Self (archive footage)
If Jean Rochefort remains so dear to our hearts, it is because this extraordinary actor alone embodies a cinema and a France imbued with freedom and carelessness. Through his films, archives and the testimony of those close to him, we discover a complex man, a sad clown saved by his taste for words and for fun.
(voice)
A forest full of animated animals encourage a pair of snails, who are fully clad in black because they are in mourning for a dead leaf, to celebrate the new spring and reclaim the colors of life. Based on the children's poem by Jacques Prévert entitled "Chanson des escargots qui font à l'enterrement" ("Song of the snails who are on their way to a funeral").
(archive footage)
A feature-length documentary about the life and career of Italian director Luigi Cozzi and his obsession with Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Self
Jean-Paul Belmondo returns to the settings of a fantastic career, accompanied by his son Paul. Over a career spanning 50 years, Jean-Paul Belmondo’s movies drew over 130 million people into cinemas. This logbook takes us back to sets and countries, from where we can revisit the films in reference and find out about his fruitful collaborations with various directors. Paul Belmondo will lead the investigation, meeting the stars and his father’s friends (eye-witnesses all) and questioning his father about his journey, sharing it with us so we can discover the man and his story like never before.
The Man with the Broken Face (voice)
At a hospital in New York, Alex, a police officer, meets Leo, a boy who has the ability to get out of his body and pass through the walls like a ghost. Both team up with Mary, an intrepid journalist, to capture a disfigured villain who terrorizes the city.
Michel's Father
Michel, who's crazy about jazz, has just found a rare album that he dreams of quietly listening to in his living room. But the world seems to have conspired against him: his wife chooses this moment to divulge an ill-timed revelation, his adult son makes a surprise visit, one of his friends knocks on the door, while his mother keeps calling him on his smartphone. Not to mention that today the residents in his apartment building are holding their annual House Party. Manipulative and a liar, Michel is ready to do anything to have a moment of peace and quiet. Is it still possible, in this day and age, to just have one hour of peace?
Lui-même
A romantic comedy about two Parisian therapists who are so obsessed about getting into the sack with anyone they meet, they can’t ever get it on with each other.
Jean
Bernard Lefort
A piano teacher suspects her entourage of being responsible for the disappearance of a former pupil she was putting up. She starts to grow suspicious of everyone's behavior.
Himself
Hubert Dassonville
Gaspard Dassonville may be 63 but he stubbornly refuses to show his age. A well-known television producer, he amuses himself with women who are half his age, and life has never felt so good. Then, one day, his age catches up with him with a vengeance, when he is forced to take care of his elderly father Hubert. An indomitable oldster, Hubert soon manages to unsettle his son’s illusory youth, but things take an unexpected turn when a care assistant with a colorful imagination comes between them...
Nick
Max is 6 years old. She lives with her dad Toni, a small time crook with a golden heart. For Xmas, Max offers him Rose, a call-girl found on the street whom she’s very fond of. Despite the complicated situation, Toni’s gonna have a hard time refusing her daughter’s «gift» and must coexist with Rose.
Titouan Leguennec
A former footballer living in Brittany enlists his old teammates to help the local fisherman to win some games in order to raise money and save jobs.
Abraham
Description : Belgium, 1943. The situation is becoming unbearable for the Field family : antisemitic persecutions become common and violent. Joseph Field, the father, rebels against the occupying army. He is arrested and deported. Esther, his wife, decides to go “underground”: she enters the clandestinity. She gives her oldest son to look after with Hermann, her father-in-law. He knows an escape n
The psychoanalyst
Self (archive footage)
Jean-Pierre
Self
Contrary Santa (voice)
Santa doesn't want to retire, but rules are rules and he must train someone to replace him. The lucky winner, to be chosen from among millions of children, must be named Nicholas, be an orphan and have a pure heart. On the other side of the planet, there is a little boy who is a perfect match, but his lack of self-confidence and fear of heights make him a poor contestant. Will Santa agree to step down, and help his apprentice take his place?
Oswald
In 19th-century France, a man (Thomas Coumans) magically has his wishes come true but at a price that shortens his life.
