Michael Lonsdale

Michael Lonsdale

Birth : 1931-05-24, Paris, France

Death : 2020-09-21

History

Michael Lonsdale (May 24, 1931 – September 21, 2020), sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, was a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows. Lonsdale was raised by an Irish mother and an English father, initially in London and on Jersey, and later during the Second World War in Casablanca, Morocco. He moved to Paris to study painting in 1947 but was drawn in to the world of acting instead, first appearing on stage at the age of 24. Lonsdale was bilingual and is in demand for English-language and French productions. He was best known in the English-speaking world for his roles as the villainous Sir Hugo Drax in the 1979 James Bond film, Moonraker, the astute French detective Lebel in The Day of the Jackal, and M Dupont d'Ivry in The Remains of the Day. On 25 February 2011, he won a Caesar award, his first, as a best supporting actor in Of Gods and Men. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Lonsdale, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Profile

Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale

Movies

Le Fantôme de Laurent Terzieff
Self
Degas and I
Between dance and drawings, Arnaud des Pallières relates different moments of Degas’s life and unveils some of his darker sides.
Salvador Dalí: Génie tragi-comique
Narrator
Bazin's Film
Narrator
A meditation on the passing of time, on a film that was never completed, upon Bazin’s death, on restoration and the future of ruins and on modern-day life that continues in resonance with the old stones.
The Mysteries of Paris: Jacques Rivette's Out 1 Revisited
Self
In June 2015, forty-five years after OUT 1 was made, the filmmakers went to Paris to interview cast and crew members and to revisit some of the film’s most significant locations. THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS features new contributions from actors Bulle Ogier, Michael Lonsdale and Hermine Karagheuz, cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn, assistant director Jean-François Stévenin and producer Stéphane Tchal Gadjieff, but also rare archival interviews with actors Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Michel Delahaye and, most prominently, illuminating statements by director Jacques Rivette himself from two different archival interviews.
Jean-Marie Serreau, découvreur de théâtres
Self
Les Filles au Moyen-Âge
Daniel
The history of women through the Middle Ages as told to and by little boys and girls and an old man (Michael Lonsdale)
The First, the Last
Jean-Berchmans
Apocalyptic neo-western about two gangsters, a town full of crazy people and Jesus...
La visite
Bobo and Michael Lonsdale are alone in the Château de Versailles. Together, they are walking around this ghostly place of power. The director Pippo Delbono offers a singular journey in this exceptional palace.
J.R.R. Tolkien: Designer of Worlds
For many people, the English writer JRR Tolkien (1892-1973) is above all the author of the Lord of the Rings, the film series directed and produced by Peter Jackson from 2001 to 2003. But what most people are unaware of is that this immensely successful novel is only the tip of a monumental corpus, started in the 1910s, and which Tolkien pursued to the day he died in 1973. Even then... This documentary goes back to the origins of this tremendous creation and, at the same time, it is an opportunity to rediscover the surprising personality of its author. Who was this quiet and scholarly man who taught languages and old English literature at Oxford? How was this gigantic project born? Going back and forth between ordinary reality and an immaterial and fabulously rich reality, the story offers to reveal the meaning of Tolkien's life as a marvelous adventure of the mind.
N: The Madness Of Reason
Narrator
N recounts the story of the Frenchman Raymond Borremans, who left Europe for Africa in the mid-20th-century. He devoted his life to the creation of the first encyclopaedia of this other world, dreaming of eternal recognition. He died, however, having only reached the letter N. With his encyclopaedia incomplete, his restless spirit drifts around West Africa, caught between life and death, past and present. This is the story of how he tries to complete his unfinished task from beyond death. N is both visually and musically a truly striking film. It is a multi-layered audio-visual symphony of great narrative richness. Hovering between dream and reality, this magical film plays on the confrontation between the Western mind and African spirituality.
Maestro
Cedric Rovère
Henry, a young actor, finds himself involved in a film by cinema superstar, Cédric Rovere. Charmed by his benevolence, feelings hitherto unknown are aroused, while Rovere, intrigued by Henry's dream, lives this shoot as an unexpected gift.
Rosenn
(voice)
A famous English writer, Lewis Lafoly, forty and languidly elegant, meets Rosennn Auroch, a young and radiant woman on Bourbon Island in the Indian Ocean in 1909...
Le Renard jaune
Jean Virno
Charles Senac, author of a single novel but crowned by the Prix Goncourt, is hated by the regulars of the bar-restaurant "Le Renard jaune" who regularly insult him. One morning he is found dead in his home. For inspector Giraud, it is clear that the culprit is among the customers of "Le Renard jaune".
Gebo and the Shadow
Gebo
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.
Veilleurs dans la nuit - Une journée monastique à l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux
Narrateur
Free Men
Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit
In Paris during WWII, an Algerian immigrant is inspired to join the resistance by his unexpected friendship with a Jewish man. Based on not very known facts about the Muslim community in Paris during WWII, when the Paris Mosque and its dynamic leader played a pivotal role in supporting the resistance and rescuing Jews.
