Julien Maffre

Victor Hugo's monumental novel Les Miserables has been filmed so often that sometimes it's hard to tell one version from another. One of the best and most faithful adaptations is this 240-minute French production, starring Jean Gabin as the beleaguered Jean Valjean. Arrested for a petty crime, Valjean spends years 20 in the brutal French penal system. Even upon his release, his trail is dogged by relentless Inspector Javert. Valjean's efforts to create a new life for himself despite the omnipresence of Javert is meticulously detailed in this film, which utilizes several episodes from the Hugo original that had hitherto never been dramatized. Originally released as a single film, Les Miserables was usually offered as a two-parter outside of France.

Commissaire Perrache, the chief of the D.S.T., the French domestic intelligence service, tries to neutralize a group of terrorists named the Partisans de la Métropole. He sends one of his best agents, inspector Louis Vignon, incidentally the husband of his charming secretary Lucette, on the trail of an illegal transmitter. But Vignon gets kidnapped by the gang and held captive on a boat off the shores of Monaco...

Le Cas Du Dr. Laurent (The Case of Dr. Laurent) stars Jean Gabin as a Paris-based doctor who tries to spread the gospel of Natural Childbirth. Working in a cloistered rural community, Gabin runs up against the stone walls of fear and prejudice. His theories are proven sound when unwed mother Nicole Courcel gives birth within Gabin's methodology. The childbirth sequence is filmed straight-on with a delicate combination of taste and frankness. Nonetheless, the lurid ad campaign of Cas Du Dr. Laurent sensationalized this sequence all out of proportion.

A Parisian reporter tries to exonerate a fugitive neighbor of charges he murdered his wife.

A lord’s servant, Ali Baba, is sent to retrieve a slave for his master, but ends up on an adventure filled with gold, mischief, love, and forty famous thieves instead.

Tongues start to wag after a famous Parisian music hall dancer is rushed to hospital after being found poisoned by arsenic at the Concert Mayol.

Four-episode Franco-Italian omnibus film. Four men from different national and cultural background take refuge in a cabin after being sidetracked by bad weather on their way to conference.

A young journalist, Sylvia, has to interview a writer, Claude Chatel, whose success is due to his misogyny.

An accordionist playing in disreputable halls is mistaken for a gangster by a special envoy from the American crime syndicate in charge of investigating the French milieu. The American will prepare a hold-up with a gang of women specialized in scamming tourists. But the accordionist will make the hold-up fail and all the criminals will end up behind bars.

Marcel Pagnol's adaptation of his own novel Manon des sources, the story of a shepherdess who exacts her revenge on the townsfolk she blames for killing her father, in two parts: Manon des sources and Ugolin.

A very ill little girl having expressed the wish to live until Christmas, the whole neighborhood agrees to anticipate the celebration.

A daydreaming French composer sees himself as a fine figure dashing through history.

The inhabitants of Marboue-Chambourcy want a swimming pool, and the difficulties in realizing this expensive dream divide the village into two clans: on one side the women, on the other the men. Piedalu, whom this conflict desolates, discovers by chance, as part of a found bicycle, a fortune in gold coins.

In order to inherit her husband's old aunt more quickly, a greedy peasant woman engages in various dishonest maneuvers.

A wealthy financier is murdered in his desirable mansion.Two lieutenants, a tough guy and a rookie, investigate.

Mario, a bumptious sheep-shearer, discovers he has a inimtable touch that makes women, as well as sheep, swoon at his professional caress. He is soon the most sought-after hairdresser in France and is awarded the Legion of Honor...

A railway worker, Leguignon, and his wife are forced to move into a house located in a shaggy part of town. What Leguignon doesn't know is that a group of children have discovered a treasure and keeps it stored in the house. Trouble ensues when he discovers the cache and tries to claim it as his own.

