No national cinema outside North America can match France for the crime film. With roots in the shadowy prewar style known as 'Poetic Realism', the genre truly flourished in the decades after the Second World War, nourished by Georges Simenon's Maigret, the long-running 'Série Noire' novels and an abiding love of Hollywood. Yet it was directors such as Jacques Becker, Jean-Pierre Melville and Claude Chabrol, together with stars including Jean Gabin, Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo, gave the genre of French crime films a style unmistakably its own.
Our new eight-week programme, led by Dr Sheldon Hall, invites you on a journey into that gallic underworld. Across four key films, one from each of four decades, we trace how the genre developed, and what made it so distinctive. Screenings and lectures alternate week by week, every Wednesday at 6.30pm: a film one week, an illuminating talk the next.
On 14 October, we open with Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), the taut, tough gangster picture that revived Jean Gabin's career and set the pattern of the genre for decades to follow, with its theme of thieves falling out over stolen gold. The following week's lecture explores the postwar crime film, from its Poetic Realist roots to the rise of film noir on both sides of the Atlantic.
Next comes Melville's Le Samouraï (1967), the most stylised of his Hollywood-influenced thrillers: a film noir in Gauloise colours, featuring Alain Delon's signature performance as the impassive, enigmatic hitman Jeff Costello. A lecture on Melville and the American influence follows the week after.
Chabrol's Le Boucher (1970), hailed on release as the one of the greatest French films of all time, brings us a Hitchcockian tale of gruesome killings and an unlikely friendship in a small Périgord town. We then consider Chabrol's abiding fascination with murder among the middle classes.
The season closes with Besson's Subway (1985), a pacy, comic-book adventure set deep in the Paris Métro and a standout of the flashy 'Cinéma du Look'. Our final lecture examines this 'New New Wave' of stylish thrillers aimed at young international audiences.
Dr Sheldon Hall is an Emeritus Fellow of Sheffield Hallam University and the author of numerous books and articles on cinema history. He has taught Film Studies courses at the Showroom since 1998.
Tickets sold individually or grab a pass for £80 (works out at £10 per lecture and film, saving £16 across the course). Book now: https://showroomcinema.org.uk/festivals/film-studies-the-real-film-noir-french-crime-cinema
By Grace Osbourne, Marketing Manager
Paternoster Row, Sheffield City Centre, Sheffield S1 2BX
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