Europe Endless - France: Playtime (Dir Jacques Tati , 2h4m, 1967)
How to pick a single film to represent France, the nation that arguably birthed the medium of cinema? This has been a question I've had to contend with over the last two months: I've already covered the early career of one of its greatest film-makers, Jean Luc Godard, one of its most famous recent hits in Amelie, and even France's burgeoning animation industry. To try and encapsulate the medium into a review is like climbing Mont Blanc armed with a spoon. A few films could have been here. The 400 Blows (dir Francois Truffaut, 19 59 ) , the opening salvo of the French New Wave; Abel Gance's staggering five hour epic, Napoleon (1927), the ultra-cool Le Samouraï (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), the nightmarish Les Diaboliques (dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), the unflinching La Haine (dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995). I even considered going back to the very birth of cinema, as audiences jump to the...
