Only the French Can

I can't help it, but apart from the fact that the film is so pleasantly relaxed and has a very period setting, it didn't do much for me. Jean Gabin fits his role pleasantly, the women are beautiful, but I guess I didn't quite fall for the storyline. I didn't find the film very sexy, more just a nice depiction of a certain time in France. (01/07/2017)

A stale affair - desperately stale, I would say. It's hard to believe that this film was directed by the same person who, a shocking 17 years earlier, managed to make Grand Illusion, a top-tier film still considered one of the pinnacles of its genre. While Jean Renoir was able to surprise in the 1930s, by the mid-1950s he produced the superficial and naive Only the French Can. Among these second-hand films for cinema nostalgics, there are unfortunately only a few titles that still hold up today. Overall impression: 35%. (01/01/2015)

A comedy of loose morals. We can see French Cancan, another of Renoir’s examples of how true mastery sometimes consists in simplicity that is difficult to capture and analyse (using every shot in its full depth and breadth), as an autobiographical confession of an aging sinner who used his position of influence to seduce significantly younger beauties. This playful, sometimes Ophüls-esque, exaggerated, colourful swarm of numerous characters, none of whom are condemned for their actions, is seen as the second part of Renoir’s “artistic trilogy” (after The Golden Coach and before Elena and Her Men). What the three films have in common is a spectacular celebration of the art of living and living through art. French Cancan is connected by these features particularly to Singin' in the Rain, another musical about a musical that, however, lacks authentic life even though it is funnier, more dynamic and technically better. This ability to build a world that is obviously artificial and yet alive at every moment is what makes Renoir’s unobtrusive creative signature exceptional. 80% (03/20/2014)