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The History of French Cinema: 1953

16/1 -

Marcel Pagnol's Manon des sources, starring Jacqueline Pagnol, Rellys and Henri Poupon is released. [ADD]

25/2 -

Jacques Tati’s Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Monsieur Hulot's Holiday), which took over a year to shoot, is released.   The bumbling Hulot is based on a sergeant Tati knew in the army. [ADD]

13/3 -

Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin finally goes on release in Paris.   The twenty-eight-year-old film had previously been banned on political grounds. [ADD]

24/3 -

Orson Welles appears before the Board of Arbitration to answer claims from set designer Alexandre Trauner that he is owed 2 million francs for work carried out on the sets of Welles’ Othello. [ADD]

22/4 -

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s tense thriller Le Salaire de la peur (The Wages of Fear) is released.   Based on a novel by Georges Arnaud, the film stars Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck and Folco Lulli as a band of adventurers transporting a cargo of nitro-glycerine 300 miles. [ADD]

1/7 -

French-born Claudette Colbert arrives in France to begin filming Sacha Guitry’s Si Versailles m'etait conté (Royal Affairs in Versailles). [ADD]

14/7 -

Abel Gance  films the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris using his Polyvision multiple-image process and stereophonic sound.   Argentinean journalist Nelly Kaplan assists. [ADD]

Other Key French Films of 1953

La Bergère et le ramoneur (Paul Grimault, Pierre Grimault) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1953