Quiz: How well do you know French cinema?

French cinema can be intriguing and full of surprises – just like our quiz. Photograph: Infografick/Getty Images/iStockphoto

1. 

   What do Jean-Luc Godard, Luis Buñuel and Jean Vigo have in common?

   1. They all dated Danielle Darrieux

   2. They all had a film banned in France

   3. They all worked as film critics before they become directors

2. 

   Which French actor currently holds the record for the most films in the official competition of the Cannes film festival (20 films and counting)?

   1. Mathieu Amalric

   2. Daniel Auteuil

   3. Isabelle Huppert

3. 

   Which of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s films was remade in Hollywood to mixed reviews in 1983?

   1. Bande à Part

   2. Alphaville

   3. À Bout de Souffle

4. 

   What links Milla Jovovich, Lise Leplat Prudhomme, Florence Delay, Renée Falconetti and Clémence Poésy?

   1. They have all played Joan of Arc

   2. They all trained as pastry chefs before they became actresses

   3. They have all walked off the set of a Luc Besson film

5. 

   Who said this: “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.”

   1. Éric Rohmer

   2. Jean-Luc Godard

   3. Claire Denis

6. 

   He is a favourite director of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Mann, Johnnie To, John Woo, Takeshi Kitano and Aki Kaurismäki. He was a member of the French resistance during the second world war. He is referred to as the “godfather of the new wave”. Who is he?

   1. Jean-Pierre Melville

   2. Jean Cocteau

   3. Alain Resnais

7. 

   Which director caused controversy by casting Italian porn actor Rocco Siffredi in two films?

   1. Leos Carax

   2. Catherine Breillat

   3. Olivier Assayas

8. 

   In the film Amélie (2001), the quirky comedy about a waitress in Montmartre, the central character loses her mother at the age of six. How did she die?

   1. She choked on an errant piece of creme brulee crust

   2. She was strangled when her scarf caught in the doors of a metro train departing from Concorde station

   3. She was collateral damage in the suicide of a Canadian tourist

9. 

   It has been described as one of the greatest works in cinema history, but when it was released, it was a critical and financial disaster, roundly mocked by audiences. The film was brutally edited from 113 mins to 85 mins, and temporarily banned by the French government for having “an undesirable influence on the young”. What was it?

   1. Les Enfants du Paradis by Marcel Carné

   2. La Règle du Jeu by Jean Renoir

   3. L'Atalante by Jean Vigo

10. 

    Who is the only French actress to win an Oscar for a French language role?

    1. Simone Signoret

    2. Emmanuelle Riva

    3. Marion Cotillard

Solutions

1:B - It takes a lot to get banned in France, but these three managed it. Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1963) was banned for “political reasons”, Buñuel's L'Age d'Or (1930) was banned “in the name of public order” and Vigo's Zéro de Conduite (1933) was blocked because of its plotline about rebellious school children., 2:C - Huppert has reigned supreme over Cannes since 1975 – her first film in competition was Aloïse by Liliane de Kermadec. She has won the best actress prize twice, for Violette in 1978 and The Piano Teacher in 2001., 3:C - The US film Breathless was inspired by New Wave classic À Bout de Souffle, with the French criminal (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and American student (Jean Seberg) in Paris becoming an American criminal (Richard Gere) and French student (Valerie Kaprisky) in Los Angeles. The remake does have its fans, though, with Quentin Tarantino citing it as one of the “coolest” movies., 4:A - Jovovich took the starring role in Besson's The Messenger (1999); Prudhomme stars in Bruno Dumont's musical Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017); Delay played Jean in Robert Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962); Renée Falconetti starred in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (1928) and Clémence Poésy starred in The Silence Of Joan (2011) by Philippe Ramos., 5:B - Godard had a knack for a pithy quote – whether or not he actually believed them is another matter. Other Godardian proclamations include: “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world”, “Tracking shots are a question of morality” and “A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”, 6:A - The director of Le Samouraï (1967), Army of Shadows (1969) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970), Jean-Pierre Melville was an obsessive cinephile. He once claimed that he got withdrawal symptoms if he watched less than five films a day., 7:B - Breillat cast Siffredi in Romance (1999) for his physical attributes rather than his acting ability. But she was so impressed with him that she wrote a role specifically for him in a subsequent film, Anatomy of Hell (2004). However, Breillat's screenplay proved too explicit for the porn actor, who demanded a body double for the gay sex scenes., 8:C - Amélie's mother died when a tourist plummeted from the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris and landed on her. Subsequently, Amélie's father withdrew from society until coaxed by his daughter, with the help of a garden gnome, to follow his dream and travel the world., 9:B - For years, the edited version was the only one available, but the film's reputation grew. In 1956, boxes containing the original material were discovered and the film was restored to its full length. It premiered at the Venice film festival that year., 10:C - Cotillard won an Oscar for her transformative performance as Édith Piaf in La Vie en Rose (2008); she was nominated a second time for Two Days, One Night (2014) by the Dardennes brothers. Signoret was the first French actor to win an Oscar – for an English language role in Room at the Top in 1960. Riva was nominated for Michael Haneke's Amour (2012) and, at 85, was the oldest actor ever to be nominated.

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