The beginnings
The first Swiss screening took place at the National Exhibition in Geneva in 1896, under the initiative of Auguste and Louis Lumière. The first movie theaters in Switzerland followed at the beginning of the 20th century. From the silent era until the 1920s, Swiss productions were rare and the country was used more as a backdrop for directors from other countries, for its mountainous views and lakes. The 1920s brought the creation of studios in several cities in French-speaking Switzerland, including Geneva. It was also the period when the actor Michel Simon made his debut. Michel Simon was born in 1895 in Geneva. He left for Paris at a very early age, but was soon called back to Switzerland at the time of the First World War. During a leave, he fell under the spell of the performance of the actor Georges Pitoëff in the play Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. He joined his company, which moved to Paris in 1922. There he began a brilliant career as an actor. But it is the cinema that made him famous to the public, including his roles in La Chienne (1931) and Boudu sauvé des eaux (1932), Drôle de drame (1937) or in Le Vieil Homme et l'enfant by Claude Berri (1966). The transition to the very expensive sound film industry put a stop to French-speaking cinema, making it almost non-existent throughout the 1930s. In the early 1950s, Alain Tanner (born in Geneva in 1929) founded the Geneva University Film Club with the famous Swiss director Claude Goretta. Tanner and Goretta then went to London to study film at the British Film Institute. In 1957, the two directors made their first film, Nice Time (Piccadilly by night). The following decade, Tanner founded the Swiss Directors' Association and made several short films.
The New Wave
From the 1960s through to the 1980s, French-speaking Switzerland followed the Nouvelle Vague movement (a genre opposed to traditional cinema, moving towards a cinema closer to reality, in both aesthetics and direction) in contrast to German-speaking Switzerland, which produced more documentaries. The pioneer of this movement, Jean-Luc Godard, passed through Geneva for his film Le Petit Soldat (1960, the same year as the legendary À bout de souffle). The film takes in famous Geneva locations such as the boulevards Helvétique and Jaques-Dalcroze, the Place de Neuve and the Promenade Saint-Antoine. The Franco-Swiss director had already passed through the city in 1955, during the shooting of his short film Une femme coquette (which features the Pont de la Machine). The 1960s also saw the return of Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta to Geneva. Both directors were hired by Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR), as was Michel Soutter. Born in Geneva in 1932, Soutter made his first film in 1966, La Lune avec les dents. This was followed by Les Arpenteurs (1971), L'Escapade (1972) and Repérages (1977). Michel Soutter was also the initiator of Groupe 5, a structure made up of Swiss filmmakers who relied on Swiss Television's pre-purchase of a cinema-format film. This process not only enabled him to raise the funds needed to carry out his projects, but also promoted the distribution of Swiss cinema. Alain Tanner, for his part, gained renown with works such as La Salamandre (1971) and Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000 (1976), both of which immerse the viewer in the struggles of proletarians prey to the disillusions inspired by capitalist society. In 1981, his film Les Années lumière won the Jury's Special Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Nowadays
At the beginning of the 2000s, three main genres can be noted in Swiss cinema: art house films, mainstream films and documentaries. In this last category, we note a very beautiful feature film shot in French-speaking Switzerland: Exit, le droit de mourir by Fernand Melgar. This 2005 documentary follows the Exit association, which has been providing assisted suicide in Switzerland since 1982. The film won the prize for best documentary at the Swiss Film Festival and was praised by European critics. In 2008, Melgar directed another successful documentary, The Fortress, which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. On the fiction side, we note the Geneva-based director Léa Fazer and her works Bienvenue chez les Suisses (2004, shot in part in her hometown), Notre univers impitoyable (2008, with Alice Taglioni, Jocelyn Quivrin and Thierry Lermitte), Ensemble, c'est trop (2010), Cookie (2013) and Maestro (2014, with Pio Marmaï and Michael Lonsdale). More recently, Frazer directed the TV movies Mystère place Vendôme (2017) and Mystère à la Sorbonne (2008) for France 2. On the events side, Geneva's Grütli cinemas host numerous festivals such as the Film and Forum on Human Rights (FIFDH), Black Movie (an international festival of independent films dedicated to auteur cinema) and Everybody's Perfect (a festival rewarding LGBTQI+ works). In 2020, director Virgil Vernier films a night of drinking among Geneva's golden youth in Sapphire Crystal.
Internationally
Several international works have passed through French-speaking Switzerland and more particularly through Geneva. Among the best known, let's first mention Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) (with the very good Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche) and Red by Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski. This third installment of the series of feature films Three Colors (the first two being Blue and White), with Irene Jacob and Jean-Louis Trintignant, offers three nominations in the most prestigious festivals in the world (Golden Globes, Oscars and Cannes Film Festival). The beginning of the 2000's brings to Geneva the shooting of L'Adversaire (2002, Nicole Garcia), Après vous (2003, by Pierre Salvadori with Daniel Auteuil) and Commis d' office (2009, Hannelore Cayre). More recently we note Belle du Seigneur (2011, Glenio Bondir), Commis d'office (2012, third film where André Dussolier and Catherine Frot resume the role of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford) and finally The Last Face (2016) by Sean Penn. The work ends its shooting in Geneva and thus passes through the Wilson Palace, headquarters of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
