Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928–1960

Carnival in Flanders

Jacques Feyder (France, 1935). Imported 35mm print! In 1616, a Spanish regiment arrives in a Flemish town, and are challenged not by the men, but by the women, in Feyder's comic gem. “One of the rare, perfect works of the screen, this comedy masterpiece suggests a fusion of Breughel and Boccaccio” (Pauline Kael). (90 mins)

Port of Shadows

L'Atalante

Jean Vigo (France, 1934). Imported 35mm print! Vigo's only full-length feature is a poetic masterpiece on the theme of passionate love, employing fantastic set pieces and bizarre juxtapositions to tell of a young barge captain and his peasant bride in their first days together. With Vigo's infamous boarding-school riot of a film, Zero for Conduct. (141 mins)

Douce

Claude Autant-Lara (France, 1943). Imported 35mm print! "If ever there was a buried treasure, the delectable Douce is it. Considered Autant-Lara's masterpiece, it is set in Belle Époque Paris and charts the decline of an aristocratic family to symbolize the end of an era and of a moral order" (Cinematheque Ontario). (90 mins)

César

Marcel Pagnol (France, 1936). The conclusion of the trilogy poignantly evokes remembrances and regrets as the cycle of life and love begins again. "Today the modest charms and graces of the Pagnol trilogy seem more precious than ever" (Time Out). (116 mins)

Marius

Alexander Korda (France, 1931). The first installment in the beloved Fanny Trilogy introduces César, boisterous proprietor of a Marseilles bar; his son Marius, drawn by the call of the sea; and Fanny the fishmonger, the apex of a triangle between Marius and widower Panisse. "These films display such old-fashioned virtues as truth to life and boundless humanity" (Time Out). (122 mins)

The Rules of the Game

Jean Renoir (France, 1939). Made just before the outbreak of WWII, Jean Renoir's masterpiece of ruthless grace uses a gathering in a country house as setting for a tragicomic study of polite society on the brink of collapse. Named fourth best film of all time in a 2012 Sight and Sound Poll. (106 mins)

Grand Illusion

Jean Renoir (France, 1937). New 35mm Print! Jean Renoir's deeply humane portrait of World War I POWs, “one of the most haunting of all war films” (NY Times). Starring Jean Gabin and Erich von Stroheim. (117 mins)

Children of Paradise

Marcel Carné (France, 1945). "This lushly romantic creation, directed by Marcel Carné and written by Jacques Prévert, is a one-of-a-kind film, a sumptuous epic about the relations between theater and life . . . and a film poem on the nature and varieties of love” (Pauline Kael). (182 mins)

L'étrange Monsieur Victor

Jean Grémillon (France, 1938). Imported 35mm print! This rarely screened Grémillon gem is a mordant and morally ambiguous tale of bourgeois hypocrisy, crime, and comeuppance involving Victor, a respectable shopkeeper by day, fence by night. (97 mins)

Remorques

Jean Grémillon (France, 1941). Cowritten by Jacques Prévert, Remorques stars Jean Gabin as a tugboat captain working the storm-battered coast of Brittany, where the moody Michèle Morgan soon washes into his life and he begins to become unmoored from his marriage to fragile Madeleine Renaud. (85 mins)

À nous la liberté

René Clair (France, 1931). Clair combines fantasy with irony, whimsy with wistful pessimism, musical comedy with fine-tuned slapstick to create a satire of the highest order in this tale of two ex-cons, one now the owner of a large phonograph company, the other a freedom-loving vagabond. (82 mins)

Under the Roofs of Paris

René Clair (France, 1930). René Clair's first sound film involves entanglements among a comely immigrant (Pola Illéry), a street singer (Albert Préjean), a petty criminal (Gaston Modot), and the singer's best friend (Edmond Gréville); the film's creativity and wit lie not in the plot but in Clair's inventive technique. (82 mins)

The Italian Straw Hat

René Clair (France, 1928). Judith Rosenberg on piano. A masterpiece of silent comedy, The Italian Straw Hat is a tribute by René Clair to the early French pioneer filmmakers, but one that moves with a rhythm and tempo unseen before its time. “One of the funniest films ever made, and one of the most elegant as well” (Pauline Kael). (84 mins)

Lola Montes

Max Ophuls (France/Germany, 1955). Restored 35mm print of the French version! In Max Ophuls's audacious final film, a life of passion becomes the stuff of carnival. “The ultimate cinephilic object: a color-and-CinemaScope dream” (Boston Phoenix ).(110 mins) NOTE: This replaces the originally scheduled screening of Panique.

La ronde

Max Ophuls (France, 1950). A prostitute (Simone Signoret) loves a soldier (Serge Reggiani), who leaves her for a chambermaid (Simone Simon), who . . . etc., etc., until the story returns to the prostitute. “Ophuls displays dazzling technical virtuosity and cinematic elegance” (Chicago Reader). (97 mins)

Hôtel du Nord

Marcel Carné (France, 1938). Two doomed lovers swear upon a suicide pact, but one loses the plot in Carné's atmospheric, fatalistic melodrama. “A stimulating reminder of the great days of French cinema” (William K. Everson). (100 mins)