While most of our holiday cinematic memories are of American films, film industries around the world have set their work at the holidays, particularly the cinema of France. Often films that take place around Christmas, instead of being about Christmas itself, these films can tackle themes as disparate as wartime collaboration, the setting aside of conflict to celebrate humanity, or the idea that love can only truly be expressed through music. Yet each film uses the holidays as a backdrop to accentuate the narrative action, sometimes providing a counterpoint that creates thematic conflict. Through two world wars and into the 1960s, these four films provide a brief glimpse into the way that France views and holds Christmas in its heart.
Dates and Titles:
December 2: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, France 1964, 91 min., 35mm)
December 9: Who Killed Santa Claus? (L’assassinat du Père Noël, Christian-Jaque, France 1941, 105 min., DCP, French with English subtitles)
December 16: My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud, Éric Rohmer, France 1969, 105 min., DCP, French with English subtitles)
December 23: Joyeux Noël (Christian Carion, France/Germany/UK/Belgium/Romania/Japan 2005, 116 min., DCP, French and German with English subtitles)
Events in this Series
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (35mm)
Joyeux Noel | Holidays One of the most beloved and cherished of all musicals is this colorful, romantic, and bittersweet study of love and chance.
Who Killed Santa Claus? (DCP)
Jouex Noel | Holidays The first film produced by Continental Films, the Nazi-controlled French film production company during World War II, Who Killed Santa Claus? is nonetheless a story of resistance against collaboration.
My Night at Maud's (DCP)
Jouex Noel | Holidays In the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of director Éric Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of sixties cinema. A pious Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code in order to rationalize his world, drowning himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Pascal.
Joyeux Noël (DCP)
Jouex Noel | Holidays In the first year of the Great War, soldiers line the trenches, French and Scotsmen on one side and Germans on the other. Among the Germans is opera singer Nikolaus Sprink (Benno Fürmann), who has been pulled away temporarily to perform with his fiancee, Anna (Diane Kruger) to perform for Crown Prince Wilhelm.