Self / C. Olivier / A. Castanier / ... (archive footage)
Self (archive footage)
For Les étoiles ne meurent jamais, director/archivist Max De Vaucorbeil has assembled precious film clips of such Gallic greats as Louis Jouvet, Raimu, Harry Baur, Louis Salou and Marguerite Moreno. Francois Perier's narration links the various vignettes together. In its own way, Les Etoiles ne Maurent Jamais can be seen as a precursor to those now-ubiquitous "tributes" on such cable services as American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies.
Lui-même
Nicolas Pavlovitch
An adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Le Eternel Mari", a somber story of marital infidelity, revenge and near madness, and starring Raimu in his last film appearance.
Boule
In a Provençal village, two jolly good fellows, Boule and Pons, decide to dress as Saint Anthony and Saint Nicholas for the distribution of presents to the children on the feast of Saint Nicholas. They unfortunately get killed by a cart and find themselves in Hell where Lucifer and his demons duly torment them. They are saved by a prayer which helps them to climb the stairway to Paradise. Saint Peter, taken in by the applicants' disguise, lets them in. When the two true Saints show up, trouble follows. Luckily, thanks to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, the two friends are acquitted at their celestial trial and allowed to return to Earth.
Le Colonel Chabert
The story of a French officer who is assumed dead during the Napoleonic Wars, but returns ten years later to a very different France, both on a political and personal level. The film is based on the novel Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.
l'oncle Jules Froment
The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.
Charpillon
Following a broadcast on the radio, each of the listeners remembers these "little nothings" (the title is borrowed from a play by Mozart), which have often changed their lives. Each of these stories told will prove that a tiny detail in life can change an entire destiny.
Monsieur Moulinet
A kind and generous village noble, specializing in good works, actually leads a double existence and carries out dishonest activities.
Antonin Ramatuel / Monsieur La Souris
On a rainy night, eccentric tramp Mr. La Souris finds a corpse. But the body soon vanishes in his car leaving only his wallet. While the police start investigating a missing person report, La Souris concocts a plan to secure his find.
Marc
In the Camargue a local young playboy named Frédéri falls in love with a young woman from Arles. His family thinks she is unsuitable as a wife because she had a fling with a soldier. His entourage attempt to cheer him up but he intends to commit suicide.
Maître Hector Loursat
Loursat, a lawyer, lives with his daughter Nicole in a sinister and vast bourgeois residence. Abandoned for nearly twenty years by his wife, the brilliant lawyer has sunk into alcoholism and his relationship with his daughter is virtually non-existent. However, one day the corpse of a stranger is discovered in the residence of Loursat. Nicole, who frequents a gang of young people who escape boredom by stealing cars and other objects, is immediately suspected.
Vicar Maffre
In the pound, Pipo the dog recounts his adventures to his fellow inmates.
Père Bolène
A widow is loved by a doctor whose brother, an ecclesiastic unconsciously in love with the young woman, persuades her to enter a convent. Brought back on the straight and narrow by a missionary, the priest blesses his brother's marriage.
Pascal Amoretti
Durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, a inocente Patrícia, uma menina do campo, filha de um homem que abre poços, é seduzida por Jacques Mazel, um charmoso aviador. Após encontros românticos à beira de um misterioso rio, Patrícia engravida de Jacques, que é enviado para a guerra. Quando a criança nasce, o seu pai, Pascal, expulsa-a de casa. A família de Jacques não quer reconhecer a paternidade do filho, o que poderá empurrar Patrícia para os braços de Felipe.
Jean Vernet
Jean Vernet, an unselfish banker, feels fine : he has a charming mistress, Jacqueline ; a godson, Fernand, that he took in when he was a child and that he has brought up and cherished ever since ; a faithful friend, Lamblin ; and an adorable dog. But things are not so rosy as they look. Adrienne, Jean's sister, hates Jacqueline and is prepared to do everything to separate the couple. Worse, it looks as though Fernand has betrayed his godfather by sleeping with Jacqueline. To know more about those around him, Jean, a modern Volpone, decides to fake deafness.
Cesare
Caesar, a senior French colonist returned home after many years of absence, knows a girl, Marcella, who is in full depression because she was abandoned by her lover. Caesar welcomes her into his home and surrounds her with paternal attention so that he can quickly forget the past. Slowly his feeling turns into a love that Marcella seems to reciprocate. However, when Cesare realizes that the girl feels only gratitude for him and is in love with a younger man, he loses control. Blinded by jealousy, he plans to kill Marcella's lover but, in the face of the girl's vulgarity and indifference, he realizes that he has been teased and turns his anger towards her.
A man leaves his adulterous wife for his secretary, but then the wife apologizes and wants her husband back again.
