"The cow is there." So begins E M Forster's The Longest Journey. That remark surfaces in Eric Rohmer's A Winter's Tale (1992) as an allusion by a character. But who, why, and when? Unlike Forster, Rohmer – often glibly called a novelist in film – leaves a blur of enchantingly civilised exchanges which do not always galvanise 90 minutes' traffic on the screen.

Director who paid tribute to Hitchcock was himself an inspiration to Hollywood

Eric Rohmer, a pioneer of the French "New Wave" which transformed cinema in the 1960s, has died, his production house said today. He was 89.

Sometimes French film noir is best left alone, as exemplified here: a remake based on the José Giovanni novel and originally interpreted in 1966 by Jean-Pierre Melville.

Claude Berri was a throwback: a film-maker who specialised in old-fashioned epics. He may have been a contemporary of French New Wave directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (who was his close friend), but his was not a cinema of shock tactics, polemics, or jump cuts. Especiallylater in his career, Berri tended to work on a very big canvas, albeit telling intimate stories. His movies were often period pieces heavily influenced by literature and painting. He was not railing against "le cinéma de papa" ("Dad's cinema" – Truffaut's term of disparagement for the old-fashioned style of film-making) and, as if to underline this point, he even made an autobiographical film in 1970 called Le Cinéma De Papa.

No Emperor's stare or up-turned collar completed the magnificent impersonation of Eric Cantona yet Wayne Rooney's response to the execution of an exquisite chip and Portsmouth's FA Cup ambition suggested a similarly talismanic effect on the remainder of Manchester United's season.

Imagine your husband works away from home with little chance to visit you, and can't even let you know when he's next going to be sending you money. Imagine your child is away at school in town, staying with a relative, but unable to afford the bus fare home. And then imagine you can't even speak to them on the phone.

1 Mozart
Piano Concerto in D minor

Jeanne Balibar is riding a new New Wave.

The French actor who plays cold-hearted manipulators and misfits talks about his secrets, his lies and his penchant for incredibly beautiful actresses. Is Daniel Auteuil the new Gerard Depardieu?

AFTER SUCCESSFULLY re-sisting the Romans for 40 years, Asterix the Gaul and his monumental sidekick, Obelix, have defied all the odds - and the treachery of the French movie critics - to defeat the massed legions of Hollywood.

Projections 9: French Film- makers on Film-making