Alain Cuny
Part 5 of Godard's 8 part examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century.
A documentary portrait of Michangelo Antonioni based on Roland Barthes' essay.
During the Crusades, Vercors betroths his beautiful daughter Violaine to Jacques. She cannot marry Jacques because she has contracted leprosy, so Jacques marries her younger sister Mara. Jacques and Mara's first child dies soon after its birth, and Mara begs Violaine to return from seclusion to restore the child to life.
An 8-part documentary chronicling the history of cinema, examining the history of the concept of cinema and how both relates to the 20th century.
"What is a location search ? Maybe that's it : hanging in a pub... let their thoughts flow freely." (André S. Labarthe) The camera reinvests the places that Van Gogh covered in Montmartre, but also among other things the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In this place which "looks like an airport" Labarthe imagine an incredible meeting between Vincent Van Gogh and Antonin Artaud. The Artaud's texts are read by Alain Cluny
La coscienza di Zeno is a TV adaptation of the 1923 novel by Italo Svevo. It was broadcasted by RAI in 1988.
The life of Camille Claudel, a french scupltor who becomes the apprentice of Auguste Rodin and later his lover. Her passion for her art and Rodin drive her further away from reason and rationality.
This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left.
Emile Chenal and his wife, Françoise, leaned on boxing manager Jim Fox Warner to cough up the considerable sum of money that he owes them, with both the police and the mob circling the situation. In the same hotel, Inspector Neveu looks into a murder that took place years before, and his storyline overlaps with the arc of the Chenals.
The lives of the surviving members of the Basileus Quartet, a chamber group that has been playing successfully around the world for more than 30 years, are turned upside down after the death of the leader, Oscar Guarneri. The three aging musicians decide to split up to pursue those pleasures they've denied themselves too long.
On planet Perdide, an attack of giant hornets leaves Piel – a young boy – alone in a wrecked car with his dying father. A mayday message reaches their friend Jaffar, an adventurer travelling through space. On board Jaffar’s shuttle are the renegade Prince Matton, his fiancée, and Silbad who knows the planet Perdide well. Thus begins an incredible race across space to save Piel.
In the fascist Italy of 1935, a painter trained as a doctor is exiled to a remote region near Eboli. Over time, he learns to appreciate the beauty and wisdom of the peasants, and to overcome his isolation.
First of all, "La chanson de Roland" is a great film. But, unfortunately, it's quite an unknown one. Unlike other "medieval" films (e.g. Anthony Mann's "El Cid") there's no "sword-battle-american-pulp-shit" stuff, but a hard intellectual effort in order to offer us a realistic version of the European Middle Ages.
A detective is assigned to investigate the mysterious murders of some Supreme Court judges.
Akira, a Japanese expat working in Amsterdam, falls in love with a Japanese woman at Schiphol Airport who he thinks is his high school love.
During his preparation for his film on Casanova Fellini asks a number of renowned actors to give him their view on the character of Casanova.
Clever, cunning and smooth-talking, Reynard the Fox does not lack imagination when it comes to filling his stomach. A masterful puppetry adaptation of the literary cycle of medieval allegorical fables.
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.
Emmanuelle, a svelte, naive young woman, is en route to Bangkok where she'll join her new husband. He works for the French Embassy and has a lovely home, several dedicated servants, and an expensive car at his disposal. Once Emmanuelle arrives, her husband and a few friends introduce her to a realm of sexual ecstasy she'd never imagined.
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. - Rovi
Caustic satire on bureaucracy of the Vatican authority and a simple Italian who wants to achieve the audience with the Pope.
The Master and Margaret (1972) is based on the eponymous book by Mikhail A. Bulgakov. The film is set in the Soviet Union under Stalin, it has several story-lines, that are intertwined. Maestro Nikolai Masoudov, a talented writer, and his assistant Margaret, are working on a biblical story of Pontius Pilate. The Satan — Woland, and his lieutenants, are harassing Master by surveillance, by killing his friend, and sending another friend to Gulag prison in Siberia. Victimized by their harassment, Master becomes paranoid, and is locked up in a mental institution. Margaret is trying to save him regardless of the danger.
