Top 6 French Sci-Fi Flicks

French cinema’s first masterpieces were sci-fi shorts by pioneer Georges Méliès: Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon, 1902) and Le Voyage à Travers l’Impossible (The Impossible Voyage, 1904). After Méliès, only a few French filmmakers have been tempted by the genre, but often with great success. French sci-fi films not to be missed:

Surrealist
Paris Qui Dort (At 3:25) René Clair, 1925
One morning the keeper of the Eiffel Tower awakes to discover that, in the city below him, everyone is frozen in a state of suspended animation. As he wanders the streets, the only other people capable of motion are a group of tourists who have just landed at the airport. They take advantage of the situation by looting jewelry stores and banks, but soon get bored…until they receive a strange radio message that might be the key to what has happened to Paris. The first film by the great René Clair is a poetic comedy and one of the first sci-fi features ever made.

Experimental
La Jetée (The Pier) Chris Marker, 1962
Lasting only 28 minutes and made up entirely of still black-and-white photographs with voiceover, La Jetée is nonetheless one of the most gripping films ever made, with one of the most spellbinding, haunting plots ever written—watch for the final twist! Scientists decide to send a man into the past to try to prevent the nuclear war that has almost destroyed the earth and threatens to annihilate the human race. But can the past be changed? This philosophical tale is the only work of fiction by Marker, best known for his documentaries. Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys (1995) was inspired by La Jetée, but pales in comparison to the original, despite its colorful, action-packed images.

New Wave
Alphaville Jean-Luc Godard, 1965
It starts like a 1950s Hollywood film noir: Detective Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) arrives in the town of Alphaville on a mission to find Professor von Braun. But Caution finds Alphaville a strange, totalitarian world where emotions have been abolished and people’s thoughts are controlled by a computer invented by von Braun, Alpha-60 (the precursor to Kubrick’s HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Aided by von Braun’s daughter (the sublime Anna Karina) Caution tries to liberate the town and save the world. With Godard behind the camera, the film is anything but ordinary.

Prophetic
La Mort en Direct (Deathwatch) Bertrand Tavernier, 1980
In the near future, when science has eradicated most illnesses, successful writer Katherine Mortenhoe (Romy Schneider) learns that she has only a few weeks to live. Contacted by a TV channel to become the heroine of their show La Mort en Direct (literally, “live death”), she refuses and tries to hide from the media. The TV producers resort to implanting a camera in the eye of Roddy (Harvey Keitel), who films her without her knowledge. Shot in 1980, this disturbing, low-key sci-fi film denounces contemporary society’s thirst for sensationalism and foresees the rise of reality TV.

Mouthwatering
Delicatessen Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991
Meat has become an exceptional delicacy in this futuristic France. Louison takes a job as a janitor in an old apartment building owned by a butcher, little knowing that his predecessors in the job have been butchered and eaten by the residents. Luckily, the butcher’s daughter falls in love with him, and her father agrees to spare his life. But how long will this last, with the residents demanding their ration of meat? This weird, hilarious cult movie is immediately recognizable as a Caro & Jeunet invention. In 1997 Jeunet (who went on to create Amélie), was called on by Hollywood to direct the fourth installment of one of the most famous sci-fi sagas, Alien: Resurrection.

Environmentalist
Eden Log Franck Vestiel, 2007
A man wakes up in the dark, not knowing where he is or who he is. The film follows his journey to escape a strange, decaying world and make sense of what has happened to him. The protagonist (Clovis Cornillac) must climb through several levels of both an underground world and his own memory before arriving at the surface in a spectacular finale. Praised for its almost silent, attention-grabbing first half hour, Eden Log represents a new generation of sci-fi films centered more on technology than on emotions.

Tied for Seventh!

Fahrenheit 451 François Truffaut, 1966 (in English)
Barbarella Roger Vadim, 1968 (in English)
La Planète Sauvage (The Fantastic Planet) René Laloux, 1973. Animation.
Le Dernier Combat (The Last Battle) Luc Besson, 1983
Le Prix du Danger (The Prize of Peril) Yves Boisset, 1983
Peut-être (Maybe) Cédric Klapisch, 1999
Les Derniers Jours du Monde (Happy End) Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, 2009

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Originally published in the November 2009 issue of France Today.