Why French Film?
French Film & Television
Course 1 · Chapter 1 · Why French Film & Television? Scope & Sources
There is a famous story that when the first audiences in Paris saw a film of a train pulling into a station, they screamed and ran from the room. It is one of the best-known stories in film history, and most historians think it has been greatly exaggerated. That makes it a good place to begin a course on French film and television: a country that claims, with some justice, to have invented cinema, treats it as an art, funds it through the state, and argues about it constantly. This opening chapter explains why the subject deserves a course, sets out what the course covers, and shows how to read the sources. A great deal of film history is half legend, so the chapter marks what is firm and what is not.
Why French Film & Television?
France matters to cinema for several reasons. It was one of the places where the film projector was invented and where films were first shown to a paying public. It built some of the first large film companies. It produced a series of influential movements, from the 1930s "poetic realism" to the New Wave of the late 1950s, and it developed a tradition of writing about film that shaped how the rest of the world thinks about directors. It also gave cinema a place in public policy, with a state body that supports film and a long argument about protecting French culture from foreign competition. Television, which is covered alongside film as in the other courses of this series, followed a similar path: a state-run monopoly, then a gradual opening to private channels and, lately, to streaming services.
A One-Paragraph Version
The Lumière brothers gave what is usually described as the first public paid film screening in Paris at the end of 1895 (check the claim, since others made similar claims at about the same time). French companies dominated the early international film business, and the country produced a distinctive series of schools of film-making. During the German Occupation the industry continued under restrictions, and after the war a state body was created to support it and the Cannes festival was founded. The New Wave of the late 1950s changed film-making around the world. Television was a state monopoly until the 1970s and 1980s. Today, France makes more films than most countries, and the state still supports them. These are the basic facts, and each is developed in later chapters.
What the Course Covers
| Chapters | Theme |
|---|---|
| 2–3 | The birth of cinema; silent experiment and poetic realism |
| 4–5 | Occupation, liberation and Cannes; the New Wave |
| 6–7 | Comedy and popular cinema; the crime film and the cinéma du look |
| 8–9 | Television from ORTF to Canal+; contemporary cinema and the streaming era |
| 10 | Cinema as a national argument |
Scope: France at the Centre
The course is built around France. French-language film is bigger than France: Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec and many African countries have film traditions of their own, and many film-makers worked across borders. Where a figure or film is inseparable from the French story, the course names it and says where it comes from, and it does not give those cinemas a strand of their own. The game show Jeux sans frontières is a television programme that belongs partly to French television history, and it is covered in its own course, Jeux Sans Frontières (It's a Knockout): Europe's Game Show 1, and mentioned here only in the television chapter.
Record, Legend and Memory
The train story shows why this distinction matters. Three kinds of claim need different handling.
Record
Dates of screenings, laws, studio foundations and ratings that appear in archives and reliable reference works.
Legend
Stories that have been repeated so often that they feel like facts: the panicking audience, the "first" of everything, the single genius who invented a technique. They often contain some truth, but the usual version is tidier than what happened.
Memory
What viewers recall about a film or a series they saw years ago. Good for atmosphere, unreliable for the year, the cast or the country that made it.
Where to Watch and Read
- The Cinémathèque française. Founded in the 1930s (check the year), it holds one of the largest film archives in the world and shows films and exhibitions in Paris.
- The national audiovisual archive. The Institut national de l'audiovisuel, set up in the 1970s (check), keeps French radio and television, and much of it is accessible online.
- Festivals. The Cannes festival and others publish programmes and histories of their own.
- Restored classics. Many French films have been restored and released with English subtitles, often with commentary.
- Books and documentaries. Look for histories of French cinema and of French broadcasting, and for the critical writing that is part of the story (Chapter 5).
- Subtitles. Almost everything discussed is available with English subtitles. A French film is usually better watched in the original language.
Exercises
In three sentences, explain why French film and television can count as a window on French culture. Use at least two points from this chapter.
Sort these into record, legend or memory: (a) the Lumière brothers gave a paid public screening in Paris in 1895; (b) the first audiences ran from the room in terror at the film of the train; (c) your recollection of a French film seen long ago on television.
Choose a French film or series you believe you know. Write down the year, the director and one thing you remember, then check each against a reliable source and note any corrections.
Quick Reference
- Early cinema: the Lumière screening in Paris, 1895 (the "first" claim is contested)
- Why it matters: invention, early studios, influential movements, film criticism, state support
- Television: a state monopoly, then private channels, then streaming
- Scope: France-centred; other French-language cinemas only where inseparable
- The train legend: widely repeated, probably exaggerated
- Handling sources: separate record, legend and memory
- Best first checks: the Cinémathèque, the audiovisual archive and the festivals
Next chapter: The Birth of Cinema: Lumière, Méliès & Pathé, which looks at how French film began.