The Lovely Month of May (1963), My Life to Live (1962), Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Eden (2014), The Bride Wore Black (1968), The 400 Blows (1959), The Beaches of Agnès (2008), The Mother and the Whore (1973) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best French New Wave movies.
Storyline: In pre-WWI Paris, two friends, Jules (Austrian) and Jim (French), fall in love with the same woman, Catherine. But Catherine loves and marries Jules. When they meet again in Germany after the war, Catherine starts to love Jim - This is the story of three people in love, a love that doesn't affect their friendship, and about how their relationship evolves with the years.
Plot Keywords: love triangle, classic cinema, black and white, literary adaptation, existentialism, war background, friendship ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Michel Poiccard, an irresponsible sociopath and small-time thief, steals a car and impulsively murders the motorcycle policeman who pursues him. Now wanted by the authorities, he renews his relationship with Patricia Franchini, a hip American girl studying journalism at the Sorbonne, whom he had met in Nice a few weeks earlier. Before leaving Paris, he plans to collect a debt from an underworld acquaintance and expects her to accompany him on his planned getaway to Italy. Even with his face in the local papers and media, Poiccard seems oblivious to the dragnet that is slowly closing around him as he recklessly pursues his love of American movies and libidinous interest in the beautiful American.
Plot Keywords: crime, romance, on the run, film noir, rebellion, existentialism, paris ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Six Parisians, including a real estate agent (Isabelle Carré) and his religious co-worker (André Dussollier), face a sad search for real love.
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, comedy, french film, urban life, human relationships, loneliness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Single father obsessed with murdering the hit&run driver who killed his only child, poses as a screenwriter to get close to an actress who was in the death car. He feels fully prepared to kill the pretty young woman if she was the driver, but as his knowledge of her family grows, so does his empathy for them.—David Stevens
Plot Keywords: revenge, murder, suspense, crime, drama, french film, film noir ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A small town in the south-west of France, summer of 1944. Having failed to join the resistance, the 18 year old Lucien Lacombe, whose father is a prisoner in Germany and whose mother dates her employer, works for the German police. He then meets France Horn, the daughter of a rich jewish tailor.—Vincent Merlaud <merlaud@studi.mathematik.hu-berlin.de>
Plot Keywords: war, france, world war ii, moral dilemma, coming of age, betrayal, rural life ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This is a jolly coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy named Laurent Chevalier who is growing up in bourgeois surroundings in Dijon, France. This is France in the mid-1950s rather than America in the 1990s. Thus, Laurent is unharmed by events which would irreparably shatter the self-esteem of a modern American adolescent: he gets drunk, he smokes, he has sex, he is smothered by his mother, he is ignored by his father, a priest makes a pass at him, he gets rheumatoid fever, etc. There's enough scandalous behavior in this film to make 100 made-for-TV movies, and yet this is a very happy and oddly innocent tale.—Tim Horrigan <horrigan@aol.com>
Plot Keywords: coming of age, family, mother-son relationship, adolescence, sexual awakening, french cinema, 1960s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A triangle: Franz, Arthur, and Odile. Franz, a young man with Alain Delon good looks, has met Odile in an English class. She lives in Joinville with wealthy benefactors and has mentioned to Franz that Mr. Stolz keeps a pile of 10,000 franc notes unlocked in his room. Franz tells his friend Arthur, a swarthy guy whose shady uncle is pressing him for money. Arthur and Franz, who mimic American movie tough guys, case Odile's house, pressure her to assist them with a burglary, and make passes at her as well. She's alternately compliant and distressed. Will they pull off the heist?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: crime, drama, romance, film noir, youth, rebellion, fugitive ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Prof. Henri Laborit uses the stories of the lives of three people to discuss behaviorist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety. René is a technical manager at a textile factory and must face the anxiety caused by corporate downsizing. Janine is a self-educated actress/stylist who learns that the wife of her lover is dying and must decide to let them reunite. Jean is a controversial career-climbing writer/politician at a crossroads in life.—Dragomir R. Radev <radev@cs.columbia.edu>
Plot Keywords: drama, existentialism, psychological, social commentary, urban life, middle class, memory ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Severine is a beautiful young woman married to a doctor. She loves her husband dearly, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him. She indulges instead in vivid, kinky, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Eventually she becomes a prostitute, working in a brothel in the afternoons while remaining chaste in her marriage.
Plot Keywords: erotic, psychological drama, surrealism, feminism, fantasy, marriage, desire ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The winner of the Louis Delluc Prize as the most outstanding French photo-play of 1936, as selected by the Young Independent Critics of France (an organization and not a description.) The film treats the imprisoning hold of poverty; the disheartening odds of people rising from such social despair, and the ease in which those in the upper spheres of Society may descend.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: drama, social, poverty, french, adaptation, realism, class ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Paul is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and disillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola', as the credits announce) and their social and emotional politics.—D.Giddings <darren.giddings@newcastle.ac.uk>
Plot Keywords: 1960s, political, romance, youth culture, social commentary, paris, black and white ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Paul Javal is a writer who is hired to make a script for a new movie about Ulysses more commercial, which is to be directed by Fritz Lang and produced by Jeremy Prokosch. But because he let his wife Camille drive with Prokosch and he is late, she believes, he uses her as a sort of present for Prokosch to get get a better payment. So the relationship ends.
Plot Keywords: art film, marital crisis, film industry, literary adaptation, existentialism, alienation, self-reflection ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Pierre Lachenay, a middle-aged, well-known publisher and lecturer, is married to Franca, an unbalanced woman, and father of Sabine, a 10-year-old girl. While traveling to Lisbon for a lecture, Pierre Lachenay has a one night stand with Nicole, the Panair do Brasil air stewardess. He wants to see her again and again, they travel to Reims together, and Pierre hides the affair from his family, mostly to spare his daughter the anguish of a separation. Nicole is taking it lightly but Pierre, misunderstanding her feelings and expectations, decides to live with her. The couple's break-up leads to a tragic end.—Artemis-9
Plot Keywords: black and white, extramarital affair, drama, 1960s, psychological analysis, middle class, love triangle ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Angela,a striptease artist, wants to have a baby and tries to persuade her boyfriend Emile to go along with the idea. Emile will have none of it so she goes after Emile's friend Alfred.
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, musical, color film, paris, marriage, satire ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Charlie Kohler is a piano player in a bar. The waitress Lena is in love with him. One of Charlie's brother, Chico, a crook, takes refuge in the bar because he is chased by two gangsters, Momo and Ernest. We will discover that Charlie's real name is Edouard Saroyan, once a virtuose who gives up after his wife's suicide. Charlie now has to deal wih Chico, Ernest, Momo, Fido (his youngest brother who lives with him), and Lena...
Plot Keywords: crime, drama, film noir, thriller, mystery, romance, music ...
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