Ex-convict Georges Manda returns to the free world determined to go straight and takes a steady job as a carpenter. Unable to completely shake his connections with the underground, he meets with a former prison mate, older gangster Félix Leca, who introduces him to his mistress, the sweet but guarded Marie "Casque d'Or". Marie and Georges fall into a passionate relationship, driving Félix to do everything in his power to ruin the couple.

Professor Louis Delage is a kidney transplant specialist. He is so good in his field that his peers nickname him the "great man". But one day, one of his patients die during surgery and Delage starts doubting. Is he actually such a great man? To fight desperation he decides to take in the deceased child while devoting more time to Florence, his hitherto neglected wife.

Annie, the ward of Monsieur Joachim, a nightclub manager, has fallen in love with Philippe Lebon, a singer who could easily re-float her guardian's failing business. The trouble is that Joachim has already - and hurriedly - betrothed Annie to his business partner. To make matters worse the young lady suspects Philippe of being unfaithful. In order to thwart the wedding of Annie and his rival, Philippe hires two of his friends, the resourceful Beaudubec and Tracassin.

Stan and Ollie are marooned on an atoll. This was their last film together.

Piedalu is an ordinary villager, who comes to the capital to present his financial plan to the Minister of Renovation, and finds it difficult to find someone to listen to him. He meets an actress in Paris, whom he takes for a girl from his country.

A Dakota plane is carrying a ton of gold bound for Brazzaville, but it is hijacked over the Camargue. On arrival, we find nails instead of gold!

Victor Boniface's life is not exactly a rest cure. Just imagine: Victor is both a store detective and a ... shoplifter (only when he walks in his sleep, mind you)! And falling in love while sleepwalking is no bed of roses either, as the good-natured man simply forgets everything after waking up. Fortunately love wins the game in the end. Does that mean that life will become as easy as pie ? Certainly not: the little Bonifaces will be sleepwalkers just like their daddy!

Endive-Meunier, a prosperous silk dealer from Lyon has an affair with his secretary he tries hard to keep secret. One day, he nevertheless accepts to accompany her to the seaside resort of Coeur-sur-Mer. Unfortunately for him, once there, he finds himself in the presence of Claudius Paquito, the popular barman of a fashionable club. The trouble is that the man is no other than one of his former employees he once fired for insolence...

Jean-Louis forgets to use the pedestrian crossing;Who could have believed then where it would lead the unfortunate guy to?

The manager of a firm has a very unusual idea : asking his employees to pose as gangsters and to hold up a bank before returning the stolen money and pocketing the reward. But things do not go according to plan and the phony thieves get stolen in their turn. They have no other choice than turning into amateur detectives to be able to pay back the stolen dough.

André Duroc pretends to be a duke in order to extort money from Aunt Solange. But his trickery is discovered, he must flee and, thanks to a uniform, takes part in the great maneuvers.

At the Café des Poètes in Paris, a fight breaks out between the poet Orphée and a group of resentful upstarts. A rival poet, Cègeste, is killed, and a mysterious princess insists on taking Orpheus and the body away in her Rolls-Royce. Orphée soon finds himself in the underworld, where the Princess announces that she is, in fact, Death. Orpheus escapes in the car back to the land of the living, only to become obsessed with the car radio.

A gangster, thief of atomic formulas, has a double in the person of a naive musician. A music hall artist who makes eyes at the musician is deceived by the gangster who also takes advantage of the resemblance to track down a band of thugs who are chasing him. Virtue is ultimately rewarded.

Documents relevant to National Defence have been concealed in a certain vase by a dangerous gang of robbers. To neutralize the criminals, a seasoned police commissioner and his clumsy assistant, young inspector César, join forces with a colorful trio of thieves nicknamed Le Pouce (Thumb), L'Index (Index Finger) and Le Majeur (Middle Finger)...

Durand, a big industrialist, works with an international adventurer, Mr. Ernest, who covets Mrs. Durand and threatens to bankrupt her husband if she does not consent. She calls him a jerk. Mr. Ernest sets out to ruin the Durands, and leaves in the castle that they must sell their couple of servants, Victor and Marie, who become the new masters, at the same time as they serve as a screen for Ernest for his dubious business.

