Jeanne Moreau
A walk through the career of French filmmaker André Téchiné, from his own point of view and that of those who worked with him: Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart, Juliette Binoche and Sandrine Kiberlain, among others.
This portrait of the world-famous French director based on his personal correspondance reveals the little known insurgent side of his personnality. Featuring interviews with close collaborators, friends and family, this definitive documentary tells his intimate story, from the streets of Paris to the filmmaking accolades and high profile marriages at the height of his career.
The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-1985), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.
Monique, happy and about sixty, is at the head of a small meeting agency, specializing in the third age. Her friend Madeleine is a regular and does not hesitate to make her organize meetings with the gents that she finds to her taste, more out of curiosity than of desire to find the soul-mate. While, the meetings follow each other and are all different. Love does not, necessarily, knock where we expect it too !
18 years after his last film, (The Troubles We've Seen), Marcel Ophuls emerges from retirement as one of our last masters, the most corrosive, the funniest as well. And the most forceful. The director of The Sorrow and the Pity shares with us stories of his exceptionally rich life in this light-hearted yet bitter escapade though the century and the movies. Son of the great Max Ophuls, he is generous in his admiration. We also meet Jeanne Moreau, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and of course François Truffaut. There are no great filmmakers without a memory, so here is the memory shop of Marcel Ophuls.
Anne leaves Estonia to come to Paris as a caretaker for Frida, an elderly Estonian lady who emigrated to France long ago. Anne soon realizes that she is not wanted. All Frida wants from life is the attention of Stéphane, her younger former lover. Stéphane, however, is desperate for Anne to stay and look after Frida, even against the old lady's will. In this conflict of strangers, Anne will find her own way…
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them.Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.
The concept includes a series of shorts titled "Dispositif + No + title". They all deal with subjects mixed in a unique and unusual presentation. It is an inventively surreal image and sound experience. It is Jean Cocteau for the twenty-first century.
Documentary about François Truffaut who is one of the most respected directors in the history of cinema.
Natanaël, seven, still doesn't know how to read. His eccentric old aunt bequeaths her house to his parents and her book collection to the young boy. Nat discovers that the books serve as a shelter for all the heroes found in children's literature. They are the original characters and are counting on him for protection. For if they leave the library, they will disappear along with their stories forever! When his parents start selling off the books, Nathanaël, who is shrunk by the evil witch Carabosse, braves everything to save his tiny friends
"Vian Bubbles" - On June 23, 2009, fifty years to the day after the death of Boris Vian, a supernatural phenomenon crosses all of France: in the streets, one sings everywhere his songs and one expresses oneself only in the language of the poet. In Paris, Antoine de Caunes wakes up to discover the strange "vianic" epidemic, which also affects radio waves and the small screen. A boss of channel proposes to him to organize, for the same evening, a show dedicated to the songs of Boris Vian. Jean-Pierre Marielle tells us the story of this phenomenon, as supernatural as inexplicable. A tribute in songs to the glowing cast.
A man endeavors to collect memories of his grandparents who died in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.
A political drama centered around Israel's pullout from the occupied Gaza strip, in which a French woman of Israeli origin comes to the Gaza Strip to find her long ago abandoned daughter.
A City Runs Through the Festival is an anatomy of the Festival through the eyes of its own audience.
A couple's honeymoon trip aboard a yacht leads to a claustrophobic drama when another vessel runs into their voyage, apparently drifting. Shot in a piecemeal fashion between 1966 and 1969 and plagued with production problems, this film never completed principal photography and never entered post-production. The original negatives are now considered to be lost, and the film only exists in two incomplete workprint versions (one color and one black-and-white), which have received isolated public screenings since 2007.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, is an unscrupulous and beautiful woman, in love with Andrea Pieri, a patriot ready to do anything to free Italy from the foreign oppressor. Wounded during a chase, Pieri takes refuge in the castle of Virginia, which, with the approval of her husband, Count Francesco Verasis of Castiglione, takes care of him. Meanwhile, Nigra, in charge of the affairs of the Kingdom of Piedmont in Paris, discovers the relations of the countess with the subversives and sees in her the perfect tool to bring Napoleon closer to the Italian cause.
