French Cinema, the era where the world cinema traces it’s history, which led to the birth of Cinematic Grammar. The Cinematic journey was embarked by ‘Gaumont Film Company’ founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont (1864–1946), being the oldest running film company in the world . In 1907, Gaumont owned and operated the biggest movie studio in the world, along with the boom in construction of “luxury cinemas” like the Gaumont-Palace and the Pathé-Palace (both 1911), cinema became an economic challenger to legitimate theater by 1914.
Genres of French Cinema showcases ten different phases of France History, starting from The New Wave ‘La Nouvelle Vague’ , which depicted about American crime thrillers, heart-rending tales of loneliness and tragic romance, politically astute. This extended to Film Policiers which refers to the crime-thriller genre of French cinema, often in the context of trench coat wearing gangsters and tough, ageing police inspectors. The polar is a specific kind of policier which involves a central mystery (although a polar does not necessarily have to be a policier). What marked the era was ‘The Silent Era’ ,’ War Films’ and ‘The War Years’.
One can witness the impact of World Wars in the films being directed between 1940’s to 1970’s, Poetic Realism was born in this era, founded by Jacques Feyder, who also dominated French Impressionist Cinema, also known as also referred to as the first avant-garde. Hence, it’s rightly said that environment inspires Cinema.
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