Reel Life

With a reputation as the birthplace of cinema,France has film programmed into its cultural DNA.Lara Dunn explores some of the landmarks.

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When Antoine Lumière achieved the first projection of a moving picture in Paris in 1895,France’s place in cinematic history was assured. Four main companies dominated the early days of film in France, with names such as Gaumont and Pathé entering the everyday lexicon of cinema, enduring even today.

From that point on, France’s innovation in the arena of film and cinema grew steadily, managing to limp through the lean years just after World War I, to develop landmark styles such as impressionism and poetic realism with directors including Jean Vigo, Jacques Feyder and Marcel Carné.

In 1945 Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis was released, after a difficult gestation during the Nazi occupation. The film, set in the theatre world of Paris in the 1820s, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1947 and voted Best French Film of the Century in a poll of 600 industry professionals in 1995. Francois Truffaut reputedly commented:“I would give up all my films to have directed