Loulou Barbentane
A small town gentleman learns that his prim and proper wife was once a showgirl, and that, even worse, he had enjoyed a one night stand with her in the Orient.
Georges
Middle-aged Georges of the "old school" who offers shelter and comfort to Marcelle. Despite his own reservations, Georges falls in love with the much-younger girl, remaining faithful to her even after he realizes that she cares only for his money.
Bernard Lefrançois
Bernard Lefrancois is a prosperous farmer on the River Marne, while his neighbor is impoverished. Lefrancois objects strongly to the romance between his son and the neighbor's daughter, but it continues in secret. WWI begins and the son becomes an aviator with the French army, and the unwed girl presents Lefrancois with an unexpected grandchild. The German army occupies the area, and the girl is serving France as a spy and securing information needed by the French to drive out the Germans. While his son is engaged in air-combat against the Germans, and the unwed mother of his grandchild is serving as a spy against their country's enemy, Lefrancois also joins the battle as a soldier.
Aimable Castanier
Em uma pequena cidade, um padeiro é abandonado pela esposa, que foge com um pastor, no dia em que faz seu primeiro pão. A vizinhança, que antes zombava do padeiro, decidiu encontrar a esposa fujona já que o padeiro não conseguia mais trabalhar sem ela.
Legendre
The workers Legendre and Martinet have won a large sum in the national lottery. Instead of squandering it, they had the good idea to invest it in industry. Happy in business, they soon find themselves at the head of a fortune. But their characters are very different. Legendre, who is brave and honest, narrowly escapes the malevolence of a couple of harlots. Martinet, his former work companion, has become a crooked and formidable financier. Both will face each other in court, the honesty of the first finally triumphing over the greed of the second.
Victor Agardanne
Outwardly, Monsieur Victor would appear to be the model citizen. A respectable Toulon shopkeeper, he has a devoted wife and is courteous and considerate to all who know him. However, beneath this veneer of respectability hides a notorious receiver of stolen goods, who trades with hardened criminals. Victor manages to keep up his double life without any difficulty until the fateful day when one of his partners in crime threatens to expose him. Fearing a scandal, Victor kills the crook in a moment of panic, using a shoemaker's tool. Naturally, the murder is blamed on a local shoemaker, who is sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Seven years later, the former shoemaker reappears in Toulon, having escaped from prison. The first person to recognise him is Monsieur Victor...
Acteur
Jules and Fernand are two boys from the Café des sports in Marseille who take part in their corporation's annual race.
Camille Morestan
Camille Morestan serves as a jury member at a court in Paris. The attractive Natalie Roguin is accused of murder. Morestan doesn't want to believe she really killed her lover. He succeeds in convincing the other jury members she was innocent. After her acquittal he takes her into his house. While he tries to keep her identity a secret for his family her presence leads to a number of unfortunate incidents.
Francois Patusset
Após a morte de seu marido, Christine planeja visitar cada homem que dançou com ela em um baile muitos anos antes.
Monsieur des Aubrays
Madame Pomarel becomes the winner of a prize of virtue awarded by the Academy of Moral Sciences which Monsieur des Aubrais is a prominent member. In reality she walks the cabarets, including the Moulin Rouge, where a succession of misunderstandings will occur with a string of characters.
Jules Papillot
A timid young man marries the daughter of the entomologist he works for. On the train for their honeymoon, he takes his young wife in his arms when a customs officer suddenly enters the compartment. The groom is now inhibited.
Juste Auguste Theillard
A young man marries the daughter of a famous actress, but is visibly more attracted to his stepmother. She manages, not without difficulty, to reconnect the bonds of a vacillating household.
Le Mari
Um advogado seduz uma mulher casada e passa a noite com ela. Na manhã seguinte, o marido chega no escritório do advogado, mas por outro motivo: ele também passou a noite com uma amante e precisa de um álibi.
Beaugérard père et les deux fils Achille
Slapstick inheritance comedy based on the confusion between twin brothers, both played by the great Raimu who also plays their father.
M. Bourdier
King John IV of Cerdania, who knows monarchs are a vanishing race but who plays his royalty role in state council or boudoir to the hilt, is in Paris to sign a treaty, and becomes enmeshed in intrigue with an actress, Therese Mannix and involved in a bit of cuckoldry with YouYou Bourdier, the ex-seamstress wife of a French senator, who is un-awed by money, power or the King's kisses. For his part, her husband, Senator Bourdier, is glad to use his wealth, wife and collectivist ideals for social position, in spite of his democratic posing.