The Cardboard Village
When a group of African immigrants builds a cardboard village between the pews of a church soon to be closed, an elderly priest must choose between his calling and his orders.
Hitler in Hollywood
Michael Lonsdale
A bio-doc about Micheline Presle changes into a thrilling investigation of the long hidden truth about European cinema. This mockumentary thriller uncovers Hollywood's unsuspected plot against the European motion picture industry. Numerous directors and stars appear in the film, making it a choice morsel for all film lovers.
Titeuf
Le Psy
Titeuf is a comic series created by Swiss draughtsman Zep (real name Philippe Chapuis) depicting the life of a young boy (the title's namesake Titeuf, "Tootuff" in the English translation) and his vision of the adult world & themes such as love, sex, seduction and mysteries about the girls. In this film, Titeuf (Donald Reignoux) is off on a new comedic adventure! Things get complicated when Nadia (Melanie Bernier) doesn’t invite Titeuf to her birthday party, which is surely the most horrible moment of his life. Before long, Titeuf’s whole life is turned upside down when his parents are nearly deported. Everything continues to spiral out of control even in the midst of Titeuf’s exhaustive attempts to make matters right.
Of Gods and Men
Luc
French drama based on the 1996 kidnapping and killing of seven monks in Algeria. A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions, eventually deciding to stay and help their neighbours keep the army and the insurgents at bay.
You'll Miss Me
Max
In an airport, six destinies, during a short moment, will change, separate and meet. And if these characters were going through, without knowing it, the most important moment of their lives? Olivier and Lila ... Will he miss his love or will she miss the plane? Julia and Marcel ... Will she avoid death or will he mess up his life? Fanny and Max ... Will she lack of courage or will he be out of luck?
Agora
Theon
A historical drama set in Roman Egypt, concerning philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria and her relationship with her slave Davus, who is torn between his love for her and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.
Les amants cinéma
Self
To Each His Own Cinema
The old blind man (segment "Le Don")
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Heartbeat Detector
Mathias Jüst
A psychologist discovers troubling links between Nazism and modern-day big business.
The Last Mistress
le vicomte Prony
Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
The Gift
A blind man tells his niece about the time he screened Casablanca to a rural village.
Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure
Bartleby (voice)
The Daltons have escaped to New York, where their accumulated loot is hidden in the carts of Monsieur Pierre's group of honest, naive European immigrants, who naively bought land in California from Crook, who inserted a clause they must claim it within 80 days. Joe emotionally blackmails Luke to guide them there, hoping to escape on the way. The usual route must shortened from 6 to 2 months, so no danger can be avoided. Given Lucky's reputation, Crook decides to shadow them to add sabotage, just to be sure- or is it?
Les Mains d'Andréa
Goya's Ghosts
Inquisitor General
Painter Francisco Goya becomes involved with the Spanish Inquisition after his muse, Inés, is arrested by the church for heresy. Her family turns to him, hoping that his connection with fanatical Inquisitor Lorenzo, whom he is painting, can secure her release.
Munich
Papa
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Gentille
Jean
As Gentille opens, Fontaine Leglou is walking down a Paris street, and stops to confront a man whom she suspects is following her. She tells him he looks normal, but she's sorry, she doesn't have time to have coffee with him. When he convincingly protests that he was not following her, she apologizes and asks him to have coffee. Fontaine would seem to have a relatively good life. She works as an anesthetist at a fancy mental hospital, and she's got a live-in Nobel Prize-winning arctic scientist boyfriend, Michel, who seems to love her. But there's clearly something nagging at her. She walks around in a perpetually distracted state, and frequently mistakes other peoples' identities and their intentions. When Michel proposes to her, she needs some time to digest it before she responds.
The Separation
Paul Doumer
On March 21, 1905, the hemicycle of the Palais-Bourbon resounded with the first session of a crucial and animated parliamentary debate, which was to last nearly ten months and occupy 48 sessions in the Chamber of Deputies. They have to study the bill of separation of the Churches and the State. This law, which founded laicity in France, was adopted on December 9, 1905.
Bye Bye Blackbird
Robert
A period drama set in the early years of the 20th century. Josef, a former construction worker who delighted in dancing on girders high above the city, who now sweeps up at the circus. Once the big top's owner spots the young roustabout defying gravity on the trapeze, however, he endeavors to pair Josef with his aerialist daughter Alice in a perilous sky-high pas de deux. Offers a romantic view of big top life, with a moth-eaten angel in his feathered, tattered costume.
The Perfume of the Lady in Black
Le professeur Stangerson
Newly married, Mathilde and Robert are honeymooning at a resort owned by their friends Edith and Arthur, the Chateau d'Hercule. But an unpleasant shock is in store for them.
Invisible
Le gardien
A budding electronica artist gives up his shot at stardom to pursue a woman from a telephone dating network.
Under a False Name
David
A mysterious writer is involved in a love affair with his stepson's wife, leading to a web of intrigue and desire.
