Cinema - All About French

You are on this page for one good reason: you love movies.

You are now joining my personal aficionado club!

I created this page to show people how much French cinema has influenced its Hollywood counterpart for the past 60 years. Some of you critiques along with the skeptics may wonder what influence? What films?

Well, I’ll tell you a quick story.
In 1964, Philippe de Broca directed l’Homme de Rio with one of my favorite actor:
Jean-Paul Belmondo. 15 years later, a young American director, dazzled by this stylish and unique type of absurd comedy selected in Cannes that year, let an idea slowly flourish into a potential motion picture. So he called De Broca hoping for a meeting to discuss technical directing details for his new idea.
The director was Steven Spielberg, and the exalting eruption that burgeoned from the volcanic That Man from Rio was nothing less than The Raiders of The Lost Ark with Harrison Ford.

BELMONDO, Who’s he ? Or rather, “what is he”

Imagine your stupefaction if someone asked you who Bogart or Pacino was. Well, you’d see the same raising eyebrows if questioning a French on the existence of Belmondo.
In a few words, the symbol of the Nouvelle Vague genre and later a legend of French cinema who created his own acting persona by blending that natural exuberant personality which made him unique. He became the national hero for two generations of inspired French. Also, at 80, he was still performing some of his own basic stunts, like, climbing a ladder on a moving helicopter!
So, you’ve heard of Humphrey Bogart, Jerry Lewis and Al Pacino, right…?
Imagine those three giants fused into one entity; Bogie’s coolness, Lewis’ comic genius, and Pacino’s massive presence. This 3-D introspection should give you a taste of the complex nature of Belmondo’s personality that heated the reels of French Cinema for the past 70 years. Here is a basic intro of what Belmondo was.

Yet, one cannot mention Belmondo without also introducing Alain Delon.

DELON, Who’s he?

Labelled sex symbol of the 60s, Alain Delon is a legend of French cinema.
Actor by accident, his angel rogue beauty is cemented as a cop or bad guy with 80 movies pined to his winnings.
He stared with the greatest ones until joining that club himself later. Here’s’ a quick look through the keyhole at Alain Delon.
FUN FACT – When Belmondo and Delon reached a certain notoriety, both wanted to make a film together; an idea rejected by production management as poor investment, though Delon insisted. After several years of saving the fruit of his work in films, Alain Delon decided to entirely produce the movie on his own in 1970 so nobody could tell him what to do. The movie became as legendary as the actors. Borsalino.

Belmondo VS Delon...Did they really compete for first place?

50 years of duel between two giants, none of whom could have existed without the other

This page opens the true cinephiles to a motion picture’s perspective that explores the links, influences and differences between Cannes and Hollywood.

Which influenced what differences? A complex question answered with a simple word: both.
But for those wondering which culprit started it – France or The USA – well, history always prevails. In the 1890s, the Lumière brothers invented the first motion picture camera and projector later lending its name to an entire industry, the Cinématographe, which in 1904 helped create the first 12-minute silent motion picture western on a $150 budget in a New Jersey studio:
“The Great Train Robbery”.
Less than 10 years later, it gave rise to the first three hour-long 12-reel film made in Kentucky:
“The Birth of a Nation”.
The world of cinema was transformed in 1924 when the first movie with sound stormed the theaters:
“The Jazz Singer”.

And that, marked the beginning of the Golden Age of cinema.

So, the stylish French invention of the cinematographe did spark the powerful wave of creativity that fueled the motion picture industry from a local curiosity to an irreversible global recognition under twenty years.
And that is how an exquisite influence started between the two countries. But it is only the beginning of the story…