Vive la france!

Cinema St. Louis hosts its first annual French Film Festival, tonight (Friday)  through Sunday in Brown Hall at Washington University. The weekend event comprises rarely seen works by legendary directors Jean-Luc Godard and Marcel Ophuls, as well as three new French movies that haven’t yet screened in St. Louis.

Coincidentally, Webster University will mark the 50th anniversary of France’s “new wave” film movement with a series of four iconic movies, screening every Thursday night in September.

Cliff Froehlich, the executive director of Cinema St. Louis, notes that France has always been our most popular source for foreign-language imports. “American audiences trust French movies, because there’s a history there.”

France arguably invented the film industry, as the Lumiere brothers were the first entrepreneurs to screen moving pictures for paying customers. French productions dominated the silent-film era–until the outbreak of World War I, when the country’s resources were diverted to the military and American producers discovered a sunny locale called Hollywood.

In the 1930s, French directors such as Jean Renoir and Rene Clair spearheaded a golden age of French cinema–which again ended with the outbreak of war.

A subsequent generation of filmmakers rebelled against the literary stuffiness of post-war French cinema. Their visually kinetic style was inspired by America, the country that had come to France’s rescue. In new-wave films such as “Breathless” and “Shoot the Piano Player,” Godard and critic-turned-director Francois Truffaut incorporated homages to Hollywood directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks at a time when those legends were losing favor in the States.

Godard and Truffaut are both represented in the upcoming events. The Webster series kicks off with Truffaut’s love triangle “Jules and Jim” in Moore Auditorium at 8 p.m. Sept. 3, and it concludes with Godard’s colorful caper “Pierrot le Fou” on Sept. 24. (Sandwiched in between are Alan Resnais’ wartime love story “Hiroshima Mon Amour” on Sept. 10 and Agnes Varda’s real-time tour of 1962 Paris, “Cleo from 5 to 7,” on Sept. 17.)

Godard’s little-seen political thriller “Made in U.S.A” screens at Washington University at 7 p.m. Saturday. The new films screening in Brown Hall this weekend are “Captain Ahab,” a conjecture about the whale-hunter’s early years, tonight at 7; “La France,” a World War I drama with a musical twist, tonight at 9:15; and “Towards Zero,” a murder mystery adapted from an Agatha Christie book, Saturday at 9:15 p.m.

Fans of French cinema at its most opulent await the unveiling of “Lola Montes,” a restored print of the 1955 movie that noted American critic Andrew Sarris called “the greatest film ever made.” It’s Ophuls’ CinemaScope epic about the 19th century dancer who bedded both composer Franz Lizst and King Ludwig of Bavaria. It screens Sunday at 7 p.m.

The first annual French Film Festival is co-presented by Washington University’s Program in Film and Media Studies and sponsored by France’s Ministry of Culture. All screenings are in Brown Hall on the University campus. Tickets are $10 each; $8 for students with current photo ID, Cinema St. Louis members with valid membership cards, and Alliance Française members. For more information, call 314-289-4153 or visit the Cinema St. Louis website.

The French new-wave screenings are in Webster University’s Moore Auditorium, 470 East Lockwood Avenue, at 7:30 p.m. every Thursday in September. Tickets are $6 for the general public, $5 for seniors, alumni and students from other schools, $4 for faculty and staff, and free for Webster students. For more information, call 314-968-7487 or visit www.webster.edu/filmseries.

So don your beret, hop into your Peugot and trade those cold freedom fries for a warm baguette at l’ecole of your choice.

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Joe’s ten favorite French-language films

• Children of Paradise (Marcel Carne, 1945)
• The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)
• Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
• Day for Night (Francois Truffaut, 1973)
• Diva (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981)
• Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
• Bon Voyage (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 2003)
• The Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2007)
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
• The Class (Laurent Cantet, 2008)