Melodrama of two struggling artists whose love for each other is thwarted.She has some success as a ballerina despite being wounded by him in a fit of jealousy. His career as a sculptor is stymied when he is arrested.

In spite of his failures as a peddler, Casimir guaranteed his fiance that this time the vacuum cleaners will work for good. But he's still unsuccessful until he go to the appartment of Paul-Andre, a painter who was engaged by correspondence to a rich south-American woman. That's exactly when she arrive armed with a gun infuriated after she had received a rupture letter from the man she had never seen. She mistakenly took Casimir as her painter lover. Casimir his ready to flee until he learned she owned many hotels, a thousand rooms in fact. "A thousand rooms, a thousand vacuum cleaners", he suddenly think.

One of the first victories against the Nazis in World War II is when Parisians help allied forces drive the enemy out of occupied French Algeria.

A valuable painting has been stolen from an art gallery in Paris.. On a train travelling between Paris and Rome, Zutra, a mysterious and sinister character, tries to find the stolen painting.

A circus daredevil is the next victim of a danger-seducing woman who tricks him into a potentially deadly stunt after he attempted to kill her.

A prompter at the Folies-Bergères and admirer of a lovely dancer, the man named Jules has the unpleasant surprise of finding, one fine morning, the corpse of his beloved in a trunk. An investigation, more burlesque than tragic, will give a lot of trouble to Jules who will have great difficulty in proving his innocence.

A simple man gets involved in an implausible story of gangsters in the wake of the discovery of a criminal's dead body in his own bed.

In 1825, Paul-Louis Courier, a Republican writer known for publishing pamphlets against the French monarchy, was killed in the farm where he had retired. Was it a political assassination or a vicious crime? Those who have known him loved him or hated him are interrogated by the police. Will the guilty person(s) be ferreted out?

In France in 1946, the difficult return to civilian life of five deportees and prisoners of war after having lived through the hell of the Second World War.

Lovers since childhood, Sylvain and Angelina do not see their lives separated from each other. However, Sylvain is sent to war and the young woman desperately awaits his return. Years pass and the latter is forced by her father to marry Jean-Marie, a man she does not love. One day, while Angelica and her family are climbing in the Alps, an avalanche sweeps them away. Safe and sound, she comes face to face with her childhood sweetheart, Sylvain.

Returning from South America, a singer is hired by an old pal who runs a detective agency to use a perch as a night club performer to be an investigator.The amateur sleuth then falls for a girl whose brother is a jewel thief.

Isabelle is a lawyer who has Flip, a private detective, convicted of speeding. But shortly after, a murder is committed of which Isabelle's best friend is suspected. To save her, Isabelle is forced, despite her reluctance, to ask Flip for help, who agrees to look for the culprit.

Shortly before the War, Jan Lazlo, a Hungarian musician who has emigrated to France, falls for a young woman. Alas, the lady forsakes him and the poor man tries to overcome his grief by writing "Gloomy Sunday", a song so desperate that it can drive its listeners to suicide. Max, a music publisher, likes the song and decides to launch it by all means, foul or fair. Bob, his accomplice, manages to talk his mistress Michèle into committing a fake suicide. She obeys him and the scheme is a success as a result. On this occasion, Jan gets to know Michèle and the two young people fall in love. Happiness seems to be in store for Jan again but this is without counting with Bob. Jealous of Jan, the naughty fellow indeed tells him that Michèle's attempted suicide was nothing but an advertising pretense.

A gangster, arrested by the police, manages to escape during his transfer to Paris. He takes refuge in the suburbs where his accomplices and his mistress await him.

During a singles meal, the phone rings. A woman claims a man, Jean-Louis. As a joke, the master of the house replies that he is gone forever and advises him to take the plunge. But she obeys and the suicide appears in the newspapers. Tested, the master of the house takes in the child of the unfortunate woman.

