French film

The French film played the most important role in the development and establishment of the film medium. In the early silent film era, French entrepreneurs set up cinemas and subsidiaries across Europe to distribute their films, which were seen as trend-setting. Several new styles of film emanated from France.

Pioneers

The long journey from the camera obscura and the magic lantern culminated in the invention of the cinématograph by the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière . The advantage over previous and simultaneous experiments was the possibility of projecting moving images onto a canvas. The first closed screening of Workers Leaving the Lumière Works ( La Sortie des usines Lumière ) took place on March 22, 1895, and the first public screening on December 28, 1895 in Paris. With a revenue of 33 francs, the company's increasingly numerous cameramen were soon traveling around the world and their films were shown in both New York and St. Petersburg. For the Lumière brothers, film as "living photography" was a means of perfecting photography. Like the latter, the short films with a length of eight to twelve meters (approx. 1 min) document privacy, baby's breakfast ( Repas de bébé ), current affairs in politics (Le Couronnement du Tsar Nicolas II), and everyday things, the arrival of a train at the train station in La Ciotat , ( L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat ). With the exception of The Watered Gardener ( L'Arroseur arrosé ), the first comedy, there seems to be no fictional element, no actors, no decoration and no scenario in the films. As Henri Langlois and Jean Renoir note in the film "Lumiére" by Eric Rohmer, it cannot be a coincidence that, given the known length of the film material, a tram leaves the picture at the beginning and the end. It would also be thanks to the brothers that they tried out almost all of today's camera settings. Georges Méliès was left with the task of opening up the path of development for film, but staging . As a theater man familiar with stage machinery, he asked himself whether the film should limit itself to only showing what is actually being seen. If the camera operators at Lumière were given a recording device, the illusionist Méliès needed a workshop. In 1897 the first film studio was set up in Montreuil near Paris. Around 500 were shot here by 1913, including the first science fiction film in 1902: The Journey to the Moon . Méliès described himself as a "human being and manual worker": He was a scenarioist, decorator, director and actor in his films. His trick technique was also revolutionary (e.g. fading and hand coloring), but he treated the film only as a theater with other means. The immobile camera position in the direction of the stage did not contribute to the development of an independent film language and was ultimately the cause of its decline. (See Toeplitz 1983, pp. 16-26)

Recommended DVDs: Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers, BFI / Georges Méliès: The first magician of the cinema, Lobster film / Rohmer, Eric: Lumière. In: Eric Rohmer: In the sign of the lion. Arthaus.

industrialization

When the Neyret group, a partner in the coal mine and steelworks, invested a million francs in the rise of Frères Pathé in close association with the major bank Crédit Lyonnais, the film developed into an entertainment industry. If Méliès was still a self-made man, Ferdinand Zecca's career is exemplary, who began as a "man for everything" and ended up as a "chief of staff". Zecca's films depict sensations such as the story of a crime, the victims of alcoholism or the life of a gamer. The company also produced the first erotic films. The "Pathé-Journal" was one of the first newsreels in the world. Comedies, tragedies, nature shots and actualities were fabricated and delivered every day. Artistically remembered ( Max Linder ) as a role model for ( Charles Chaplin ). Five copies of the production were destined for the domestic market, up to one hundred and fifty for the American market. With its programs, production of raw film and cinema supplies, Pathé became a world power. In the early days of cinema, an estimated 80 percent of all films came from France. Centralized commercial production and distribution systems with cinema chains also first appeared in France. The profit opportunities of the film business soon attracted competitors, especially Léon Gaumont's group . Gaumont boasted beautiful photography and even today the names of directors such as Louis Feuillade , Léonce Perret , Alice Guy are known in contrast to the mostly anonymous production of Pathé. The company also employed the first animated filmmaker, Émile Cohl . Industrialization also led to the replacement of traveling cinemas with permanent film projection sites. In order to drive out the smell of the fair and to give it respectability, the demanding Film d'Art was launched around 1908 , often a film adaptation of sophisticated literature, accompanied by the music of well-known composers and starring famous actresses like Sarah Bernhardt . This style suffered from the fact that it was less interesting because of the specifically cinematic means, but too often only offered "filmed theater". (See Toeplitz 1983, pp. 32, 33, 47 - 60)