Juliette, 15, is the only child of an eminent judge and has had the best of education in the best of schools. Her father is in the limelight because he’s been chosen to preside over one of the most important trials of the past 10 years: the case of Réal Lamontagne, a notorious criminal accused of killing a child. Roméo, 17, is the son of the accused. Even though they come from diametrically opposed universes, Juliette and Roméo fall for each other.
In the nineties the Yugoslavia Federation falls apart in bloody wars. Perpetual student Milan, a Serb from a patriarchal community and Kenan, a Muslim cellist, are a homosexual couple living in Sarajevo. Their lives, intimate and public, are shaken up by the aggression in Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose devastating consequences unfold in inter-ethnic hatred. Trapped in Sarajevo during the siege of the Serb forces, the lovers manage to flee to Milan's home village and there they take shelter, waiting for Milan's father, Ljubo, to find a way to the Netherlands. Witnessing the brutality of Serb forces and their hatred towards Muslims, Milan desperately improvises: he disguises Kenan as a woman and begins to present him as his wife, Milena, a secret discovered by Milan's best friend, Lunja. Milan is drafted into the army and the situation becomes almost unbearable for Kenan. His one companion, is Ranka, a waitress in a local café, a woman whose dark secrets terrify most of the villagers ...
Romain, 31, a gay photographer, learns that a malignancy may kill him within a few months. Decisions: treatment? work? how to tell his lover and his family. He remembers the sea and himself as a child. He stares in the mirror. He's cruel: facing death, he pushes people away - what's the point? He visits his grandmother to tell her; on the way, he chats briefly with a waitress. He looks at old photos, visits a childhood tree house. He takes pictures. Returning from his grandmother's, he stops for food and sees the waitress, Jany, again. She makes a request. He returns to an empty flat - his lover has left. Can Jany's proposition give him a way to move past self-pity?
Ashes and Snow, a film by Gregory Colbert, uses both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. The 60-minute feature is a poetic narrative rather than a documentary. It aims to lift the natural and artificial barriers between humans and other species, dissolving the distance that exists between them.
It is the early 1300's and the treasury of France, under the rule of Philippe IV (Philippe le Bel or Philippe the Beautiful), is empty. The king decides the only solution is to raid the treasures of the Knights Templar (amongst others) and concocts various charges of treason, heresy and deviance against the Knights and their Grand Master Jacques de Molay. Having confessed under torture to the crimes of which he is accused, de Molay is condemned to be burned at the stake. With his dying breath he curses the king, the king's advisor (Guillaume de Nogaret), the pope (Pope Clement V) and the thirteen succeeding generations of their families. There follows one of the most dramatic periods in French history, half a century of political intrigue, murder, treason, war and famine, which ultimately culminates in the 100 Years War.
Follows seemingly unrelated people as their lives begin to intertwine while they fall in – and out – of love. Affections languish and develop as Christmas draws near.
Cet Amour-là is an intimate portrait of a legendary love affair. Set against the beauty of the Breton seaside, it is also a film that revels in the insights that Marguerite Duras' writing affords.
The film is a biography of Giuseppe Tomasi (Bouquet), the prince of Lampedusa, who is the author of Il gattopardo, one of the most influential Italian novel of XX century and is adapted on screen by Visconti, THE LEOPARD (1963, 8/10). Directed by Roberto Andò, a native from Palermo, stars two French cinema icons Bouquet and Moreau (as the princess Licy).
Les Misérables is a 2000 French television miniseries based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. The miniseries was broadcast in four parts. A three hour English version was also released.
He burned with ambition. He lusted for life. He lived for passion. This is the sprawling saga of Honoré de Balzac (Gérard Depardieu), a man who created a great literary oeuvre from the dramas and adventures of his own life - a life that he shaped into one spectacular and unforgettable blaze of passion. At the heart of the story are the women in Balzac's life. Although gruff, unsophisticated, and far from handsome, Balzac exerts an irresistible fascination on women.
