Serge Reggiani
A wonderful documentary that sheds additional light on the fascinating project ‘Inferno’ was, as well as how those who were involved with it reacted to it during the shooting process. A riveting adjunct to the main feature, offering a glut of interviews with various people associated with the production, and presenting quite a bit more production data, as well as some unseen footage from Clouzot's shoot.
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished 1964 psycho-thriller L’Enfer is as tantalizing as it is frustrating. Despite remaining one of the most masterful of French directors, Cluozot inexplicably seems to have lost control of the big-budget production of L’Enfer. Although directors Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Mederea have managed to speak to numerous members of the original crew, this behind-the-scenes investigation has so little to say about the reasons behind Clouzot’s failure to complete the film. In spite of this, the undiminished power of Clouzot’s extraordinary images makes the documentary a fascinating watch.
Mario Gas directed this music-themed Spanish drama set in Barcelona of the mid-'80s. When famed composer Lluis Doria (Laurent Terzieff) visits a transvestite club, he learns his lifelong friend Albert Rossell (Serge Reggiani) is the house pianist. A flashback takes the tale four decades into the past where the younger Rossell (Pere Ponce) rejoins Teresa (Paulina Galvez) after having spent years in prison for helping anti-Franco anarchists. The story continues into Paris of the '30s, the period when Doria and Rossell first met, sharing a mutual interest in music and Teresa, before civil war sent them in different directions.
The ex-gymnast and survival artist Emil falls in love with the prostitute Lissy. Through her he meets some criminals whom he can help thanks to his gymnastic skills. But on his rise in the criminal hierarchy, Lissy might fall by the wayside.
After fifteen years' service, Henri Boulanger is made redundant from his job. Shocked, he attempts suicide, but can't go through with it, so he hires a contract killer in a seedy bar to murder him at some unspecified time in the future. But almost immediately he meets and falls in love with Margaret, a flower-seller, which makes Henri realise that his life has some meaning after all. But when he goes back to the bar to cancel the contract, he finds it has been demolished - and there's no way he can get in touch with the killer...
How can moon and time affect human mood and fate? In the manner of a Greek tragedy , this movie shows how the chaos of life ineluctably propels its characters towards violence and alienation.
This movie tells the story of a group of right-wing cops have begun carrying out vigilante justice on drug dealers and other crime figures who might otherwise avoid punishment for their misdeeds. Police inspector Grindel (Delon) understands the feelings which motivate these deeds, but does not approve. However, he is not highly motivated to put an end to the group's activities until it begins to appear that they are now attacking fellow cops for reasons which are unclear.
A bee keeper, Spiros, travels from the north to the south of Greece with his bees to meet the spring.
A sexually transmitted disease called STBO is sweeping the country; it's spread by having sex without emotional involvement, and most of its victims are teenagers who make love out of curiosity rather than commitment. While a serum that can treat the disease has been formulated, it's been locked away in an inaccessible government building. A woman hires two men to steal the serum.
Drama about the difficulties of a group of people trying to change their lives. A group of people gathers in a terrace in Rome . Some are friends, some know each other and others just meet for the first time. All are intellectual and belong to the middle class.
The life of workers and their families in a construction site of a highway in 1965.
In this Canadian made oddball mix of music and drama, an actress (Carole Laure) in a traveling musical revue is involved with the show's director until she meets and falls for an aging ecological activist. He too is drawn to her, and together they try to stop a factory from being built over an old-growth forest.
Violette and François are a couple with a child.As they cannot lead a good life with odd jobs,François starts to steal.
From 1935 to 1945, the happiness of a couple turns to sadness when their Traction Avant auto is used by the gang des Tractions Avant.
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.
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.
