Gilberte Géniat
Birth : 1916-02-17, Paris, France
Death : 1986-06-28
Caretaker
A diverse group of guests gather in a small hotel in Paris to contemplate the state of their lives in this pretentious drama. Joseph Goldman (Fernando Rey) is a washed-up Hollywood actor making a living in the dinner-theater circuit. Accompanied by his wife Sarah (Carole Regnier), Goldman meets Frederique (Berangere Bonvoisin), who is hiding from her former lover. French financier Arthur (Fabrice Luchini) hopes to get into the film industry and bends the ear of a British director (Michael Medwin). The talkative film has little action, and none of the characters evoke much interest or resolve their dilemma.
Embassy Guest #2
American housewife Cathy Palmer loses her memory on a trip to Paris after being hit by a car. She wakes up in the hospital believing she's the fictional international spy, Rebecca Ryan.
Zézette
Françoise has gone into business seducing men whose wives want to divorce them, and who need incriminating evidence against them. In addition, she has a little blackmail operation going on on the side with politicians who can't afford a scandal. She got started on this business after she was raped, and hasn't looked back since. Now the police are on her trail, and she avails herself of the services of a couple who make a profession of hiding wanted criminals. At the hideout, she meets Simon, a second-generation mobster. As the police close in, Françoise and Simon go on the run together, pulling off occasional heists for operating money. Before long, they have also fallen in love.
L'ouvreuse du théâtre
Solange is depressed: she's stopped smiling, she eats little, she says less. She has fainting fits. Her husband Raoul seeks to save her by enlisting Stephane, a stranger, to be her lover. Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange. She knits. She does housework. Everyone, including their neighbor a vegetable vendor, agrees that she needs a child, yet she fails to get pregnant by either lover. The three take a job running a kids' summer camp where they meet Christian, the precocious 13-year-old son of the local factory manager. It is Christian who restores Solange to laughter
Sophie Tatischeff's short film set in the small town of Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre, three decades after its use in her father's film 'Jour de Fête'. The conversation from a typical village bar is transplanted to a patisserie with particularly tempting tartlets: 'No reason for us not to have another' says one habitué; 'no more for me thanks,' says another. 'A shortbread at this time of day?' asks the woman behind the counter.
La concierge
A serial-killer frightens Paris by phoning young ladies at night, telling them insults about their lives. Minos, as he calls himself, wants to prevent the world from free women and he targets at first these ones. Commissaire Letellier is given the investigation and he has hard work with the maniac.
Paris Apartment Concierge
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.
Isobel
Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He chooses Camille Bliss as his subject of study and begins to visit her in prison for interviews. Camille became acquainted with trouble at a young age and justifies her actions by "fate-bets." She is currently in prison for allegedly murdering one of her lovers. As she tells Stanislas of her life and love affairs, his interest in her grows to more than just professional. Can he resist her charm?
The Concierge
The story of an apartment in Paris and the various people that occupy it over the years.
Village Storekeeper
Dany Longo is blonde, beautiful, disturbed, passionate--and nearsighted. As she speeds through the south of France in a purloined Thunderbird on an errand for her employer and his wife, no one, including Dany herself, knows where she is headed--or why she is going there.
Rose
Treated as an outcast and exploited by the villagers of a small town, a young woman liberates herself through sex, which she uses as a tool of economic gain and an instrument of revenge against those who have wronged her.
Rose
Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it. She uses her sexuality and the promise of marriage to get Joseph to confess -- but things do not go as planned.
Mme Zoutin
Marcel, a simple-minded factory worker, is tricked into buying a high-priced American convertable car by a widow determined not to let it fall into the hands of her late husband's secretary/secret lover. Once in pocession of the car, Marcel only encounters one bad luck episode after another with the excessive gasoline consumtion, his wife trying to sell it to make ammends meet, getting into traffic jams, accidently riding into a car wash with the top down, and more
Barbara Laage essays the title role in Zoe. Our heroine's adventures begin when she catches the eye of a big-city playboy named Arthur (Michel Auclair), who is attracted not only to Zoe's beauty, but by her insistence upon telling nothing but the whole truth. This trait causes no end of comic complications when Zoe moves into the palatial home of Arthur's family. The limit comes when Zoe botches a big business deal formulated by Arthur's not-altogether-honest father (Louis Seigner). Zoe is based on a stage farce by Jean Marsan.