Adieu
Serge
Under threat in Algeria, Ismahel emigrates to France where he wants to live and work, with the hope that the people he's fleeing from will forget him the time he is away. In the letters that he writes to the daughter that he left behind in his homeland, he tells his own story in the guise of the biblical tale of Jonas and the Whale. Somewhere in France, an elderly farmer has just lost his young son. His three other children help him as much as they can to get through the trial of the funeral, but the ceremony is halted when the old man falls ill. The two stories unfold parallel to each other and are alternated.
Five Times Two
Bernard
As young French couple Gilles and Marion officially separate, we see, in reverse order, the milestone moments in their relationship: Gilles revealing his unfaithfulness at a tense dinner party; Marion giving birth to their premature son while Gilles is elsewhere; Gilles and Marion's joyous wedding; and, finally, the fateful moment when they meet as acquaintances at an Italian beach resort, and their love affair begins.
Le Furet
Don Salvadore
From his locksmith's shop, a simple guy dreams of becoming a crime boss, at the wheel of his Cadillac surrounded by blonde bimbos. He starts small, assassinating petty criminals. Gaining renown in the newspapers as "Le Furet" (The Ferret), he soon sets his sights higher. The police and organized crime both take up the chase.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
Stangerson
Joseph Rouletabille, a reporter for a local newspaper, investigates the attempted killing of Mathilde Stangerson, who uses the yellow room of the title as her bedroom. At the time of the revolver shots her room was locked and the windows were barred, but when her father enters after having forced the door, there is no-one there except for Mathilde. So who did it and how did he get away?
Kaena: The Prophecy
Opaz (french voice)
Compelled by a mysterious force, Kaena, a rebellious, high-spirited teenage girl will defy the High Priest and her people's ancestral beliefs to take the perilous journey through the Axis and discover what dark secrets lie beyond the clouds.
Best Ever Bond
Hugo Drax (archive footage) (uncredited)
Roger Moore presents the ten best sequences ever to have appeared in the James Bond series, and cast members recall their favourite moments.
Those Facing Us
Mikaël
In a big isolated house, Mikael, a musician, is composing a psalm. A young woman, Linda, comes to retreive a suitcase belonging to Sébastien, her companion and Mikael's friend. It contains hundreds of photographs from all over the world. While he is travelling, Sébastien has asked Linda to organise the photographs with a view to an exhibition. Mikael invites Linda to reside with him. She accepts. That is the heart of the film – an intertwining of photographs which, juxtaposed by Linda, begin to speak. In parallel with this, Linda receives cassette-letters from Sébastien. A subtle relationship is established between Linda, the young debutante, and Mikael, the man of experience. Mikael goes off to direct his psalm, Linda stays alone. The walls become covered with photographs – wall of happiness, wall of misery – the fight between Good and Evil. Linda learns of the accidental death of Sébastien and stays alone.
Delphine Seyrig, portrait d'une comète
Self
Delphine Seyrig, an extraordinary woman and actress, died on October 15, 1990. From "Last Year at Marienbad" by Alain Resnais to "India Song" by Marguerite Duras, she played in 34 films for cinema, 13 films for television and 33 plays. Jacqueline Veuve, filmmaker and friend of Delphine Seyrig, wanted to break the silence that has fallen on her memory by making a documentary that traces with emotion and subjectivity the life of the mythical actress, the fierce feminist but also the simple friend.
Actors
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.
Is Dead - Portrait incomplet de Gertrude Stein
The life and work of Gertrude Stein (1874-1946), an American writer who lived in France for more than half of her life ("... not the half that made me, but the half when I did what I did..."), presented in a montage of her autobiographical texts, with pictures from today mixed with archives from the past.
Inside 'Moonraker'
Documentary looking at the production of the James Bond movie 'Moonraker'. Narated by Patrick Macnee.
A Monkey's Tale
Maître Flavius (Voice)
Kom is from a tribe of monkeys who live in a canopy. He rejects elders' authority as well as the superstition that the lower world would be inhabited by demons. But he accidentally falls from the trees…
Ronin
Jean-Pierre
A briefcase with undisclosed contents – sought by Irish terrorists and the Russian mob – makes its way into criminals' hands. An Irish liaison assembles a squad of mercenaries, or 'ronin', and gives them the thorny task of recovering the case.
Let There Be Light!
Monseigneur Loublié
God comes to Earth in order to make a film.
Don Juan
Don Luis
Spain in the mid-seventeenth century. A series of bloody wars has ravaged the nation. Don Juan the nobleman and his valet, Sganarelle, roam the countryside on horseback, on the run and lost.
Mauvais Genre
Honoré de Balzac
The film's title is a pun, the double meaning referencing both the "wrong genre" and a person with distasteful motives. Insecure novelist Martial Bok promotes his new sexy novel La Fille de Dos ("Girl Observed From the Rear") with a round of book-signings and talk-shows. When beautiful hat designer Camille buys the book, Martial follows her and spies on her as she reads his book and removes her clothing. It's the beginning of his obsession and also an inspiration. After Martial's live-in girlfriend Lucie establishes contact with Camille for real, Martial is able to type out another sexy manuscript.
