Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 13/11/2016)

Perhaps the most ambitious picture on display is The Death of Louis XIV, Catalan Albert Serra's studied adaptation of the Duc de Saint-Simons memoirs, much of which takes place in 1715 at the Versailles bedside of the ailing Sun King (Jean-Pierre Léaud) after he returns from a hunting trip complaining of a pain in his leg and a loss of appetite. As physicians led by Fagon (Patrick D'Assumcao) employ regular bleedings and an increasingly eccentric range of medicines, clerics like Le Tellier (Jacques Henric) prepare a Divine Right monarch who has ruled for 72 years for the next life. Shooting mostly in candlelight, Jonathan Ricquebourg's digital photography does full justice to Sebastian Vogler's production design and Nina Avramovic's costumes, while Jordi Ribas and Anne Dupouy's sound mix brings a sense of intimacy and immediacy to the often witty depiction of the very public pageantry that attended a ruler who had reduced his once-rebellious nobility to fawning subservients at a fairytale court.

As always, FFF is divided into strands and the Panorama Horizons slot contains a number of intriguing titles, including Danièle Thompson's Cézanne et moi, which chronicles the friendship between the struggling post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne (Guillaume Gallienne) and the realist novelist Émile Zola (Guillaume Canet); Roschdy Zem's Chocolat, a memoir (which was reviewed in detail last week) of the partnership between fin de siècle clown George Footit (James Thiérrée) and his black sidekick Rafael Padilla (Omar Sy); and Bruno Dumont's Slack Boy, which harks back before the Great War for a darkly Buñuelesque story set in the quiet north coastal backwater where hunchback Fabrice Luchini and wife Valeria Bruni Tadeschi have brought their family to spend the summer and police chief Didier Després is investigating a nasty case of cannibalism.

The postwar period provides the setting for Gilles Legrand's The Scent of the Mandarin, which drew César nominations for Jean Rabasse's production design and Catherine Leterrier's costumes. Howver, Yves Angelo's photography also does much to enhance the simmering story of cavalry officer Olivier Gourmet, who hires Georgia Scalliet as his nurse after losing a leg on the Western Front. Scalliet is mourning the loss of her soldier husband and is glad to find a new home for her young daughter. But, while she bonds with Gourmet over their shared love of horses, she is dubious about accepting his marriage proposal. He insists it would merely be a union of convenience, but his clumsy attempts to express his ardour change the dynamic of their friendship.

The Occupation provides the setting for Lola Doillon's Fanny's Journey and Christian Carion's Come What May. Adapted from the autobiography of Fanny Ben Ami, the former opens in 1939 before moving forwards four years to show how 12 year-old Léonie Souchaud and younger sisters Fantine Harduin and Juliane Lepoureau are helped by teacher Cécile De France to flee to the Swiss border when the Nazis approach their boarding school in the supposedly neutral zone. Carion joins another exodus as the Wehrmacht pours across the border in May 1940 and German exile August Diehl is forced to join forces with Scottish soldier Matthew Rhys to find Joshio Marlon, the son who has followed mayor Olivier Gourmet in fleeing a rampaging foe.

There are more children in peril in Joachim Lafosse's The White Knights, which draws on the 2007 Zoe's Ark scandal that saw over 100 African orphans become embroiled in the illegal adoption trade. Vincent Lindon and girlfriend Louise Bourgoin run Move for Kids with the best of intentions. But their methods of rescuing under-fives in an unnamed African country are called into question by translator Bintou Rimtobaye and journalist Valérie Donzelli. The mood is equally sombre in the Beauce flatlands in Bouli Lanners's The First, The Last, in which the director teams with Albert Dupontel to find a mobile phone that has been stolen by petty crooks David Murgia and Aurore Broutin. But things become complicated when the hapless bounty hunters encounter undertaker Max von Sydow, hotel employee Michel Lonsdale and drifter Suzanne Clément, while the homeless lovers become convinced that the end of the world is nigh after meeting the eccentric Philippe Rebbot.

