Available on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time in a newly restored and uncut version, Le Jour Se Lève is a 1939 collaboration between director Marcel Carné and writer/poet Jacques Prévert, who would later work together on the equally feted Les Enfants du Paradis. Over 70 years since its first release, the film retains its freshness thanks to its innovative narrative structure: it begins with a murder committed by François (played Jean Gabin, pictured with co-star Arletty) and then explains the circumstances leading up to it in flashback.
Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Long before Matt Damon played The Talented Mr Ripley in the 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s thriller, the role made Alain Delon a star. Digitally restored and with brand-new extras. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
A young Catherine Deneuve stars in this sung-through musical about star-crossed lovers during the Algerian War. Its bright, bubble-gum colours have been digitally restored for this extras-packed 50th anniversary edition. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Long unavailable yet undoubtedly Buñuel’s most accessible film, Belle de Jour is an elegant and erotic masterpiece in which a frustrated housewife (Catherine Deneuve) lives out her fantasies. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
One of the great anti-war films, Jean Renoir’s prison-camp masterpiece starring Jean Gabin has been digitally restored for its 75th anniversary and features an introduction by film professor Ginette Vincendeau. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
This haunting pre-war drama, starring Jean Gabin as a deserter sheltering in Le Havre, was a key influence on Film Noir in 1940s Hollywood. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Jean Renoir’s adaptation of the Émile Zola novel, again starring Jean Gabin, is a tense love triangle full of murder, betrayal and violent jealousy. Photograph: SAM LEVIN/STUDIOCANAL
Jean-Pierre Melville is the acknowledged master of noir-ish French gangster films, and Alain Delon his definitive star. This heist movie is one of their finest collaborations. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL/Andre Perlstein
With its innovative jump cuts, Godard’s New Wave crime romance revolutionised cinema and influenced a generation of Hollywood directors. It’s still fresh and achingly cool more than half a century later. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Drawing on director Jean-Pierre Melville’s own experiences in World War II, the film follows a band of resistance fighters as loyalty gives way to suspicion, secrecy and loss. Photograph: RAYMOND VOINQUEL/STUDIOCANAL/Raymond Voinquel
Beloved of cinéphiles for its film-within-a-film plot, Godard’s typically subversive film makes a genuine actress of pouting sex kitten Brigitte Bardot. Fritz Lang plays the director. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
One of the masterpieces of the French New Wave, this enigmatic existentialist fantasy tale set in a luxury hotel is a collaboration between director Alain Resnais and French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
This quick-fire, visually ravishing black comedy about a post-apocalyptic Sweeney Todd gave Jean-Pierre Jeunet (currently riding high with The Young and Prodigious TS Spivet) and Marc Caro an international hit. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Mathieu Kassovitz’s extraordinarily powerful drama, shot in black and white, examines the racial and economic divisions that trap Paris’s underclass. Vincent Cassel, now a Hollywood star, makes an unforgettable debut. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
Inspired by a real-life love triangle between a prostitute and rival gang leaders, this Belle Époque tragedy starring Simone Signoret is gloriously filmed in Expressionist style by Jacques Becker. Photograph: STUDIOCANAL
