Top 10 Movies Set In France
Vive la France (on film)! Join http://www.WatchMojo.com as we count down our picks for the top 10 movies set in France! For this list, we're looking at Hollywood movies that take place in France. We have not included French productions such as Amélie, but have instead focused on more mainstream cinema.
Special thanks to our users kenn1987 submitting the idea using our interactive suggestion tool at http://www.WatchMojo.comsuggest
#10: “The Bourne Identity” (2002)
What better place to re-remember your memories than en France?! Even if those memories are really rather scary! A must-have for all action movie heads, “The Bourne Identity” is the first film within an early twenty-first century franchise that took the world by serious storm! Starring Matt Damon as title character Jason Bourne, it’s one man’s quest to regain his identity, and a quest largely carried out in Paris. Apparently, even top-level espionage has a little room for romance!
#9: “Moulin Rouge!” (2001)
A movie so spectacular it needs an exclamation mark in its title, “Moulin Rouge!” was the first musical to be Oscar-nominated for Best Picture inten years since Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” - and with good reason! A kaleidoscopic, nicely frantic representation of the theater scene in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, this movie is all singing, all dancing, and all of a lot of other things as well! Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman star, Baz Luhrmann directs with familiar flair, and the movie in general breathes life into life itself!
#8: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996)
The first of two Victor Hugo adaptations to make today’s countdown, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is also the 34th film to feature within the ‘Walt Disney Animated Classics’ list. Detailing a struggle for acceptance within Parisian society, the tale of deformed Notre Dame bell ringer Quasimodo is brought to life in all its gothic glory. The hunchback’s the main event at the opening ‘Festival of Fools’, but we’re all hoping he can turn things around by the movie’s final curtain!
#7: “Saving Private Ryan” (1998)
Some of the most important events in all of history played themselves out in France, but few was more significant than the Second World War. It’s fitting, therefore, that few movie moments are more powerful than the 27 minute opening sequence of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”, which is considered one of the iconic scenes in all of cinema! The film’s D-Day Omaha Beach landings are brutally true to life, providing backdrop to a quest that takes in the French countryside, albeit a severely war-torn version of it!
#6: “Ratatouille” (2007)
We advance back into animated areas next, to a Pixar film that has us reconsidering previously held notions of ‘pesky’ rodents! “Ratatouille” is the story of a rat named Remy who loves the kitchen, but not in the way one might expect! Rather than scavenging for food, this little feller is serving it up! And he’s doing so to an exceptional standard! Of course, restaurants and rats don’t really mix, and therein lies the problem! But the French and good food do mix, and the whole lot combined makes for a five-star movie!
#5: “Hugo” (2011)
We’re 3D at five, as Martin Scorsese delivers the delightful tale of “Hugo”, a Parisian orphan. The title character is the last in line of a family of clockmakers and repairers... Bad luck has blighted his twelve short years however, meaning he must now ply his trade in secret, within the hidden passageways of the Gare Montparnasse railway station. What follows is a story encapsulating the romance and tragedy of 1930s France, doing so with an attention to detail that’s second to none!
#4: “Beauty and the Beast” (1991)
Disney’s Renaissance during the early ‘90s might not have been anywhere near as all-conquering were it not for our next film set in France! If “The Little Mermaid” hadn’t done it already, “Beauty and the Beast” well and truly re-announced the animation studio back into the cinematic big leagues! A love story shared between two unlikely souls, and set to an incomparable soundtrack, it was the first animated movie ever to receive an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Picture’... That’s how good it is!
#3: “Before Sunset” (2004)
Paris is well known as ‘the city of love’ and our third-placed picture is the very definition of ‘whirlwind romance’! The sequel to “Before Sunrise”, it details a chance meeting between two people who had shared a passionate night in Vienna during the first film. Played out in real time, “Before Sunset” is essentially a one hour twenty minute conversation between the couple, but with incredible intensity and emotion! Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy deserved all of the critical acclaim that they got postproduction!
#2: “Les Misérables” (2012)
It had seemed an impossible feat, translating this epic novel and stage musical into film while doing it justice at the same time... But director Tom Hooper, and the rest of the team behind the 2012 reworking of “Les Miserables,” certainly pulled it off! With an A-List cast including Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Hugh Jackman and Eddie Redmayne, Jean Valjean’s story is shot to perfection! It’s a tragic, heroic, beautiful, brutal, inspiring adventure that’s well worth setting aside 158 minutes of your time for!
Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
- “Last Tango in Paris” (1972)
- “Inglourious Basterds” (2009)
- “The Phantom of the Opera” (2004)
- “From Paris with Love” (2010)
- “The Three Musketeers” (1973)
#1: “Midnight in Paris” (2011)
Of all the defining eras within Parisian history, the city’s hosting of art and literature’s ‘Lost Generation’ in the 1920s has to be one of the most colorful! And, it is to that era that we are lovingly transported with our winning film. Directed by Woody Allen and starring Owen Wilson, “Midnightin Paris” is one writer’s nostalgia brought to life... Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and Stein are all in attendance (among many others) for this mosaic of Modernism that leaves us as captivated as its main character!
Do you agree with our list? Which film set in France did we forget? For more tres bon top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.