Three friends face mid-life crises. Paul is a writer who's blocked. François has lost his ideals and practices medicine for the money; his wife grows distant, even hostile. The charming Vincent, everyone's favorite, faces bankruptcy, his mistress leaves him, and his wife, from whom he's separated, wants a divorce. The strains on the men begin to show particularly in François and Paul's friendship and in Vincent's health. A younger man, Jack, becomes attractive to Lucie, François's wife. Another young friend, the boxer Jean, who's like a son to Vincent and whose girlfriend is pregnant, has taken a bout with a merciless slugger. Has happiness eluded this circle of friends?
Seven small rogues dream of stealing the beautiful jewels which are in Paris for an exhibition.
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.
Based on a montage of photographic and cinematographic archives, this documentary evokes, from the demonstrations of February 1934 to the resignation of the government of Léon Blum, passing through the great moments of the Popular Front, the climate of a time when the destiny of France and Europe will switch. The simply edited images are accompanied by a rigorous commentary, mixed with sound documents and texts by famous writers.
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
The story of the Cervi family. Rural farmers brought up to be idealogically opposed to fascism during the era of Mussolini's rule of Italy and World War 2.
Set in Sicily, this violent crime drama tells the tale of an Italian cop who heads to a small island town to look into the death of a construction supplier. Once there he is shocked by the influence the Mafia has over the people and even himself.
Two adventurers and best friends, Roland and Manu, are the victims of a practical joke that costs Manu his pilot's license. With seeming contrition, the jokesters tell Roland and Manu about a crashed plane lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Congo stuffed with riches. The adventurers set off to find the loot.
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.
A short protest film about the Vietnam War. The film puts the resistance to America in the context of resistances to occupation, like that of occupied Europe against the Nazis, and the heroic endurance of enemy bombing in the tradition of Londoners' endurance of the Blitz. There are sequences of the industrial and agricultural life of Vietnam, when air-raid warnings are sounded and men and women either carry on working regardless or leap into defence with rifles and machine guns. There are shots of the citizens of Hanoi preparing defences against air attack. There are shots of the NLF jungle command HQ, of the primitive traps they were setting over the country and of their captured American arms. There are shots of anti-American riots in Saigon and tales of the computerised planning of the escalation of the war and of blanket bombing by the Pentagon.
Marie-Chantal travels by train to her cousin's place to spend a winter holiday, when a stranger - apparently a fugitive from someone aboard - entrusts her with a jewel in the shape of a tiger with ruby eyes. Unknown to her, these false jewels contain a virus powerful enough to destroy all humankind. Doctor Kha is just one among many spies from different nations trying to get their hands on the tiger, or Marie-Chantal... It will give any nation a tremendous control over all others! Marie-Chantal, a snob girl, will evade all attacks by sheer female cunning, and shows tigerish qualities in dealing with her male, and female foes.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
World War II Italy...1943. After parachuting behind enemy lines on an espionage mission, an American soldier is imprisoned by the enemy. He escapes with four Italian prisoners, enlisting their aid in exploding a bridge.
Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook are two expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris where, unlike America at the time, Jazz musicians are celebrated and racism is a non-issue. When they meet and fall in love with two young American girls, Lillian and Connie, who are vacationing in France, Ram and Eddie must decide whether they should move back to America with them, or stay in Paris for the freedom it allows them. Ram, who wants to be a serious composer, finds Paris more exciting than America and is reluctant to give up his music for a relationship, and Eddie wants to stay for the city's more tolerant racial atmosphere.
When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.
A group of ex-resistance fighters are brought together by Marie-Octobre, the code name of Marie-Helene Dumoulin. The former members of the network have carried on with their lives after the war, but this evening they are going to have to live again a fateful night – the night their leader was killed. He had been betrayed, his name given to the Germans. The search for the traitor puts each personality in the spotlight – and also that of the killed leader, Castille.