One of Alexandre Dumas's most popular adventure novels is "The Count of Monte-Cristo". What is little known is that the famous writer made up neither its plot nor its characters. Dumas actually heard the true story of a man named François Picault during a stay at a private mansion and only adapted it into the novel everybody knows . Picault (who in the book would become Edmond Dantès) was about to marry the beautiful Marguerite (Mercédès in the novel) when he was denounced by three jealous friends who falsely accused him of being a spy for England. Picault was placed under a form of house arrest. In his prison, he made friends with an Italian abbot. When the man died, he left his fortune to Picault whom he had begun to treat as a son. On his release, Picault, who had become wealthy, was able to pursue his ruthless revenge on the three men who were responsible for his misfortune.

Gonfaron is barking at the auction of Cassis. He accepted with good heart to believe that he was the proud custodian of the jackpot of the National Lottery , to avoid marital trouble his friend Viala, which is the real winner with his mistress Ginette . Millionaire become false as false Ginette lover until one day.

Janvier, an embittered teacher, is fed up with his colorless, monotonous life. One day he breaks away and ends up becoming a circus clown. In his new world, he meets a beautiful acrobat nicknamed Lili and grows fonder and fonder of her every day of his life. The trouble is that the lady bestows her favors to two different lovers : wealthy married man Chardeuil and good-looking but listless young Antonio. He now considers his duty to make Lili recover her dignity.

Around 1750, in the Dauphiné not far from the Swiss border, a cooper, tired of the injustices affecting the peasants crushed by taxes, went into revolt. Louis Mandrin, a handsome fellow without fear and without reproach, puts himself out of the law by refusing to obey the local nobility. The public authorities are tearing their hair out because the man is elusive. Helped by his faithful friends and by two women in love, Mandrin will become a legend.

Christine, the daughter of a rich American, acquires from her father the jazz band of Ray Ventura who will be made responsible for accompanying her from morning till evening wherever she goes. From an endless number of amusing situations, the fiancée of the girl despairs. But soon the musicians rebel in in the face of the requirements of their patroness. More than a job, it is for them misery. Christine excuses them and she goes back to America with her band. Things go bad, degenerate, but the kindness of the musicians and the firmness of the fiancée of Christine really quiet down the moods of the young woman .

Hector Dumontier has had enough of his wife Noémie : she is always immersed in those detective stories he disapproves of. To teach her a lesson, Dumontier decides to simulate the burglary of their house, with the help of an alleged jewel thief masked by a hood. He creates many false leads and everybody in the house gets suspected, from Ernestine, the maid, to Cabassol, the chauffeur, to Rosine, the Dumontiers'daughter. The disorder is complete and the various police detectives in charge do not help much.

For fun and to dazzle his wife, the novelist Morgan steals a ring and gets rid of it in the costume jewelry section of a supermarket. Sophie buys the diamond, which forces the novelist to embark on crazy adventures to recover the jewel.

To receive the inheritance of his uncle, who died in Brazil, Claude, who has no money, must absolutely marry one of his three cousins.

Around 1750, in the Dauphiné not far from the Swiss border, a cooper, tired of the injustices affecting the peasants crushed by taxes, went into revolt. Louis Mandrin, a handsome fellow without fear and without reproach, puts himself out of the law by refusing to obey the local nobility. The public authorities are tearing their hair out because the man is elusive. Helped by his faithful friends and by two women in love, Mandrin will become a legend.

In a town on the banks of the Saône1 Grasalard, a butcher, likes to feast and play boules with his friends. Although married, he falls in love with another woman.

Portrait of a two-faced man. By day he is rich, brilliant and respectable financial officer Lussac; at night, he becomes "Mirror", a ruthless gang leader in Marseilles.

On his way to Paris, Casanova keeps on collecting female conquests, does not shy away from duels and gets into many a colorful adventure. Once in the capital, the fearless knight saves the honor of a great lady, conquers the niece of his implacable enemy but courts disaster for love of Coraline, a faithless opera dancer.