A unique 16th century woman, Danielle possesses a love of books, and can easily quote from Sir Thomas More’s UTOPIA. An intriguing mix of tomboyish athleticism and physical beauty, she has more than enough charm to capture the heart of a prince ... after beaning him with an apple.
Amour et confusions is a French film which was released in 1997. It stars Patrick Braoudé, Kristin Scott Thomas and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.
Michael Firch is very skilled in computers and he goes to Paris to meet very important persons to discuss a contract. Michael was born on a special astral date. On arriving in Paris, he meets Morgane and her son. Morgane is a witch, she is beautiful, she is good and she needs Michael to save her son from evil powers. Molok is a sorcerer and he opposes Morgana's plan.
Trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to the immature future Czar, a young German Princess proves a skillful political infighter and rises to become Catherine the Great.
School student and her European-born grandmother share sad stories of their lives.
Adrienne Mark (Jeanne Moreau) is the most acclaimed French novelist of her generation, whose best known work, Je M'Appelle France, was an international best-seller made into an award-winning French film (and a disastrous Americanized remake). Adrienne is living in New York City when she learns that the flat in Paris where she grew up (as Adrienne Markowsky) is up for sale. Looking for a key to her past, she buys the apartment and discovers a cache of letters written by her late mother. Adrienne's mother died in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII, but while she's been led to believe that her mother was betrayed while working with the resistance, the letters suggest that the truth was far more troubling. Along the way, Adrienne is romantically pursued by a young fan, William O'Hara (Josh Hamilton), though he instead finds love with Virginia Kelly (Sean Young), an American film producer eager to work with the great writer.
A documentary reflecting on women in film and the entertainment industry through the ages led and hosted by some of its most beloved female icons.
Orson Welles' archives of unfinished/never released movies and the last years of his life from the perspective of Oja Kodar (life and artistic partner of Orson Welles in his last years).
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made. Also a line of movie stars comes to visit him giving him back the pleasure of life - but amongst them there are also some young students only striving after his money for the realization of their film projects. The two stories - Monsieur Cinema's and the young people's life - are told in parallel until they come together in the end when the old man plays a role in the film made by the students.
Agnès Varda's documentary portrait of her late husband, Jacques Demy. A companion piece to her Jacquot de Nantes.
Made of four short tales, linked by a story filmed by Wim Wenders. Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story, which always a woman as the crux of the story, invites to an inner travel, as Antonioni says "towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see".
Documentary overview of the life of French filmmaker François Truffaut.
Fantastic improbabilities, happenstance and the undying bridge of love are part of this romantic fantasy about an Inuit who crosses years, oceans and the ravages of WWII to find his childhood love, a Metis girl, but finds that their cultures are the most difficult spaces to gap.
Margaret (Lena Headey) is a shy, pale, middle-class Englishwoman who is reluctantly engaged to her older, twittish neighbor Syl Monro (David Threlfall). Both bride- and groom-to-be still live with their mothers in the humdrum suburb of Croydon. However Margaret has been acting strangely ever since a vacation in Egypt, where she stayed with her mother's friend Marie-Claire (Catherine Schell). She secretly despises Syl, but does not resist when her mother Monica (Julie Walters), who has repressed the failure of her own matrimony, insists on marriage for the sake of social convention.
No one knows, or is ever likely to know how many disabled or handicapped relatives have been hidden from the outside world in attics and basements over the years. In this wry comedy, Basile (Claudio Bucella) is an eleven-year old boy living in a rural French town (along with his mother) with his grandparents. He has the usual boyish adventures in town, punctuated with odd goings-on brought about by events which take place in his grandfather's crocodile farm. However, there is a deep rivalry between his grandmother and her wheelchair-bound half-sister, Cecile (Jeanne Moreau), who has kept hidden from the world (and her family), and has lived in the attic for decades. Basile eventually feels the wrongness of her situation and feels that he may be the reincarnation of Victor, Cecile's long-lost lover. Eventually things come to a head in a confrontation which provides the town gossips with material for years to come.
After the disappearance at sea of a young fisherman, his childhood friend and his mother begin an ambiguous relationship.
Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.
La vieille qui marchait dans la mer (English: The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea) is a 1991 French film directed by Laurent Heynemann and written by Heynemann and Dominique Roulet. It won the 1992 César Award for Best Actress.