Lebanese student Manal Issa also comes across her share of quirky strangers in Danielle Arbid's Parisienne, as she tries to make a new life in French capital in the mid-1990s. Forced to flee when her uncle makes inappropriate advances, Issa crashes with classmates taking art professor Dominique Blanc's course on ugliness in the 20th century, while forging tenuous links with waiter Damien Chapelle, married businessman Paul Hamy, rabid royalist India Hair and socialist lawyer Vincent Lacoste. Marion Cotillard also makes some unwise connections in Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon, an adaptation of Milena Agus's bestseller, Mal de Pietre. But, having married Spanish bricklayer Alex Brendemühl after an unwise liaison with the local schoolteacher, Cotillard becomes obsessed with Louis Garrel, the piano-playing soldier she meets at a sanatorium while being treated for kidney stones.

Emerging talents get their chance to shine in the Discovery strand and Bavo Defurne makes a fine impression with Souvenir, in which Isabelle Huppert tries to live down the fact that she was once a singing star (married to songwriting manager Johan Leysen) by working in a paté factory. However, promising boxer and co-worker Kévin Azaïs recognises her and, after they embark upon a whirlwind romance, he persuades her to make a comeback. A chance meeting also sparks the action in Julien Rappeneau's Rosalie Blum, an adaptation of a three-volume graphic novel by Camille Jourdy that sees prematurely balding provincial hairdresser Kyan Khojandi seek an escape from possessive mother Anémone and sex-obsessed cousin Nicolas Bridet by following corner shopkeeper Noémie Lvovsky in order to resolve a puzzling case of déjà-vu. But Lvovsky quickly spots him and asks niece Alice Isaaz and her roommates, Camille Rutherford and Sara Giraudeau, to find out what he wants and why.

Virginie Efira's problems can't be solved quite so easily in Justine Triet's In Bed With Victoria, as her thirtysomething single-mom lawyer has to entrust her young daughters to babysitter Vincent Lacoste while she defends friend Melvil Poupaud in his assault case against girlfriend Alice Daquet and struggles to live down the revelations made by insufferable ex-husband Laurent Poitrenaux in his wildly successful blog. Another unlikely age-gap alliance is forged between rapper Sadek and hip-hop-hating amateur dauber Gérard Depardieu in Rachid Djaidani's Tour de France. Opting to lay low after a run-in with Parisian rival Mabô Kouyaté, Sadek finds himself accompanying producer (and Muslim convert) Nicolas Marétheu's dad on a cross-country pilgrimage inspired by 18th-century landscape artist Claude-Joseph Vernet.

As the owner of the

Château de Tigne winery in the Loire, Depardieu might well be intrigued by Jérôme Le Maire's First Growth, which heads to Burgundy to see whether prodigal oenologist Jalil Lespert can repair his relationship with father Gérard Lanvin after leaving the family business to forge his own career in Paris. However, when profits take a dip, Lespert finds it harder than he had envisaged to revive the vineyard's fortunes after the disillusioned Lanvin had let things slide. Another black sheep returns to the fold in Arthur Harari's Dark Inclusion. But Niels Schneider is back in Antwerp to exact his revenge on the diamond-dealing relatives who betrayed his late father. However, his plans to team up with Hafed Benotman and Guillaume Verdier and rob uncle Hans-Peter Cloos and his smug son August Diehl hit a snag when Schneider falls for cousin Raphaele Godin.

Crime of a different kind comes under the spotlight in Malian debutant Daouda Coulibaly's thriller, Wùlu, as Bamako bus driver Ibrahim Koma decides to become a drug smuggler. Conspiring with buddies Jean-Marie Traoré and Ismaël N'Diaye, Koma quickly becomes rich through his contacts with French businessman Olivier Rabourdin. But his big house fails to impress Mariame N'Diaye and, in a bid to turn her head, Koma elects to make a killing in Al-Qaeda territory.

Fundamentalism plays an even more pivotal part in Nicolas Boukhrief's Made in France, whose combustible content caused it to be withheld twice following the Charlie Hebdo and 13 November attacks. The country has been subjected to more terrorist outrages since then and this uncompromising insight into how cells are formed and operate within ordinary suburban settings is deeply disconcerting. But, while they follow the lead of Philippe Faucon's The Disintegration (2011) in touching upon ideology and strategy, Boukhrief and co-scenarist Eric Besnard place as much emphasis on sustaining suspense, as the hour of the strike approaches.

