{"id":7679159,"date":"2026-01-21T14:06:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T14:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/?post_type=app_magazine_article&p=7679159"},"modified":"2026-01-23T21:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:15:07","slug":"reel-love-the-symbiotic-relationship-between-french-and-american-cinema","status":"publish","type":"app_magazine_article","link":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/magazine\/reel-love-the-symbiotic-relationship-between-french-and-american-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"Reel Love: A Story Starring French and American Cinema"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When was cinema invented? It depends on who you ask. America lays claim to the Edison Company\u2019s Kinetoscope in 1891 that allowed people to view moving pictures for the first time. France attributes it to the Lumi\u00e8re brothers who, in 1895, launched the cinematograph, a camera and a projector in one. Ever since, the two countries\u2019 film industries have been inarguably intertwined. Much like literature in the nineteenth century or twentieth century jazz, cinema\u2014known as \u201cthe seventh art form\u201d in France\u2014has become one of the most visible and reciprocal cultural exchanges between the country and the U.S. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early French pioneers like Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9 and Gaston M\u00e9li\u00e8s, lured by \u201cthe American dream,\u201d set up studios and produced films in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hollywood films have long dominated French screens. This dominance was reinforced after World War II by the Blum-Byrnes agreements, which sparked a flood of American films into France in exchange for debt relief. This subsequently caused fierce debates about protecting French cinema. The two film industries have co-existed for over a century with a symbiotic relationship, constantly nourishing and feeding off each other. While ostensibly similar, they are radically different in that the complex and world-revered French system is bolstered by state aid, while America is led by its Hollywood studio system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, opposites do attract, and the love affair between the two industries has lasted for generations. Take Leo McCarey\u2019s 1939 film, Love Affair<\/em>, for example. A French man and American woman meet by chance and fall in love, but are separated by a twist of fate. Like its two main characters, the two countries\u2019 cinema industries have often gone their separate ways, yet fate\u2014or perhaps more recently, financing\u2014continues to bring them together. The decades-spanning romance has really been heating up with a slew of Franco-American fusion fare. American director Richard Linklater made perhaps the most French film of 2025, Nouvelle Vague<\/em>; Jim Jarmusch filmed his French-produced Father Mother Sister Brother <\/em>partly in Paris; Jodie Foster speaks fluent French in Rebecca Zlotowski\u2019s A Private Life<\/em>; and Angelina Jolie stars in Alice Winocour\u2019s Paris-set Couture<\/em>. These films are no longer simply transatlantic trysts or transient trends\u2014they represent a new era of blurred borders and more global cinema. And they may be getting all of the attention today, but it is no surprise considering the often forgotten cinema history that led us here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The two countries\u2019 cinema industries have often gone their separate ways, yet fate\u2014or perhaps more recently, financing\u2014continues to bring them together.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s go back to the early twentieth century. Famed French illusionist and filmmaker Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s\u2014best known for his landmark foray into special effects and science fiction with A Trip to the Moon<\/em>\u2014had a lesser-known older brother named Gaston who moved to the U.S. in 1903, first to manage his brother\u2019s films, then produced dozens of his own shot across America. Alice Guy-Blach\u00e9, the world\u2019s first female director, began at Gaumont in France. She went on to found the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America in 1910 in New York, and then in New Jersey, where she made hundreds of films. Although she was, until recently, nearly erased from cinema history, her work on both sides of the Atlantic was pivotal. She influenced Alfred Hitchcock, who influenced the French New Wave directors, who influenced American filmmakers, who influenced even more French directors, as an endless cycle was born. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an American journalist based in France, for the past two decades, whenever I ask both famed French auteurs or first-time filmmakers about their cinematic influences, their first answers are typically American directors like Tarantino, Scorsese, and Spielberg. And whenever I ask American filmmakers that same question, they typically start with French directors, mostly from the New Wave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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FROM NEW WAVE TO NEW HOLLYWOOD <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The French New Wave and its auteur theory, unconventional editing, and experimental storytelling of the late 1950s and early 1960s influenced America\u2019s New Hollywood movement spanning the two decades that followed. Meanwhile, many French New Wave filmmakers said they drew inspiration from American directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and John Ford. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut famously conducted a series of recorded interviews in 1962 with Hitchcock that not only became the book Hitchcock\/Truffaut<\/em>, but also changed the way critics viewed the latter\u2014elevating him from entertainer to serious auteur. To get Hitchcock to do the interviews, Truffaut wrote him a letter calling him \u201cthe greatest film director in the world\u201d and telling him: \u201cSince I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such mutual admiration among legendary directors on both sides of the Atlantic has transcended multiple generations. Bertrand Tavernier wrote Amis Am\u00e9ricains <\/em>that featured dialogue with U.S. directors from John Huston, Elia Kazan, and Robert Altman to Quentin Tarantino, Joe Dante, and Alexander Payne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his 2011 film, Hugo<\/em>, nominated for eleven Oscars, Martin Scorsese paid tribute to M\u00e9li\u00e8s (Georges, that is\u2014once again, poor Gaston, is forever usurped by his more famous family). \u201cAs a filmmaker, I feel like we owe everything to Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s. He invented everything, basically.\u201d Scorsese has also cited Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s cinema as taking his breath away, writing after the director\u2019s death in 2022: \u201cGodard redefined cinema on a minute-by-minute basis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Quentin Tarantino has cited Godard as a major influence on his early career, saying, \u201cGodard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Quentin Tarantino has also cited Godard as a major influence on his early career, saying, \u201cGodard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music,\u201d and naming his production company A Band Apart after Godard\u2019s 1964 Bande \u00e0 part<\/em>. Steven Spielberg has credited another New Wave filmmaker for one of his best known films, noting that Truffaut helped inspire him to make E.T<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the other direction, French auteurs frequently cite American filmmakers as key influences. Michel Gondry, for example\u2014who made a slew of American films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em>\u2014has named Charlie Chaplin and David Lynch among his key influences: Chaplin\u2019s blend of drama and comedy, Lynch\u2019s way of abstracting story into feeling. Gondry shot and set his 2008 buddy comedy Be Kind Rewind <\/em>in Passaic, New Jersey, an ode to popular American cinema like Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy<\/em>, and Rush Hour 2<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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MODERN MUSINGS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The line between American and French cinema has become increasingly blurred as U.S. filmmakers flock to France for financing and creative freedom, and French filmmakers dip their toes into English-language projects with A-list casts and thus wider scope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Producer and director Coralie Fargeat\u2019s Los Angeles-set body-horror film, The Substance, <\/em>was shot entirely in France starring Demi Moore as an aging actress who goes to extreme measures to preserve her youth with devastating consequences. The film was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture. \u201cI felt this was the time for me to start thinking about making a movie with American partners while still preserving my way of doing things, which is very much European,\u201d Fargeat told me ahead of the Oscars last year. She wrote the script in English to reach as many people as possible and has cited American genre influences from John Carpenter to Lynch and Kubrick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Illustration by B\u00e9r\u00e9nice Milon<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
American actress-turned-director Kristen Stewart has been vocal about the fact that it took her nearly a decade to make her 2025 feature debut The Chronology of Water<\/em>, which premiered at Cannes and won the Deauville American Film Festival\u2019s Revelation prize. She cites French director Olivier Assayas (who directed her in Personal Shopper<\/em>) as an influence on her style, and, during a masterclass at the 2025 festival, spoke about how her favorite French movies have inspired her\u2014from Louis Malle\u2019s Elevator to the Gallows <\/em>to Alain Resnais\u2019 Hiroshima Mon Amour<\/em>, Catherine Breillat\u2019s A Real Young Girl<\/em>, and Leos Carax\u2019s The Lovers on the Bridge<\/em>. She credits French producer Charles Gillibert of CG Cinema with being key to getting the long-gestating project off the ground. Gillibert told me recently: \u201cOne of the questions I always ask as a producer is, \u2018How do I make the film the filmmaker wants to make while dealing with its budget?\u2019 Kristen took more than ten years to make her film. I jumped in more recently, but in the end she made the film she wanted to make.