Victor
The wedding of Vincent and Berenger does not begin well. For starters, the fabulous cake for the reception falls apart as the butler of the château, and one of the caterers is taking down a flight of stairs falls. The cream puffs are carefully picked up from the floor an arranged as though nothing happened. The bride comes from a bourgeois family, presided by Maddie, an old lady with a secret in her heart. The wedding, to be performed at the local church, by father Victor, proves to be not the classic marriage that has been planned...
Charles Darwin
Placard
While standing in the doorway of the video shop where he works, Bazil is inadvertently shot in the head. Now homeless and jobless, he is taken in by a troupe of misfits who live in a giant mound of trash. There Bazil begins his quest for revenge against the people who produced the gun that shot him.
Self
"Vian Bubbles" - On June 23, 2009, fifty years to the day after the death of Boris Vian, a supernatural phenomenon crosses all of France: in the streets, one sings everywhere his songs and one expresses oneself only in the language of the poet. In Paris, Antoine de Caunes wakes up to discover the strange "vianic" epidemic, which also affects radio waves and the small screen. A boss of channel proposes to him to organize, for the same evening, a show dedicated to the songs of Boris Vian. Jean-Pierre Marielle tells us the story of this phenomenon, as supernatural as inexplicable. A tribute in songs to the glowing cast.
Self
Jean Dussart
Lucie Audibert, a student of Art History, does research work on Watteau and is certain that a hidden sense that nobody has ever deciphered can be found in a few of his paintings. The further she explores this the more Professor Jean Dussart - for unclear reasons - tries to discourage her.
Salomon Bellinsky
In the Bellinsky family: there is Solomon the father, 80 years old, brimming with life. He is fighting not to be buried too quickly, between tap dance lessons under the high patronage of Fred Astaire and the search for a companion... The mother, Geneviève, dreams of only one thing: quietly continuing her infantilisation, with her household help, protector and guardian angel, Mr Mootoousamy.
M. de Galais
A coming-of-age story set in France in the years leading up to World War I. Two teenage boys experience love, loss, anguish and betrayal in a rural setting of great beauty.
Jacques Saunière
A murder in Paris’ Louvre Museum and cryptic clues in some of Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous paintings lead to the discovery of a religious mystery. For 2,000 years a secret society closely guards information that — should it come to light — could rock the very foundations of Christianity.
Le Pape Barberini
Before the court of the Inquisition, the scientist Galileo defends his position in favor of Copernicus' thesis that the Earth revolves around the sun.
Pierre-Ange Destinat
In 1917, the old rivalry between a prosecutor and a judge resurfaces during a police investigation into the murder of a child.
Bosco
James Bataille is in love. He attempts to stage an elaborate motorcycle stunt to impress the girl, but when it goes sour, he ends up in prison with a 133-year sentence. Bataille escapes from behind bars to make an appointment to fix the car of music biz tycoon, as well as watch the love of his life take part in the town's annual talent show.
Popernick
When her mother moves in, the life of a writer gets crowded.
Simon
This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films. When the young and overly sensitive filmmaker Julien screens his new DV art-film starring his girlfriend Lili (Swimming Pool's Ludivine Sagnier) --a sexy young local girl--to his famous actress mother Mado, and her lover Brice, an accomplished film director, an unraveling of the delicate peace in their house begins. The graceful beauty Lili, who dreams of becoming a famous actress like Mado, is immediately fascinated by Brice, who gladly falls prey to her charms.
Self
Thanks to a series of unpublished interviews, recorded shortly before his death, director Claude Sautet gives us a fascinating lesson in cinema. Through his thirteen films, he tells about his career and his work as a director.
Le général
The action takes place in Paris in the 30-ies. The Countess Louise de... has made debts and she urgently needed cash. She decided to sell the family jeweler Remy earrings — a gift from her husband…
Self
Les Acteurs is the absurd story of Jean-Pierre Marielle desperately waiting for a cup of hot water, the story of a conspiracy against actors, the story of aging actors whose careers are slowly less active than they used to be, but a stunning tribute to French actors and their cinema.
Comissaire Bayard
Olivia, Irina and Masha are improving their acting skills. They no longer believe in Prince Charming, and their career is waning. Olivia works at the front desk at the airport and offers a wonderful plan: he would do so that friends will be aboard the Paris - New York plane and will sit next to wealthy men. Their task is to seduce the rich and pull them out of money. But the fraudsters do not suspect that Comissaire Bayard and his young assistant are closely watching them...