Noise of Love and War
A couple takes charge of mounting the film of love and war of a filmmaker friend faded away.
La Plante Humaine
Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud
Dollabella
Nelly leaves her lazy, unemployed husband to work for retired judge Mr Arnaud, forty years her senior, after he offers to clear her bills for her. While she types his memoirs the two develop a close friendship, but Arnaud becomes jealous when Nelly begins dating his good-looking young publisher.
Jefferson in Paris
Louis XVI
His wife having recently died, Thomas Jefferson accepts the post of United States ambassador to pre-revolutionary France, though he finds it difficult to adjust to life in a country where the aristocracy subjugates an increasingly restless peasantry. In Paris, he becomes smitten with cultured artist Maria Cosway, but, when his daughter visits from Virginia accompanied by her attractive slave, Sally Hemings, Jefferson's attentions are diverted.
Vroum-vroum
Dieu sait quoi
Narrator
A homage to journalist Francis Ponge in a film that its author regarded as “natural.”
The Remains of the Day
Dupont D'Ivry
A rule bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
L'ordre du jour
Stark
Martin raises alone his son Jonas. Road works Ministry, which employs him, is upset by fighting for power between the Director and Gosselin his assistant.
My Life Is Hell
Gabriel
The naive and self-conscious Leah mistakenly signs a pact with the devil Abargadon. But she's on Heaven's hit list, so the Archangel Gabriel intervenes to bring about the demon's demise. But Leah begins to find Abargadon attractive and not so bad. She decides to save his soul.
Film sur Georges Perec
himself
A two-part documentary made for French TV about Georges Perec, directed by his former partner Catherine Binet. It features a mixture of archival footage, scenes from Perec’s films and to-camera readings of excerpts from his work by various actors and friends of the author (Michael Lonsdale, Marina Vlady, Alain Cuny, Sami Frey, Edith Scob, Harry Mathews and others).
Cela s'appelle l'amour
The theme of Romeo and Juliet is the starting point from which the film spins a web of several stories. A love story between a boy and a girl whose families are Algerian: they are young, beautiful and they are trying to build a family and a social life in France. They love each other, and yet conflicts, family pressure and contradicting desires alternately tear them apart and unite them. The story of Romeo and Juliet, minus death.
Souvenir
Xavier Lorion
In 1944, a dashing German soldier and a beautiful French girl fell deeply in love while World War II raged on. More than forty years later, Ernest Kestner, retired and recently widowed, leaves his adopted home in New York and returns to France to visit his headstrong, estranged daughter, with the fleeting hope of finding the love he was forced to leave behind. But this is no ordinary vacation in the charming French countryside. The mood is strangely dark, and what Kestner and his daughter encounter is completely unexpected as the veteran soldier seeks the ultimate Souvenir - born from the ashes of a horrible, hidden secret. Based on the true story of Oradour-sur-Glane, a French town that was nearly wiped out near the end of WWII. Most every man, woman and child was gunned down or burned in retaliation for the French Resistance. The entire ruined town has been preserved as a national memorial. - Written by Mackinac Media Inc.
Earthen Man
(voice)
From the construction of a sculpture "life size" in the earth, the director Boris Lehman imagines a story that staged a sculptor (Paulus Brun) struggling with an impossible order. The man of land is "golemise", takes life in the countryside, and ends up dying on an opera stage.
The Tribulations of Balthazar Kober
Cammerschulze
Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a plague hit the landscape, he meets the Kabbalists, priests - and himself.
Der Madonna-Mann
Tanzmann
The Abbey of Crime: Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose'
Self
A German TV documentary that chronicles the daily rehearsals, the filming and all the behind the scenes of Jean-Jacques Annaud's classic "The Name of the Rose". From actors perspectives to the ideas used by the director to produce an impeccable international epic adaptation of Umberto Eco's best selling novel, the film presents the obstacles behind the creation of a production of such large scale and also the making of the many difficult scenes, most of the ones presented here are the characters' murders inside the mysterious abbey.
The Name of the Rose
The Abbot
14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to find that several monks have been murdered under mysterious circumstances. To solve the crimes, William must rise up against the Church's authority and fight the shadowy conspiracy of monastery monks using only his intelligence – which is considerable.
Rendez-vous manqués
Moralès
To relieve her boredom, a lonely woman embarks on adventures that turn out to be disappointing.
L'air d'aimer
Raymond
The Insomniac on the Bridge
Antonie
This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.
The Holcroft Covenant
Ernst Manfredi
A man who was a confidant of Adolf Hitler dies and leaves a fortune to make amends for his Nazi past—but his son has to search the world to find it.
Good King Dagobert
Saint Eloi
King's Dagobert I intestinal and sexual problems loom large as he survives an attack on his royal caravan then barely makes it to Rome to personally give thanks to the Pope. After he arrives at the Vatican, he becomes involved in the battle between two contenders for the papacy and has to face the machinations of a ruthless Byzantine princess.
