French Cinema B2+: Polars: Le Corbeau, Voici le temps des assassins, Compartiment tueurs

This class is a film-centered language class, dedicated to building oral comprehension and communication skills. Through film, students will enhance their knowledge of spoken French of all levels—formal, standard, and informal—as well as their French cultural literacy.

This course explores the French polar (crime thriller) as a conduit for examining sociological and political undercurrents in French society. Through a fatalist vision of corruption and social decay, we will trace the evolution of this genre from the claustrophobic paranoia of early film noir to the stylized tension of the 1950s. We will start with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece of suspicion, Le Corbeau (1943), move to the gritty underworld of Julien Duvivier’s Voici le temps des assassins (1956) starring Jean Gabin, and conclude with the fast-paced, modern police procedural of Costa-Gavras’ Compartiment tueurs (1965).

We will read criticism and reviews of all three films to deepen your appreciation of them.

Lastly, you’ll listen to and study popular songs from the periods and artists depicted in each film.