FRANCE

Medieval France to Age of Discovery

Charlemagne, Charles the Prince (1995) --  early unifier of Frankish kingdoms

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) -- 1428; Hundred Year's War with England

Joan of Arc (1999)  --  Leelee Sobieski

Joan of Arc (1948) Ingrid Bergman

Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) --  French film

Beatrice (1988)  --  set during the Hundred Year's War (1337-1453), a revisionist view of the noble Knights

Le Retour de Martin Guerre [The Return of Martin Guerre] (1982)  --   fascinating film about Medieval France.

FRANCE IN NORTH AMERICA

Last of the Mohicans (1920) -- silent film

Last of the Mohicans (1936)

Last of the Mohicans (1992) -- Daniel Day Lewis -- French and Indian War, 1756-1763; best version

Northwest Passage (1940)  -- French & Indian War

Mohawk (1956) Indians attack a frontier outpost; Scott Brady

Frontier Times (1987)  --  swashbuckler set during the French and Indian War

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Lafayette (1962)  --  the Frenchman who fought for American independence

FRANCE TO FRENCH REVOLUTION

Reformation & Religious Conflict

Diane (1956)  -- mistress of King Henri II, first emperor of the French Renaissance (rule from 1547 to 1559)

Queen Margot (1994) -- sister of Frances's Charles IX weds in 16th c; Isabelle Adjani; subtitled

Cardinal Richelieu (1935)  --  Cardinal Richelieu oppresses French Protestants, known as Huguenots

Under the Red Robe (1937)   --   Cardinal Richelieu

The Three Musketeers (1935)   --  the Musketeers fight against the forces of Cardinal Richelieu. 

The Three Musketeers (1939)

The Three Musketeers (1948)

The Three Musketeers (1973) -- King Louis XIII of France, 1616

The Three Musketeers (1993)

La Prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV (The Rise of Louis XIV) (1966)  --  Louis XIV

Vatel (2000)  --  in 1671, Prince de Condé hosts Louis XIV for three days

The Devils (1971) -- witchcraft in 17th c. France

Rembrandt (1936) -- 1630 Dutch painter

Girl with a Pearl Earring  --  Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer

Voltaire (1933)

Cartouche (1962) -- 18th c. French Robin Hood

FRANCE  

Camille Claudel (1989)  --  in 1883 France, sculptor Auguste Rodin meets sculptress Camille Claudel and they begin a relationship

Lust for Life (1956)  -- 1885-1891, French painter Vincent Van Gogh (friend of painter Paul Gaugan)

Vincent (1987) -- documentary on Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent and Theo  --  the two Van Gogh brothers

Time Regained (1999)   --  life of French writer and critic Marcel Proust, most famous for his In Search of Lost Time began in 1909

Modigliani  -- Amadeo, the painter

Surviving Picasso (1996)  --  Pablo Picasso

Prisoner of Honor (1991) -- anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair

The Life of Emile Zola (1937) -- involved in the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair

I Accuse! (1958) -- Zola and the Dreyfus Affair

Total Eclipse (1995)  --  French poets struggle with relationships, 1871

IMPERIALISM

Outpost in Morocco (1949)  --  Foreign Legion and the fight for independence

Legionnaire (1999) --  the Foreign Legion's battles against Algerian berbers

Chocolat (1989)  --  colonial racism in Cameroon

Black and White in Color  (1976)  --  French and German colonialists learn WWI has been on for seven months

The Lover (1992)   --  a relationship between a young French teen-ager and wealthy Chinese heir in French Indochina causes problems

Indochine (1992) -- political upheaval in French Indochina in the 1930s to the defeat of the French in 1954

MEXICO

Major Dundee (1965)  --  Dundee hunts down an Apache warrior group raiding in Texas during the Civil War & runs into French troops in Mexico

WORLD WAR I

Paths of Glory (1957) -- French generals hide their own incompetence by declaring their own soldiers cowards, 1916

Trench -- 

Mata Hari (1932) -- the spy Mata Hari executed in 1917

A Very Long Engagement (2004)  -- a French woman looks for her man on the battlefields of France

Joyeux Noel (2006)  --  soldiers on both sides call a Christmas truce and are punished for it

WORLD WAR II

Weekend at Dunkirk (1965) -- seen from the French perspective

Attack on the Iron Coast (1968) --  British raid on large ship dock at St. Nazaire, France, March 28, 1942

Assignment in Brittany (1943)  --  efforts of the Free French

Lacombe Lucien (1974)  --   in occupied France, a young Frenchman is conflicted over his work for the German police and his Jewish girlfriend

VIETNAM WAR

317th Platoon (1965) -- the French in Indochina

Lost Command (1966) -- from French Indochina to French-Algerian guerilla warfare in North Africa