The Colour of Words
Self
This afterword to India Song (Duras' celebrated 1975 film) is organized in several parts. It begins with an interview to Marguerite Duras by Dominique Noguez, an expert in her work; the interview links the film to the two movies whom it's related to: The Ravishment of Lol V. Stein and The Vice-Consul. Several themes are tackled: childhood, autobiographical traces, relationships between differents characters and different films and more. India Song's main actors — Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale, who played Anne-Marie Stretter and the French vice-consul — join the conversation and talk about their roles and their craft. Marguerite Duras then evokes her memories of the shooting with the composer Carlos D'Alessio and her camera operato Bruno Nuytten. The conversations are punctuated by clips of the film.
The Judge
Le docteur
A courageous judge tries to dismantle a drug traffickers ring.
Chronopolis
Narrator (original version only)
Chronopolis tells the story of a gargantuan city lurking in the sky colonized by powerful immortals who have become jaded with eternal life. Most of their time is spent monotonously constructing bizarre and unusual objects while waiting for the ultimate gift to arrive in their hands.
Une jeunesse
Béjardy
After the birthday party of his wife Odile, Louis accompanies a friend to the station. When the train leaves he starts reminiscing about his youth.
Erendira
Senator Onésimo Sanchez
While Erendira, a beautiful teenage girl, has a surreal mystical vision, her grandmother's house catches on fire and burns to the ground. Her grandmother holds Erendira responsible and, in order to extract restitution from the girl, forces her into prostitution. Erendira's surreal mystical experiences continue while her grandmother grows rich from exploiting her.
Enigma
Bodley
Five highly-trained KGB agents are sent to the west to assassinate several Soviet dissidents. In order to stop the diabolical plot, an American agent must infiltrate Soviet intelligence and obtain information from a Russian computer.
Mora
Writer
A reporter travelling to Latin America witnesses a murder through the lens of his camera.
Mersonne ne m'aime
Commissioner Bancau
After a feminist is found murdered in her own home, a police detective investigates the crime with the help of several determined women.
Douce enquête sur la violence
After a businessman is captured by kidnappers, his rescue seems incumbent on a group of filmmakers, rather than a lackluster police force -- a premise that is matched by the rest of this movie. The kidnapping victim rambles on philosophically with his captors, who end up leaving him alone -- thereby providing him with a chance to escape. As he makes a break for it, he is literally hounded by some guard dogs. Then there are also some interviews with people who know one of the kidnappers, though it is not clear why. Neither the victim, nor the kidnappers, nor the filmmakers can compete with the canines, the only protagonists who add some bite to the action.
The Games of Countess Dolingen
Bertrand Haines-Pearson
In this eerie, atmospheric tale, a young woman is on a train when she sees some people she thinks she knows from her childhood. On arriving home, her husband tells her that a certain countess has died. At that point, the film cuts to a scene of the countess singing in a mausoleum while the visual image of the graveyard's many tombstones passes before one's eyes. Back home, the husband -- also a "father-figure" -- is looking over his collection of wooden angels. Some time elapses, and he surreptitiously sees a thief come down through the chimney, steal some things, and then leave. To combat any recurrence, he builds an iron, escape-proof cage around the fireplace, and then goes away on a trip. When he comes back, he finds the thief dead in the cage. Thus far, the camera has only shown the husband in profile or from the back. Then there is another story about a young girl, with a spiteful, nasty mother, who is trying to cope with her own attraction to a man.
Chariots of Fire
Garth Jones (scenes deleted)
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners train for the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell, a devout Christian born to Scottish missionaries in China, sees running as part of his worship of God's glory and refuses to train or compete on the Sabbath. Harold Abrahams overcomes anti-Semitism and class bias, but neglects his beloved sweetheart in his single-minded quest.
The Bunker
Martin Bormann
Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler's last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city.
Seuls
Ludovic
Jean (Niels Arestrup), the lead character in this psychological journey is torn by a search for his lost childhood, the overwhelming need to love a woman of his dreams (someone he has invented), and a struggle with his latent bisexuality. Jean finds some photos inside an automatic photo station that look like his mother who died soon after he was born. He starts to fantasize about the woman, giving her a name and identity and waiting for her to appear. During this time, he meets Carole (Christine Boisson) and has an affair with her, all the while pretending he has this other relationship with the woman in the photo. Significantly, the couple who introduce him to Carole is childless, and they eventually split up - perhaps a comment on the importance of childhood to the adult world. In the end, Carole discovers that Jean's "other woman" has no real existence, causing a crisis that finds a symbolic expression as the last scenes close on the story.
Un paquebot dans la tête
Roland
Jean-Sans-Terre
Jean Papeuil
Moonraker
Hugo Drax
After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax. With the help of scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond soon uncovers Drax's nefarious plans for humanity, all the while fending off an old nemesis, Jaws, and venturing to Venice, Rio, the Amazon...and even outer space.
The Passage
Renoudot
During WW 2, a Basque shepherd is approached by the underground, who wants him to lead a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees. While being pursued by a sadistic German.