Franco-Algerian journalist Malik Zidi has a keen interest in all things Islamic. But, even though he knows such a mission might put wife Judith Davis in danger, he feels the need to infiltrate the jihadist cell operating out of a mosque on the outskirts of Paris. He is taken under the wing of Dimitri Storoge, a shoe salesman who is tired of being patronised by his customers and has just returned from a trip abroad. His tales of life in training camps in Iran and Pakistan intrigue Zidi, but they fire up the other members of the cabal: Storoge's angry Maghrebi cellmate Nassim Si Ahmed; African migrant Ahmed Drame;, whose desire to avenge a dead cousin is tempered by his growing distaste for violence; and Breton convert François Civil, whose determination to kick against his haute bourgeois parents prompts him to offer his late grandmother's as the group's HQ.

Aware that he will give himself away unless he participates fully in the gang's activities, Zidi witnesses the murder of some ruthless arms dealers at a trailer park and makes contact with cops Franck Gastambide and Nicolas Grandhomme so that his motives are known in case he is arrested. But, while they start to keep the cadre under surveillance, Storoge receives orders from Al-Qaeda for the brotherhood to shave off their beards and become so assimilated that no one could possibly suspect them.

Tense without being sensationalist or irresponsibly glamorising, this cogently explores the issues that could provoke French-born Muslims into turning on their compatriots. However, Boukhrief and Besnard stumble in the last reel, as the plot lurches between twists and coincidences that are more generic than authentic. The make-up of the cell is similarly contrived to reflect all aspects of French society, while the revelation of the identity of the cadre's handler falls frustratingly flat.

But the performances are well judged, with Storoge seething with a fury that is rooted as much in his reaction to the incessant racism he endures as his commitment to the jihadist cause. Boukhrief also stages the set-pieces with aplomb, thanks to Patrick Ghiringhelli's kinetic camerawork, Lydia Decobert's sharp editing and Robin Coudert's propulsive electro score. Moreover, the idea that terror is as much an act of secular revenge as holy war is chilling and Boukhrief makes his case with a restrained intelligence that also informs the conclusion that it may already be too late for the French populace to undo the damage it has unthinkingly done to a generation of young Muslim men.

One of the joys of events like FFF is the chance they afford to discover gems like Willy 1er, the feature debut of Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, Marielle Gautier and Hugo P. Thomas, who first met at the École de la Cité film school established by Luc Besson. There's nothing of their mentor's dynamism in this measured snapshot, however, which was loosely based on the life of its non-professional star, Daniel Vannet, who was illiterate until he was 45.

Fifty year-old Willy (Daniel Vannet) has spent his entire life in the same village in Normandy. He lives with his parents (Robert Follet and Geneviève Plet) and identical twin brother, Michael (also Vannet). But, when Michael unexpectedly commits suicide, the sweet-natured Willy realises that it's possible to be unhappy with one's lot and, when his parents try to have him committed to an asylum, he decides to leave home and make a new life for himself in the neighbouring village.

Despite having made a list of things he wants to achieve, Willy gets off to a bad start when he falls foul of some Caudebec ruffians in the local café. But Michael's spirit provides periodic reassurance, while social worker Catherine (Noémie Lvovsky) comes to Willy's aid and helps him find a job at the supermarket. Here he meets a cross-dresser of the same name (Romain Léger), who has ambitions to relocate to Germany and become a famous artist. Willy 1er doesn't always understand what Willy 2ème is talking about. But he values his friendship and they vow to face the future together, even if fate has other ideas.

In truth, no one says much and very little happens. But that is the secret of this deceptively astute character study that refuses to sentimentalise the hulking innocent at its core. Essentially playing a variation on himself, Daniel Vannet is delightfully empathetic and amusingly deadpan, while Léger avoids caricature in presenting another alternative lifestyle that departs from the norms the directorial quartet seek to parody. As with the slapstick outings of Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel, the odd scene misses its mark, especially when the tone suddenly shifts from the kitschy to the cruel. But this odd couple curio suggests that Gautier, Thomas and the Boukhermas have a distinctive collective talent and it will be fascinating to see how they develop together or alone in the future.

