Best French Films of the 1930s

The Golden Decade

The 1930s is often referred to as the Golden Age of French cinema, and it was certainly a prodigious decade, with a flourishing of talent on both sides of the camera. The arrival of sound coincided with the emergence of a wave of dynamic new filmmakers determined to make their mark. Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier and Jean Grémillon endowed their fatalistic dramas with an aesthetic called poetic realism, a precursor of film noir, whilst others - Jean Renoir, Marcel Pagnol - opted for a more naturalistic approach. Films were not just for entertainment, they often had a political axe to grind and reflected the concerns of the day. In this remarkable decade, French cinema was the envy of the world, and with so many iconic films to choose from it's hard to know where to begin. Here are some of the highlights of French cinema from the 1930s. For a more complete list consult our best films index and complete films index.

L'Âge d'or (1930)

Luis Buñuel's second surrealist film (after Un Chien andalou) combines stunning visual artistry and a mischievous sense of humour with a thoroughly unrestrained assault on bourgeois conformity. Where else would you witness such bizarre sights as a Catholic priest and stuffed giraffe being thrown from an upstairs window? L'Âge d'or literally caused a riot when it was first screened in 1930 and it remains one of the most provocative examples of film art, from a master whose main raison d'être was to provoke.

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Le Sang d'un poète (1930)

With Le Sang d'un poète, his first film, Paris's leading avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau was able to impose his own unique poetic vision on the new medium of film art. Daringly experimental, with flashes of surreal brilliance, the film employs all manner of visual trickery to create a freely flowing dreamlike experience that is genuinely unsettling. Cocteau's obsession with death and the afterlife is felt here, prefiguring his subsequent cinematic masterworks, notably Orphée.

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Sous les toits de Paris (1930)

With his first sound film, director René Clair offers an affectionate tribute to the City of Lights that is full of charm and bonhomie. Sous les toit de Paris may not be Clair's greatest film but it exudes an infectious sense of optimism with its sympathetic portrayal of ordinary Parisian people going about their daily routines. The film was a notable hit with the public and seems to anticipate the short-lived Popular Front Utopia that came a few years later.

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À nous la liberté (1931)

René Clair's exuberant anti-capitalist satire À nous la liberté was one of the first popular successes of sound cinema in France. It tackles one of the major concerns of its time (the effect of technological advancement on human civilisation) with a combination of visual flair and good humour. The film is at its most inventive in its imaginative use of sound, which boldly reinforces the impression of the images on the screen. The film - one of Clair's most accomplished - is reputed to have inspired Chaplin's similarly themed Modern Times (1936).

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La Chienne (1931)

With its conflicting mix of black comedy and social drama, Jean Renoir's early sound film La Chienne shocked the critics but oddly found favour with the cinemagoing public. What could have been a fairly routine melodrama ended up as a highly influential departure from film convention, one that spawned the poetic realist aesthetic in French cinema, a forerunner to classic film noir. Renoir brings some dazzling innovation to both the sound and the visuals, and of all his experimental films this is the one that is most successfully realised.

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Le Million (1931)

With Le Million, director René Clair created a template for the musical comedy that would soon become one of the most popular genres in cinema (particularly in America). The fluid visuals, replete with surreal touches, make this a pleasing dreamlike fantasy that both looks back to the director's earlier fantasies and anticipates those that were yet to come.

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Marius (1931)

Such was the immense success of his stage play Marius that the playwright Marcel Pagnol could hardly wait to turn it into a film. He wasn't up to the job of directing it himself at the time, so that role was taken by Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda, who went on to have a legendary career as a film producer. After Marius, Pagnol adapted its sequel Fanny and wrote and directed a third installment, César, creating what is now known as the Marseille Trilogy. This was the foundation on which Pagnol perfected his own unique brand of rural slice-of-life cinema, based in the picturesque environs of his beloved Marseille.

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Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932)

Jean Renoir's growing estrangement from the bourgeois world in which he grew up had its most vivid expression in his first comic masterpiece, Boudu sauvé des eaux. As befits its subject matter, the film gleefully breaks convention with its long takes and roving camera, innovations that give it an extraordinary fluidity and naturalism. As the vagrant who brings anarchy into a respectable bourgeois household Michel Simon delights in one of the greatest roles of his incredible career..

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Les Croix de bois (1932)

One of the most harrowing war films to have been made in France, Les Croix de bois still packs a strong emotional punch with its searingly authentic depiction of the horrors of the First World War. Sensitively scripted, it manages to be both a powerful anti-war film and a fitting memorial to those who gave their lives in what was considered to be the war to end all wars. Director Raymond Bernard shows both his visual flair and his humanity in this remarkably moving film, which offsets its brutal realism with some exquisite poetry.