Le risque de vivre
narrator
A paean to Darwin and his theories, this documentary on the increasing complexity of life forms as they go up the evolutionary scale is fascinating in its visual images. Microscopic organisms in a tiny drop of water vie for the viewer's interest with birds and monkeys and other animals in their natural setting. Intelligence and awareness increase on the way toward more evolved species until it becomes clear that different kinds of apes and monkeys are fairly calculating in their use of tools and communication. One drawback is that the narration does not entertain on a par with the images captured on camera.
A Dirty Story
Self
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version. Then, the actual person who this happened to relates the same story; this time, however, it is an unscripted documentary, in which the same things occur as in the scripted one.
The Left-Handed Woman
The Waiter
Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them.
The Accuser
Abéraud
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.
Le diable dans la boîte
Georges Aubert
Bartleby
L'Huissier
Adaptation of the classic Herman Melville short story. The narrator, an elderly Manhattan lawyer with a very comfortable business helping wealthy men deal with mortgages, deeds, and bonds, relates the story of the strangest man he has ever known.
Mr. Klein
Pierre
Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.
Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert
The Vice Consul of Lahore
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.
Scrambled Eggs
The President of the Republic
Brumaire, the director of public relations at the Élysée, is trying to boost the rating of his government.
La nuit du beau marin peut-être?
Boris
A César nominated short drama.
Né
The Pink Telephone
Morrison
A small industrialist from Toulouse, goes to Paris to negotiate the buyout of his company from an American financial group. During his stay, the representative of the large firm calls on a luxury call girl to facilitate their "business".
Mad Enough to Kill
Stephane Mostri
A girl from an asylum is engaged as nurse to a small, spoiled orphan boy, whose uncle has evil designs on him, and who hopes to kill him and cast the blame on the girl.
The Romantic Englishwoman
Swan
What is real and what is fiction? Faced with writer's block with his novel, Lewis Fielding turns to a film script about a woman finding herself after his wife Elizabeth returns from Baden Baden. She didn't quite find herself there but had a brief encounter in a lift with a German who says he is a poet. Now the German is in England, gets himself invited to tea where he claims he admires Fielding's books. Which one does he like the best? "Tom Jones." Amused at being confused with the other Fielding, the novelist works the German into the plot.
India Song
Le Vice-Consul de Lahore
India, 1937. Anne-Marie Stretter is the wife of the French ambassador and leads a solitary yet privileged life in Calcutta. The tedium of her existence is relieved by numerous illicit love affairs with government officials, young men who find her an object of desire and fascination. The Vice Consul is driven insane by his love for her and, expelled from the ambassador’s palace, cries like a sick animal. Life continues for Anne-Marie Stretter, the same tedious existence…
The Track
David Sutter
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.
Special Section
Pierre Pucheu - le ministre de l'intérieur
In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy government decides to pin the murder on six petty criminals. Loyal judges are called in to convict them as quickly as possible.
A Whale That Had a Toothache
Le peintre
Bernardette is feeling bored in a country house. She decides to send weekend invitations to a lot of people.
Aloïse
le médecin
The painful life of a mentally unstable but highly gifted woman is unveiled in this film, based on episodes from the life of an actual person. Aloise (Delphine Seyrig) creates a series of haunting drawings while she is incarcerated in an institution for the insane in turn-of-the-century Switzerland. She endures torments as a musically gifted girl and later as a young woman; her developing madness and the barbaric treatments of the time are shown.
Galileo
Cardinal Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII)
Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and discovers irrefutable proof of the heretical notion that the earth is not the center of the universe. But in a rigid society ruled by an uneasy alliance of aristocracy and clergy already undermined by the Plague and the Reformation, science is a threat and enlightenment is a luxury. Faced with either death at the hands of the Inquisition or recantation to a hypocritical but all-powerful Papacy, Galileo must choose between his own life and the restless scientific curiosity that he has spurned family, friends, and wealth to pursue.
Serious as Pleasure
Inspecteur Fournier
"In Serieux comme le plaisir, two men and a woman live quite happily together in a romantic liaison. The woman is probably wealthy anyway, so the trio doesn't worry much about money. One day they decide to take a trip in their beat-up car, managing the whole affair in their own special, insouciant manner. They are followed by a suspicious policeman who thinks there's something fishy about this group..."
Les Suspects
Le juge Souftries
When an American tourist is murdered in the south of France, the police must investigate. In this movie, the police inspector re-creates the girl's journeys through France until the murder is solved. Suspicions are narrowed down to four possible perpetrators early on, and flashbacks illuminate the roles each one played in the girl's vacation.
No Pockets in a Shroud
Raymond
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?
The Phantom of Liberty
Le chapelier
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
Caravan to Vaccarès
Duc de Croyter (as Michel Lonsdale)
American Neil Bowman is traveling through France when he meets British photographer Lila. They are hired by French land owner Duc de Croyter to escort a Hungarian scientist to New York. But they soon realize that the job is not a cushy number, and have to deal with a gang of kidnappers who will stop at nothing to get their hands on the scientist
The Truth About the Imaginary Passion of an Unknown
Le reporter TV / Ponce Pilate
A very personal interpretation, to say the least, of the passion of the Christ According to St. John.
Stavisky...