DVD recommendations: Early Cinema: Primitives and Pioneers, BFI / Laugh with Max Linder !, Image Entertainment / Gaumont le cinéma premier vol. 1 & 2, Gaumont / Les Vampires by Louis Feuillade, Image Entertainment / Les Vampires, Artifical Eye / Fantomas, Artifical Eye

After 1918

After the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, shooting was restricted because the film used up raw materials that were essential to the war effort - but war propaganda films and newsreels continued to be produced. Centralized film censorship had existed since 1916. After the war, American and German cinema productions flooded France, at times they had a market share of 80 percent. The rules of the game of film had changed fundamentally in the meantime, full-length feature films based on the model of the American director David Wark Griffith required new structures for film production and distribution, and the established French studios remained stuck to their once successful strategies for too long. Gaumont and Pathé got into a crisis, American companies opened their own studios in France.

To protect against excessive film imports, France also introduced film quotas in 1928, following the example of other European countries . Initially, the French Prime Minister Édouard Herriot wanted to set an import quota of 1: 4 - that is, four films should be imported for every French film produced. In view of the flagging French film industry, this seemed too high for the American film magnates - otherwise they would have had to produce films in France in order to be able to show their own films. The President of the American Film Association, Will Hays , traveled personally to France and finally negotiated a quota of 1: 7.

avant-garde

This guarantee that a certain number of French films would have to be shown in French cinemas made it possible for creative and prolific local avant-garde filmmakers such as Jacques Feyder , Marcel L'Herbier , Jean Epstein , Louis Delluc and others. a. to ensure the survival of French cinema despite the flood of commercial US films. An anti-war stance was widespread in these productions. A filmmaker of the movement was z. B. Abel Gance , who later parted with the pure teaching of the avant-garde in order to pursue major projects such as his gigantomantic film Napoleon (1927). Other important and innovative directors of this time (and the early sound film years) were for example Jean Vigo and René Clair .

Sound film

The sound film brought another upheaval: 20 French sound film cinemas were set up in 1929, by 1931 there were to be 1,000, after the slump in growth in 1935 it rose to 4,250 by 1937. 1929 was a year of crisis for French film: only 52 domestic productions were made, man had become dependent on the licensed foreign sound film systems, which ruthlessly divided up the world market in the 1930 Paris Sound Film Agreement.

In 1932, however, 157 French films were made again, and the global economic crisis would not reach the country until later. A new, capable generation of film directors and many other talents, often provided with valuable theater experience, made the production of numerous classic works of cinematography possible. The emigrants from Germany (in the 1930s) and from Russia (in the 1920s) also enriched the cinema culture. Demanding films of these years were characterized by the style of so-called poetic realism .

The musical film celebrated successes in the entertainment cinema. B. with Mistinguett , Maurice Chevalier and Josephine Baker .

Apart from Paris and the other metropolises, France was still a strongly agrarian country in those years, but even the province was now being carried away by the cinema. There were 150 million viewers in 1929, 234 million in 1931, then 453 million in 1938. In the occupation after 1940, however, the number of visitors fell again. The French film industry remained fragmented: between 1935 and 1939 there were 102 independent film production companies.

Poetic realism

Classic box office magnets and stars of the French sound film appeared in this era: Arletty , Fernandel , Jean Gabin , Raimu and Michel Simon, for example. Star directors included Sacha Guitry , Julien Duvivier , Jean Renoir and Marcel Pagnol . Works like Renoir's Bestie Mensch (1938) anticipated the "noir" style of later years.

After the German invasion in June 1940, France was also flooded by German film productions. With Continental Films , the German occupiers in Paris also created their own film production company, for which all studios in the Paris region were taken over and most of the French artists and technicians were hired. In 1942, the showing of Anglo-American films was banned.

After 1945

Feature film production in France
year	number
1975	222
1985	151
1995	141
2005	240

After the liberation in 1944, American films initially conquered the French market again. The Blum-Byrnes Agreement, negotiated in 1946 and 1948, set import quotas. Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) and Gone with the Wind (1939) were successful . The Hollywood system was at its best for the next decade. Young, cinema-enthusiastic French discovered US cinema with its excellent "film noir", its musicals, westerns and its intelligent comedies. Before that, the plight of French films, which struggled in vain to restore the high pre-war level, was all the more clear. In 1946 the CNC (" Center national de la cinématographie ", state film funding institution under the direction of the Minister of Education) was set up to organize and support French cinema. Starting in 1948, a tax was levied on every cinema ticket to support the film industry. To this day, the public sector financially supports French cinema, which competes with Hollywood. The market share of foreign films on the French market between 1950 and 1980 was around 50 percent.