Victor Hugo's monumental novel Les Miserables has been filmed so often that sometimes it's hard to tell one version from another. One of the best and most faithful adaptations is this 240-minute French production, starring Jean Gabin as the beleaguered Jean Valjean. Arrested for a petty crime, Valjean spends years 20 in the brutal French penal system. Even upon his release, his trail is dogged by relentless Inspector Javert (Bernard Blier). Valjean's efforts to create a new life for himself despite the omnipresence of Javert is meticulously detailed in this film, which utilizes several episodes from the Hugo original that had hitherto never been dramatized. Originally released as a single film, Les Miserables was usually offered as a two parter outside of France.
A struggling model concocts a story of being raped and beaten by three strangers and soon becomes a media darling. Complications arise when the police eventually arrest three suspects.
This movie follows the river Seine from the countryside to the heart of Paris.
Making his directorial debut, Robert Hossein also assumes the leading role, playing an escaped convict. Hossein and his fellow escapees cross the path of Marina Vlady, with whom they all fall in love. Alas for our "heroes," Vlady intends to avenge the death of her sweetheart at the hands of Hossein and his confreres. Not only do these heels go to Hell, but they do so with a spectacular flourish. Les Salauds Vont en Enfer was adapted by Rene Wheeler from a play by Frederic Dard.
The film follows the life of Napoleon from his early life in Corsica to his death at Saint Helena. The film is notable for its use of location shooting for numerous scenes, especially at the French estates of Malmaison and Fontainebleau, the Palace of Versailles, and sites of Napoleonic battles including Austerlitz and Waterloo.
A chimney sweep and his beloved shepherdess are aided by Wonderbird in their escape from a ruthless dictator
Forced by her lover to sell her body, Renata is saved from a suicide attempt by Paolo Martelli, an engineer. She asks him to help her find a job. When Paolo's wife humiliates her, Renata gains revenge by seducing the woman's husband.
An American soldier romances a beautiful Parisian during the final days of World War II.
This tale of intrigue finds Valentina Cortese involved in an assassination plot. She helps the police apprehend the conspirators after an innocent bystander is accidentally killed.
Ex-convict Georges Manda returns to the free world determined to go straight and takes a steady job as a carpenter. Unable to completely shake his connections with the underground, he meets with a former prison mate, older gangster Félix Leca, who introduces him to his mistress, the sweet but guarded Marie "Casque d'Or". Marie and Georges fall into a passionate relationship, driving Félix to do everything in his power to ruin the couple.
An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Return to Life (French: Retour à la vie) is a 1949 French drama film directed by Georges Lampin, André Cayatte, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Jean Dréville. It was entered into the 1949 Cannes Film Festival.
Angelo, a glass-blower from Murano, and Georgia Maglia, the pretty daughter of a fallen fascist magistrate, are chosen to be the stand-ins for the stars of a film version of "Romeo and Juliet" being shot on location in Venice and Verona. It is not long before they fall in love and their romance parallels that of Shakespeare's timeless heroes. Indeed their union is threatened by the schemings of Raffaele, the Maglia family's dubious tout...
Au Royaume des Cieux takes place in in a dreadful girls' reformatory. A couple of lovers will try to escape from this living hell.
An aspiring singer tries to break into films during the early talkie era. She is hired to dub the singing and speaking voice of a silent-movie favorite. Sworn to secrecy, the fill-in must stand by in silence as the star receives all the praises and plaudits.
Paris, during the winter after its Liberation: Jean Diego meets up with his friend Raymond Lecuyer again. A tramp predicts Jean will meet the most beautiful girl in the world, and that same evening Jean meets Malou. But he soon discovers that her brother Guy was the one that gave his friend Raymond away to the Gestapo...
An officer, two of his comrades and a social worker want to create the "Carrefour", a place for lost children and teens to give them a chance not to fall by the wayside and spend most of their life in jail.
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.
In a college, three friends form a secret society. There objective - going to America. A night, after one of their secret meetings, one of them see a man coming out from a wall. Then the day after he talks about it, he disappears. Then the second one vanishes. Are they gone to their dreams? That's when the art teacher is murdered. Suspicions now are too high so the third one decides to investigate.
