Time Out's The 100 Best French Films

Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game is a comedic drama about a Parisian aristocrat. The film was released shortly before the start of World War II.

Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is an unemployed young man involved in a love triangle with both his girlfriend Marie, and a Polish nurse, Veronika (Françoise Lebrun), which he picked up at a café.

In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.

Contempt / Le Mépris is a film about filmmaking. Godard’s Masterfully staged melodrama tells of a woman’s love for a middle-class lifestyle and how a film maker must buy it for her while at the same time working as a writer for the film ‘The Odyssey’ to be directed by Fritz Lang.

Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is unhappily married and has been recently fired from his job at a TV broadcasting company. After a boring party in Paris, he decides to leave his wife and children for his baby-sitter, an ex-girlfriend, Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina).

Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Gé...

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime, a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

Newly married couple Juliette and ship captain Jean struggle through marriage as they travel on the L'Atalante along with the captain's first mate and a cabin boy.

The 400 Blows is Francois Truffaut’s first feature film about a boy who is misunderstood by his parents causing him to leave them and enter into a life of crime. A powerful film set in Paris that gives a glimpse into Paris life of the 1950’s along with a Jazz soundtrack.

Agnès Vardas’ first feature film is an hour an a half from the life of singer Cléo in which she walks through Paris while waiting the results of a cancer test. The film showed the Nouvelle Vague the first woman to become famous from the film school.

Beauty and the Beast is the 1946 adaptation from the 1757 classic love story. This romantic and dramaticly staged film from Director Cocteu’s is his second film to deals with surreal imagery.

Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece about the French Resistance underground fighters who must grapple with their own brand of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.

In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.

The Wages of Fear / Le Salaire de la Peur – is a black and white French classic by Clouzot about a South American village in the 1950’s where men who are paid to transporting extremely dangerous nitroglycerine. The story is about the rivalry that grows between the two groups of drivers. An art road genre movie.

Grand Illusion is a classic war film from French director Jean Renoir created without using images from the first World War.

With many idea rich comic situations French director Jacques Tati uses his poetic ways and knowledge of the discrepancy between heart and technique to tell a gentle business satiric tale that won him the Oscar for best foreign film in 1959.

Sentenced to six years in prison, Malik El Djebena is alone in the world and can neither read nor write. On his arrival at the prison, he seems younger and more brittle than the others detained there. At once he falls under the sway of a group of Corsicans who enforce their rule in the prison. As the 'missions' go by, he toughens himself and win...

Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search f...

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

After leaving the asylum, Vincent van Gogh settles in the home of Doctor Gachet, where he keeps painting amidst the torments of his failing mental health. He begins an affair with his host’s daughter, however, she soon realizes that he doesn’t love her and that his heart beats only for art.

A committed filmmaker struggles to complete his latest project while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

It's July, and Delphine has nowhere to go for the summer. She feels very bored and "empty", but this won't last; one day she accidently meets someone who seems to be totally made for her...

Alphonse Tram is unwittingly involved in several murders despite having no memory of committing the crimes. His confusion lead him to confess to his neighbour, Inspector Morvandieu. Alphonse and Morvandieu become the axis around which murders occur.

At a weekend gathering, a man tells a woman that they had spent time there together a year prior. But, the woman has no recollection whatsoever and is convinced that he is simply fabricating the encounter. The more he speaks about their activities the previous year however, the more compelling he becomes. The question remains however – did they ...

Hitman Jef Costello is a perfectionist who always carefully plans his murders and who never gets caught...

Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.

A bored wife of a wealthy doctor spends her afternoons exploring exciting escapades as a call-girl in a chic Paris brothel.

La permanence parisienne SOS détresse-amitié est perturbée le soir de Noël par l'arrivée de personnage marginaux farfelus qui provoquent des catastrophes en chaîne.

Remy Germain is a doctor in a French town who becomes the focus of a vicious smear campaign, as letters accusing him of having an affair and performing unlawful abortions are mailed to village leaders. The mysterious writer, who signs each letter as "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) soon targets the whole town, exposing everyone's dark secrets.

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration c...

Paris, in the early 1990s: a group of young activists is desperately tied to finding the cure against an unknown lethal disease. They target the pharmaceutical labs that are retaining potential cures, and multiply direct actions, with the hope of saving their lives as well as the ones of future generations.

On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Whilst Laura attempts to flirt with him, his fantasy becomes focused on wanting to caress Claire's knee.

Abdel, a local hoodlum, is hospitalized after a riot, where a policeman lost his gun. His friend Vinz finds it and claims he will kill a cop if Abdel dies.

Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.

The Pier / La Jetee is a masterpiece from French director Chris Marker from 1962. A post apocalyptic science fiction short film in the form of a photo collage. The film inspired the film ’12 Monkeys.’

A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality.

A bout de Souffle is Godard’s debut film and a French classic. With this film Godard begins a new style of filming that revolutionized the film industry.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, ...

La vie de Fernand Naudin, ex-truand devenu depuis petit propriétaire d'une usine de tracteurs, est bouleversée quand son ami d'enfance, un gangster notoire, l'appelle à son chevet...

The film tells the tragical story of the life of Lola Montes who was a great adventurer and stopped being the attraction of her circus after having been the lover of various important men.

Fifteen-year-old Suzanne seeks refuge from a disintegrating family in a series of impulsive, promiscuous affairs. Her fulsome sexuality further ratchets up the suppressed passions of her narcissistic brother, insecure mother and brooding, authoritarian father.

At 15, Adèle knows two things for sure: she's a girl, and a girl goes out with boys. But the day she sees Emma's blue hair at her father's house, she knows her life is about to change.

Les Diaboliques is a Horror mystery thriller from French director Henri-Georges Clouzot about a triangle relationship that leads to murder.

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two...

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

A devout Catholic man's rigid principles are challenged during a one-night stay with Maud, a divorced woman with an outsize personality.

The Passion of Joan of Arc is the masterpiece from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer that depicts the story of French martyr Joan from Orleans seven years after her canonization from the catholic church.

A cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organization. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.

Tom Ripley is a talented mimic, moocher, forger and all-around criminal improviser; but there's more to Tom Ripley than even he can guess.