Jean Aurenche
A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard. The story unfolds as the monk tries to save the guest's lives without violating the holy secrecy of the confession.
French filmmaker Jean Delannoy directs this inspiring sequel to his biopic about Marie-Bernarde Soubirous (portrayed by Sydney Penny), a young shepherdess who claimed to have seen numerous apparitions of the Lady in White at Lourdes in 1858. Chronicling Bernadette's years with the Sisters of Charity of Nevers convent, the film traces her life from age 22 until her untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35.
A bombing raid makes travelling companions of a blind man, Fernand, and Antoine, a criminal. Fernand is a virgin and is depending on his new friend to find him a woman. But to Antoine, on the run, his fellow victim is more a burden than a boon.
Alice is the widow of a Jewish surgeon who helps the former diplomat Jerome smuggle Jews out of Austria to save them from the Nazis. The duo recruits Charles, a shoe manufacturer whose uncle is a Nazi sympathizer in the Vichy government. Charles and Alice become lovers when they are picked up in Paris by Nazi soldiers on a curfew violation.
A young girl from the provinces, comes to Paris with one goal: to become a part of the rich bourgeoisie. To achieve this she will use her unique beauty and charm.
In 1938 in the french West Africa, Lucien Cordier is a weak and corrupted policeman despised by the local bad boys. His wife is openly cheating on him and he hasn't got any self-respect anymore. But when comes the occasion, his revenge will be terrible.
France, 1893. Joseph Bouvier attempts to shoot his love who refused to marry him and to commit suicide. Upon release from the filthy asylum where he was placed, with bullets still remaining in his head, he wanders the country roads and rapes and murders many teenagers over years. The judge Rousseau captures him, but to serve his ambition seeks to avoid that Bouvier is simply declared insane.
France, 1719. Louis 14th died four years ago, Philippe d'Orleans is the regent. He is a liberal and a libertine. His right-hand man, Dubois, an atheistic and cupid priest, as libertine as Philippe, tries to take advantage of a little rebellion lead by a Breton squire (Pontallec) and of the famine to become archbishop... Description of the life of the court in this period of transition where the French Revolution smoulders.
Lyons, France. Michel Descombes is a watchmaker who lives alone with his teenage son Bernard. When the police visits and informs him that Bernard killed a man and is on the run with a girl, Michel realizes that he knew far less about his son than he thought .
In a village in the Ardennes, during the German occupation, finding rations is becoming almost impossible. Clovis, an ordinary labourer, decides to cross the occupied zone to bring back enough potatoes to feed his family. His plan is a success but Clovis rapidly becomes obsessed with storing the precious tubers.
Claude Sauvage, a tenacious young gynecologist takes a months long internship in a Paris hospital. Between her private life and medical career, she set her doubts and desires in a society where the square and the plight of women remain at that time a secondary issue. The film follows Claude and the staff through the case of some patients while the crucial debate on women's professional ambition, contraception and abortion rights.
A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the upperclassman who is the object of his desire. All set in the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.
Husband try to kill his wife with a help of the plan he saw in a film. But reality is not a film.
At the end of World War II, a French pacifist is arrested for refusing to fight. In prison, he befriends a German priest arrested for murder of a French Resistance fighter. They discuss morality, obedience, and religion.
When the lover of a an oil magnate's spoiled daughter is murdered, her brother-in-law must determine whether the killer is his own ex-wife, the dead woman's lover or somebody else entirely.
Michel Ferréol reluctantly meets up with an old school friend, Antoine Fiesco. Michel didn’t like Antoine much when they were at school and tries to get away by making an excuse. He changes his mind when Antoine introduces him to his wife, a beautiful brunette named Christine.
This movie is a Marcel Aymé adaptation and it deals with the not-so-glorious side of the Occupation: black market, war profiteers, cracking open bottles of Champagne while most of the Parisians are almost starving.
Handsome and rich Spanish gentleman abandons his wife and riches for his love of a young girl of poor stock who taunts and degrades him.
Married French lawyer Andre defends succesfully the case of Yvette, who committed a robbery. He falls in love with her, but she isn't true to him.
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...
Two unlikely companions must smuggle four suitcases filled with contraband pork across Nazi-occupied Paris.
Judge Julien Lamy regularly deals with the welfare of children, namely down on their luck delinquents. When an orphan named Alain Robert burns down a barn belonging to his abusive foster family, Judge Lamy has no choice but to send him to a juvenile jail. There he meets an older boy named Francis Lanoux, who is desperate to escape and be reunited with his girlfriend Sylvette. The boys eventually flee the institution, as Francis goes in search of his lost love and Alain continues looking for his parents. Unfortunately, the little rebels run into some big problems once on the outside.
It's no holds barred for Julian in pursuit of upward mobility. Although expected to channel career aspirations into the Church of the post-Napoleonic era, his intensely romantic liaisons propel him forward at a pace he cannot control.
Three stories, very different in space and time. Lysistrata, a dancer from ancient times, Jeanne d'Arc, medieval warrior and Elisabeth, American war widow who comes on pilgrimage in Italy.