Adapted from a novel by her partner, Nicolas Rey, and featuring her esteemed father Fabrice, Emma Luchini's second feature is aptly entitled My Men. Reuniting with Rey after they shared the directorial duties on the César-winning short, La Femme de Rio (2013), this is a pleasingly left-field family comedy that never quite makes good on its early potential (perhaps it's no accident its French title,Un Début Prometteur, translates as A Promising Start). But any film whose finale is set in Claude Monet's haven at Giverny is worthy of consideration.

When not making impulse purchases in the small hours, Fabrice Luchini is obsessed with his garden. But he also takes a keen interest in sons Manu Payet and Zacharie Chasseriaud. Unfortunately, the former is a serial substance abuser, who has returned home after another failed attempt to make something of his life. His 16 year-old sibling is very fond of Payet. But he also knows how to twist him around his finger. So, when he develops a crush on thirtysomething Veerle Baetens, Chasseriaud enlists Payet's assistance in his audacious bid to seduce her.

As Baetens has a gambling addiction, she is open to any suggestion that will earn her the wherewithal to place the next bet. But, even though a trip to the dog track should convince her that the distracted Luchini, the addled Payet and the puppyish Chasseriaud are a highly dysfunctional triumvirate, she lets fate take its course (pausing for the odd song along the way), as her accepting attitude prompts Payet to rethink his ruinous ways.

Shifting between domestic absurdism, social satire and heartfelt poignancy, this may not always hit the right note. But the performances are spirited, with renowned comedian Manu Payet courageously playing against type as a morose alcoholic junkie. Moreover, Jérôme Alméras's photography is often a delight, with his climactic images of the lily ponds and bridges lingering after the closing credits.

A relationship comes under fires in Emmanuel Mouret's Caprice. Having started out making gently amusing slapstick shorts in the spirit of Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati, Mouret decided to morph into Woody Allen with Change of Address (2006) and Shall We Kiss? (2007). Indeed, following Please, Please Me! (2009) and The Art of Love (2011), he followed Allen's example by attempting a more serious drama with Another Life (2013). But he is back to what he does best with this typically witty romantic muddle.

Primary school teacher Emmanuel Mouret lucks out when he is hired to do a little private maths tutoring and wins the heart of his student's aunt. Virginie Efira just happens to be a successful stage and screen actress and Mouret is amazed when she accepts his dinner invitation and seems to be swept along in a daydream as their relationship deepens and they move in together. Best pal Laurent Stocker certainly can't understand what Efira sees in Mouret. But he is even more bemused when aspiring actress Anaïs Demoustier starts throwing herself at him after bumping into him at one of Efira's shows.

Although her wide eyes suggest butter wouldn't melt, Demoustier is quite prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed and Mouret quickly finds himself out of her depth. But, having slept with her after a drunken night on the town, he realises that he cannot cope with her incessant lies and schemes. However, breaking up with her is easier said than done, even when Stocker begins making a move on Efira.

Shades of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950) fall across this genial, but not entirely convincing romcom. Yet, while Demoustier could give Anne Baxter a run for her money, Efira is far too sweet and trusting to be Bette Davis. Consequently, they often feel like pieces in the bumbling Mouret's nebbish fantasy. Nevertheless, Demoustier rises above her material to convey a spontaneous sense of femme fatalistic danger that is much more memorable than Mouret's misfortunes with a coffee cup or a pair of crutches. So, while this may be a bit limited in its ambitions, it still proves highly entertaining. Moreover, Laurent Desmet's views of Paris are enchanting.