Alexandre, a TV reporter, is working for a few days in a border town, where a lot of refugees from Albania, Turkey and Kurdistan are packed in. Among them, he notices an old man and thinks he is an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously a few years ago. Back in Athens, he asks this politician's former wife to come and identify him. A slow and dry meditation about inhumanity of borders.
This film is of interest primarily because it contains within it the entire surviving footage of an unfinished 1974 film by the same director, Slave of Love, which was successfully remade shortly thereafter by another director, Nikita Mikhalkov.The "cover" story is about a woman (Jeanne Moreau) newly released from prison camps in the 1940s back into Russian society, who finds that there is no place for her in the world she has come back to. However, this painterly film is so filled with striking and surreal imagery that it would be misleading to say that the story is of any great importance in relation to that.
Until The End of the World is an odyssey for the modern age. As with Homer's Odyssey, the purpose of the journey is to restore sight -- a spiritual reconciliation between an obsessed father and a deserted son. Dr. Farber, in trying to find a cure for his wife's blindness, has created a device that allows the user to send images directly to the brain, enabling the blind to see.
A two-and-a-half hour documentary retrospective on the career of Orson Welles.
A documentary which follows director Wim Wenders and Sean Naughton, the high-definition-video designer on UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD, in Tokyo, and details the creation of the film’s groundbreaking high-definition sequences.
A beautiful felon, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a policeman, is given a second chance - as a secret political assassin controlled by the government.
A young Italian, living in Paris with his French wife, is about to become a father. Before the baby is born, Alberto must repay his father for every expense from his own birth until he left home.
Featuring never-before-seen film footage of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, The Architecture of Doom captures the inner workings of the Third Reich and illuminates the Nazi aesthetic in art, architecture and popular culture. From Nazi party rallies to the final days inside Hitler's bunker, this sensational film shows how Adolf Hitler rose from being a failed artist to creating a world of ponderous kitsch and horrifying terror. Hitler worshipped ancient Rome and Greece, and dreamed of a new Golden Age of classical art and monumental architecture, populated by beautiful, patriotic Aryans. Degenerated artists and inferior races had no place in his lurid fantasy. As this riveting film shows, the Nazis went from banning the art of modernists like Picasso to forced euthanasia of the retarded and sick, and finally to the persecution of homosexuals and the extermination of the Jews.
Documentary about women in the film industry. Interviews with directors, producers, writers, and actors include Karen Arthur, Lizzie Borden, Joyce Chopra, Martha Coolidge, Donna Deitch, Ann Hui, Euzhan Palcy, Agnès Varda, Margarethe von Trotta, Anne Wheeler, Sandy Wilson, Mai Zetterling
The work of legendary actor François Simon, son of Michel Simon.
Each evening, four men – a doctor, a journalist, a professor and a merchant – meet up in a deserted bar to play cards. As they play, the bar’s owner, her downtrodden barman (nicknamed “le paltoquet”) and a strange woman in white watch from a distance. One night, the card game is disturbed when a police inspector suddenly appears and declares that a dead body has been found nearby. Certain that one of the four men is the murderer, the inspector starts his investigation. All the evidence suggests that the doctor did the deed, but we soon learn that nothing is quite what it seems…
Lola, a young lawyer, is raising her little boy Bolivar, and sustains his family. Diagnosed with cancer, she decides to fight against this disease as it has always done in life with strength, determination, and above all with humor. In his fight, it is supported by Ferdinand, his fiery lover and naive who is a journalist. In the hospital, treated by Prof. Tobman, deeply human doctor, she met a group of women, all living with the same bad but each following a different social environment. This group will become his new "family".
A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche!, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and death.
A tribute to actress Lillian Gish, a pioneer in American cinema whose long and distinguished career began in the early silent era.
A young journalist stumbles across something much more sinister than a simple suicide in the death of a politician - the death seems to be an assassination contrived by an American multinational company intent on taking over several French industries. The journalist's objective is to garner enough evidence to expose the American corporation for what it really is, before French companies start disappearing - and before any more corpses accumulate, including his own.
