Roger Blin
Ivan, a writer living in Manila, walks through the city in search of his past.
The kingdom of Takicardie quakes under the rule of the tyrannical King Charles V-et-III-font-VIII-et-VIII-font-XIV, whose favourite pastime is shooting birds. His archenemy is a cheeky mockingbird, whose favourite pastime is thwarting the king’s attempts to shoot birds. One night, a portrait of the king comes to life and disposes of the real king, taking his place. The portrait king falls in love with a young shepherdess in another painting and intends to marry her. But, alas, the shepherdess has fallen in love with a chimneysweep and together they elope from the king’s palace. Enraged, the king sends his police to capture them and once they are within his power he forces the shepherdess to marry him. The mockingbird must use all his guile and courage to once more thwart the king and bring his evil reign to an end.
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?
A middle-aged man travels to France and is discouraged by the attitudes of the people concerning his native land until he meets and begins relationships with two lonely women.
Claire (Bulle Ogier) returns to France following the death of her actress friend Agathe (Loleh Bellon). She attends an auction of her friend's possessions, provoking memories of the past. As her camera glides across the auction house bric-a-brac, Yanick Bellon mixes past, present and future to create a delicate piece of cinematic poetry. Set to the music of Georges Delerue.
Servais Mont, a freelance photographer who works taking compromising photos, gets fascinated by Nadine Chevalier, a tormented low-budget movie actress married to an eccentric film photo collector.
Richard is a private detective. He makes a good money from marital infidelity: the deceived husband and wife generously paid him for proof of their infidelity "halves"...
Story of a young, inexperienced ship captain named Marlow, who struggles in solitude during the voyage with disease, insubordinate crew and vagaries of weather.
A mysterious history, esoteric formulas pronounced by entreated seeking to dominate the world.
In 1960, Stan, the protagonist, after having made a fortune in Asia, returns to Corsica, to visit a friend's tomb. In Ajaccio, he meets Helene, who she rescues from her kidnappers, who take advantage of her "charms" in a house of ill reputation. They hide then somewhere in the mountains, where they are pursued by the Corsican mobsters...
After five years in the army, Valentin Brû marry a haberdasher. They move to Paris, where Valentin sells frames, while his wife becomes fortune teller. One day, Valentin replaces her, and predict a terrible event which will happen.
Ginette Chaluzac, who has left Central France for Paris, now works as a seamstress in a modest workshop in the Marais district. Her life is quiet and uneventful until the day when, to her surprise, she receives a letter containing a hundred-franc banknote. The sender, who remains anonymous, renews his gift day after day and Ginette grows accustomed to the situation. Her material situation improves but after a while she starts asking herself questions about the one who sends her the money and his/her intentions. Till obsession. To make it clear in her mind she eventually decides to investigate...
A little girl named Alice dreams about going through the looking-glass and becoming a queen in the mirror reality.
Once upon a time there lived in the same village two men bearing the very same name. One of them chanced to possess four horses, the other had only one horse, so, by way of distinguishing them from each other, the proprietor of four horses was called "Great Claus," and he who owned but one horse was known as "Little Claus"...
In a small Gallic village, tourists are regaled by street entertainers and brash prostitutes. One of the tourists, a black girl named Bessie, falls in love with local villager Bob, and he with her. Soon racial tensions erupt volcanically among tourists and townsfolk alike. All is forgiven when the respective parents of the hero and heroine save the village's water supply.
Les Etoiles de Midi is an engaging docudrama about some of the more spectacular exploits of French mountain climbers over the last several decades. In one re-enacted story, there is a wartime escape through the mountains, and in another, a daring rescue of a pair of climbers who had been missing. The actors themselves are adept at the sport of climbing, and they give the scenes an immediacy and real daring that brings the stories alive. A combination of their acrobatics and skill and the outstanding episodes in the history of French climbing creates a winning 78 minutes.
Jean-Louis Barrault, Charles Dullin and Roger Blin each say a poem. The actors do not appear on screen.
At the Café des Poètes in Paris, a fight breaks out between the poet Orphée and a group of resentful upstarts. A rival poet, Cègeste, is killed, and a mysterious princess insists on taking Orpheus and the body away in her Rolls-Royce. Orphée soon finds himself in the underworld, where the Princess announces that she is, in fact, Death. Orpheus escapes in the car back to the land of the living, only to become obsessed with the car radio. This film is the central part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).
A Canadian sailor (Jean-Pierre Aumont) becomes a fugitive for love after a night with a woman (Maria Montez) in Marseille.
Thérèse kills her lover during the very night of her wedding to the count of Vétheul. To gain a night with her, a modest local worker agrees to bury the body.
Remy Germain is a doctor in a French town who becomes the focus of a vicious smear campaign, as letters accusing him of having an affair and performing unlawful abortions are mailed to village leaders. The mysterious writer, who signs each letter as "Le Corbeau" (The Raven) soon targets the whole town, exposing everyone's dark secrets. This allegorical film was highly controversial at the time of its release, and was banned in France after the Liberation.
The story of a French officer who is assumed dead during the Napoleonic Wars, but returns ten years later to a very different France, both on a political and personal level. The film is based on the novel Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.
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 ?
Volpone, an elderly Venetian, connives with his money-crazed servant to convince his greedy friends that he is dying, knowing that each will try to curry favor with him in order to be named his heir. He is inundated with valuable gifts, and soon finds himself entangled deeper and deeper in a web of lies.
Tells the story of a young woman escaping from reform school who tries to steal a foreign ambassador's watch but ends up falling in love with him.
Mireille, a Frenchwoman, marries a westernized Turkish diplomat and, thinking that she will live a dream life in an Arabian Nights setting, follows him back to his native country, only to discover that, in a staunchly traditional society, she will not be a free woman there any longer.
What was it about opera diva Grace Moore that attracted the attention of filmdom's top directors? Moore's 1937 American movie vehicle When You're in Love had been directed by Josef Von Sternberg; two years later, her French starrer Louise was helmed by no less than Abel Gance, who a decade earlier had revolutionized the "historical epic" genre with the awesome Napoleon. There was, however, little that was revolutionary in this cinemadaption of Gustave Charpentier's opera. Moore plays Louise, a poor seamstress who is led astray by the rakish Julien (Georges Thill). After falling from grace (no pun intended), our heroine is rescued by her understanding father (Andre Pernet), who demonstrates his forgiveness by singing to her (it is, after all, an opera). Though it played to enthusiastic crowds in both London and Paris, Louise turned out to be Grace Moore's final film; conversely, Abel Gance continued to make commercial potboilers well into the 1970s.
A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing how the comrades help the proletariat against the capitalists.
When her fiancé breaks off their engagement, Danielle leaves London and returns to her mother, Jenny, in Paris. With her business partner Benoît, Jenny runs what appears to be a respectable nightclub – it is in fact a place where wealthy men can buy the favours of attractive young women. Oblivious to her mother's professional and personal life, Danielle meets a handsome young man named Lucien, and falls in love with him – not realising that he is Jenny's lover...
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
The story focuses on a street in the Parisian banlieue where Italian and French workers live. Their neighborhood will soon be demolished and a mysterious character hides himself in this street.