Moving into animation, Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's Phantom Boy (which we reviewed a couple of weeks ago) is joined on the slate by Michael Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle and Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci's April and the Extraordinary World. The former sees the Dutch Oscar winner Michael Dudok de Wit team up with Studio Ghibli for a debut feature debut in which a castaway's attempts to escape from a South Sea desert island are frustrated by the eponymous creature, whose magical transformation gives this the feel of a creation myth. Based on a steampunk graphic novel by Jacques Tardi, the latter has a complicated backstory that sees the past being altered when Napoleon III is killed in a super-soldier laboratory experiment on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War. Thus, with the mysterious disappearance of the world's leading scientists, humanity is still dependent upon wood and charcoal for fuel in 1931. It's at this point we meet April (Marion Cotillard), who lives with her scientist parents, Annette and Paul (Macha Grenon and Olivier Gourmet), and her grandfather Pops (Jean Rochefort). But they are torn apart by meddling detective Pizoni (Benoît Brière) and, a decade later, he sends a thief named Julius (Marc-André Grondin) to spy on Alice and her talking cat, Darwin (Philippe Katerine), just as 70 years of history collides with the present.

Switching to actuality, where better to start than with Bertrand Tavernier's three-hour opus, A Journey Through French Cinema? In addition to being a fine film-maker in his own right, Tavernier has also interviewed Jean Gabin and Jean Renoir, assisted Jean-Pierre Melville and been Jean-Luc Godard's press agent. So, this survey ranging from the Poetic Realist phase of the 1930s to the post-nouvelle vague surge of the 1970s deserves to stand alongside such personal reflections as Martin Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy (2001). This leads neatly into a heritage selection that opens with Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927), which is reviewed in this week's In Cinemas column, and closes with Jean-Pierre Mocky's Kill the Referee (1984), a darkly comic adaptation of an Alfred Draper novel that follows the efforts of football fan Michel Serrault to track down referee Eddy Mitchell after he awards a contentious penalty that decides a big game. Unwilling just to punish Mitchell and his journalist girlfriend Carole Laure, Serrault also tries to frame him for the murder of a fellow hooligan while besieging his home.

The tone is much less mayhemic in Marcel Pagnol's revered Marseilles Trilogy. which is showing at FFF24 in its entirety. Adapted from a hit stage play, Marius (1931) was directed by Hungarian émigré Alexander Korda and centres on a café in the Old Port owned by César Ollivier (Raimu). He is devoted to his son, Marius (Pierre Fresnay), who dreams of a life at sea. However, he also has a crush on Fanny Cabanis (Orane Demazis), who runs a fish stall with her mother, Norine (Alida Rouffe). She has hopes of marrying her daughter to Honoré Panisse (Fernand Charpin), a wealthy sail-maker who is widowed and several years her senior. Surprised to learn that Fanny shares his feelings, Marius promises to settle down. But, even though she knows she is pregnant, Fanny urges Marius to report to the ship and fulfil his destiny on a five-year voyage.

Marc Allégret continued the story in Fanny (1932), as Norine learns she is going to be a grandmother and urges Fanny to marry Panisse without telling him about the child. She insists on being honest and Panisse likes the idea of adding `& Son' to his shop sign. César knows nothing about the baby, however, and accuses Fanny of selling herself for an easy life. But, when he learns the truth, he warns the returning Marius against trying to break up the marriage, as Panisse has been a loving husband and father. Fanny admits that she still loves Marius, but he decides to do the decent thing.

Pagnol was so disappointed with Allégret's efforts that he directed César (1936), which opens with Panisse suffering a heart attack. He confesses to many sins, but refuses to tell Césariot (André Fouché) that Marius is his real father. He is now working as a garage mechanic in Toulon with Fernand (Doumel), but he fails to recognise the youth when he adopts a false name in bringing his motorboat for repair. However, Fanny has told Césariot all about Marius and he is delighted at being able to call César his grandfather. They conspire together to bring Marius and Fanny together after 20 years and he reassures her that her beauty remains undiminished.

When Paramount agreed to back Marius, Pagnol was appalled by their suggestion of Victor Francen, Henry Garat and Meg Lemonnier for the principal roles and insisted on keeping the stage cast that had debuted the play at the Théâtre de Paris in March 1929. It's impossible to imagine anyone other than Raimu, Pierre Fresnay and Orane Demazis in the title roles, but the ensemble playing is as exceptional as Pagnol's naturalist writing. He disliked Alfred Junge and Vincent Korda's studio sets, but what they lack in location authenticity they more than make up for in atmosphere.

