In one word: Emotions.’ His succinct and, let’s be honest, utterly hip rejoinder fluently captures what we’re about to undergo with Godard’s mischievous tenth film, ‘Pierrot le Fou’. Fuller replies: ‘Film is like a battleground.

Jean-Paul Belmondo mooches up to Samuel Fuller at a party and, naturally, asks him his thoughts on cinema. In the leading role, Dutronc displays a physical frailty and stooped sadness that complements Pialat’s beautiful, poignant images. There’s no attempt to trace the origins and development of his ‘creative genius’ nor, avoiding the hazards of biopic cliché, does it seek to illuminate these dark corners of his subject’s troubled soul. However, his ill health, a brief return to the debauchery of brothels and drink, and his irrational resentment of his brother Theo’s failure to sell his work, provoke erratic swings from brooding introspection to frustrated anger. Living in Auvers-sur-Oise with his sensitive and knowledgeable patron Gachet (Sety), van Gogh (Dutronc) works quietly and steadily, meanwhile flirting with Gachet’s precocious daughter Marguerite (London). This stunningly photographed and skilfully acted film uses an accretion of naturalistic detail to present an emotionally restrained but utterly compelling account of the last three months of van Gogh’s life. 🛏 The 101 best sex scenes in movies of all-time Written by Tom Huddleston, Geoff Andrew, Dave Calhoun, Cath Clarke, Trevor Johnston, Joshua Rothkopf, Keith Uhlich and Matthew Singer Even if you’re an espresso-sipping, chain-smoking Francophile, you’re going to find something that surprises you. To make it easier for you to take the leap, we’ve ranked the 100 best French movies ever made, from famous crowd-pleasers like Amélie to the more challenging – but no less rewarding – work of mavericks like Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda. But if you continue to immerse yourself, you’ll also discover pleasures unlike those found anywhere else in world cinema.

If you dive into the French film canon, you’ll encounter plenty of philosophical musings, arty embellishments and impenetrable characters. But in popular consciousness, ‘French film’ is effectively a slur – coded language for ‘pretentiousness’. Few countries can claim to have exerted such a strong influence over global cinema the New Hollywood revolution of the 1970s wouldn’t have happened without the nouvelle vague. After all, it’s where movie culture, if not moviemaking itself, began: the first commercial film screening in history occurred at the Grand Café in Paris in 1895.

Every serious cinephile eventually finds themselves in France.

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