The ticket seller
Noël is a bachelor who inherits a matrimonial agency. After contemplating selling it, he chooses to manage it.
Annette, the maid
One day, Raoul Cérusier realizes with amazement that his face has changed. With the exception of an old uncle, no one, not even his wife, recognizes him. From an ordinary, rather ugly man, he has become a charming young man on whom the prettiest girls turn, including his wife whom he seduces. Fortunately, he regains his old face in time and Madame Cérusier, losing a lover, finds her husband again.
The telephone operator
A woman who has a terrible secret to conceal takes refuge on a barge.
La cliente de la voyante (uncredited)
A woman in Paris hires a taxi driver to locate her ex-lover, father to her newborn child, who left her without leaving an address.
La caissière (uncredited)
Jean-Louis forgets to use the pedestrian crossing;Who could have believed then where it would lead the unfortunate guy to?
Solange, l'épicière
Suppose lost and found objects could talk... But they can! At least four of them... : -A statuette of Osiris remembers how two ex-lovers, a model and a good for nothing who claimed to be an Egyptologist, met again one Christmas Eve. -A violin has things to say about Raoul, a humble policeman who lost Solange, a widowed grocer he loved, to a god-dam seducing busker also named Raoul. -A scarf was witness to an eerie romance between a young madman and girl he had saved from suicide. -A funeral wreath lets us know how it caused a young woman to believe her lover dead. After having told their respective story, the objects return to their customary stillness.
The maid (uncredited)
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.
Gaby
The struggle of a female doctor against superstition and healers.
Jeannette
In the train that takes her back home, Catheine Beryl meets concert pianist André Fuger, a childhood friend of her husband's. The musician is both good-looking and seductive and Catherine soon falls for his charms. The two young people spend the evening and the following night together. The next day, a lost powder compact gives the affair away. At a loss, Catherine runs away from her husband but she has an accident. When she regains consciousness in her hospital bed, Catherine finds Georges, her husband, by her side, pretending nothing has happened.
A young woman who inherits her uncle's nightclub, invents a gangster husband in order to gain respect.
Mrs. Beauvoir
Paris, France, December 1946. Jenny Lamour, an ambitious cabaret singer, and Maurice, her extremely jealous pianist husband, become involved in the thorough investigation of the murder of a shady businessman, led by Antoine, a peculiar and methodical police inspector.
Geneviève
Cambo, a banker, has been in trouble since a certain Parizot has tried to extort stocks from him. Following the advice of his friend Quincampoix, Cambo decides to trade places with Bardac, a painter, who happens to be his lookalike. Bardac slips into Cambo's shoes with delight although he does not really live up to his task. But Cambo, who manages to ruin Parizot, makes a 100% profit on the situation. There are of course some misunderstandings when one man is mistaken for the other, notably as concerns Lulu and Geneviève, respectively Bardac's and Cambo's sweethearts, but things finally return to their initial state.
Estelle
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.
The daughter Sauton
A courier carrying a large sum of money intended for Bonaparte's army is attacked. A miscarriage of justice will lead an innocent person to the guillotine.
Louise, la bonne
Catherine
During the students ' rebellion against Nicholas the Second in Russia, Viana tries to kill the governor but it's her lover who is arrested and sent to a sinister fortress : hence the title. To help the prisoner,Vania marries the officer who commands the place. There the convicts have really a bad time, but Vania manages to communicate with her dear captive. But beware of informers.
Helene is based on Helene Wilfur, a novel by Vicki (Grand Hotel) Baum. Madeleine Renaud essays the title role, a young medical student in love with aspiring musician Pierre Regnier (Jean-Lous Barrault). Pierre's father, a noted surgeon, puts pressure on his son to give up music in favor of medicine. Unable to withstand his father's remonstrations, Pierre kills himself, prompting the grieving Madeleine to forget all about romance and dedicate her life to the cause of healing others. Wilfur avoids the usual soap-opera goo by offering realistic performances and credible dialogue (the English-language subtitles were composed by erudite film critic Herman G. Weinberg).