10 Great French Crime Films

LE JOUR SE LÉVE

(Marcel Carné, 1936)

You might argue that, although it’s about a crime, it’s not strictly a crime movie. Nonetheless, Carné’s classic, featuring Jean Gabin as a troubled murderer, remains uniquely tense and moving.

PÉPÉ LE MOKO

(Julien Duvivier, 1937)

It’s Jean Gabin again. This time the grizzled star plays a gangster on the run in Algiers. Moody and enigmatic, the film was a clear influence on Carol Reed’s The Third Man.

RIFIFI

(Jules Dassin, 1955)

Despite that convincingly French name, Dassin was born in Connecticut and only moved to France after being blacklisted. Rififi, featuring Jean Servais as a criminal mastermind, remains one of the great heist films. Dassin’s own Topkapi is another.

BOB LE FLAMBEUR

(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956)

This list could be composed of nothing but Melville films. One of the director’s earliest hits, this spooky heist film – set around the casinos of Deauville – was remade as Neil Jordan’s slightly crazy The Good Thief.

ASCENSEUR POUR L’ÉCHAFAUD

(Louis Malle, 1958)

Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet star as a pair of lovers who conspire to murder the lady’s unfortunate husband, but get frustrated by an uncooperative lift. Miles Davis’s score is delicious.

BREATHLESS

(Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

It hardly needs to be said that Godard’s film – a key early effusion of the nouvelle vague – is as much a comment on crime cinema as an example of the genre. Still, it does have a girl and a gun. And that’s all you need.

SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER

(François Truffaut, 1960)

Slightly less austere than Breathless, Truffaut’s second feature, starring Charles Aznavour as a pianist down on his luck, combines nods towards American classics with a poignant central story.

LE SAMOURAÏ

(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

Not much is said in Melville’s late austere masterpiece – Alain Delon moves about his stark flat and seeks to evade equally surly coppers – but the film has been hugely influential. Without this, there would be no Heat and no Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

DIVA

(Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981)

Okay, the film now looks fantastically vulgar and insanely showy, but this odd thriller – in which a postie becomes obsessed with an opera singer – did help launch a new class of cinema. The so-called Cinema du Look also brought us Subway and Mauvais Sang.

LA BALANCE

(Bob Swaim, 1982)

As mainstream French cinema was succumbing to 1980s glitz, Bob Swaim managed to squeeze out this fine drama following the tangled relations between a French prostitute (Nathalie Baye) and her pimp (Philippe Léotard).