Jean Desailly
Pierrette is a woman who describes herself as having "opted for the temporary on a permanent basis." After 15 years of living the good life in Switzerland, Pierrette one day packs her bags full of fashionable outfits and returns to her native Paris with no idea of what she'll do. Pierette, however, leads a charmed life; while her son is forced to work the graveyard shift at a factory due to poor job prospects, she's able to find a job right away at a high school. Pierrette soon reintroduces herself to her 23-year-old daughter and one-time best friend, trying to use her charm to skate over years of neglect. She just as suddenly finds a new beau, Ackerman, and starts helping him out with his antique business. However, what would seem like a simple matter -- buying a clock from an elderly woman -- soon turns out to be very complicated and fraught with consequence.
Iranian Iradj Azimi directed this French historical drama re-creating events depicted in the famous 1819 painting The Raft of the Medusa by Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault (1791-1824). The ill-fated voyage of the frigate Medusa begins when it departs Rochefort for Senegal in 1816. After striking a sandbar off the African coast, 150 civilians row safely to shore, but Captain Chaumareys (Jean Yanne) orders 140 soldiers and sailors onto a raft (minus supplies) and has it cut loose. Only 14 survive from the 140, creating a scandal back in France. Gericault (Laurent Terzieff) later talks to three of the survivors while researching his painting. Work on this film began in 1987, but sets destroyed by Hurricane Hugo caused delays, so the film was not completed until 1990. However, it then remained undistributed until an incident in which writer-director Azimi slashed his wrists in front of French Ministry of Culture officials.
Quentin and André, two brothers who had lost sight for several years, find themselves in the family home, uninhabited since the death of their parents.
French secret agent Joss Baumont is sent to kill the president Njala of an African country. However, a counter-order is given before he can execute his mission and he is abandoned in the hands of foreign authorities. He escapes and seeks revenge by pursuing what was his original mission.
In this satire, a police detectiveis investigating the disappearance and kidnapping of the host of a television dance show. However, instead of finding his man, he is trapped into becoming a contestant on a children's quiz show. What's worse is that he becomes a very successful contestant.
After his father is killed in a plane crash, Bart Cordell returns back home to France to claim his inheritance: to lead the industrial empire his father built. But when a prostitute tries to set him up for a drug smuggling charge, he is forced to accept that his father may have been assassinated and that the killers are out to get him as well...
Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.
After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with the politics. Stalin has sent out an assassin, Frank Jacson. Jacson befriends a young communist and gets an invitation to Trotsky's house.
Set during the reigns of the last five kings of the Capetian dynasty and the first two kings of the House of Valois, Tha Accursed Kings begins as the French King Philip the Fair, already surrounded by scandal and intrigue, brings a curse upon his family when he persecutes the Knights Templar. The succession of monarchs that follows leads France and England to the Hundred Years' War.
10 years ago, François Nolan and his brother have been betrayed by one of their accomplices after a break-in. During the fight with the police, Francois's brother was killed, and a cop disfigured by François. Now, François is back for revenge. As nobody knows who the traitor was, the former accomplices lose their head. The disfigured cop is also waiting for the right moment to take his revenge on François.
Montage film dedicated to the Resistance, under German occupation from 1940 to 1945, with documents from French, Canadian, American, English and German archives.
A Romanian peasant fights to get back to his family after he's imprisoned by the Nazis.The picture is based on real events. It includes Hungary's government in collaboration with the Nazis, the encroachment of Romania by Stalin's troopers, and other happenings.
The rich and conservative Edward can not forgive his younger wife who had been unfaithful. She's trying to get his attention by flirting with a Dutch tourist.
A story about two girls who grew up as sisters, were separated and finally met again.
Pierre Lachenay is a well-known publisher and lecturer, married with Franca and father of Sabine, around 10. He meets an air hostess, Nicole. They start a love affair, which Pierre is hiding, but he cannot stand staying away from her.