"Quality Cinema"

Post-war film classics were, for example, Marcel Carné's Children of Olympus (1945) and Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946). Films about the resistance against the German occupiers were very popular, for example René Clément's La bataille du rail (1945).

There were many co-productions and thus interactions with the then flourishing and artistically demanding Italian film. In 1946 the first Cannes Film Festival took place. It held up well and soon became one of the most demanding international events of its kind. Together with the country's numerous film clubs, the film archive of the Cinémathèque Française , and also with the many publications by film critics , Cannes supports the film culture of France and forms a window and connection to the art of cinema around the world. France became the country of film criticism and reflection on cinema. From this, the Nouvelle Vague , the new wave of French film , developed in the late 1950s . Later well-known directors such as Éric Rohmer , François Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard initially worked as film critics (for André Bazin's " Cahiers du cinéma "). One of the most famous film critics was Lotte Eisner , who originally came from Germany and later worked mainly from France. In the fifties new attendance records could be booked; an average of 400 million admissions were counted each year.

The French quality cinema ( cinéma de papa ), gradually perceived as outdated by young cineastes , largely copied American knitting patterns and relied on established stars, many of them from the pre-war period. Jean Gabin, Gaby Morlay , Danielle Darrieux , Michèle Morgan and Jean Marais appeared frequently on the screen. New faces such as Gérard Philipe , Simone Signoret or Martine Carol remained the exception. From 1956 the French cinema had a superstar again, the “nymph among the sex goddesses”, Brigitte Bardot .

Max Ophüls , who had to emigrate from Germany in 1933, made interesting, indulgent, realistic literary film adaptations by Schnitzler, Maupassant and others that conjured up the glamor and decadence of the late 19th century by the mid-1950s. Ophüls was seen by the next generation of cinematographers as an exception in an otherwise sterile studio system that was boring with conventional film adaptations, a cinema of screenwriters and production hierarchies, sealed against the realities of the present. On the other hand, the boys admired the work of Robert Bresson . Also Jacques Tati or Jean-Pierre Melville attracted turning "on location" in front of the studio.

Nouvelle Vague

→ Main article : Nouvelle Vague

Regardless of the forerunners and foothills, the Nouvelle Vague certainly begins with Truffaut's success. They kissed him and they beat him at the Cannes Film Festival in 1959. The final panel of Godard's radical weekend with the text "fin du cinéma" (fr. End of cinema "). The filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague are cinephiles , i. In other words, they did not learn the cinema trade within the film industry, but acquired their understanding of film through going to the cinema, film criticism and role models. In the films by François Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Jacques Rivette , Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol, this explains the frequent reverence especially to Hitchcock, Renoir, Vigo, Hawks and the American gangster film. The camerawork by Raoul Coutard, for example, also sets the style in its avoidance of high-contrast light-dark studio photography in favor of shooting "on location". A young generation of actors, some of whom are friends with the directors, act in front of the camera, such as Jean-Paul Belmondo , Jean-Pierre Léaud , Anna Karina , Jean-Claude Brialy , Françoise Dorléac , Claude Jade and Stéphane Audran .

After 1968

Market share of French films in cinema admissions in France
year	Total cinema visits , in million	French films market share
2004	195.3	38.4%
2005	175.5	36.6%
2006	188.8	44.6%
2007	177.9	36.5%
2008	190.1	45.7%
2009	201.1	36.8%
2010	207.0	35.7%

In 1968 the May riots shook France. In February, François Truffaut organized demonstrations against Henri Langlois ' removal from his position as head of the Cinémathèque française and is dedicating his upcoming film Stolen Kisses to Langlois . The Cannes Film Festival is canceled - on the initiative of Truffauts, Godards and Louis Malles. Jean-Luc Godard stopped working in the commercial film business for years. Political films like Costa-Gavras ' Z celebrate success. Chabrol continues his vivisection of the bourgeoisie ( The unfaithful woman ) and Truffaut investigates the possibility of civil happiness ( table and bed ).