Enrico struggles with his dysfunctional family and cheating wife, and eventually makes plans to kill them all.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the filming of the Federico Fellini film, "Satyricon."
On the Italian/Austrian front during World War I, a disastrous Italian attack upon the Austrian positions leads to a mutiny among the decimated Italian troops.
Two drifters go on a pilgrimage from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Along the way, they hitchhike, beg for food, and face the Christian dogmas and heresies from different Ages.
Inspired by the life of 19th century composer Robert Schumann, this fiction tells the decline of Hans Richter, a great German musician. Then dying, he feels his reason leaving him, while his wife gets closer to his disciple, Friedrich Turner, who has endless admiration for him. After his death, Turner helped make him a legend.
A young Jesuit missionary reflects on his life and his faith while awaiting his execution at the hands of the Native Americans he came to convert.
The son of a rich Italian industrial finds out how tough is to leave the path the society has for him.
Yan, who has just been acquitted of a crime he has not committed, returns to his Flemish village, where he meets hostility, particularly from Franz, the garage owner. Fortunately, Gus, his childhood friend refuses to follow the pack and talks his mother, the richest person in the area, into getting him a job. But Yan is soon drawn to Maria, the sultry girl Gus lives with.
Journalist and man-about-town Marcello struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.
Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when the ugly freak comes close to her is touched by the young woman's beauty...
By a twist of fate, the photogenic Milanese shop assistant, Clara Manni, gets the leading role in Italian movie producer Gianni Franchi's romantic drama, "Addio Signora", and becomes an overnight sensation in Rome. However--as this small role catapults her professional career as a silver-screen diva--more and more, Clara finds herself trapped in a glamorously cruel world of false promises, failed relationships, and disastrous choices. Now, a betrayed, weak, and, above all, insecure Clara has her back to the wall, forced to make a difficult but pivotal decision in her life. Is there a future in the commercial film industry for the beautiful Lady without Camelias?
The Forbidden Christ combines a revenge tale with a postwar reenactment of the first four books of the New Testament. Freshly released from a Russian POW camp, Italian soldier Raf Vallone tries to discover who betrayed his brother to the Nazis. Alain Cuny is an enigmatic carpenter who has confessed to causing the brother's death. Cuny is slain by Vallone, whereupon it is revealed that the carpenter sacrificed himself on behalf of the real culprit, Phillipe Lemaire. Vallone catches up with Lemaire, but is unable to kill him, thanks to the Christlike example of Cuny. Originally titled Il Cristo Proibito, this film represented the movie directorial debut of novelist Curzio Malaparte, who also wrote the musical score.
Elfy, Countess of Saint-Hélié's daughter, was brought up with her foster sister Anne, in an old dilapidated castle whose landlord, Baron Julius Carol, disappeared mysteriously some day. The two girls had a playmate, Hervé, the son of the gamekeeper. Now that they are adult, Anne is in love with Hervé while Elfy thinks she loves the young man. One day, the baron's mummified body is found in an oubliette and the secret of the estate is revealed...
At the end of the 15th century, two minstrels Gilles and Dominique come from nowhere into the castle of Baron Hugues. Gilles charms Anne, Hughes' daughter, while Dominique charms both Hugues and Ann's fiance. Gilles and Dominique are not really in love : they are sent by the Devil to desperate people. But Ann is so pure that Gilles is caught to his own trap... How will they fight against the Devil ?
Deals with the ordeals of a crude washerwoman in the chic court of Napoleon the First. Based on the play of the same name.
The film shows the seizure of power by the Nazis and Hitler wants a trial, at a time when France has just declared war on Germany (Sept. 3, 1939). Hybrid composition, it alternates originals and reconstructions performed by actors (docudrama). A not-so-subtle condemnation of Hitler, Nazism and Germany by the movie's French film makers, which conveniently makes no mention of how the policies of Great Britain and France created Hitler and allowed him to go as far as he did prior to the beginning of the Second World War.
Film sur Georges Perec is a work of pure montage, consisting of a range of famous actors and friends of Perec’s (Alain Cuny, Sami Frey, Harry Mathews, Edith Scob, Lonsdale and Vlady, among others) in close-up, reading out excerpts from the author’s texts against sometimes abstract backgrounds
