Vladimir Cosma
«Le Corniaud», «La Grande Vadrouille», «Les Aventures de Rabbi Jacob», «La Folie des Grandeurs», «L'As des As», «Le Coup du Parapluie», Gérard Oury remains the undisputed master of comedy, and his films are equally popular with audiences, generation after generation. The man who created the mythical couple Bourvil-Louis de Funès, who gave Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pierre Richard emblematic films, has signed the greatest successes of French cinema. He is the director who knew how to treat the most serious subjects with humour and humanity, combining elegance and funniness. With the help of testimonials and unpublished archives, this documentary brings to life the mythical scenes of Gérard Oury's films and reveals their secrets.
An aging gangster (Jean-Pierre Mocky) escapes from prison and is taken in by a very beautiful blonde who asks him to kill her uncle (Richard Bohringer) because he guards her money but prevents her from using it. She asks the gangster to kill him and that way she won't turn the gangster in - she knows he's escaped. The gangster prepares to kill the uncle, except that he realizes he's a very good guy. He becomes friends with the uncle. He won't kill him and will simulate the murder.
Pierre, widowed and retired, has not been out of his house for two years. He discovers the joys of the internet thanks to Alex, a young man hired by his daughter to teach him the basics of computer science. On a meeting place, a charming young woman, Flora63, seduced by the romanticism of Pierre, offers her a first date. Lovers, Pierre is back. But on his profile he put a picture of Alex and not his own. Pierre must convince the young man to meet Flora in his place
An obnoxious man ends up in court facing a familiar judge after a dispute over archery.
The film tells the story of a gentleman of a certain age, a distinguished homeless, who becomes the mentor of a young girl of 20. He will keep out of trouble, especially when she’s about to marry a fool. He will try to change her life by making it more beautiful in the manner of a guardian angel.
A scientist invents a product destined to make vegetables grow larger. His nephew, until then totally lacking a penis, drinks a little of this liquid by accident and from then on develops outsize genitals that lead some of his acquaintances to become jealous.
Two insomniacs go into partnership to start a club bringing together people who suffer from the same trouble and decide together to become vigilantes and more precisely vindicators serving causes they are interested in. But relations between the various members will go on deteriorating.
While unemployed, Gobert must repay 40 bank loans he had taken out. In the housing project where he lives in, bailiffs swarm. Gobert will organize resistance and develop an original and popular loan system which will soon arouse the interest of the French government.
A young, idle, half-mad man kidnaps a wealthy woman and confines her to the trunk of his car. He drives very close to the police who are watching his victim's house. He talks to the police and accentuates the danger more and more.
A pedophile network, to which belong notables of a French provincial town is about to be discovered by a young woman who herself lost her son, a child survivor of one of these horror festivals, and an anarchist gunsmith.
A neo-noir tale of a man who seeks out an old friend, only to succumb to the will of a beautiful, mysterious woman.
A dutch family of seven persons (grand-father, grand-mother, father, mother, son, sister, and wife of the son go to Paris to assist at a concert of their mayor. The film tell the incredible story of this family during the week end in Paris. Only four members of the family will return to home.
A man spreads the rumor of his fake homosexuality with the aid of his neighbor, to prevent his imminent firing at his work.
For Pierre Brochant and his friends, Wednesday is “Idiots' Day”. The idea is simple: each person has to bring along an idiot. The one who brings the most spectacular idiot wins the prize. Tonight, Brochant is ecstatic. He has found a gem. The ultimate idiot, “A world champion idiot!”. What Brochant doesn’t know is that Pignon is a real jinx, a past master in the art of bringing on catastrophes...
A humoristic view of the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie and their discoveries around radioactivity.
Having first lost his wife then his job as a tweed tailor, Alex Ponttin has devised a novel way to keep himself in touch with society. He admits himself into people's homes, by pretending to be a relative or an official, and persuading his victims to give him a night's free board: He finds at first a lunch at the horrible couple Dumont, where a thief follows him for a robbery. Alex spent an evening in front of TV at Marie, mother of seven children. He runs from Marie to find an evening and a new bed at the home of charming but shy lesbian Caroline and her funny lover Gloria. To save her inheritance, Caroline - accused for her homosexuality by her horrible sister Catherine - tells her aunt Amélie, that Gloria is her secretary and Alex her lover. So Alex has to present himself nude in Caroline's bed. He saves Carolines inheritance. The police officers investigating the case are so terminally stupid that Alex has little chance of being arrested.
Jacques et Martine, couple de bourgeois ordinaires, ont invité à dîner un ami perdu de vue depuis dix ans et devenu depuis une vedette des médias.
A farce, Hoskins plays a photographer who specializes in religious pictures who searches for a model for Jesus. He does a favor for a friend and finds himself doing a voice track for a porno movie with Natasha Richardson. Hoskins finds his model for Jesus in Jeff Goldblum and a romantic triangle begins in which Goldblum finds adoring crowds believing him to be Jesus and then begins to believe it himself.
French adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's memoirs of his childhood in the countryside, early in the century.