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La Nuit du carrefour (1932)

La Nuit du carrefour was the first film adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel, and since it was directed by Jean Renoir it follows that the first actor to portray Jules Maigret on screen was the director's brother, Pierre. (Simenon apparently disliked the film but appreciated Pierre Renoir's performance.) An intensely atmospheric crime drama, the film is atypical for Jean Renoir but it was to be one of his most influential films, prefiguring both the film policier, which became a mainstay of French cinema from the 1930s onwards, and classic film noir.

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La Maternelle (1933)

Jean Benoît-Lévy's La Maternelle may have been less controversial than Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite, but it was just as powerful an indictment of the French education system at the time. Adapted from a well-known novel by Léon Frapié, the film has the form of a conventional melodrama but makes a powerful case for drastic reforms, arguing that compassion and understanding are as important to a child's education as rote learning and discipline. One interesting facet of the film is that it shows us the world from a child's perspective, thereby forcing us to identify closely with the child protagonists.

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La Tête d'un homme (1933)

Directed with considerable aplomb by Julien Divivier La Tête d'un homme is arguably the most successful adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel. With his dour persona and natural air of authority, Harry Baur looks as if he was born to play Maigret, and he does so more convincingly than any other actor to take on the role (with the possible exception of Bruno Cremer). Just as impressive as the lead villain is the charismatic Russian émigré Valéry Inkijinoff, who previously featured in Pudovkin's Storm over Asia (1928). What sets this film apart from the many other Simenon adaptations that have been made since is that it succeeds in recreating the oppressively melancholic aura of the author's novels.

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Les Misérables (1933)

Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables has received numerous film adaptations, but few can match the scale and emotional power of Raymond Bernard remarkable 1933 version. Adopting the tropes of German expressionist cinema (skewed camera angles and high-contrast photography with bold menacing shadows), Bernard endows his most lavish production with a sustained sense of noir menace, but it is with the ambitious exterior sequences that the film is most impressive. In this four and half-hour epic, Harry Baur is the definitive Jean Valjean, dominating every scene he appears in whilst conveying the inner turmoil of a man who has his faith in humanity tested time and again.

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L'Atalante (1934)

Completed just before his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1934, L'Atalante was the crowning achievement of Jean Vigo's short but brilliant filmmaking career. An early example of poetic realism, the film is bathed in an aura of fatalistic gloom which is given a poignant resonance by Maurice Jaubert's haunting score. Vigo demonstrates his well-developed visual flair with some unforgettable flights of fancy, the most memorable being a sequence in which the hero (Jean Dasté) dives into a canal and sees a mirage of his future bride (Dita Parlo) in her wedding dress.

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Le Grand jeu (1934)

One of Jacques Feyder's most successful films, Le Grand jeu brought the emerging poetic realist aesthetic to a highly popular genre of the time - a sultry melodrama set in an exotic North African location and featuring the Foreign Legion. The film owed its success to the casting of Pierre Richard-Willm and Marie Bell, who immediately became major stars of French cinema. (Bell actually plays two characters, one of whom is badly dubbed by another actress.) Feyder's masterful use of long tracking shots, natural locations and overlapping dissolves bring both a stark realism and visual artistry to the film.

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La Kermesse héroïque (1935)

Considered Jacques Feyder's greatest film, La Kermesse héroïque achieves the production standards of a Hollywood blockbuster with its authentic recreation of 17th century Flanders. The film skilfully combines the spectacle of a quality historical drama with outrageous farce, with Françoise Rosay (the director's wife and muse) giving her finest comic performance as the cowardly burgomaster's wife. The excellent cast includes Louis Jouvet in one of his first screen roles, playing a chaplain with an all-too-evident taste for the pleasures of the flesh.

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La Bandera (1935)

La Bandera may not have been a particularly noteworthy film for its director, Julien Duvivier, but it was a personal milestone for its lead actor, Jean Gabin, allowing him to make the transition from lightweight melodramas and comedies to more serious dramatic fare. Through his collaborations with Duvivier, Gabin soon became the leading French male actor of his time, and no other actor embodies the spirit of poetic realism so fully as he does. Despite some obvious flaws (over-use of back-projection and blacking up its lead actress), La Bandera is a powerful drama that is made all the more gripping by its extraordinary cast, with Robert Le Vigan and Pierre Renoir both excelling in roles worthy of their talents..