Cinéma you look

→ Main article : Cinéma du look

Cinéma du look (English in the sense of "appearance") was a style name of the French critic Raphaël Bassan for films of the eighties that shared the same "look" (English in the sense of "appearance"). The films by Jean-Jacques Brilleix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax were said to have put their sleek visual style above substance and preferred the spectacle to the narrative. The protagonists are often young people, alienated from society and family, with love relationships doomed to failure (e.g. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf , Subway , Nikita , Diva ).

today

The French film still enjoys a high status in France, recognizable by the lively audience. French films account for between 35% and 45% of all cinema visits in France every year - an unmatched cut in Europe. Only five other countries worldwide achieved a market share of over 30% each in their national cinema market in 2008.

Most successful French films

In France

The most successful French films in France since 1945, according to the CNC.

space	title	Director	year	spectator	Production countries
1	Welcome to the Sh'tis	Dany Boon	2008	20,489,303
2	Pretty much best friends	Olivier Nakache / Eric Toledano	2011	19,490,688
3	Three break pilots in Paris	Gérard Oury	1966	17,272,987
4th	Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra	Alain Chabat	2002	14,559,509
5	The visitor	Jean-Marie Poiré	1993	13,782,991
6th	Don Camillo and Peppone	Julien Duvivier	1952	12,791,168
7th	Monsieur Claude and his daughters	Philippe de Chauveron	2014	12,361,430
8th	Sharp things for monsieur	Gérard Oury	1965	11,740,438
9	Les Bronzés 3 - Americans pour la vie	Patrice Leconte	2006	10,355,928
10	Taxi cab	Gérard Krawczyk	2000	10,345,901
11	Three men and a baby	Coline Serreau	1985	10,251,813
12	War of the buttons	Yves Robert	1962	9,959,601
13	Les Misérables	Jean-Paul Le Chanois	1957	9,940,533
14th	Dinner for weirdos	Francis Veber	1998	9,247,001
15th	In the intoxication of the deep	Luc Besson	1988	9,194,118
16	The bear	Jean Jacques Annaud	1988	9,136,803
17th	Asterix and Obelix against Caesar	Claude Zidi	1999	8,948,624
18th	Me and the cow	Henri Verneuil	1959	8,844,199
19th	The children of Monsieur Mathieu	Christophe Barratier	2004	8,669,186
20th	Le battalion du ciel	Alexander Esway	1947	8,649,691
21st	The fabulous world of Amélie	Jean-Pierre Jeunet	2001	8,636,690
22nd	Nothing to declare	Dany Boon	2011	8,150,825
23	Violets impériales	Richard Pottier	1952	8,125,766
24	The Time Knights - In Search of the Sacred Tooth	Jean-Marie Poiré	1998	8,043,129
25th	Un india in la ville	Hervé Palud	1994	7,947,786

Worldwide

The most successful French films in the world since 1997 (Concerning the worldwide number of admissions served as source Unifrance, for those from the French inland CNC).

space	title	Viewers France	Spectators Except France	Director	year	Viewer world	Production countries
1	Lucy	5,203,226	56.105.721	Luc Besson	2014	61,308,947
2	Pretty much best friends	19,490,688	31,854,396	Olivier Nakache / Eric Toledano	2011	51,345,084
3	96 Hours - Taken 2	2,903,637	47,677,904	Olivier Megaton	2012	50,581,541
4th	96 Hours - Taken 3	2,614,008	43,600,000	Olivier Megaton	2015	46.214.008
5	The fifth Element	7,699,038	35,700,000	Luc Besson	1997	43,399,038
6th	96 hours	1,018,518	31,536,136	Pierre Morel	2008	32,554,654
7th	The fabulous world of Amélie	8,636,690	23.139.709	Jean-Pierre Jeunet	2001	31,776,399
8th	Welcome to the Sh'tis	20,489,303	6.200.109	Dany Boon	2008	26,689,412
9	Asterix and Obelix against Caesar	8,948,624	15,900,000	Claude Zidi	1999	24,848,624
10	Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra	14,599,509	10.212.943	Alain Chabat	2002	24,812,452
11	Monsieur Claude and his daughters	12,361,430	9,767,683	Philippe de Chauveron	2014	22.129.113
12	The journey of the penguins	1,951,609	19,964,375	Luc Jacquet	2005	21,915,984
13	The pianist	1,775,310	17,830,643	Roman Polanski	2002	19,605,953
14th	The little Prince	1,816,270	17,647,421	Mark Osborne	2015	19,463,691
15th	Transporter 3	1.430.308	16,730,005	Olivier Megaton	2008	18.160.313
16	The Artist	3,064,873	13,670,464	Michel Hazanavicius	2011	16,735,337
17th	Arthur and the Minimoys	6,396,989	10.299.198	Luc Besson	2006	16,696,187
18th	Asterix at the Olympics	6,818,158	9,404,781	Thomas Langmann / Frédéric Forestier	2008	16,222,939
19th	Taxi cab	10,345,901	5,162,483	Gérard Krawczyk	2000	15,508,384
20th	The children of Monsieur Mathieu	8,669,186	5,289,122	Christophe Barratier	2004	13,958,308
21st	Transporter - The Mission	1,230,444	12.714.103	Louis Leterrier	2005	13,944,547
22nd	The Transporter Refueled	594.935	12,741,103	Camille Delamarre	2015	13,336,038
23	Kiss of the Dragon	1,098,367	12.183.035	Chris Nahon	2001	13.281.402
24	pact of wolves	5,179,154	7,419,375	Christophe Goose	2001	12,598,529
25th	Joan of Arc	2,991,810	9,557,143	Luc Besson	1999	12,548,953