The stage sequel was much less successful, as Fresnay was elsewhere engaged and Raimu fell out with the theatre manager Léon Volterra. But a deal was swiftly struck to film Fanny and Marc Allégret was hired to direct on the basis of his collaborations with Raimu on Mam'zelle Nitouche (1931) and La Petite chocolatière (1932). He concurred with Pagnol's insistence on setting more scenes en plein air. But they argued about the dramatic tone, as Allégret tried to impose a brooding aura of poetic realism that sat awkwardly with Pagnol's compassionate celebration of the everyday.

Keen to conclude the sage, Pagnol opted to make César from an original script. It opened in his own cinema in Marseilles, but failed to out-perform its maligned predecessor at the box office. Finally able to work in real locations, Pagnol achieved a look and feel that anticipated neo-realism. But there was no escaping the melodramatic nature of the storyline, as the loose ends were neatly tied up and Césariot assumes a disguise to get to know Marius to understand the man who had abandoned his mother. Their fishing trips are chatty and relaxed, but Pagnol gives many of the best lines to Fanny and César, as she seeks to assert herself in a patriarchal milieu and he strives to keep his family together.

Charles Boyer must have spent the remainder of his career regretting the decision to turn down the title role in Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937), for while he got to star in the Hollywood remake, Casbah (1940), it was scant consolation for rejecting a picture that went on to become the French Casablanca. Moreover, he also lost the chance to epitomise the national mood in the way that Jean Gabin would do in such dark poetic realist dramas as Le Quai des Brumes (1938) and Le Jour se Lève (1939), which he was offered on the strength of his portrayal of the romantic anti-hero in this engrossing study of criminous loyalty, impending doom and lost dreams.

Toulon-born gangster

Pépé le Moko (Jean Gabin) has taken refuge in the labyrinthine Casbah quarter of Algiers after killing several gendarmes during bank raids back in France. Along with sidekicks L'Arbi (Marcel Dalio) and Jimmy (Gaston Modot), he has built up a nice racket safe in the knowledge that the police cannot touch him. But Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux) exploits Pépé's homesickness for Paris to lure him into the open when he becomes attached to Gaby (Mireille Balin), despite being shacked up with Inès (Line Noro), who has been tipped off about Slimane's operation by the envious Régis (Fernand Charpin).

Wounded during a visit to his friend

Grand Père (Saturnin Fabre), Pépé suspects that Slimane is up to no good and smells a rat when Tania (Fréhel) informs him that Régis has taken Pépé's protégé Pierrot (Gilbert Gil) to see his sick mother. He is even more suspicious when Pierrot returns mortally injured and Carlos (Gabriel Gabrio) shoots Régis. Inès prevents Pépé from venturing into the city to attend his friend's funeral, but Slimane is convinced that he can use Gaby to entice Pépé into an indiscretion and orders the treacherous L'Arbi to inform him that she is leaving for France with her wealthy fiancé, Maxime (Charles Granval). Slimane also tells Gaby that Pépé has been killed. So she fails to see him on the quayside as he watches her ship depart and stabs himself to avoid being arrested.

Reuniting with Jean Gabin after La Bandera (1935) and La Belle équipe (1936), Julien Duvivier proved himself to be a master of mood with this adaptation of Henri La Barthe's seething study of criminous loyalty, lost dreams and impending doom. In conjunction with cinematographers Marc Fossard and Jules Krüger, he lit Jacques Krauss's evocative Joinville sets with a menacing melancholy that anticipated film noir. Moreover, he allowed Gabin to deliver Henri Jeanson's acute dialogue with a nonchalance that smacks of the everyday (even though François Truffaut detested the Everyman schtick on which Gabin relied as he came to be seen as a barometer of national confidence as the hopefulness of the Popular Front era gave way to pre-war pessimism).