Set within the super-rich jet-set society of Paris, Richard Harris portrays a man whose life is gradually being destroyed. From sexual trauma to financial disaster, he slowly descends into a world of insanity, perversion and finally the bottomless pit!
In France in the near future, revolt and chaos erupt. A right-wing politician, Philippe Muphand, is set to take control when his lady friend Caroline walks out, announcing she will take up with the first fool she sees. The fool is Serge Laine, a professor and author of the prize-winning "Le voyage qui ne finit pas," headed to the train station for tickets to Barcelona where he and his wife will enjoy a second honeymoon and he will lecture at the university. Caroline seduces Serge, and he soon abandons wife, family, job, and honesty to embrace Caroline, the romanticism of Jack London, and murder.
The summer of 1939. Marie, at 13, goes with her parents to visit her grandmother in a small town near Avignon. Although rumors of war reach the countryside, it's an idyllic place. Marie's parents are constantly making love. Surrounded by sexual frankness, Marie fancies herself a woman and develops a crush on Alexander, the town's young Jewish doctor. She's despondent when he treats her as if she were a child. After Marie's father abruptly leaves for a few weeks to assist with a relative's harvest, Marie's mother and the doctor disappear into the woods for hours at a time. Marie tries to spy on them. When dad returns, what will the family and the doctor do?
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is brought to life in this story of a movie producer slowly working himself to death.
Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.
Sarah, an actress nearing 40, has invited the woman who has been her best friend for 16 years and two younger women to her vacation retreat in Provence. There are the simple pleasures of lounging in adjacent hammocks, the sun, the food, conversations about men. This is prologue for what happened a year ago in Paris with a man Sarah has long taken for granted as a platonic friend. She had just finished a film, also finishing her liaison with the director, and was about to get an award and start work on a new film and begin a romance with a German writer.
Director André Téchiné brings his usual obsessions -- including a preoccupation with the fortunes of the bourgeoisie -- to this episodic drama, which serves as a thinly-veiled portrait of France's economic peaks and valleys from the 1930s through the 1970s. Jeanne Moreau stars as Berthe Pedret, a simple laundry woman who marries Hector (Michael Auclair), son of a wealthy, upper class, Spanish immigrant family that owns a successful farm machinery factory. Through a series of vignettes, Techine depicts the passage of years, during which the ambitious working class woman blooms through several bold moves, such as negotiating a workers' strike settlement and using her alliance with the war-time French Resistance movement to increase the enterprise's prestige.
Karl, a young killer is to kill Kate, an adventurous lady living in a mansion by a lake. He approaches her but fails to kill her. Instead, he falls in love and becomes her lover ...
Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure.
Julien Dandieu, leader of the socialist political party PRU is asked to be part of the new conservative government as minister of foreign affairs. However his reputation is somewhat tarnished by his adulterous relationship with Creezy, a fashion model seen on every magazine cover. Ready to sacrifice his family for his career, he is eventually faced with the ultimate choice: his career ambitions or a lifetime with his beautiful girlfriend, who has recently mysteriously disappeared.
Joana is a sophisticated, beautiful woman, so she has a choice of lovers, and destinies. She will let down Pierre, the French consul at São Paulo, and with him the frivolity of tea-parties and comfort. Her wild inner-soul will develop into the wild forest surroundings of a landlord's farmhouse. To the extent she will defend her land like a 19th century owner - of lands and men alike.
François Naulet turns his bedroom into an island of drugs, loneliness and despair.
In this French romance, Louise (Jeanne Moreau) lives alone and seems to like it that way. She has been through a divorce and the recent death of her mother. Recently, she has moved to Annecy, a moderate-sized city, to take work as a schoolteacher. She encounters a much younger man, Luigi (Julian Negulesco), an Italian who is down on his luck. Though he moved to France to find work, he was robbed of his money and papers and is stranded. When he helps her bury her dogs, which her neighbor has poisoned for barking, their relationship grows to a new level.
Jeanne Moreau, filmed by Jacques Rozier, meets with Jerry Lewis, Barbet Schroeder and Orson Welles, among others.
