Fumée, histoire et fantaisie
Also Directed by François Villiers
A Canadian sailor (Jean-Pierre Aumont) becomes a fugitive for love after a night with a woman (Maria Montez) in Marseille.
In 1943, a group of high school students decide to take action against the Nazi occupying forces. Showing courage and imagination, they manage to blow up the Kommandantur and to release hostages. But after the killing of a German soldier the Nazi police apparatus strikes back. The young resisters are arrested and two of them are condemned to death.
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.
In this unusual feature, Manika (Ayesha Dharker) is a girl born in a Catholic family in a south Indian fishing village is convinced that she has recently had a former life as a Brahman wife in Nepal. Her parish priest, Father Daniel (Julian Sands) is under orders to convince her otherwise, as reincarnation does not accord with official Catholic doctrine. Instead, he agrees to journey with her to the site of her dreams of a previous life. Once there, they discover that all is just as she had dreamed it, and her former husband has remarried despite promising not to. Her arrival on the scene does not disturb the man, but it really upsets his new wife, who departs with her baby. Manika decides that it helps no one for her to remain there in Nepal, and returns to her home in the south. However, all this has caused a genuine crisis of faith for the priest who, witnessing all this, has had to grapple with some irreconcilable issues.
"Black Friendship" - The commentary recalls that Radio Brazzaville was, from June 18, 1943, the contact of the French settlements and the metropolis, bush stations participate in the organization of the resistance.
Produced and conceived by French filmmakers Jean Cocteau and François Villiers, with a screenplay by Langston Hughes, Rhythm of Africa takes a look at the special ceremonial dance of atonement in Chad. The heartbeat of the jungle, the day-to-day life in the modernizing village, and the bustling marketplace take on a hypnotizing rhythm of their own. A changing Africa asserts itself in a changing world.
The heroine in L'Eau Vive is the unwilling heir to a fortune. Young Hortense (Pascale Audret) has always known that her family was greedy, but until she inherits her father's hidden millions she has no idea how loathsome her relatives could be. Surrounded on all sides by grubby, outstretched hands, Hortense takes some comfort in the fact that her legacy is still missing. When the money is finally recovered, our heroine does the "right thing" with her windfall, leaving her mercenary family empty-handed. Throughout the film, Hortense's dilemma is likened to a government dam project not far from her home; as the bridge grows in size, so too does Hortense's resolve to rise above the nastiness all around her.
Rear Window meets Estate violenta. The middle-aged Constance watches a young couple that lives across the courtyard; the girl plays loud pop music and goes out of her way to be unpleasant to the classically educated and piano-playing Constance. Then one day Constance sees the boyfriend strangle the little tart in a fit of jealousy. He sees her, too, and has nobody else to turn to for help. Constance keeps silent about the murder and offers the young Hugo a place in her bed. Then the blackmail notes start to arrive...
