During the second half of the 1930s, a particularly weighty aesthetic, called the ‘French style’, emerged in the Finnish film studios. With its expressionist lighting, in-depth staging and Dutch tilts, this style, inspired by French films, became one of the most characteristic and popular features of Finland’s classical cinema. Drawing from existing scholarship on Finnish film studios, this article explores the conditions of transfer of this specific aesthetic from France to Finland and its impacts, highlighting the economic and technical conditions underpinning this aesthetic circulation. To do so, it examines the critical reception of French cinema in Finland and compares the sociocultural issues of the two countries in order to show that, more than a style, such influences are evidence of a production model that circulates from France to Finland.