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Toni (1935)

Toni marked a significant turning point for its director Jean Renoir, the start of a brief phase in which his art became strongly influenced by his left-wing political concerns. Shot entirely on location in the south of France, the film has a fierce raw naturalism to it and here we have something very closely akin to Italian neo-realism (not surprisingly, as Luchino Visconti served as Renoir's assistant on the film). Deep focus, wide-angle lenses are employed to bring a near-documentary realism to the film and stress the importance of the location in the story (this being a defining characteristic of Renoir's oeuvre). Whilst he may have been influenced by Marcel Pagnol's slices of Provençal life, Renoir develops a very different kind of rural naturalism, one that is far more willing to show the extreme nastiness of human nature.

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Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936)

Of all the films that Jean Renoir directed, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange is the one that is most evocative of the mood in which it was made. An unashamedly pro-Left political comedy, this film reflects the leftwing fervour that was sweeping France in the mid-1930s, anticipating the Front Populaire's triumph in the country's legislative elections in May 1936. In keeping with the subject of the film, Renoir gave his actors the freedom to improvise, and this is presumanly what gives the film its remarkable energy and spontaneity. Jules Berry's villainous portrayal of the worst kind of self-serving capitalist is the film's chief delight.

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Le Roman d'un tricheur (1936)

Le Roman d'un tricheur was the first feature to be directed by Sacha Guitry that was not based on one of his pre-existing stage plays. In fact, it is adapted from the only novel that he wrote, Les Mémoires d'un tricheur. This sets the film apart from Guitry's other work and shows far more in the way of inventiveness and humour. There are some memorable appearances by Fréhel, a popular chansonnier of the era, and Marguerite Moreno, a grande dame if ever there was one, but it is Guitry who dominates the proceedings (as usual) in a lead role that is more than slightly self-mocking.

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Mayerling (1936)

With captivating lead performances from Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, it is not hard to see why Anatole Litvak's Mayerling is considered one of the finest examples of French film melodrama of the 1930s. With its lavish recreation of the court of the Hapsburgs in 19th century Vienna, the film has a rare opulance for a French film of this period, and the atmospheric chiaroscuro cinematography brings a chilling sense of oppression that lends the tragic denouement an exquisite poignancy and poetry. The film is a faithful adaptation of Claude Anet's novel Idyll's End, inspired by a true story about the mysterious death of the Austrian prince Archduke Rudolph.

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Partie de campagne (1936)

One of Jean Renoir's sunniest films, Partie de campagne serves both as a hymn to the transience of love and as a wry allegory on the futility of human aspirations - ironically, as it was made just before the Utopian dreams of the Front Populaire came to nothing. Taking as his source a short story by Guy de Maupassant, Renoir crafts a bitterweet tale of love lost and found that closely matches the beguiling impressionistic style of his father's paintings. Bad weather led to the film being abandoned, but the rushes were subsequently edited together by Marguerite Renoir into a 40-minute short short that is now considered one of the director's most perfect films.

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La Belle équipe (1936)

The election of the Popular Front government in France in May 1936 brought with it a spirit of optimism that was to prove misguided and short-lived. No other film of this time evokes both the euphoria and subsequent disillusionment as powerfully as Julien Duvivier's La Belle équipe, which proved to be horribly prescient with its tale of solidarity destroyed by human frailty. The film's original downbeat ending was replaced at the last minute by a happier one that was more in keeping with the upbeat mood of the time. As it turned out, Duvivier's original ending (in the poetic realist mould) proved to be the one that was closer to the truth..

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Drôle de drame (1937)

Taking a break from their doom-laden poetic realist dramas, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert made a surprising departure into British-style black comedy with Drôle de drame. The film was not well received by the critics or the public, but it now rates as one of the duo's best films, and how could it fail to please with such an illustrious cast list as Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet, Jean-Louis Barrault, Françoise Rosay and Jean-Pierre Aumont? The chemistry between Simon and Jouvet alone makes the film worth watching, but throw in a totally unhinged Barrault as a butcher-killing madman and it becomes irresistible. Bizarre, bizarre.

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La Grande illusion (1937)

La Grande illusion is one of Jean Renoir's greatest films, a landmark of French cinema, although it came tantalisingly close to being directed by Julien Duvivier. In fact, Renoir had immense difficulty getting the film off the ground, and it was only after he managed to persuade Jean Gabin to take the lead role that he found a financial backer. Renoir's ambivalance towards war (he was a pacifist but he recognised the threat posed by Hitler) is reflected throughout the film, which can be seen both as a statement of the futility of war and also as call to arms at a time of national emergency. The latter view was the one that prevailed when the film was first seen, and this is what made it a major critical and commercial success.

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Pépé le Moko (1937)

Strongly prefiguring American film noir with its moody tale of an outlaw driven to his doom by an irresistible femme fatale, Pépé le Moko is Julien Duvivier's most pessimistic film. In fact, it was thought to be so grim by the French government that it was banned at the start of WWII because of concerns over its demoralising influence. Many of the familiar tropes of classic film noir are in evidence in this film, not surprising as Duvivier had been very heavily inspired by Howard Hawks' seminal gangster film Scarface (1932). The expressionistic use of shadows and silhouettes lends the film a sustained aura of menace, revealing a darker side to the director that would dominate in later years.