Although the focus falls on Gabin and Mireille Balin (the scene in which they fall in love while recalling the names of Métro stations is adorable), Duvivier finds plenty for the excellent ensemble to do, as they scheme for the collective or their individual benefit. But this is primarily a film about longing for a time and a place that can never be revisited and the anguish on the face of Fréhel, as she sings along to a sentimental old refrain, epitomises the blend of desire, dread and despair that permeates proceedings.

Jean Cocteau declared Pépé le Moko a masterpiece, while Jean Renoir hailed him as a poet and Claude Chabrol pronounced him an auteur. But, by the end of the war, some critics complained that it had preconditioned the French psyche for the Occupation. Marcel Carné also came in for criticism. But, following Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), he and screenwriter Jacques Prévert returned to the poetic realist style that had served them so well in the previous decade for Gates of the Night (1946), which Pathé hoped would bring about a reunion of Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich after their teaming on Georges Lacombe's Martin Roumagnac (1946). However, Carné insisted on casting newcomers Yves Montand and Nathalie Nattier and his fortunes began to decline with the film's lukewarm reception.

Yet, there is much to admire about a story set in February 1945, as Montand's Métro labourer pays a visit to Sylvia Bataille to inform her that husband Raymond Bussières has been killed in a Maquis reprisal. In fact, he has merely been tortured, but Montand gets to meet the heroic Bussières's Pétain-supporting neighbour, Saturnin Fabre, whose son Serge Reggiani is a nasty piece of work. While out with his friends that night, Montand encounters a hobo who insists he is Fate. While playing the song `Les Feuilles mortes' that Montand recognises from a pre-war trip to San Francisco, Jean Vilar tells him that he will meet a tragic end after renewing contact with someone from his past.

But Montand thinks nothing of the prediction as he takes pity on Nattier, who has just left her cruel husband, Pierre Brasseur, who spent much of the Occupation profiteering from misery. Gabin feels he has a connection to Nattier, who warms to his kindness. However, while they aspire to the happiness being enjoyed by Dany Robin and Jean Maxime, Reggiani cannot resist interfering and not only informs Brasseur that his wife is seeing another man, but also loans him a knife.

Superbly abetted during an eight-month shoot by Alexandre Trauner's claustrophobic interiors, Philippe Agostini's sombre imagery and Joseph Kosma's mournful score, Carné captures the mix of relief and mistrust that kept France a divided nation in the first winter after the war. Adapted from the ballet, Le Rendez-vous, which he had created with Kosma, Prévert's screenplay examines the nation's conscience, as it shows how collaborationists kept ducking and diving without recrimination, while those they had exploited continued to suffer from deprivation and despair.

But viewers wanted to escape rather than be reminded of how so many of them had compromised their principles in order to survive. They also baulked at the more calculatedly melodramatic contrivances and, consequently, the picture (which had cost a record 120 million francs) lost a fortune. Over time, Carné and Prévert's fatalist swan song has been reappraised for its stark depiction of an era few other film-makers were prepared to hold up to the audience. But contemporaries preferred unquestioningly heroic accounts of the Occupation, such as René Clément's The Battle of the Rails (1946).

Borrowing from the documentary style that has been so successfully used by British film-makers to push propagandist topics during the war, this intriguing meld of actuality and reconstruction was inspired by the tales told to Cléments co-scenarist, Colette Audry. The concept was to show how French people had played a crucial part in the Liberation of La Patrie through acts of sabotage that prevented tanks, artillery, fuel and troops from reaching the German forces trying to resist the Allied onslaught after D-Day. Given that the country had been divided in Occupied and Free zones after the ignominious surrender of 1940, Clément was determined to restore some pride by chronicling the combined efforts of the Maquis and the railway workers of Brittany.

Much of the opening third is taken up with an explanation of how the Nazis ran the French rail network. Aware of the need to keep supply lines functioning, each station and marshalling yard had its own supervisor who reported to the hierarchy in Paris. But they were powerless to prevent tracks from being undermined or destroyed and even punishments (such as the harrowing execution of six workers by firing squad) failed to deter the partisans.