Le docteur Jean Marcellin
Armand
Morgan, a sensitive 12-year-old, growing up in richness and royalty, finds a true friend in Julien, a young man hired to tutor him.
Georges Cox
Three aging and failed comedians, Georges Cox, Victor Vialat and Eddie Carpentier, hit the road again with a lousy production of a lousy play, of course under the worst possible conditions.
Commandant Perrochon
In the beginning of the Second World War, Germans, Austrians and persons without nationality living in France are sent to the concentration camp of Les Milles by France government. Commander Charles Perrochon is the responsible for this camp and he promises to the leaders of the prisoners to protect them from the Nazis. When France is invaded by the Germans, Commander Perronchon will disobey orders and his superiors trying to save these men. He gets a train, a ship and money from USA to send about eight hundred of these prisoners to the safety of Casablanca, in Marrocos.
Pierre-François Le Clainche
An old psychiatrist finds out that he is likely to suffer a second and probably fatal heart attack in the near future. As a consequence he becomes determined to seduce Odile, a young woman he first encounters in a railway compartment.
Dr. Rene Meinthe
It is the summer of 1958 in wealthy Lake Geneva, where an enigmatic young Frenchman begins an affair with a beautiful starlet under the watchful eye of her flamboyant elderly mentor. But in a season full of secrets, is truth the most elusive passion of all?
L'homme seul / The lonely man
A provocative, seemingly absurd patchwork movie which sends a worthwhile message about hope against all odds, love, children and human understanding. Schoolgirl Victorine has an insane mother and an alcoholic father who can never find his way home in their maze of slum apartment blocks. Aggressive, sexually threatening boys of all ages are everywhere, and while the teacher eventually relents to a gang of adolescent rapists, Victorine gives herself to a rowdy gang of older layabouts, eventually winning the heart of burglar Paul.
Almeida
Even among bombers and murderers, there is a social ladder, a hierarchy to climb. Jeremie is a mere bomber who blows up people and places for mobsters in Paris. He may not look it, scruffy lad that he is, but he is a sensitive fellow, and he feels his lowly status keenly. If only he could graduate to the ranks of hitmen, who are honored in his world, perhaps then he would feel more like somebody. He finally gets his chance when he receives instructions to kill the eminent hitman Max, who knows too much to be left alive. Instead of planning a cool and distant hit, Jeremie gets to know his quarry personally and thereby gets entangled in a mass of conflicting allegiances. Max has one more assignment and has asked Jeremie to help him with it. The hero-worshipping boy can't bring himself to knock of this classy guy. However, just having such an inept apprentice as Jeremie around is enormously dangerous for the soon-to-be-retired killer.
Bartolomé de las Casas
Spain conquered the seas, found a new world and different realities than the one known in Europe. But a question needed to be answered with what they found in those new territories: do the Indians have souls? The Church, bound to protect and convert the natives and the conquerors who treated them like slaves and thought they were only merchandising, expose their arguments and reasonings at what would be known as the Vallidolid controversy. Between them, there's a cardinal hearing both parts and trying to get reasonable answers from this critical question.
Monsieur de Sainte Colombe
It's late 17th century. The viola da gamba player Monsieur de Sainte Colombe comes home to find that his wife died while he was away. In his grief he builds a small house in his garden into which he moves to dedicate his life to music and his two young daughters Madeleine and Toinette, avoiding the outside world. Rumor about him and his music is widespread, and even reaches to the court of Louis XIV, who wants him at his court in Lully's orchestra, but Monsieur de Sainte Colombe refuses. One day a young man, Marin Marais, comes to see him with a request, he wants to be taught how to play the violin.
Archambaud
After World War II, a small French village struggles to put the war behind as the controlling Communist Party tries to flush out Petain loyalists. The local bar owner, a simple man who likes to write poetry, who only wants to be left alone to do his job, becomes a target for Communist harassment as they try and locate a particular loyalist, and he pushes back.
François Bouvard
Two retirees obsessed with their desire to know everything put their knowledge into practice in a constantly awkward way.
Darnoncourt
A legendary police commissioner is at the edge of writing his memoirs when he asked to help out with solving a locked room mystery where two people are found dead in an apartment that was locked from the inside.