Paul and Bernard seek in the reproductions of Jerome Bosch's "Jardin des délices" a definition of lust. Bernard remembers his childhood, where he confused lust with luxury. Jacques Demy based this 1962 short, made for the omnibus feature "The Seven Deadly Sins",on his memories of growing up in Nantes.
Stéphane Blanchon lives a quiet life in Switzerland with his wife, Christine, until a young American boarder named Belle, who was living with them, is found murdered. Despite Stéphane's innocence, the evidence points to him, and he learns that Belle harbored romantic feelings for him. Suspicions mount against him; even Christine thinks he is the culprit. Stéphane's sanity begins to crumble, and he lashes out in unprecedented ways.
Un soir sur la plage is relatively interesting; the cast includes highly talented Jean Dessailly, Martine Carol, a cast against type Michel Galabru as the cop.The biggest surprise is sixties starlet Daliah Lavi as a simple-minded nymphomaniac girl who is murdered on the beach. The story is essentially a whodunit: in Martine Carol's house, there are many people (too many people actually) and they all have a reason to get rid of her.
On his journey through USA, Simon Templar, alias 'the Saint', landed in Palm Springs. After arrival, Simon is offered a job as a bodyguard of a millionaire who is threatened with death.
Bernard Sommet has killed his wife and her lover and he declares that was a crime of passion. Sylvie Foucot, his court-appointed attorney, not only believes him but falls in love with him. But the examinating magistrate is not convinced. For his part, he leans towards premeditation. Whether Sommet premeditated his act or acted out of anger and jealousy will be up to the court to decide.
The lucky Baron wins a boat in a card game and takes off with his former lover to find new adventures. Adverse circumstances land them in a small town, where the Baron's seafaring companion leaves for more attractive scenery offered by a wealthy local man. Meanwhile, there is a certain charming cafe owner that the Baron finds irresistible -- at least for awhile.
Desperate, Didier throws hymself out in the Seine. Pascal, a newsboy, jumps and saves him. It’s the beginning of the friendship between them.Once, as Pascal helps Didier, he finds himself involved in a murder. Only the superintendent believes in his innocence…
Burgundy 1728. Old count Antoine d'Eon is overjoyed. His daughter-in-law has finally given birth to a boy and he will at long last be able to transmit his inheritance to his son Pascal. At least this is what he thinks, for Pascal has concealed from his father the fact that his son was ... a daughter, his eighth daughter! Well, enough is enough and Geneviève has no other choice but become a boy first, then a soldier and even the special envoy of Louis XV, King of France, to Catherine II, the Czarina of Russia.
Four women were murdered, each was knifed and, though they had their clothes torn, they weren't molested. As the famed police inspector Jules Maigret pieces the clues together, he comes to realize that for the elusive man that he suspects to be unmasked, he has to set him a trap.
Armand, a boastful womaniser, makes a bet that he can seduce any girl he wants. He soon crosses paths with a beautiful Parisian divorcee, who is nothing like anyone he has ever met before.
Witty narration follows the history of Versailles Palace; founded by Louis XIII, enlarged by autocratic Louis XIV, whose personal affairs and amours, and those of his two successors, are followed in more detail to the start of the Revolution, after which the story is brought rapidly up to date. A huge cast plays mainly historical persons who appear briefly.
Fred Peloux nicknamed Chéri, the handsome son of Charlotte Peloux, a former demimondaine, lives in the small circle of his mother's friends, all high class prostitutes past their best. He has an affair with Léa, a waning beauty, who loves him both as a mistress and a mother. But the age difference takes its toll on their union. To please his mother, Chéri accepts to marry young Edmée without actually caring for her. After a while, the young man tries to return to Léa...
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?
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.
An old merchant ruined by the dot its two ungrateful daughters, moved to the Vauquer pension in Paris. In after Balzac.
A young man comes back to his hometown to be confronted with a bourgeois obnoxious family who has always despised his -now dead - parents because they were music hall artists, "entertainers". But because he's the sole legatee of an uncle's fortune, his relatives become friendly with him.. at least for a while.
