Jean Castanier

Movies

Elena and Her Men
Isnard
Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men—as well as the future of France—in her hands.
The Man Who Returns from Afar
Director
A man, after a fight, believes he has killed his cousin, and hides the body. The dead man had only passed out, but when he regained consciousness, he became amnesiac. When she sees him again, the woman who loved him takes him for a ghost.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
Story
A man and a woman arrive in a cafe-hotel near the Belgian frontier. The customers recognize the man from the police's description: his name is Amedee Lange, and he murdered somebody in Paris. Lange was an employee in a printing works. His boss was a real bastard, swindling every one, seducing female workers... One day he fled to avoid facing his creditors, and the workers set up a cooperative to go on working. What then made Lange a killer?
Boudu Saved from Drowning
Production Design
Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.
L'Âge d'Or
Guest at the Marquis of X's Concert (uncredited)
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.