Monsieur Fonfrin
Martial is discharged from a mental insitution where he spent a few years due to a serious nervous breakdown. Upon his return he finds his mother, a busy business woman who owns a supermarket chain, convinced that her son will be able to find himself again if tasked with some responsibilities. Soon enough, he's sent to Limoges on a business trip to check on one of their stores in the hope to reinvigorate the failing business. Once he arrives, Martial is faced with responsibilities he had never imagined, including dealing with the store's personnel.
René Boutancard
Rene (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a small-time crook who tries to shake down storekeeper Emile (Jean Carmet) in this uneven and humorless comedy. Things change when Rene starts to fall for the terminally boring and provincial Emile.
Fred
When an informer is executed, his dismembered remains found in several bin bags, Fred, a resilient police inspector, leads the murder investigation with his customary dogged determination.
l'homme riche et dépressif
Bickering couple Monique and Antoine are interrupted by bisexual burglar Bob while fighting in a bar. With husband and wife in need of cash, Bob teaches them the most efficient house burglary methods. Monique is attracted to the charismatic thief, but Bob is more interested in Antoine, who eventually succumbs to his attentions. As the trio continues living together, Monique grows unhappy about being ignored by both men.
Simon Labrosse
Dressed as a clown, the clever rascal Grimm holds up the most secure bank of Montreal and takes 30 hostages. While confusing and ridiculing the police with his strange behavior, he calmly manages to rid the bank of a fortune. But then an unsatisfied companion arouses trouble...
Antoine Garnier
A lawyer hires a call girl after learning his wife has invited her lover to move in; the husband and wife separate and the two new couples live side-by-side without issue - until an ex-boyfriend shows up and things start to go wrong.
Gabriel Gallien
Simon
In post-revolutionary France, two neighbouring aristocrats (Nicole Garcia and Jean-Pierre Marielle) embark on a dangerous game when they agree to help a Polish agent.
Jérôme Bouvier
Jean-Jacques Lestrade is the owner of a renowned veterinary clinic in Paris who lives in a luxurious apartment. He is part of Parisian high society and lives a wealthy lifestyle surrounded by young women and money. He relies on his trusty accountant, Jérôme Bouvier, to manage his finances. All goes well until the day that Béatrice Flamand, a tax inspector, shows up at his clinic, at which point Lestrade is now in trouble.
Patrick Le Kermadec
Bernard accompanies his friend Roger on a circuit. They witness a serious accident. Roger rushes in and saves the pilot's life. In the explosion that followed, the three boys were injured and were soon taken to hospital.
Daniel
An innocent man stumbles across a political intrigue, when he discovers that his neighbours apartment is bugged. They are then found dead and their killers description resembles the man.
Le Peron
A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.
Albert Pourrat
Heavy traffic in the summer. Bad luck for Juliet, Albert, Jaeger and Arthur who does not reach their destination. Involved in a terrible accident that will change their lives forever.
Jean-Marie Tardel
Le PDG d'une importante société pétrolière voit ses manoeuvres illicites déjouées par un jeune concurrent dont la femme n'est autre que la fille de son fournisseur arabe.
Castelard
Two little criminals without major, dream of adventure and easy life. They agree to go to work in the Poitou as representatives of musical encyclopedias luxury. But their friend Valerie arrive from Paris and just changes their life.
François Perrin
François Perrin is a journalist who reads the news on RTL radio. Alone in life, his only "amusement" is his neighbor from Africa, who makes mildly fun of him from time to time. One evening, François is bored, and decides to call a random telephone number. He gets Christine on the line, a bit of an old school pharmacist, who hesitates to put down the phone, and plays the game of seduction with the charming "Mr X"...
Pierre
Pierre, 44, contentedly divorced, takes his teen daughter to the Côte d'Azur along with his friend Jacques and Jacques' own teen daughter, Françoise. On the topless beaches of Saint-Tropez, Jacques and Pierre discuss marriage and being parents. Then, in a wild moment at a nighttime party, Françoise starts playing with Pierre, and one thing leads to another: they become lovers. After a couple of trysts, Pierre wants out, but Françoise declares her love for him and wants to tell her father about it. She does, but leaves out Pierre's name, so Jacques enlists Pierre's help in identifying who seduced his daughter. What will Pierre do?