This is the story of two brothers: the good one, the virtuous gent, an acclaimed singer, and the bad one who leads a wild life.

The local building-contractor Martin Roumagnac is fascinated by the fashionable Blanche Ferrand. To impress Blache, Martin presents her with a villa. However, this ruins him financially. Despite Martin's many efforts for the now femme-fatal Blanche, she is not able to chose between him and the rich consul De Laubry.

Professor Artus, a scientist specializing in artificial life, wants to try an experiment on an automaton; he is entrusted with a death row inmate. The professor is soon found murdered. It is Inspector Wens, helped by a journalist, who must solve the case. Franck Villard in the role of Wens succeeds Fresnay.

Alex Grégoire is a timid insurance company clerk who shares his uneventful life between his wife Angèle, his colleagues and his passion for crosswords. But all of a sudden his existence changes dramatically. First because he wins a crossword competition. Second because a jewel thief, Charles Tuffal, thinks he recognizes in him a former accomplice. From that moment "uneventful" is not the best adjective to qualify Alex's life anymore...

An Alsatian, head of a section of the Gestapo, is actually spying on behalf of the French and dismantling a Nazi network. His activities are brought to light by the Germans and he owes his life only to the intervention of a young woman.

Two hitch-hikers are on the way to Marseilles pursued by her husband.

Sylvie, a girl who believes she is cursed having seen her two lovers die in tragic circumstances, lives in the town of Carcassonne, in the South of France with her adoptive guardian, Mr. Toulzac. This one, a retired school teacher, has a passion: to discover the secret of the Cathars, a Christian sect of the Middle Ages that glorified death over life. One day Sylvie meets Roland, a pianist and composer back home in Carcassonne. A handsome and good man, he instills new hope into Sylvie's troubled mind. Unfortunately her uncle asks her then to renounce the world and to follow him down into a secret cathedral he has just found...

A rich young man, Pierre Trévoux, has a desire for adventure and boasts of his courage. While he is staying with friends in the countryside, his hosts, to play a trick on him, organize a fake burglary, but he discovers the hoax. When he returns home, he finds his house broken into. Convinced that the game continues, he does not understand that he is dealing with real gangsters. His recklessness allows him to rout the criminals.

The story of a French officer who is assumed dead during the Napoleonic Wars, but returns ten years later to a very different France, both on a political and personal level. The film is based on the novel Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.

A kind and generous village noble, specializing in good works, actually leads a double existence and carries out dishonest activities.

The children born from a first marriage of a widower and a widower who have remarried do not get along. Frequent quarrels break out in the household which finally finds calm thanks to the presence of a new little girl.

Antoine Mouret, an authoritarian restaurateur, is the head of a large family where, for reasons of interest, people only marry cousins. But some have other plans, Marcus especially when he meets a passing circus girl.

Grigou owns a patch of land between farmers Martin's and Aubert's fields. Both covet this plot.As Grigou has lost the title deed,the mayor of the village decides to sell it.After an interminable auction sale, Aubert carries the day .To add insult to injury,shortly after, Martin is expelled from his farm,and becomes an innkeeper (a doomed inn where the former owner hanged himself). Ten years after, Aubert's daughter falls in love with Martin's son.Their fathers being deadly enemies, their marriage seems impossible.

In this little Provencal village, a new baker, Aimable, settles down. His wife Aurelie is beautiful and much younger than he. She departs with a shepherd the night after Aimable produces his first breads. Aimable is so afflicted that he can not work anymore. Therefore, the villagers, who initially laughed at his cuckoldry, take the matter very seriously (they want the bread) and organize a plan to find Aurelie and to bring her back to the bakery.

Claire and Jean are lovers, but Claire's father opposes this union, because Jean is the son of a woman he once knew. Jean becomes a great singer, but doesn't forget Claire.

Mr. Pontbichot has long dreamed of cheating on his wife. To achieve his goals, he looks for a son-in-law who could help him, and finds him in the person of a young painter, who pleases his daughter.