The latter scenes, however, focus on a mission to prevent reinforcements from reaching the front. Tracks are blown up and one train is derailed. But, while giving the impression that they are endeavouring to have the wagons removed, the local dispatchers succeed in sending a giant crane that (with a little help from brave patriots) is so unstable that it crashes on to the rails. The soldiers being spared a showdown with the Allies seem unperturbed, as they sun themselves while awaiting another crane to clear the way. However, Clément is not so naive as to suggest that resistance was a formality and shows a couple of agents murdering a German guard and dumping his body in a coal truck, while the enemy routs a detachment with a tank before continuing north and takes hostages who are executed by firing squad to a chorus of defiantly whistling locomotives. He also highlights the indiscriminate nature of Allied air raids.

Such attempts at balance are outweighed by acts of heroism and ingenuity, however, as was the case with British and American flagwavers during and after the war. But, even though four of the seven Nazi trains are stopped, this is much more rooted in reality than crowdpleasers like Henri Calef's Jericho, Maurice de Canonge's Mission spéciale (both 1946) and Alexander Esway's Le Bataillon du ciel (1947), and it is tempting to suggest the influence of André Malraux's Espoir (1938) and Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), even though Clément filmed some of the scenes with German troops still on French soil.

Clément won the Best Director prize at the first completed Cannes Film Festival (where it also took the International Jury Prize) for a grittiness that was then new to French cinema. He also coaxed credible performances out of a largely non-professional cast, several of whom were recreating their own exploits for the camera of Henri Alékan, who had escaped from a POW camp in 1940 and formed the July 14 resistance group with his brother to provide shelter and documents for fugitives in Vichy. He also put his photographic skills to good use by filming German beach fortifications - hence his eye for an authentic combat detail.

Gérard Oury takes a markedly different approach to conflict in La Grande Vadrouille (1966), which is showing in a restored copy to mark the 50th anniversary of a comedy that remained France's biggest homegrown box-office hit (selling over 17 million tickets) until the release of Dany Boon's Welcome to the Sticks in 2008. Actually a co-production with Rank (who dubbed it Don't Look Now…We're Being Shot At for the misfiring UK release), this clearly had an influence on the BBC sitcom, `Allo `Allo, as the storyline revolves around a trio of stranded RAF flyers and depends heavily on puns, innuendo and plenty of slapstick. Rather than the bawdy music-hall bravura of the Carry Ons, however, this wartime romp has the impish elegance and impeccable timing of a classic French farce.

In the summer of 1941, an RAF bomber returning from a raid mistakes Calais for Paris and gets shot down by an anti-aircraft battery. Crew members Terry-Thomas, Claudio Brook and Mike Marshall parachute to safety and respectively land in the Vincennes zoo, a decorators platform and the roof of the Opéra Garnier. They are rescued by puppeteer Marie Dubois, painter André Bourvil and conductor Louis de Funès. But, while they conspire with Colette Brosset at the Hôtel du Globe to smuggle the airmen across the Burgundian border to Meursault, German major Benno Sterzenbach is keen to track down the fugitives before a showcase concert. However, neither Sterzenbach nor De Funès knows that the Maquis plans to launch a bomb attack on the theatre and the situation becomes all the more fraught when les rosbifs steal some German uniforms and find themselves in the auditorium as the lights go down.

Drawing on pictures as different as Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Ken Annakin's Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), this is a rousing romp that bounces along to Georges Auric's jaunty score. Despite spending the war as a Jewish refugee in Switzerland, Oury captures the mood of the embattled capital with the estimable assistance of production designer Jean André and cinematographer Claude Renoir. He co-wrote the script with daughter Danièle Thompson and cast stepson Mike Marshall (whose mother is the remarkable Michèle Morgan, who is still going strong at the age of 96). Yet he allowed De Funès and Bourvil (with whom he had made Le Corniaud, 1965) to invent their own comic business and their blend of buffoonery and pluck perfectly complements Terry-Thomas's distinctive patrician bluster, while Bourvil even finds time to romance the spirited Dubois. But, while Oury keeps the laughs coming, he also stages some spectacular set-pieces (as well as a little subterranean cross-dressing) that would not have been out of place in René Clément's Is Paris Burning?, an all-star epic about the Liberation of August 1944 that was released later the same year.