Roustev
In this sardonic comedy, after an executive is killed in a mysterious automobile accident, the French offices of his multinational company is inundated with mysteriously threatening be-ribboned anti-capitalist tracts, delivered overnight to everyone's desks. Later, the executive's body is brought to company offices for an official wake -- only no one at the company has ordered that such a thing be done. A mysterious prankster, who is able to imitate the voice of the company's president, has arranged these things. When Americans from the head office get wind of these developments, they institute a search for the perpetrator which leads to mysterious subterranean passages under the company's skyscraper.
Pouplard
Normandy, France, 1976. After 2 years of wild love with Nadia, Pouplard - unemployed heating engineer, working in his girlfriend's butcher's - decides to marry her and leave for good his (regular) wife and daughter.. He'll have to struggle against his own jealousy and Nadia's incredible sexappeal to get through this 'moment de vie'.
Inspecteur Pignon
il Milite Ignoto
A handful of recruits prepares for a war that nobody knows about the purpose or the motive. The field commander is a general who plays with a Marx puppet and lives in a luxurious palace that looks like a cabin from the outside. His orderlies are a captain who lives in Arabic dress in a curtain and a sergeant in training who does not shine for intelligence. Continuing training between various and grotesque accidents until the order arrives for the front. And then?
Paul
A love story between the pets hairdresser and accountant - both with significant life history.
Morlock
An advertising photographer, François, has agreed to sell the poetic script of one of his friends to a porn-maker without his knowledge. But Christine, François' fiance, doesn't want him to do so, especially when the naive friend has succeeded in recruiting the young daughter of his employer to play in what he thinks is a romantic love movie.
Paul Dufour
Two men, fortyish, worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile who recalls them to life's simple pleasures. Calm is what they want. But soon their example inspires thousands of disorientated males, fleeing the feminist 1970s. Soon, too, there arrives a squadron of nymphomaniac Amazons.
Henri Serin
Henri Serin, a sales rep in umbrellas who lives in Saumur, is bored with his life. Married to an unloving, uptight wife, who, unlike him, has no interest in sex, he is also rejected by his children. Thus, he spends most of his time travelling from town to town, flirting with women and meeting all kinds of people in the hotels, restaurants, shops and places he visits. He also dabbles in painting, particularly portraits. After his car breaks down as he is driving through Brittany, he meets a rough, foul-mouthed painter who offers him to stay at his house, near Pont-Aven. There, Henri falls in love with Angela, the painters model and fling, and soon they run off together...
Albert Danville
Somewhere in rural France, a young English female tourist is sexually assaulted by two men in the countryside. After she manages to escape, a party of local hunters agree to track her in order to cover up the scandal.
The Marquis de Pontcallec
A look at 18th-century France, when the authorities depravity contributed to social oppression, and the uprisings flared up one after another.
Léo Tartaffione
As every summer, Georges Lajoie, his wife Ginette and grown-up son Léon go on holiday to Loulou's campsite. They join old friends, the Schumachers and the Colins. Brigitte Colin, the daughter, is quite a pretty young girl now. One day, Georges rapes and murders her. He hides the body near the barracks of the immigrant Arab workers. The racism of the campers will do the rest... A virulent lampoon against the average Frenchman's racism.
Richard Le Royer
French comedy.
Le docteur Carlille
Michel Dolannes resigns from a major newspaper as a journalist to launch a new journal 'Le Cosmopolite' which reveals all kinds of shady deals.One day, he is killed but who is the killer?
Gérard Malempin
A story about a guy who still lives with his mother and sells some really awful alcohol to bartenders. The only way for him to do this is to cry and invent himself an awful life. Then he meets the beautiful woman whose goal in life is to sleep with the less exciting guys on Earth.
Tony
Charlie, a forty-something looking for a job, meets two twenty-something girls, Ghislaine and Josiane, who are similarly unemployed. All three decide to take to the road selling oilcloth to pay their way. The harmony reigns within the group until the arrival of Tony, a seller of miniature cathedrals.
