The best of French cinema is and always has been stunning, to put it modestly. Its gradually escalating refinement reached a peak of maturity in the late 1960s, but its seeds first germinated between the two World Wars when French audiences first demonstrated an appetite for arcane themes that were tempered by rich characterizations.
Golden Age, “L’age d’or” (1930)
Spanish director Luis Buñuel made many films that have been compared to the surrealist movement in French art, and in this film, he described himself as “the dream of a madman.” That’s about right. The closest thing we see to it today is in the works of David Lynch and Peter Greenaway, films heavily laden with subjective elements that require extensive digestion but can still be interesting prima facie for sheer weirdness. The broad characteristics of the quasi-genre are bizarre circumstances, illogical plot-twists and heavily exaggerated reactions on the part of caricatured characters. A father would not, for example, shoot his child with a rifle for a minor prank, but he might (i.e. does) in a madman’s dream. The fun is how such things provoke a confluence of humor and horror. See it with friends, and I promise that you will have plenty to talk about.
Le Million (1931)
You have surely seen it before — person wins lottery, person loses the ticket, madness ensues. This film is the first such telling of which I am aware in the cinematic medium, but it remains a superior one. At a time when the comedic genre was dominated by Charles Chaplin and French cinema was exploring complex dramatic temperaments, this miracle of madcap farce is an unique deviation from whatever conceptions you might have of classic films. That includes French films and even comedies. René Clair’s characters are so realistic that they quickly reel you in, and before you realize it, the roller-coaster embarks on an escapade which feels like a fantastic adventure that could somehow still happen to anyone. “Million” is funny as hell; it’s loads of entertainment in a package that, from the outside, looks beguilingly like an anachronistic yawner. Don’t be fooled!
The Grand Illusion, “La Grande Illusion” (1937)
One of the prevailing experiences of combatants in the First World War was the way in which aristocrats and bourgeois shared the sufferance of battle relatively equally. Most wars of the 19th century were contested by armies of plebeians in the fields commanded by patricians looking on from higher ground, but the nature of trench warfare did much to homogenize the risks faced by all soldiers. This film, directed by Jean Renoir, attempts to encapsulate that solidarity with a story about prisoners of war from opposite extremes of class conspiring to make an escape. Each has different skills to tender, and through excellent scene writing, the social divides are overcome to realize freedom. Even considering the language barrier, it’s easy to appreciate the genius of the screenplay, and Erich von Stroheim delivers a particularly inspired performance as a German captain and warden. Everything about “Illusion” is brilliant, and no film makes for a more rewarding evening with classic cinema.