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the climate for making independent films in the U.S. grows increasingly complicated\u2014both in terms of finding funding and making films outside of the studio system, or with streamers\u2014such creative freedom, coupled with enticing public funding and tax credits, is luring American filmmakers to France. Gillibert also produced Jim Jarmusch\u2019s Venice Golden Lion\u2013winning Father Mother Sister Brother<\/em>. The family-focused triptych about the relationships between adult children and their parents is set between the U.S., Ireland and France, and shot in Paris in March 2024. Alice Winocour\u2019s Paris fashion-week-centered Couture <\/em>is a true French-American collaboration, produced by CG Cinema alongside U.S. production house Closer Media. The film is technically a French production, but stars Angelina Jolie and is a blend of English, French, and Dinka and Swahili, languages spoken in South Sudan. Winocour told me that she has had a self-described \u201cobsessional relationship with cinema\u201d and has been \u201ca cinephile since I was a child.\u201d While also influenced by the French New Wave, she says that for a time, \u201cI was obsessed by one director in particular: Alfred Hitchcock.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other recent Franco-American mash-ups include Rebecca Zlotowski\u2019s A Private Life<\/em>, starring Jodie Foster as a psychoanalyst investigating a suspicious death, that premiered in Cannes before a global festival tour and early Oscar buzz. Olivier Assayas\u2019 The Wizard of the Kremlin <\/em>stars American actor Paul Dano in the lead role in an English-language film that first bowed in Venice. Yann Gozlan\u2019s forthcoming French release Guru <\/em>was shot between Paris and Las Vegas and dives into the American concept of life coaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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NOUVELLE VAGUE <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
These recent films are not simply cases of American directors making French films and vice versa, but of each bringing their respective sensibilities and outsider perspectives for unique unions of both countries. Richard Linklater\u2019s latest film, Nouvelle Vague, <\/em>is the epitome of this. It follows the production of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s 1960 film Breathless<\/em>, a pivotal moment in the French New Wave and in the evolution of filmmaking. Linklater previously shot the second film in his trilogy, 2004\u2019s Before Sunset<\/em>, starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, entirely in Paris, but that was an American film and mostly in English, whereas Nouvelle Vague <\/em>is produced by Mich\u00e8le Halberstadt P\u00e9tin and Laurent P\u00e9tin of France\u2019s ARP. It stars an almost fully French cast other than Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, and has a Paris-based crew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Linklater told me in a recent interview: \u201cWe were on hallowed ground in the French film industry, but I think they liked that there was an American doing it. I didn\u2019t feel the same weight of the French New Wave that a French person might. These aren\u2019t my elders or my fathers and grandfathers\u2014I\u2019m just a fan.\u201d Halberstadt agrees. \u201cIt is an American\u2019s vision of French cinema. A French director could not have made this film.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nouvelle Vague<\/em> star Guillaume Marbeck and director Richard Linklater. Photograph by Jean-Louis Fernandez. <\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
According to Linklater, \u201cGenre-wise, there is something cyclical going. Godard was making a low-budget film inspired directly by American gangster films. He was doing his own French twist on that genre. Nouvelle Vague <\/em>is the French New Wave filtered through an American consciousness.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I asked him about his influences as a director, he said: \u201cI get the question a lot. What is more inspiring\u2014the New Hollywood of the 1970s or the French New Wave? I always say the New Wave. Here were these writer-critics now making films about very different subject matters, twisting genres, telling personal stories, and that\u2019s why they became such an inspiration for the next generations of filmmakers.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
American directors shooting in a foreign country also brings added enthusiasm, which is reflected on the screen. As for returning to France to film, he told me: \u201cI love Paris. It\u2019s all the streets my heroes walked and where they made films. I\u2019m the luckiest filmmaker in the world.\u201d He also credits the country\u2019s film-financing system: \u201cThe film industry of France is wonderful in the way they operate and take care of themselves. We did get support from the CNC, the French National Centre of Cinema, and I don\u2019t take that lightly, that meant everything. France is the home of the auteur and that is how all films should be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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BLURRED BORDERS <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Gene Kelly dancing his way through the Place de la Concorde in Vincente Minnelli\u2019s 1951 musical An American in Paris <\/em>and Owen Wilson running into Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein in Midnight in Paris <\/em>to Lily Collins jogging along the Seine in Emily in Paris<\/em>, the French capital has become Hollywood\u2019s favorite place for on-screen