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Gueule d'amour (1937)

Jean Grémillon's inspired adaptation of André Beucler's popular novella Gueue d'amour was the director's first commercial success. With its haunting portrayal of obsessive love and betrayal, the film bears the familiar imprint of poetic realism that impacted greatly on French cinema in the mid-to-late 1930s, reflecting a growing sense of pessimism in the country after the failure of the Popular Front goverrnment. Avoiding the expressionistic stylisation of his contemporaries, Grémillon's own brand of poetic realism has a more naturalistic feel to it, and this lends the film a greater immediacy and emotional resonance.

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Hôtel du Nord (1938)

Adapted from a novel by Eugène Dabit, Hôtel du Nord is the second of the three poetic realist masterpieces directed by Marcel Carné. A sense of despair and hopelessness hangs over all of the protagonists in this film as they reflect on a past strewn with broken dreams and a future devoid of meaning. From its doom-laden opening to its shocking cordite-scented climax, this is a film that bears the distinctive imprint of classic film noir more vividly than any other French film of this decade. Its impressive main set (designed by Alexandre Trauner) was the largest ever to be constructed at Billancourt studios - a suitable venue for a memorable encounter between Louis Jouvet and Arletty.

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La Bête humaine (1938)

Inspired by Emile Zola's classic novel, La Bête humaine was Jean Renoir's one and only excursion into film noir territory. The change of mood from the director's previous films is stark and bitter, and no doubt reflected his own state of mind after the failure of the Popular Front government. Once again, the director uses the film to express his contempt for the class barriers which divided French society in the 1930s, although on this occasion he sees no happy resolution to the problem. The plot may be pure B-movie fare, but Renoir invests it with such depth and compassion that we are compelled to sympathise with the three deeply flawed protagonists, played to perfection by Jean Gabin, Fernand Ledoux and Simone Simon..

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La Femme du boulanger (1938)

After his famous Marseille Trilogy, the most widely known of Marcel Pagnol's Provençal dramas is La Femme du boulanger, an engaging modern fable which is among the most poignant and perfectly crafted of his films. The film's international success brought instant worldwide fame to both its author and his loyal lead actor, Raimu. The last of Pagnol's films to be inspired by a Jean Giono story, this enchanting film pairs Raimu with rising star Ginette Leclerc - two immesnely talented performers who bring an extraordinary authenticity to their portrayals of the temperamental baker and his cheating wife.

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La Marseillaise (1938)

Whilst it is a flagtant piece of propaganda for the Popular Front, La Marseillaise also serves as a fairly authentic historical account of key episodes in the French Revolution. Renoir's intention was not to stick slavishly to historical fact, but instead to present certain events in the revolution in a way that would chime with the present day concerns of his audience. The political aim of La Marseillaise was essentially to rekindle the euphoria of the Popular Front in its early days and thereby help to unite a divided country at a time of political and economic crises.

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Le Quai des brumes (1938)

Le Quai des brumes would seem to be the most perfect example of poetic realism, with its unremitting aura of doom and a romance that cannot end well in an oppressive milieu populated by shady underworld characters. This is the film that cemented the partnership of director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert, who would later collaborate on what is often cited as the greatest of all French films, Les Enfants du paradis (1945). Prévert's genius for making ordinary dialogue sound poetic works well with Carné's own peculiar kind of realism, to create a powerfully moving drama that is steeped in atmosphere and emotion.

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La Règle du jeu (1939)

A brilliant piece of social satire that swings effortlessly between high drama and low farce, La Règle du Jeu is the absolute pinnacle of Jean Renoir's art, and it's small wonder that many regard this as the greatest French film ever made. Renoir had already spent a fair chunk of his career bemoaning France's out-dated class system but here he goes at it with the ferocity of a demented Rottweiler, or rather a man determined to tear down the entire edifice of bourgeois privilege. It's no surprise that the only genuinely sympathetic character in the film, the only one capable of feeling real emotion, is played by Renoir himself.

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Le Jour se lève (1939)

The fourth collaboration of director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert is by far their bleakest, another trip down an unbearably dark and lonely road to a destination that is all too evident. Le Jour se lève is a defining work of poetic realism and follows a condemned man on his final journey through his barbed memories and shattered illusions. Utterly grim and offering not one scintilla of hope, there is no other film that better reflected the mood of pessimism that hung over France in those final months of the 1930s, now that hopes of a socialist Utopia had all but faded and Europe drifted inexorably towards war.

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