Major Bloch
A beautiful and thoroughly modern young French women, Francoise, gets involved with an Israeli agent working in Libya. The agent is exposed and in order to save his life, he has to be smuggled out of the country in a trunk ("valise"). Francoise and the agent get through a lot of turbulent adventures, in the process of which the thoroughly liberated young woman also seduces a Libyan agent and an Egyptian officer, who also fall wildly in love with here.
Commissaire Martin
French gangster movie
L'Ogre
Classic fairy-tale story about Tom Thumb against Giant. Parents are poor and want to leave Tom Thumb in forest. But Tom Thumb is clever and marks his way by stones. Second time he is unsuccessful - he has only bread-crumbs and birds eat them. Tom Thumb finds a Giant and a beautiful princess in his entrapment, and is determined to free the princess.
Lucien
On the advice of a friend, Claude, married to the charming Isabelle and father of two, decided to transform his library, hardly flourishing, into a sex shop. This change of activity proves to be very lucrative and sharpens his desire to spice up his married life through various erotic experiences. Claude asks his wife to share with him the audacity he dreams of. Soon, the household meets a dentist and his wife and is engaged, without much success, to new discoveries. Isabelle, full of good will, tries to follow her husband ...
Narrator (voice)
Essay film on the darker side of cartoonist and filmmaker Chaval, aka Yvan Francis Le Louarn.
(voice)
Gianni Arrosio
Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders.
Perry Rupert-Foote
A serie of murders is comitted in Nice on the French riviera. The commissaire Carella is in charge and tries to find a missing link between all these murders.
Maxime
In a cul-de-sac in the Faubourg-Saint-Antoine, Leon shares two rooms with his sister Marie. In one, he receives his clients: he is a tailor. In the other, Marie receives her own: she is a clairvoyant. Leon was happy until he learned what Marie was hiding from him. She is actually a prostitute, and Maxime, her supposed fiancé, is her pimp. On the same day, Leon also discovers love in the form of Arlette, a provincial young woman picked up by Marie.
The Lieutenant
Following "The Two of Us", Claude is now 21 years old. Content with his life, he has a girlfriend Tania and he aspires to become an actor. When he receives his draft notice, a friend convinces Claude he can get out of military service with his connections in Paris. When the connections fall through, Claude is sent for basic training outside Paris before being shipped off to Algeria. His stops in Morocco and Algeria are uneventful as far as military action goes. He returns home with few bad memories of his army life ...
Jean-Jules de Lépine
l'éditeur
Clara becomes a secretary who must cater to all the desires of the womanizing writer Jérôme, while he tries to write his memoirs.
Jean-Jacques Leroy-Martin, le "play-boy"
In this comedy, a run-down hotel drums up customers by sabotaging passing cars. The stuck motorists are then obliged to stay. Unfortunately, one of the sabotaged cars belongs to a bank robber. The hotel staff wants the robber out, but they also want to keep his ill-gotten money.
Le Marquis
Mr Jo, nicknamed "the man with the Buick", is the darling of the small town of Honfleur. But he is in fact a trafficker with a bad reputation who would like to forget about his past, now limiting himself to smuggling rubies under the cover of a charitable organization which offers underprivileged children holidays in Switzerland. However, Mr. Jo is in love with a pretty widow and, in order to marry her, he is willing to get involved in a hold-up again. And "the man with the Buick", who seemed so honorable, will surprise the inhabitants of Honfleur when Inspector Menard reveals his secret activities.
Le Révérend-Père Fouquet
Mathieu is a mild-mannered man engaged to a woman whose father is involved in running a house of prostitution. When the father dies, Mathieu inherits the bordello and is unprepared for his new position. He overcomes his shyness and becomes a sexual dynamo when his workers feed him some powerful amphetamines.
Le narrateur
Bob
Tony Maréchal is a professional seducer. Having conquered countless women, proclaims that there is none that can resist his charm. To prove this makes a difficult challenge: to seduce baroness Minna von Strasshofer.
Lucien de Noirville
This one is generally looked upon as the best version of the old-fashioned melodrama by Jules Mary.Riccardo Freda,who was mainly known for his horror movies,tried also his hand at spy thrillers in the wake of James Bond ("Coplan Ouvre Le Feu à Mexico") ,and had a penchant for old French melodramas (before "Roger la Honte" ,he redid "Les Deux Orphelines " -D.W.GRiffith's "orphans of the storm-. Georges Géret replaces Lucien Coedel and Irene Pappas takes on Maria Casarès's part of his mistress.Freda 's movie is more compact ,with a running time of 105 min,whereas Cayatte's version (1945-46) spread over two episodes with a total time exceeding 3 hours.It also benefited from the use of color .But all in all,it's the same old story.
