An extra film, Nine Bachelors, ended a month-long French film exhibition here Wednesday night, with 42 films by 26 directors screened.

Pola X by Leo Carax was expected to be the final film. After shooting the acclaimed Boy Meets Girl in 1939 at the age of 24, Carax was considered a young successor to the French New Wave.

But audiences watched an extra film, Nine Bachelors shot by Sacha Guitry in 1939.

As an item of The Year of France in China, the Retrospective of French Cinema was sponsored jointly by the China Film Archive (CFA) and the French Cinematheque.

The screened films -- nine documentary films and 33 feature films -- included Cleo From 5 To 7 and Sans Toit Ni Loi both by Agnes Varda, known as the Mother of the French New Wave, The Fall of the House of Usher by Jean Epstein, The Last Metro by Truffaut, A Man and A Woman by Claude Lelouche, Jean de Florette by Claude Berri and Zero de Conduite by Jean Vigo.

The exhibition was held in Hong Kong in January, and will open in Shanghai Friday.

Only a retrospective film show in China in 1985 was comparable to it, said Shan Wanli, a researcher with CFA, when audiences in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Changchun enjoyed 40 French films between March and May in 1985 in the first large-scale French cinema fair.
 
(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2005)