literature

• Roy Armes: Cinema of Paradox: French Film-Making during the Occupation: in: Gerhard Hirschfeld, Patrick Marsh (Eds.), Collaboration in France. Politics and Culture during the Nazi Occupation, 1940–1944, Oxford / New York / Munich 1989, pp. 126–141 (English)
• André Bazin : Was ist Film ?, Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2004. Original: Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? Edition définitive. Paris 1975. * Bertin-Maghit, Jean-Pierre: Le cinéma français sous l'occupation, Paris 2002 (French)
• Susan Hayward : French National Cinema , 2nd Updated Edition, Routledge 2005, Paperback, ISBN 0-415-05729-9
• Georges Sadoul : History of Cinematic Art. From the Franz. By Hans Winge. Vienna: Schönbrunn-Verl., 1957.
• Jerzy Toeplitz : History of the Film. 2 volumes. From the polish. by Lilli Kaufmann et al. Frankfurt am Main: Zweiausendeins, 1983. In the original "Historia sztuki filmowej". Warsaw 1955–1970
• François Truffaut : The Films of My Life: Articles and Reviews. Edited by Robert Fischer. From the Franz. By Frieda Grafe and Enno Patalas. - Frankfurt am Main: Verl der Autor, 1997.

See also

• Portal: France / Missing Articles - Film and TV

Web links

• Country profile of the film country France on cineuropa.org
• News on French film, film database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ L'Estrange Fawcett: The World of Film. Amalthea-Verlag, Zurich, Leipzig, Vienna 1928, p. 149 (translated by C. Zell, supplemented by S. Walter Fischer)
2. ↑ World Film Production Report (excerpt) ( Memento from August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Screen Digest, June 2006, pp. 205–207, accessed on October 3, 2015.
3. ↑ Österreichisches Filminstitut : Press release ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the European Audiovisual Observatory (OBS) , Council of Europe Strasbourg, 9 February 2009 (accessed 17 February 2009); Figures for France according to CNC  
4. ↑ FOCUS World Film Market Trends ( Memento from July 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ ^{a b} Homepage of the Center national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
6. ↑ Unifrance.org
7. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Unifrance.org Bilan; bilan 2014 accessed on December 4, 2015
8. ↑ Unifrance.org: le cinéma français à l'étranger premier bilan 2015, accessed on January 4, 2015
9. ↑ Unifrance.org: le cinéma franças à l'étranger en 2009, accessed on October 21, 2012
10. ↑ Unifrance.org: bilan 2010 accessed on January 12, 2014
11. ↑ Unifrance.org: le cinéma français à l'étranger 17 avril 2012, accessed on 30 September 2012
12. ↑ ^{a b c} Boxofficestory.com: Unifrance Boxoffice International Semaine 7 de 2016, accessed on March 6, 2016
13. ↑ Unifrance.org: bilan 2012 accessed on January 12, 2014
14. ↑ ^{a b} Unifrance Bilan; pièce jointe, résultat décennie 2000 (PDF; 1.4 MB) accessed on December 4, 2015