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:

Ranking Every Truffaut Film I’ve Ever Seen

It’s time to wrap up my de facto François Truffaut week, a week where I’ve honored Monday’s birthday boy. I’ve included a big screen review of The Bride Wore Black and waxed poetic about the importance of the man. And all week long, the question has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue–what are my favorite Truffaut films? Here is how I’d rank every Truffaut film I’ve ever seen. There is a bit of personal preference included in the list, but for the most part I’ve tried to stay true to overall quality. Enjoy!

The Importance of François Truffaut

Monday was François Truffaut’s birthday, and I feel like I missed an opportunity by not writing about him. To make up for it, I’ve more or less turned this into a de facto Truffaut Week. The fact of the matter is that Truffaut is one of the most influential and important filmmakers in film history. His techniques have been mimicked and recreated for decades since. If you could, imagine for a moment that the entirety of film history is a river. Imagine that the first films ever made are the source, and that the movies being made today are the end of the river emptying into the great unknown that is the sea. In the middle of that river, there’s a gigantic rock that shifts the current of the river. All of the water flowing forth from that spot touches that rock. That rock is the work of François Truffaut.

2010: The First Annual TDYLFies

A quartet of what would've been 2008 TDYLFie Award Nominees

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I can’t recall every single movie I’ve seen this year. I do know, however, that probably 75% of the movies I’ve seen have been via Netflix. And having no record of the other 25% (which Netflix used to have with the use of a chronological ratings history slider, but I don’t want to get back into the whole Netflix thing again), I’m forced to make my year-end awards selections strictly from the rentals I’ve gotten through Netflix. Using only the list of things I’ve seen via Netflix in 2010, let’s hand out some film awards, which I’m calling TDYLFies (phonetically: ta-dill-fees). Why call ’em that? Why not? 

Iron Director: Truffaut v. Fassbinder

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When you’re a hardcore film nerd, you spend too much of your time trying to spackle in the cracks in your film knowledge. My friend Marty, for instance, is currently obsessively trying to knock out the entire Criterion Collection. It’s a noble goal- Criterion makes some amazing movies. But we’re talking about some 550 or 600 movies that they’ve released. To date, he’s somewhere in the 400’s. My recent obsession has been the films of two art house titans- Francois Truffaut and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The Nine Best Uses of Songs in Movies

I’ve been watching too much “Prime Nine” on the MLB Network. In reality, my list of candidates for this entry amounted to something like 25 songs in various movies. Note that when I say “Best”, I really mean “my favorite”. So if you don’t see “I Like Changing Myself For the Woman I Love” from “Love is Nice” starring Julia Roberts or whatever, well… it’s because I don’t watch that shit. Feel free to add ’em in the comments section, though.