The first to die in an epidemic of meningitis in Vera Cruz is a French tourist. His wife Nellie, detached and indifferent, feels little grief and realizes that her coldness is her own doom. Over the next two days, she is attracted to George, a local drunk who does odd jobs for brothels and dances grotesquely for tourists in exchange for drinks. George has his own dark secret, a tragedy he caused that leaves him with a death wish. In assisting the local doctor to cope with the epidemic, these two emotional cripples enable each other to rediscover reasons to live and to love.
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
A French/Italian motion picture drama covering the seven deadly sins in seven separate sections.
A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard.
Back from the war, Marceau Le Guern remembers. Educated in an orphanage run by Dominican brothers, he fell into misery when he left it. His only asset was his good looks, which did not escape the attention of Madame Alice, a shady woman who persuaded him to pose for pornographic photos meant for lonely aging women. Marceau also served as a gigolo before the war and captivity put an end to this juicy business. Now he wants to start a new life, all the more as ha has found love in the person of a pure young lady named Dominique. But Madame Alice won't hear of it...
The inhabitants of a Scottish island in the 19th century follow their own religion without need for clergy, but as strangers arrive, their faith and beliefs face a deep crisis.
A French fugitive arrives in Genoa, where he becomes entangled with an Italian woman and her daughter.
Young Amélie is currently enjoying life as the kept woman of her reasonably well off boyfriend Étienne. But when Étienne is called off for military duty, he enlists his playboy friend Marcel to keep an eye on her....something of a problem seeing that he is currently looking for a woman with which to create a sham marriage so he can quickly inherit a large sum of money from his father. Then suddenly the Prince of Palestra enters into the picture and boldly asks for Étienne's romantic favors to assess whether or not he would consider taking her as his bride. What's a free-spirited girl to do?
An old man about to die gives all his fortune to a young beggar he meets in an Arabian town. He takes him to his house (now the poor man's property) and he strongly advises him not to open one of the doors, the seventh door. "I could throw the key into the sea" says the young lad" No use, you'd dive to get it back". The young man is curious and he cannot resist temptation: he opens the forbidden door. A strange world is waiting for him where a girl, Leila, will be his guide .
In France during World War I, Marthe waits for her husband, Jacques, while he fights on the front lines. Marthe then begins a tempestuous affair with 17-year-old François, with whom she had a dalliance before marrying Jacques. Jealous François struggles with the fact that Marthe is married, while she tries to prove her devotion to her young, hotheaded lover. Things become even more complex when Marthe becomes pregnant with Jacques' baby.
A teenager becomes fixated on the handsome suitor who died in a duel for her grandmother's love. On her sixteenth birthday, her uncle oversees three men who pretend to be the ghost of the suitor to entertain her - but little do they know, the ghost of the suitor himself is roaming the castle halls......
A minister falls in love with a blind young woman he sheltered, but so does his son.
Having lost his memory due to serving in World War I, Gaston has spent the past 15 years in a psychiatric hospital. Due to his large disability pension fund, several families claim him as their missing son. Gaston is introduced to the Renaud family by the Duchess Dupont-Dufort and her lawyer. The Renaud family attempt to revive Gaston's memory with stories of his past, but he is apalled by some of the things he hears and dislikes the man he is supposed to be.
In Paris in 1887, Irène works as a governess to Douce, the grand-daughter of the dowager Countess de Bonafé. Douce believes she is in love with Fabien, the handsome manager of the estate. However she cannot hope to marry him because of their class difference. Douce's widowed father, the Count de Bonafé, has a wooden leg, and is infatuated with Irène. Douce discovers that Fabien is planning to flee to Quebec with Irène, and also finds out that the Count has asked Irène to marry him. So Douce tells Fabien this and convinces him to run away with her, causing consternation in the family.
A plucky businesswoman agrees to receive love letters to a prefect’s wife from a young official, and soon finds herself embroiled in a scandal that inflames a town’s class tensions.
Odette Joyeux plays an eccentric young aristocrat called "Chiffon", who is struggling to comply with the social conventions of the community. A widow, her mother (Suzanne Dantes) would like to remarry a rich noble. Without realizing it, Chiffon is in love with her uncle, a ruined pioneer of aviation ...
Deals with the ordeals of a crude washerwoman in the chic court of Napoleon the First. Based on the play of the same name.
Five people are gathered in a cafe because of a phone call they have all received. The plot thickens when they discover a dead body in a bedroom upstairs.The five people all become suspects.
A young couple, Renee and Pierre, take one night a room at the Hotel du Nord, in Paris, near the canal Saint-Martin. They want to die together, but having shot at Renee, Pierre lacked the courage to finish the job and fled. Another customer, Monsieur Edmond, a procurer, rescues her. When Renee goes out of the hospital, she is hired as a waitress at the hotel. Monsieur Edmond falls in love with her, but Renee is still thinking of Pierre...
Based on true facts, a news item which was widely talked about in the nineteenth century, this is the story of a wife who might have poisoned her husband .
When Paul, an officer, discovers Denise, a young orphan escaped from her orphanage, he takes advantage of his naivete to seduce her before changing her mind and sending her to live with her mother while sailing.
This 1933 documentary delves into the rich waters of the Rhone. Around Lyon, fishing is already rented and poisoned by industrial waste. Fishermen are forced to poaching at night. They are nicknamed the "Pirates of the Rhone."
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