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.
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.
Bohemian Alex Morrison has just finished directing his first feature length movie. In its previews, the movie is considered a critical, artistic and surefire commercial success. As such, Alex seemingly has his choice of what his next project will be. As he makes the rounds both in the Hollywood community and European movie centers for ideas, he fantasizes about movie scenarios of those everyday situations he is in.
Part One, "The Last Christmas Dinner," is about the relationship between an old man and an old woman, both homeless. Part Two, "The Electric Floor Polisher," is an opera-like story of a woman who is obsessed with polishing her floors. Part Three is a musical interlude featuring Jeanne Moreau singing "When Love Dies." Part Four, "The Virtue of Tolerance," concerns an old man, his young wife, and how they come to terms when she has an affair with a man her own age.
It was while going to film Jeanne Moreau in the summer of 1970 in her house at Garde Freinet that Guy Gilles fell in love with her. She will appear in his films: "Courtyard side on the field side", then "Saint, martyr and poet". She will also sing for "Repeated absences" and "The garden that tilts".
Monte Walsh is an aging cowboy facing the ending days of the Wild West era. As barbed wire and railways steadily eliminate the need for the cowboy, Monte and his friends are left with fewer and fewer options. New work opportunities are available to them, but the freedom of the open prarie is what they long for. Eventually, they all must say goodbye to the lives they knew, and try to make a new start.
Diane is married to an architect in this situation comedy. The two met in Czechoslovakia before marrying and moving to France. He becomes extremely jealous when he suspects her of having a lesbian affair with a ballet dancer. His incessant questions and insane jealousy make Diane resentful to the point she considers pushing him off a cliff.
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal ? What is her purpose?
Excerpts and fragments from different interviews with Orson Welles making a statement to journalists in fluent French about his career and his conception of life.
An aged, wealthy trader plots with his servant to recreate a maritime tall tale, using a local woman and an unknown sailor as actors.
Slapstick comedy based on the play by George Bernard Shaw. A stiff English officer, captain Charles Edstaston (Peter O'Toole), and his fiancée Claire arrive in St. Petersburg. Edstaston is brought to the imperial court to seek audience with the empress Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). He obtains an interview with her courtier, the drunken Potemkin (Zero Mostel), who ends up carrying him in his arms to the empress and dumping him into her royal bed. From this moment on, the hapless Edstaston endeavours to escape from the clutches of the sex-crazed empress and leave the city with his English fiancée.
A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages. 1) "The Prehistoric Era": A caveman discovers that a cavewoman is more attractive when cave paint is applied to her face. And she can earn more seashells that way. 2) "Roman Nights": The Emperor goes out seeking a little nocturnal amusement, only to find that the high-priced, Oriental courtesan he hires is his wife, the Empress. 3) "Mademoiselle Mimi": In revolutionary France, Mimi finds that her client, the nephew of a marquis, is more interested in watching the guillotinings out her window than he is in going to bed. 4) "The Gay Nineties": When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! 5) "Paris Today": Two girls pick up clients by driving around in a car...
Alan, after quarreling with his girlfriend Sheila, becomes intrigued by Anna, a mysterious widow who's searching for a sailor she had known many years before. Alan and Anna begin the search on board a yacht bound for Greece, but they don't find the sailor. After a stop in Africa, Louis de Mozambique joins the party and suggests that the sailor may never have existed other than in Anna's mind.
A sexually repressed school teacher releases her pent up passions in a series of shocking crimes.
Gorgeous IRA operative Marie flees the British authorities and finds herself somewhere in the American continent, where she meets a stunning woman also named Marie, a singer in a traveling circus. The new friends start a vaudeville act that grows exponentially more popular after they incorporate striptease into their routine. When the singer Maria falls for a charismatic rebel, the girls leave the circus behind and recreate themselves as wild-eyed revolutionaries.
The career of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff as roistering companion to young Prince Hal, circa 1400-1413.
This promotional film showcases the automobile whose adventures are chronicled in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964). After the car is filmed in various European shooting locations, it becomes the star attraction in an international automobile show in New York City. We even see a fashion show whose colors and styles are based on the 1930 model vehicle.
