I mean, watching a film in French with English subtitles and relaxing is not going to be bad for your French, it will certainly not harm it, but it is a mistake to think you are going to significantly improve your French by doing so.
There is however a way to work with French movies: it's a lot of work, it's tedious and time consuming, but you will learn a lot. To pick movies suitable for working with, consult my list of 10 top easy-to-understand French movies
Here is what you should do:
1 - Pick an appropriate French movie.
a - sound quality
Many people think they don't understand the movie because they don't know the vocabulary. Well, it is obviously true if you are a beginner, or have selected a movie with a lot of slang and expressions that are not common. But my experience is that most of the time, the culprit is not so much the vocabulary as the sound quality. Students don't understand well because they cannot hear well; either the actors mumble, or they speak all together, or there is a noisy background, or it's an old movie and the soundtrack is not crisp. So take all this into account when you choose your movie, and prefer slow paced stories with dialogues between 2 actors indoors. .
b - it doesn't have to be a French movie.
As far as it comes with a French soundtrack... and many Holywood movies do. Actually, picking a movie you already know will help you understand the French better, so it's not a bad idea at all.
c- date and genre
Be careful also to train with movies that match the kind of vocabulary you want to learn. You might love "les 400 coups" (Truffaut 1959), but be then aware that French expressions have evolved since the sixties... In the same idea, a movie like "la Haine" (Kassovitz 1995) taking place in the "hood" may not teach you the vocabulary you need to communicate everyday. Go read this blog to understand why you should be cautious with French slang and idioms.
d- Subtitles
Choose movies with French soundtracks, English subtitles and if possible French subtitles. That's the best. However, don't get frustrated: often the subtitles don't exactly match the dialogues. It happens, but it's a very small percentage of the dialogues.
2 - the method for studying with French movies.
a- You will need a remote control :-)
Put the movie on, without subtitles (if you only have a version with subtitles, take a plastic bag and put it against the TV screen: it will stick and hide the subtitles).
Listen to a sentence or 2, and try to write the dialogue down. If you succeed, great, move to the next 2 sentences.
If you cannot do it, rewind and repeat. At least 4 times. If you still don't get it, write what you hear, phonetically. Then check the French subtitles, or the English one if that's all you have, and figure out what they said (If you only have English subtitles, you might not be able to do it for every single word, but with the help of a dictionary, you should be able to translate most of the dialogues).
b- Analyze why you didn't understand.
- You didn't know the vocabulary.
But did you get the sound right? If you did, that's already a victory! Can you guess what it means with the scene? If not, go check the English subtitles (or use a dictionary). Then repeat the sentence out-loud, trying to mimic the actor. Then write down the new words of vocabulary in a notebook, in 2 columns: French on one side (don't forget the article if it's a noun), English on the other. Later, test yourself: look at the English word and see if you can come up with the French.
- You couldn't understand the actor.
Then listen to the sentence very carefully, and repeat out loud, trying to mimic exactly the actor. Figure out how you would have said it, and compare it to the way they said it. If it's a common word/sentence, write it down in a notebook and try to write how the actor pronounced it. later, test yourself to see if you can read the word or combination of words correctly.
Many students of mine have used this method, and made great progress. It's a lot of work, but the results are outstanding. If you feel that movies are too hard, start by challenging your understanding with longer audio recordings: start with my French audio books, then I suggest you check out my Poetry Reading and Analysis series, or Fun French Tales, which are both a reachable way to challenge your listening skills.
Finally, it's not because the movie is in French that you have to do all this hard work: there are many good French movies, that should be enjoyed for the story and the film making, with the English subtitles on, not for language learning purposes.
There is work, and there is leisure, you should have both in your life.