Raymond Vernet
Fulbert is a sidewalk artist who is duped into working for a counterfeiter. He accompanies a woman posing as a grieving widow on a trip to Spain in a hearse. Unaware she is the mistress of a notorious gangster, Fulbert is chased by thugs.
Pierson
In June 1940, during the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied troops to England, French sergeant Julien Maillat and his men debate whether to evacuate to Britain or stay and fight the German troops that are closing-in from all directions.
Balthazar
A dedicated layabout (Jean-Pierre Cassel) bounces from relationship to relationship, moving on only when the prospect of employment presents itself.
Van Houde
A greedy gold smuggler hires a handsome hero to transport a stolen fortune to a new hideout accompanied by the smuggler's sexy girlfriend.
David Kouglov
Hélène and François are a perfect couple happily married for twelve years. But Hélène discovers psychoanalysis via a very handsome Dr. Kougloff, and he convinces her that the apparent well-balanced nature of her husband is in fact a cover for horrible tragedies.
Jo Adams
Set between Christmas and New Year, the film told the story of six criminals who kidnap an ambassador's daughter and await the ransom; enter Monsieur Wens, who infiltrates their hideout using various comic disguises, bumps them off one by one and rescues the little girl.
Le banquier André Durand-Mareuil
Shopkeeper Victor Garnier has naively invested his family's life savings in an African mine, on his banker's recommendation. When the mine is nationalized, rendering the stock worthless, he considers himself shamelessly robbed by the bank; it seems only fair to him to return the 'favor' and rob the bank, teaming up with the whole family as they were all duped. Even for professionals such an enterprise -he decides to dig a tunnel- is quite demanding, but for simple commoners it's daunting, as they also have their personal downsides; thus Victor's wife has a most unwelcome tendency to blurt out the truth, even to the grumpy local copper: a crazy risk when you need to keep a criminal plan secret.
Monsieur Rakanowsky
Gerard, a young man from a "good family" dreams of becoming an actor. To do this, he follows everywhere his sister Frédérique who is infatuated with cinéma vérité.
Paul Reynaldo
Two scoundrels cheat a millionaire out of a huge bankroll on the French Riviera.
Emile
In this crime drama, Michel Simon is cast as Pierrot, an elderly gangster who does not fit the stereotype -- he is soft-hearted. After a petty criminal betrays his cohorts by taking off with the loot from a big robbery, he is caught and sent to jail. Now he has served his time, and Pierrot is given the task of retrieving the stolen cash. The tyro criminal tries to use a pretty young woman who has fallen in love with him as a red herring for Pierrot's investigation. Everything backfires though, and Pierrot is left considering what to do with the loot, and with the criminal who does not yet realize he loves his attractive accomplice and could have a good life with her if he opts for walking the straight and narrow.
Le chef de la préfecture de police
Toujenbach
Outiechitelny
Cauteret - l'inconnu
Germain Vignon is a used car dealer whose eloquence is such that he could sell the lousiest banger to a guy that does not even have a driver's license. He is not bad either at chatting up girls. Indeed, since his blonde wife left him, Germain has seduced no fewer than four brunettes. And as, besides being a ladies'man, he has a heart of gold, Germain is unable to break up with any of them, hence a complicated sentimental life. But this delicate balance is threatened the day an outraged stranger comes to him and orders him to leave his wife alone. One small problem is that the man has forgotten to specify the name of the lady in question. So, which of his four mistresses - Christine, Sophie, Anne-Marie or Sonia - should he leave?
Lucien, le détenu bavard
The holdup of the bank is a success. All happened according to plan. Now, Cyril Gad and his four accomplices must secure an alibi. What better place than a prison cell? As a result the five gangsters have themselves arrested on minor charges and start waiting until they are released. Unfortunately three of them die mysteriously, another one is openly murdered. The only man still alive, Tony, is scared. Easy to understand why...
