The 50 Greatest French Films of All-Time

It’s time yet again for my favorite feature at TDYLF- my annual list of the 50 greatest French films of all-time. One aspect I’m starting to really enjoy about this list is how organic it is. Each year, movies rise and fall thanks to re-watches, exposure to new films, and new insights. Keeping and maintaining this list throughout the year also serves an important function for me. It motivates me to continue learning, and grow as a French film enthusiast. A few notes before we get started:

• I am not an authority on this. I’m just a Francophile with a Blu-ray player, Netflix and Facets subscriptions, and a love of movies.
• As much as I try, I am not a completist. There are a lot of films I simply haven’t seen. I’ve done my best to make it as comprehensive as I could but there’s always room to see more. There are still some relatively glaring omissions. Please feel free to recommend others, as I am always on the lookout to improve this list. It’s a labor of love for me.
• There is obviously a lot of personal preference involved. However, I’ve given a lot of weight to objective aspects like a film’s influence, importance, creativity, and how much they embody the spirit of French cinema and history.
• To qualify, the film has to be a French language film. There are non-French directors on this list but every movie is a French language film.

With that out of the way, I present to you  the 50 greatest French films of all-time:

Expanding Upon TCM’s List: Ten More Influential Silent Films

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has provided a wealth of classic movies for cinephiles to watch, commercial-free, since April 1994. They’re a tremendous resource, offering films 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Part of what makes them so lovable is their dedication to silent cinema. They have a weekly feature called “Silent Sundays” during which they air several hours of silent films beginning at midnight. It’s no surprise that the recent success of The Artist, a modern-day silent film, would grab TCM’s eye. To celebrate the film a few weeks ago, they released their own list of the 10 Most Influential Silent Films. It was an impressive list, and can be found here. I think it’s a tremendous starting place for movie-watchers interested in silent cinema. Having said that, I think it could easily be expanded to include ten more films. Here are ten that I think could be added:

Long, Strong, and Down to Get the Classics On: The Insanely Long Movie Checklist

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Despite the fact that Sir Mix-A-Lot’s knighthood is clearly invalid, I’ve still opted to quote him because his long/strong/down to get the friction on line from the timeless “Baby Got Back” perfectly pertains to several fantastic bits of cinema. These are films that show up on “Greatest” lists all the time. They’re influential, and some of the best movies ever made. They’re also, unfortunately, endurance tests that require 4 hours or more of viewing. In at least a few cases, it’s best to think of them as a mini-series, viewed an hour or two at a time. Here’s my checklist of insanely long movies that I have seen or that I intend to see.

Let My Movies Go: Five Films That Need Wider Releases

For many reasons, some films are in peril of being lost to time. For instance, Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana was perceived as so blasphemous that Franco and his censors ordered that all copies be destroyed. On the Criterion Collection release, the film’s star- Silvia Pinal- says that two copies of it were buried, waiting to see the light of day only after better times had come. It took some 16 years before Viridiana gained traction. Here’s a list of five films that need a wider release and deserve to be more readily available to people.

Los Olvidados (1950)

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Speaking of Buñuel, one of his best films is virtually impossible to find. The best luck I’ve had finding Los Olvidados is with out of print VHS tapes that have very poor subtitling. Everything about the film screams “Buñuel”- it hums with the skewering of class structures, total institutions, and an eerie, experimental dream sequence that’s one of the best I’ve ever seen put to film. It deserves to be seen.

A Movie Geek’s Letter to Santa

‘Tis the season for letters to the North Pole. Why should little kids have all the fun? Here’s what one movie fan wants.

100 Things I Love About the Movies

I passed a milestone recently here at TDYLF. Thanks to the help of the editors over at IMDB, I passed the 100,000 Hits milestone on Sunday (with a whopping 80,000+ of those hits coming just since September 30th). To celebrate, I’m beginning a brand new series called “100 Things I Love About the Movies”. To be sure, there a LOT more than 100 things that I love about the movies. As such, this has the potential to become a series- 100 Things I Love About Horror Movies, 100 Things I Love About Foreign Movies, and on and on. I present to you the first edition of “100 Things I Love About the Movies”.