Clockwise from top left: 'La Gradiva,' 'La Haine,' 'La Marseillaise,' 'Masculin Féminin.' Courtesy Chicago Film Festiva/Gramercy Pictures/Everett Collection For those whose knowledge of France is drawn primarily from bingeing episodes of Emily in Paris, the wave of protests, rioting and looting that have swept the country over the past month may feel like a wake-up call. For others — and particularly those versed in French history (including fans of podcasts like The Rest Is History) — what’s happening right now may appear as just the latest chapter in a saga of upheaval stretching all the way back to the revolution of 1789, which was followed by more revolutions in 1830, 1848 and 1870, then major general strikes in 1936 and, famously, May 1968. More recently, riots broke out in Paris and its surrounding banlieues (suburbs) after the deaths of Black and Arab teenagers at the hands of the police in 2005 and 2023.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same”) is a very French way to describe this phenomenon; the same struggles return with each new generation, whether it’s citoyens fighting the monarchy, Maoists fighting de Gaulle, immigrants from former colonies (and their French-born offspring) fighting police, or students fighting for better schools at a time when their future seems more uncertain than ever.
The movies below, listed in chronological order, depict this long, continuous struggle across multiple viewpoints and time periods, illustrating the extent to which it belongs to French cinema as well as to the French themselves.
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‘Zero for Conduct’ (1933)
Image Credit: Institut Jean Vigo In Jean Vigo’s medium-length silent masterpiece, a group of junior high school students at a stuffy old boarding school decide to revolt against their headmasters, bringing anarchy to a cruel and hypocritical institution. At once lyrical, raucous and surreal — including what’s arguably the most mesmerizing pillow fight ever captured on screen — Zero for Conduct was a major influence on both François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (some scenes are nearly identical) and Lindsay Anderson’s If…, which features a similar plot. Censored in 1933 for being “anti-French” and only released in theaters a decade after Vigo’s death, it remains a landmark movie of youth in revolt.
