10 Outstanding French Films You've Probably Never Heard Of

3. The Trip Across Paris (1956) - Claude Autant-Lara

Based on a novella by Marcel Aymé, The Trip Across Paris is a dark dramedy starring Bourvil as Marcel Martin, a black marketer whose dangerous mission €“ carrying pork meat across Paris at night €“ is complicated by the presence of Grandgil, who seems to be trailing along just to make his life even more difficult. While Bourvil's Marcel is the film's protagonist, the film's most memorable scenes are driven by Jean Gabin's Grandgil. In the film's most famous scene, he unleashes vitriolic abuse at bar owners, noting their exploitation of a Jewish girl as a servant, daring their patrons to take their bags away and berating them all for hiding behind a veneer of honesty to take advantage of the country's situation for their own ends. This scene underscores the class warfare at the heart of this movie: Martin is an unemployed taxi driver, whereas Grandgil turns out to be a successful painter. Grandgil's antics, while not without validity, are nevertheless revelatory of a man secure in his position of privilege and using it as a safeguard. Many films have been made about life in Nazi-occupied France, but few have encapsulated its effects on societal roles like The Trip Across Paris.