The Naked City by Jules Dassin is a really good police procedural. If you like stuff like Law & Order, this is the progenitor.
The Third Man is classic, classic noir. Between the on location shooting in Vienna, fantastic performances by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, and really distinctive cinematography, it's just stunning.
A Man Escaped. To quote Godard, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music". If you like simple, but beautiful films, watch Bresson. A Man Escaped makes all other prison break films, with their endless plot twists and convolutions, seem utterly pointless. Instead Bresson focuses on the character, the drama and the methodical process of breaking out.
> I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywood. Or a director with primarily french influences producing a war movie.
Not sure if the stipulation is a war movie about Vietnam, or just plain a war movie. But certainly here's a list of some non-U.S. 20th century war movies, very vivid, biased towards France:
The Battle of Algiers (French, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
Come and See (Russian, Elem Klimov, 1985)
Ivan's Childhood (Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)
Beau Travail (French, Claire Denis, 1999) -- OK, soldiers but not war
Army of Shadows (French, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
A Man Escaped (French, Robert Bresson, 1956) -- POW, not front lines
Little Dieter Needs To Fly (British/French/German?, Werner Herzog, 1997) -- actually relates to the war in Vietnam
Hacker Cinema
2 comments on Hacker News
The Naked City by Jules Dassin is a really good police procedural. If you like stuff like Law & Order, this is the progenitor.
The Third Man is classic, classic noir. Between the on location shooting in Vienna, fantastic performances by Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, and really distinctive cinematography, it's just stunning.
A Man Escaped. To quote Godard, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music". If you like simple, but beautiful films, watch Bresson. A Man Escaped makes all other prison break films, with their endless plot twists and convolutions, seem utterly pointless. Instead Bresson focuses on the character, the drama and the methodical process of breaking out.
> I had never seen a war movie produced outside of Hollywood. Or a director with primarily french influences producing a war movie.
Not sure if the stipulation is a war movie about Vietnam, or just plain a war movie. But certainly here's a list of some non-U.S. 20th century war movies, very vivid, biased towards France:
The Battle of Algiers (French, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
Come and See (Russian, Elem Klimov, 1985)
Ivan's Childhood (Russian, Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962)
Beau Travail (French, Claire Denis, 1999) -- OK, soldiers but not war
Army of Shadows (French, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
A Man Escaped (French, Robert Bresson, 1956) -- POW, not front lines
Little Dieter Needs To Fly (British/French/German?, Werner Herzog, 1997) -- actually relates to the war in Vietnam