Docteur Mézy
Irresistible charm and talent helps Serge Alexandre alias Stavisky, small-time swindler, to make friends with even most influential members of French industrial and political elite during the early 30s. But nothing lasts forever and when his great scam involving hundreds millions of francs gets exposed result is an unprecedented scandal that almost caused a civil war.
Successive Slidings of Pleasure
The Judge
A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, and a pair of scissors impaled through her heart, as she lay attached to the bedposts. Apparently, the girl does have powers, to make all people around her fall prey to her spell, glissing progressively into desire, lust, and the unknown.
Right  to the city
Narrator
Lefebvre's Le Droit à la Ville as visualised by Jean-Louis Bertucelli
La Confession d'un enfant du siècle
Smith
Film sur Hans Bellmer
Narrator
Documentary short about Hans Bellmer.
Les grands sentiments font les bons gueuletons
Stéphane
1970s France. In this modern Parisian city suburb, the paths cross of two neighbours living on the same landing, Georges and Claude: one burying his mother, the other about to marry his daughter. Two family events which, on that day, are going to have to co-exist as best they can!
The Day of the Jackal
Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel
An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.
Out 1: Spectre
Thomas
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
Autumn
Julien, le réalisateur
Julien, a movie director, is on the phase of editing his new film, "Juliette sacrifiée". Hurried by his producer, he asks for the help of a professional editor. It is Anne, with whom Julien is soon falling in love. During the whole of the movie, both are sitting in front of the editing table, where they listen to music, talk about politics and what movies should and should not be about.
Les années Lumière
Film montage of documents shot between 1895 and 1900 by the operators of the Lumière brothers.
There Once Was a Cop
Le commissaire Lucas
Campana, a commissar at the drugs bureau of Paris police gets an undercover job in Nice to catch an Italian-French mafia boss. As he slips into the identity of a gangster's brother, who was already killed, he has to play the role of a loving husband with child - something that is not so easy for a confirmed single like Campana. Unfortunately American killers chase behind the Nice mafia clan too, in order to get control of French drug trades to USA.
The Old Maid
Muriel is a shy woman who bluffs and blusters around in order to hide her shyness and to protect her loneliness, even though she longs wistfully for a companion of some sort. She has been lonely so long that now she is an old maid and has never been wooed. In this gentle French film, Muriel gets a glimpse of romance when Gabriel walks into the seaside hotel she is vacationing in. His car has broken down, and he has to stay there for a few days while it is repaired. Hers is the only dinner table with room at it, and Gabriel cannot prevent himself from charming women. She is stiff with him at first, but soon they develop a friendship.
Chut !
Sergel
Out 1
Thomas
While two theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash.
Law Breakers
Inspecteur Bertrand
A judge investigating police corruption finds that the deeper he digs, the more roadblocks he finds.
Murmur of the Heart
Father Henri
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
Papa, the Lil' Boats
Hippolyte the brother of Marylène
In this whimsical French comedy, Cookie is a tough, sweet little rich girl, and is rather smart, too. She's smart enough and charming enough to outwit her kidnappers by setting one against the other until they have all killed each other or died trying to prove thier worth to her.
Jaune, Le Soleil
Un juif
The whole film takes place in a single room where representatives of the two political forces and their enemy "the Jew" are gathered. A female character establishes the dialogue between these individuals and comments on the ideology of each; Until the final scene where everyone seems to rally to a common idea.
Le revolver et la rose
Philippe de la Tour / Dimitri Korkesky
Eric, a 14-year-old boy, is now almost alone. His mother, faced with her husband's bizarre behavior, left the marital home. Eric's father, for his part, leads a triple existence. On the other hand, he maintains apparently normal relations with his son, but at the same time he leads an unacknowledged, secret life "elsewhere", where confused, equivocal relations bind him to a strange, elusive woman, whose vision sometimes inspires feelings of filial love, sometimes reveals to him the bitter taste of a passion faded by time.
Spring
L'homme qui fuit
One of four Hanoun films that take their titles from the seasons of the year, SPRING tells two parallel stories: a man, fleeing the forces of order, takes refuge in the forest, while a young girl living with her grandmother in a nearby village approaches the threshold of adolescence, and begins to discover both the world and herself. - Anthology Film Archive
La fenêtre
Bracquemont
Two suicides take place in the same room of a hotel in Paris. The police investigate the reason why two previous tenants was pushed to hang themselves at that particular place.
The Stud
le commissaire Donald Both
Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is witness to an event that will change not only his life but the destiny of France! A young woman tries to kill herself by jumping from the upstairs window of the hotel where he is staying. Thanks to the services of a passing athlete, the woman is unharmed, and she reveals that her distress is down to her husband’s apparent lack of interest in her. Immediately, Chaminade has a brainwave. He will open a special centre for people like this unfortunate young woman, who will be able to satisfy their romantic needs, at the tax payers’ expense. All is well until this innovative ’pleasure centre’ draws the attention of an over-zealous tax inspector, Dupuis...
Winter
Julien & Marc
While working on a documentary about the city of Bruges, an artistically frustrated filmmaker must deal with the increasing difficulties in his marriage.