Mr. Jouvenel
Secret de Polichinelle roughly translates as Open Secret. The "secret" in question is an illegitimate child, the offspring of young-and-foolish Henri (Bernard Lacret). The baby is adopted by its grandparents, Monsieur and Madame Jouvenol (Raimu and Francoise Rosay). At first taking charge of the child because it is their duty, the Jouvenols come to love the little nipper as if he were their own son. At this point, the film threatens to drown in a morass of sentiment, but the actors and the director manage to stem the bathos with some first-rate comedy vignettes revolving around the care and feeding of the bouncing baby boy.
César Ollivier
Panisse está morrendo, alegremente, com amigos, esposa e filho a seu lado. Ele se confessa ao padre e insiste que o médico seja honesto sobre sua condição. Mas, ele não pode ir sem dizer ao filho Cesariot que seu verdadeiro pai é Marius, o filho ausente de César, o padrinho de Cesariot.
Samplan
The gratuitous murder of his father and the misery of the people, aggravated by a succession of bad harvests, lead Gaspard, a great admirer of Mandrin and blacksmith by profession, to revolt. With his companion Samplan, he finds himself at the head of a handful of soldiers dissatisfied with their fate and a band of brigands. They steal money from the rich to give it to the poor, like highwaymen, vindicators with a big heart. In their eyes, things cannot go on like this, in this country which seems given over to the decadence of the nobility and the whims of an indolent king. Gaspard and his troupe are responsible for making it known.
Labaume
Ginette, a Parisian seamstress, lives poorly but happily with her musician lover. When Count la Ferronnière offers to teach her the manners and behaviours that will open her the doors to a richer world, she quickly chooses wealth over love.
Aubrey Harrington
Aubrey is a debt-ridden man. One day, he has the idea of faking his death and taking on the role of a deceased cousin about to receive a beautiful inheritance. This idea will, however, lead him to very difficult situations.
Tartarin de Tarascon
Tartarin is the local hero in the small provincial town of Tarascon. He shows off about imaginary adventures in Africa, where he has never been, as a Lion Hunter, which he is only in his imagination. Even though the locals know he has never been to Africa, they keep hoping he will leave one day. After a misunderstanding, and much gossip, everyone thinks that Tartarin plans to actually take the trip.
Monsieur Prosper
After retiring as a butler in a nightclub where he made his fortune, Prosper decides to return to his job after the death of his wife. Now ruined, he only finds a job as a dishwasher.
Gédéon - Jules Taffard
A knight of industry escapes from prison and undertakes new financial affairs under a false name.
Charlemagne
After the sinking of their boat, seven passengers from a wealthy background find themselves on a desert island. The man who saves them from drowning then proposes to the sailor Charlemagne to become the king of the peninsula.
Clodomir
Chénérol, a wealthy merchant, one day discovers that his wife is having an affair and that his nephew is playing with him. Indeed, the latter, Théodore, does not work but earns money by using a few dirty tricks.
César Olivier
Picking up moments after the end of Marius, this film follows Fanny’s grief after Marius’s departure—and her realization that she’s pregnant. Panisse continues courting her and embraces the baby’s impending arrival as a gift, so long as its paternity remains a secret. Fanny and Panisse wed, but after her baby’s birth, Marius returns unexpectedly and demands what he believes is still his.
Le capitaine Hurluret
The life of disorderly soldiers in the barracks dealing with daily routines.
Félicien Bédarride
A bureaucratic civil servant is annoyed by the spoiled daughter of a rich chocolate maker, but lands up marrying her.
Célestin / Floridor
Célestin, the organist of a convent, has written and composed a light operetta under the name of Floridor. One day, the Mother Superior asks him to chaperone one of the boarders, Denise de Flavigny, who is returning home to get married. Now, Denise, for all her goody goody looks, soon proves as saucy as can be. Things get even more complicated when Célestin starts courting Corinne, the star of his operetta, to the great displeasure of a commander of dragons, the young woman's lover. Worse, the latter is none other than the Mother Superior's brother... To say nothing of Lieutenant Fernand de Champlatreux, who happens to fall in love with Denise, his fiancée that he has never seen before...!
Cesar Ollivier
César runs a bar along Marseilles' port, assisted by his 23 year old son, Marius. Colorful characters abound: M. Panisse, an aging widower and prosperous sail maker; Honorine, a fishmonger with a sidewalk stall near the bar; her daughter, Fanny, who helps her sell cockles just outside the bar; and various old salts. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship's whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny's hand in marriage and when a departing clipper needs a deckhand, Marius and Fanny must decide who and what they love most. César, with his generous, wise spirit, tries to guide his son.
Marcel Desnoyers
A one-night stand with an entertainer threatens to destroy a woman's marriage after she gives birth to a black child.