Duras interviews an exhausted Jeanne Moreau, addressing her friend as vous, despite the fact "the two were close friends for many years, living in neighbouring houses and cooking for each other from the early ‘60s.
Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it. She uses her sexuality and the promise of marriage to get Joseph to confess -- but things do not go as planned.
This French version of the notorious spy's life centers less on her romantic escapades, and more on those that reveal the person she actually was during WW I when her German superiors ordered her to seduce the French captain Trintignant so she can steal classified papers from him. Instead she falls in love with him, blows the cover, and ends up convicted of espionage and shot. (AllMovie)
One Rolls-Royce belongs to three vastly different owners, starting with Lord Charles, who buys the car for his wife as an anniversary present. Another owner is Paolo Maltese, a mafioso who purchases the car during a trip to Italy and leaves it with his girlfriend while he returns to Chicago. Later, the car is owned by American widow Gerda, who joins the Yugoslavian resistance against the invading Nazis.
As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance however wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures but have received orders from London that they are not to be destroyed. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage an elaborate ruse to keep the train from ever leaving French territory.
Intercutting dramatic vignettes with newsreel footage, the story follows the characters from an infantry squad as they make their way from Sicily to Germany during the end of World War II.
Alain Leroy is a recovering alcoholic who decides to end his life, but first decides to visit his friends in Paris one last time, in an attempt at finding a reason to continue living.
Best-selling author Tyvian Jones has a life of leisure in Venice, Italy, until he has a chance encounter with sultry Frenchwoman Eva Olivier. He falls for her instantly, despite already having wedding plans with Francesca Ferrara. Winning Eva's affection proves elusive; she's more interested in money than in love. But Tyvian remain steadfast in his obsession, going after Eva with a fervor that threatens to destroy his life.
In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim. Both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine, but it's Jules who wins her hand. After the war, Jim visits Jules, Catherine and their daughter in their Austrian home and discovers not only that his feelings for Catherine are unchanged, but also that they're reciprocated.
Longing for a baby, a stripper pursues another man in order to make her boyfriend jealous.
A wealthy and bored woman (Moreau) is witness of a murder in affection and meets another witness (Belmondo). She asks him about the history of the victim and falls in love with him.
Five Yugoslav women who consorted with the German occupiers are publicly humiliated and banished by the Yugoslav partisans but they take up arms to fend for themselves.
In full French Revolution, the young Blanche de la Force decides to protect a convent and so entered the Carmelite order. She meets the cheerful nun Sister Constance and mother Marie, among others, and is happy with them despite the external conflicts and pressures of his father to leave the convent. Film based on real and tragic story from the sixteen Carmelite nuns in the convent of Compiègne in 1794, and collected by the French writer Georges Bernanos in his play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the piece "The Last of the scaffold" the writer Gertrud von Le Fort.
From his childhood in the lowlands of northern France to his death in Nice, a look at the life of painter Matisse: his early education, his apprenticeship at the Beaux-Arts and his decades-long career as a painter, sculptor, and draftsman.
Juliette Merteuil and Valmont is a sophisticated couple, always looking for fun and excitement. Both have sexual affairs with others and share their experiences with one another. But there is one rule: never fall in love. But this time Valmont falls madly in love with a girl he meets at a ski resort, Marianne.
For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
Rich industrialist Jacques Decret learns his wife Gloria is having an affair with a young actor. For revenge, he bombards her with anonymous letters, convincing her that her lover is the culprit while Gloria desperately seeks a way out.
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
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.
Trois jour à vivre (Three Days to Live) takes off with a bang when two-bit actor Daniel Gelin witnesses a murder. He didn't see the killer, but that doesn't stop him from claiming that he did in order to get his name into the papers. Sure enough, the murderer targets Gelin as his next victim. Our hero is temporarily rescued by Jeanne Moreau, an aspiring actress who has always had a crush on him.
