Philippe Labro
Documentary examines the production history, style, and lasting appeal of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge, as well as the evolution of the French crime thriller during the Melville era
Mixing interviews, rare archival footage and film extracts, the film shows how Melville's works were impacted by what he experienced in his youth during WWII, and how it structured his whole approach to cinema, not only in its thematic but also in its aesthetics.
In this documentary, produced by Philippe Quinconneau for StudioCanal, editor Françoise Bonnot, actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, composer Éric Demarsan, writer and filmmaker Philippe Labro, cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier share insights and anecdotes about Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 film ARMY OF SHADOWS.
The cameras of Jacques Perrin fly with migratory birds: geese, storks, cranes. The film begins with spring in North America and the migration to the Arctic; the flight is a community event for each species. Once in the Arctic, it's family time: courtship, nests, eggs, fledglings, and first flight. Chicks must soon fly south. Bad weather, hunters, and pollution take their toll. Then, the cameras go
Longtime friends Guarrigue and Sénanques own a successful law practice in Paris. The dreaded businessman Pervillard is one of their clients. One night, Sénanques, who is in an unhappy relationship, meets Sacha. For her sake, he causes a political scandal involving Pervillard and puts himself in danger.
L'Alpagueur is a free-lance spy from the French secret agency. He's put on the investigation about L'epervier, a serial-killer who employs young boys to help him robbing banks before killing them.
A jaded and charming police inspector is assigned along with his cheerful partner to a case involving the mysterious death and/or suicide of a wealthy entrepreneur. The chief suspect is his enchanting wife who was aware that her husband had a mistress. It is also possible that the dead man may be the victim of a radical terrorist group.
I've only seen this in a dubbed (and possibly cut) version on a second-rate UHF station, so maybe I missed the good stuff. I watched it because I'm an Yves Montand fan and he's hard to find on TV. My teenage son watched it with me and we wound up calling it "The Beach Chair Movie" because it's set at the beach (maybe some rundown part of the Riviera in the off season?) and there are 3 or 4 scenes in which various people are kicking or throwing beach chairs around. I don't know what they had against those chairs. Not much else happened. I don't know what Katharine Ross was doing there. It was fun to get another look at Yves, though.
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...
A serie of murders is comitted in Nice on the French riviera. The commissaire Carella is in charge and tries to find a missing link between all these murders.
Back in France after a few years in the United States, a reporter goes in search of his wife.
Paula Nelson (Anna Karina), a female version of Humphrey Bogart's hard boiled detectives, goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, at an unknown point in the future (maybe 1969). Once there, she learns that Richard is dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, she meets Typhus, whom she ends up knocking out. His corpse is later found in the apartment of David Goodis (Yves Afonso), a writer. Paula is arrested and interrogated. From then on, she encounters many gangsters.
In 1964, on the request of UniFrance, writer and director Philippe Labro filmed four young actresses – Mireille Darc, Marie Dubois, Catherine Deneuve, and Françoise Dorléac – in order to promote these young talents around the world. He took a free approach to the project, trying to capture the personality of each one, while also providing a vision of Paris as the quintessential backdrop of French cinema. By way of a tribute to Françoise Dorléac, for whom 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of her death, MyFrenchFilmFestival today unveils a previously unseen segment of “4XD” about her.
