One of the most highly reputed directors is the French Max Ophuls. 
Critics normally praise the way he had to move the camera. He usually followed the characters with the camera, so the shots of their films are really long. Truffaut used to say that he sould be considered a neorrealist, like Italian directors.
I've seen the films:
La Signora di Tutti -1934
Letter from an unknown Woman- 1948
Madame De - 1953
Lola Montes - 1955
I find something a bit annoying in the four films. The mains characters of those films are women that have inmoral behaviours: they  are wilful and unfaithful with their friends, husbands or lovers.
Nevertheless, they are shown as heroines, Ophuls goes far away from the human comprehension of Renoir. Ophuls explains that those women are victims from a society where men have the liberty and women not; so they are forgiven from the "liberties" they take.
At least, I consider that the purposes of Ophuls's films are widely left behind.
On the other hand, I recognize the care he takes making films. Lola Montes is doubtless one of the great classics of French cinema.