Just released from prison after serving a six-month sentence, Fernand Bastia goes into hiding. He has indeed double-crossed his gang by keeping part of the product of a robbery for himself. Thanks to his sister Marcella, Fernand has taken refuge in a small circus where she works. There, he falls in love with Gina but also arouses the jealousy of Quedchi, a fairground stall-holder who has seen him hiding the stolen money. After a while, Fredo Riccioni, the boss of the gang and his men, manage to trace him...
Les Louves was also released as Demoniaque and She Wolves. By any name, it's a puzzler, at least until the final fast-paced scenes. Gervais (FranÁois Perier) escapes from a German concentration camp and assumes the identity of a recently deceased fellow prisoner. Knowing that the dead man has been carrying on a romance by correspondence with Helene (Micheline Presle), a woman whom he has never seen, Gervais makes the acquaintance of the woman and moves in with her. The woman's sister, Agnes (Jeanne Moreau), dabbles in the black arts, which should be warning enough for Gervais to make himself scarce. But he sticks around, intrigued that the dead man's sister, Julia (Madeleine Robinson), refuses to blow the whistle on him.
Georges Villard, a minor bank employee, is won over by Mr Steve who does him favours, treats him to the high life and introduces him to his wife Florence, with whom he falls in love. Georges is unaware that these generous gifts will cost him dearly.
Bourgeois melodrama about the family of a wealthy businessman in La Rochelle, who dismisses the marriage of his only daughter with a journalist.
After a spending the night with his girlfriend Alice (Jeanne Moreau), trucker Jean (Jean Gabin) encounters a dead body on the road home. He reports the incident to the police who suspect that Jean was responsible for the death and his new truck is impounded. To make matters worse, the man's widow accuses Jean of having robbed her husband of a large amount of money that he was carrying. And then there's that gang of sinister crooks who also are harassing him. Jean is a victim of circumstance and forces beyond his control are closing in on him. But Alice gives him a measure of comfort and stability. With her as his emotional base, he manages to rouse his trucker friends to turn the tables against the gangsters who are pursuing him.
Pepe la Vache, who coveted Fernande's love, denounced her protector: Dominique le Corse, who was arrested. But Fernande was attracted by Jesus the Quail, a guy of dubious manners. Intimidated by Pepe, the Quail moved away.
Gentleman gangster Max and his partner, Riton, pull off their last, most successful heist and find themselves comfortable enough to retire in the style they enjoy. However, Max confides the details of the theft to his younger mistress, Josey -- who has secretly taken up with ambitious young rival gangster Angelo. Angelo then has Riton kidnapped and demands the stash of gold as ransom, which threatens Max's dreams of the perfect retirement.
The renowned theatre manager, Paul Rémy, is accused by his general secretary Andrieux of having killed his partner. On the advice of his wife Mona, Paul goes into hiding in a psychiatric hospital to escape from the police. But Andrieux seduces Mona who then turns against her husband.
In a little town with a renowned college a female student is found after she was hogtied and strangled to death. Inspector Marco is assigned to catch the murderer.
L'homme de ma vie stars Madeleine Robinson as Madeleine, who after being abandoned by her lover is forced to raise her baby all by herself. Supporting herself and her child as a prostitute, Madeleine manages to give her daughter an expensive girl's-school education, all the while keeping her own identity and profession a secret. The girl grows up to be an insufferable snob; nonetheless, Madeleine attempts to re-establish a relationship. Things take a sorry turn when the daughter takes drastic actions to defend her mother's honor.
A man assists his gravely ill wife to die and wants to face justice for this, but his brothers try everything to keep the family's name clean.
"Le Tambourin", a Montmartre nightclub, is on its way down. Although it can boast great performances by the alluring Les Bluebell Girls and by Jacques Hélian's lively Big Band the venue does not attract people anymore. Nightclub patrons now prefer the jazz cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Taking this new taste into account, the staff of the "Tambourin" and Jacques Hélian decide to set up their own club, "La Pivoine Ecarlate". They are joined by Pâquerette, a flower vendor and amateur singer, and by Jean-Pierre Francis, an existentialist poet...
This film not only illuminates Heiner Müller's life and works, it is more about questioning the "Sphinx" of the East and its saying about the loss of utopias and examining whether Heiner Müller's texts, as he himself said, were messages in a bottle for the future or not.
