Paths of Glory (1957), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Battle of Algiers (1966), Dunkirk (2017), The Day of the Jackal (1973), Port of Shadows (1938), Joyeux Noel (2005), A Very Long Engagement (2004) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best French Army movies.
Storyline: The futility and irony of the war in the trenches in WWI is shown as a unit commander in the French army must deal with the mutiny of his men and a glory-seeking general after part of his force falls back under fire in an impossible attack.
Plot Keywords: trench warfare, world war one, court martial, death penalty, fear of death, french soldier, french army ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In the eighteenth century, in a small village in Ireland, Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal) is a young farm boy in love with his cousin Nora Brady (Gay Hamilton). When Nora gets engaged to British Captain John Quin (Leonard Rossiter), Barry challenges him to a duel of pistols. He wins and escapes to Dublin, but is robbed on the road. Without an alternative, Barry joins the British Army to fight in the Seven Years War. He deserts and is forced to join the Prussian Army, where he saves the life of his Captain and becomes his protégé and spy of Irish gambler Chevalier de Balibari (Patrick Magee). He helps Chevalier and becomes his associate until he decides to marry the wealthy Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson). They move to England and Barry, in his obsession of nobility, dissipates her fortune and makes a dangerous and revengeful enemy.
Plot Keywords: rise and fall, amputation, cheating at cards, fencing, card playing, social climber, wedding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A film commissioned by the Algerian government that shows the Algerian revolution from both sides. The French foreign legion has left Vietnam in defeat and has something to prove. The Algerians are seeking independence. The two clash. The torture used by the French is contrasted with the Algerian's use of bombs in soda shops. A look at war as a nasty thing that harms and sullies everyone who participates in it.
Plot Keywords: underground fighting, resistance, algeria, poverty, murder of a police officer, hiding place, guerilla ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Evacuation of Allied soldiers from the British Empire, and France, who were cut off and surrounded by the German Army from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, France, between May 26- June 04, 1940, during Battle of France in World War II.
Plot Keywords: world war two, 1940s, bravery, soldier, evacuation, royal air force, army ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: It is the early 60s in France. The remaining survivors of the aborted French Foreign Legion have made repeated attempts to kill DeGaulle. The result is that he is the most closely guarded man in the world. As a desperate act, they hire The Jackal, the code name for a hired killer who agrees to kill French President De Gaulle for half a million dollars. We watch his preparations which are so thorough we wonder how he could possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to pick up his trail. The situation is historically accurate. There were many such attempts and the film closely follows the plot of the book.
Plot Keywords: assassin, assassination plot, paris france, conspiracy, sniper rifle, terrorist plot, race against time ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Life's a rotten business, says Jean, a deserter who arrives at night in Le Havre, looking to leave the country. He lucks into civilian clothes, a little bit of money, a passport, and a dog, and he also meets Nelly, a 17-year-old who's grown up too fast. She's the object of lust of men: including a boyfriend Maurice, her putative protector Zabel, and Lucien, a local hood. Jean falls for her, faces down Lucien, and gives her courage to stand on her own feet. A ship is leaving for Venezuela; can at least one of them be on it, or is that just a dream?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: port, harbor, french soldier, suicide, nightclub, murder, identity swap ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1914, World War I, the bloodiest war ever at that time in human history, was well under way. However on Christmas Eve, numerous sections of the Western Front called an informal, and unauthorized, truce where the various front-line soldiers of the conflict peacefully met each other in No Man's Land to share a precious pause in the carnage with a fleeting brotherhood. This film dramatizes one such section as the French, Scottish and German sides partake in the unique event, even though they are aware that their superiors will not tolerate its occurrence.
Plot Keywords: soldier, christmas, world war one, soccer, trench, christmas eve, truce ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Five desperate French soldiers during The Battle of the Somme shoot themselves, either by accident or with purpose, in order to be invalided back home. Having been "caught" a court-martial convenes and determines punishment to be banishment to No Man's Land with the objective of having the Germans finish them off. In the process of telling this tale each man's life is briefly explored along with their next of kin as Methilde, fiancée to one of the men, tries to determine the circumstances of her lover's death. This task is not made any easier for her due to a bout with polio as a child. Along the way she discovers the heights and depths of the human soul.
Plot Keywords: delirium, deserter, crucifix, hand wound, self mutilation, gendarme, photographer ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A group of German infantrymen of the First World War live out their lives in the trenches of France. They find brief entertainment and relief in a village behind the lines, but primarily terror fills their lives as the attacks on and from the French army ebb and flow. One of the men, Karl, goes home on leave only to discover the degradation forced on his family by wartime poverty. He returns to the lines in time to face an enormous attack by French tanks.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: world war one, adulterous wife, steel helmet, german soldier, french soldier, comrade, infantry ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A telling of the 1st Battalion, 7 Cavalry Regiment, 1st Calvary Division's battle against overwhelming odds in the Ia Drang valley of Vietnam in 1965. Seen through the eyes of the battalion's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore (played by Mel Gibson), we see him take command of the battalion and its preparations to go into Vietnam. We also see how the French had, years earlier, been defeated in the same area. The battle was to be the first major engagement between U.S. and N.V.A. forces in South Vietnam, and showed the use of helicopters as mobility providers and assault support aircraft.
Plot Keywords: battle, soldier, vietnam war, helicopter, exploding body, gore, severed leg ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1832, cholera ravages Provence (South of France). After several misadventures, Angelo, young Italian officer hunted by the Austrian secret police, meets Pauline de Theus, a young lady. After a second accidental meeting, both will start the search of Pauline's husband in a chaotic country.—Remy Amouroux <Remy.Amouroux@imag.fr>
Plot Keywords: knight, escape, saving a life, prologue, horse and carriage, shot in the head, duel ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A news-reel like movie about early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of individual people, citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course the king Louis XVI, showing their own small problems.—Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>
Plot Keywords: french revolution, la marseillaise, pigeon, jumping out a window, hunger, misery, trojan horse ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Algeria, 1943, through Italy and France, to Alsace in early 1945, with a coda years later. Arabs volunteer to fight Nazis to liberate France, their motherland. We follow Saïd, dirt poor, an orderly for a grizzled sergeant, Martinez, a pied noir with some willingness to speak up for his Arab troops; Messaoud, a crack shot, who in Province falls in love with a French woman who loves him back; and Abdelkader, a corporal, a budding intellectual with a keen sense of injustice. The men fight with courage against a backdrop of small and large indignities: French soldiers get better food, time for leave, and promotions. Is the promise of liberty, equality, and fraternity hollow?
Plot Keywords: year 1944, battle, firearm, cigarette smoking, reference to allah, 1940s, world war two ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The newly-named Emperor Maximillian, the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire, arrives in Mexico in the early 1860s with his wife Carlotta to face popular sentiment favoring Benito Juarez and popular demand for democracy. With an elite group of Mexican monarchists, Maximillian tries to appease the democratic Mexicans but he fails. Abraham Lincoln continues to support Juarez and asks the French to withdraw support for Maximilian. Carlotta goes to France to plead with Napoleon III, to no avail.—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>
Plot Keywords: cavalry charge, infantry, cavalry, musket, flintlock pistol, flintlock rifle, cannon ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Set in the time of Napoleon wars, shows how the wars swept over the unfortunate Polish country at the beginning of the 19th century. Story revolves around the Polish legion under command of General Dabrowski, who then fought on Napoleon's side with the hopes of Poland's revival.—Polish Cinema Database <http://info.fuw.edu.pl/Filmy/>
Plot Keywords: widow, battle, cannon, wounded soldier, officer, barricade, monk ...
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