Destroy, She Said
Stein
In a secluded hotel circumscribed by a dense forest Max and Alissa Thor meet Stein and Elisabeth. Max, a professor of future history and an aspiring author, is immediately attracted to the brooding wife of industrialist Bernard Alione, Elisabeth, who is recovering from a miscarriage. Stein, a German Jew and potential writer, is infatuated by Alissa, Max's young wife and former student. During their sojourn the guests' identities gradually meld.
Hibernatus
Edouard Loriebat
The frozen body of Paul Fournier is discovered in Greenland where he had disappeared during a scientific expedition in 1905. Perfectly conserved he is brought back to life in the 1960s. His descendants take care of him: to spare him the cultural shock they behave so to make believe it's 1905 and they are his cousins, uncle...
The Nail Clippers
Le mari
A bourgeois couple check into a hotel. All seems fine until a man loses his nail clippers
The Big Wash
Delaroche
Sickened to see his students always sleeping in class, a teacher with a colleague and an anarchist start a war against the television. They climbed on Paris roofs to coat the T.V. antennas with a special product cutting the signal reception.
Stolen Kisses
Georges Tabard
The third in a series of films featuring François Truffaut's alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, the story resumes with Antoine being discharged from military service. His sweetheart Christine's father lands Antoine a job as a security guard, which he promptly loses. Stumbling into a position assisting a private detective, Antoine falls for his employers' seductive wife, Fabienne, and finds that he must choose between the older woman and Christine.
The Bride Wore Black
Morane
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?
Concerto for an Exile
Un acteur au théâtre
Young Africans in Paris face insecurity and vague future. Should they stay in France, or return to their homes?
The Authentic Trial of Carl Emmanuel Jung
L'Avocat de la Défense
20 years later, the recreation of the trial of a simple man that confesses himself as a war criminal, Carl Emmanuel Jung.
Judoka-Secret Agent
Thomas Perkins
Marc is a French secret agent whose only weapons are judo and karate. With the help of his sidekick Jacques, the duo goes to protect a noted scientist from falling into the hands of a gang of underworld thugs. Marc finds love with one of the female gang members who turns out to be a double agent with the British Secret Service.
Les compagnons de la marguerite
Lastac / Lataque, expert en écritures / Le juge (voice)
Jean-Louis Matouzec works for French National Library as an expert looking after the restoration of old manuscripts.He falsifies marriage certificates as his wife refuses divorce.
Is Paris Burning?
Debu-Bridel (uncredited)
Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.
Your Money or Your Life
Le conférencier au club des timides
Pétepan learns that his money has been lost by Robinhoude brothers.He asks his assistants to withdraw his amount from the bank.
Comédie
L'homme (M)
An adaptation of the Beckett play
Je vous salue, mafia!
Hyman
A couple of hit men set out to kill an old friend.
The Ghostly Rental
Kernan
At the end of the 19th Century, young Fanning finishes his studies in theology at the University of Cambridge. During a walk through the countryside, the boy, inspired by the lecture of romantic novels, discovers an abandonned house, from which an old man is coming out. He returns to the house regularly without ever seeing its mysterious inhabitant. Fanning finally surprises the old man while he is sitting on a bench at the cemetery and manages to gain his confidence...
The Buddies
Lamendin
The Little Misses
L'elève
Four young girls' love of boys put their newly opened all-services company in peril.
Jaloux comme un tigre
un autre homme en voiture
Le Procès
Priest
Josef K wakes up in the morning and finds the police in his room. They tell him that he is on trial but nobody tells him what he is accused of. In order to find out about the reason for this accusation and to protest his innocence, he tries to look behind the façade of the judicial system. But since this remains fruitless, there seems to be no chance for him to escape from this Kafkaesque nightmare.
Snobs
Charles Dufaut
The Denunciation
Mercier
Michel Jussieu, a film producer, returns one morning to the cabaret where he forgot his sweater. He discovers the corpse of an extreme right-wing journalist, but immediately he is knocked out. He wakes up in the police station ...
Crime Does Not Pay
Acteur
Husband try to kill his wife with a help of the plan he saw in a film. But reality is not a film.
Adorable Liar
Albert
Juliette is a young woman who just can't help lying. She lies to her sister, Sophie, to Sophie's fiancé Martin, and to all the men she attracts with her womanly charms. But when she falls for an older man, a 40-year old lawyer, her reputation as a liar precedes her and she cannot convince him that he really does love him…
The Door Slams
Georges
Between a whimsical wife, two insolent girls, a son who is engaged in strange chemical experiments and a mother-in-law who is being courted by a rich English lord, André Costais, an intractable industrialist, is struggling to impose his authority on his family.
Les trois soeurs
Andreï Prodarov
A Bullet in the Gun Barrel
Back from Indochina, Tony and Dick, two French soldiers, are now in possession of more than 20 million, entrusted by a trafficker. They buy a nightclub in the district of Montparnasse but are soon hunted by the thug who wants to recover his money.
It Happened in Aden
Sinclair
L'art d'aimer
Raymond