escapism. France is not just a place to capture postcard Paris. In Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s 1955 film, To Catch a Thief<\/em>, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly drive from La Croisette through Nice to Monaco; Steve Martin and Michael Caine play rival con men on the Riviera in Frank Oz\u2019s 1988 comedy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels<\/em>; and Tom McCarthy sets his 2020 feature, Stillwater<\/em>, in Marseille, starring Matt Damon as an oil-rig worker from Oklahoma who teams up with a Frenchwoman (Camille Cottin) to prove his daughter\u2019s innocence. In the other direction, filmmakers like Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element, Lucy<\/em>) and his one-time assistant turned prodigy Louis Leterrier (The Transporter <\/em>films, The Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans, Fast X<\/em>, and the forthcoming sci-fi horror 11817 <\/em>) have seamlessly made the jump to blockbuster English-language films. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean Seberg famously starred in Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s Breathless<\/em>, speaking French with an American accent (see: Nouvelle Vague<\/em>), and other U.S. actors have followed\u2014John Malkovich speaks French in Gilles Legardinier\u2019s 2023 film, Mr. Blake at Your Service!, <\/em>and Jodie Foster shows off her French-language skills in A Private Life<\/em>; Angelina Jolie speaks French on occasion in Couture <\/em>alongside French actors like Vincent Lindon and Louis Garrel, who act in English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actors like Juliette Binoche, Marion Cotillard, Omar Sy, Vincent Cassel, Jean Reno, and L\u00e9a Seydoux are also all recognizable faces on U.S. screens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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KEEPING THE LOVE ALIVE, YEAR AFTER YEAR <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is the secret to such a long-term love affair between French and American cinema? Annual getaways to the sea never hurt. Film festivals have always been a crossroads between the two cultures, in particular Cannes\u2014perhaps the best example of an event that has bridged the French and American film industries with a signature blend of auteur cinema and red-carpet glamour. It is a hub for cinema from all over the world, but films from its native France and across the Atlantic have long dominated both the lineups and premieres. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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What is the secret to such a long-term love affair between French and American cinema? Annual getaways to the sea never hurt. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In another seaside town in Normandy, the Deauville American Film Festival is a celebration of American cinema that has existed since 1975 and continues to spotlight U.S. indie cinema in competition while welcoming Hollywood stars for premieres, masterclasses, and tributes. It even features in Joachim Trier\u2019s Sentimental Value<\/em>, with scenes in both cinema venues and on the Normandy beach where director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd) meets an American actress (Elle Fanning) meant to play a fictional version of his own daughter in his next movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Los Angeles, at the annual American French Film Festival, French cinema and series are in the spotlight. Launched and produced by the Franco-American Cultural Fund, it screens some seventy French films and series, and the 2025 line-up epitomizes what the festival\u2019s deputy director Anouchka van Riel calls \u201ca major trend in crossover films.\u201d She explains: \u201cA Private Life <\/em>echoes New Wave themes of subjectivity, existentialism, and inner psychology while using tropes from American film. In Nouvelle Vague<\/em>, Linklater deals with all the grammar of the New Wave\u2014like Godard\u2019s improvisation\u2014but does it in a playful and iconic American manner.\u201d She adds: \u201cIt is peak cultural exchange and transatlantic synergy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such Franco-American festival selections also highlight the fact that in a time when film financing is increasingly complicated and coproductions are ubiquitous, a film\u2019s identity has become more difficult to define. Technically, a film is identified by the country that is the majority producer, but in France, a film is traditionally defined by its auteur, or writer-director. Just as the question of who really invented cinema is subjective today, the question is: Is a film like Nouvelle Vague<\/em>\u2014in French with a French cast and mostly French crew\u2014a French film if it is directed by an American? Is an English-language film with an A-list American cast and set in Hollywood helmed by a French auteur (like Coralie Fargeat\u2019s The Substance<\/em>) a French or a Hollywood film? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like any long-term relationship, the two cinemas continue to learn from each other and, though often contentious\u2014at the box office, in film-festival competitions, or for audience attention on screens of all sizes\u2014recent films prove that their love has stood the test of time and they are better together, n\u2019est-ce pas<\/em>? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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