My Mother's Castle (Le chateau de ma mere) is a sequel and companion piece to My Father's Glory (La Gloire de Mon Pere), both based on the childhood recollections of Marcel Pagnol. Like its predecessor, the movie explores the adventures of the young Marcel (Julien Ciamaca) during his summers at the family summer home in Provence.
An American officer on a Landing Craft carrying plans for the Allied invasion of Europe in Normandy takes part on landing maneuvers, his craft was attacked and sunk by German EBoats. and he finds himself on German occupied Jersey Islands. The Allies hatch a plot to rescue him by sending a British SOE agent impersonating an SD officer.
Based on Elliott Chaze's "Black Wings Has My Angel", the film tells a story of (nudist) gangsters on a coup and on the run
Arsène Muselier returns to his home village at the end of the First World War. His only injury is a head wound, which sometimes provokes periods of delirium and fury. As he renews his acquaintance with the people he left behind - his mother, the old farmhand who brought him up after his father's death, his former girlfriend, and many others - he becomes fascinated by the legend of La Vouivre, a creature with the body of a woman who lives in the marsh, surrounded by vipers. One day, Arsène sees the strange woman - she is naked, beautiful, alluring, and he is instantly enchanted by her. Can she be real, or is she merely a creation of his damaged mind...?
The life and love affairs of a 12-year-old boy Pierre who lived in France during the Nazi occupation in 1944. We see his family, his chubby friend, the girl who ignores him - and the German defector who hides in the cellar. He suffers from a slightly more prominent nasal appendage than the average of his congeners. This complex initially serving it, will ultimately be the detonator of his success with women and the entire population of the city.
One little ancient British village still holds out against the Roman invaders. Asterix and Obelix are invited to help. They must face fog, rain, warm beer and boiled boar with mint sauce, but they soon have Governor Encyclopaedius Britannicus's Romans declining and falling. Until a wild race for a barrel of magic potion lands them in the drink.
Obelix falls for a new arrival in his home village in Gaul, but is heartbroken when her true love arrives to visit her. However, the lovers are kidnapped by Romans; Asterix and Obelix set out to rescue them on a dangerous journey that will involve gladiators, slavers and beauracracy - and a personal encounter with the Emperor himself, Julius Caesar...
Beautiful and naïve Maggy Lunel arrives in Paris completely broke. She becomes an artist's model and the toast of Paris, attracting the attention of Picasso-like painter Julien Mistral, an arrogant and selfish man who places his work above everything. Their paths diverge as Mistral's art catches the eye of a rich American woman who becomes his patroness and eventually his wife. During the war years in France, Mistral collaborates with the Nazis in order to continue with his work, a decision that will come back to haunt him years later. In the meantime, Maggy has a daughter named Teddy who grows up and falls in love with Mistral with whom she has a child named Fauve. As Mistral ages, he comes to terms with his selfish past and wartime betrayal through his art, leaving a beautiful legacy for his daughter, Fauve.
Bastien Grimaldy, a man driven to heightened anxiety as the plot against him begins to take effect. Bastien's personal relationships give him enough cause for anxiety -- between his new lover Laura and a feisty mother, life provides its own insecurities. When he goes to the police with his problems, Bastien is assigned an off-beat inspector to protect him but is still faced with skepticism about his dilemma.
In a futuristic society, contestants pit their survival skills against each other in a fight to the death for cash prizes, and the contest is aired live on television.
Unable to find her runaway son, a woman deceives two of her ex-lovers from her youth, a mild-mannered teacher and a tough journalist, that each is the real father in order to obtain their help.
Michel works there manically solving people's problems over the phone. He is about to tie the knot with his girl friend Isabelle, an airline hostess. She flies all over the world, he hates to leave the office. A series of madcap mishaps involving theft or injury (as you would expect in his line of work) ensues after Michel promises Isabelle nothing will delay their marriage and she promises in turn that she's done flying. Once this unlikely promise is made, it becomes premise and both are forced into escalating white lies to maintain the appearance of keeping their word. Their predicament mounts as Isabelle is forced to do a few more flights, while Michel is compelled to travel to New York, Tunisia, and finally Hong Kong, where they are finally reunited in the throes of a contrived and hilarious drug deal involving a 747, water taxi chases, and martial arts.
A young French teenage girl after moving to a new city falls in love with a boy and is thinking of having sex with him because her girlfriends have already done it.
In this action comedy the French boxer Jo Cavalier is charmed on the train to Berlin for the Olympics in Hitler's Germany by the little boy Simon Rosenblum who asks his autograph; when it turns out his adorable young fan is a Jewish orphan in danger of persecution, he risks his one shot at Olympic glory to save Simon and his family, helped only by a German officer-gentleman who became his friend in World War I, by an adventurous escape to Switzerland, Nazi troops on their heals and braving impossible odds in roller coaster-style.
Félix, disguised as Father Christmas, hands out leaflets advertising a sexy Christmas party. His place is taken by an African Santa Claus and he returns to his caravan only to find his girlfriend Josette about to leave him. When he comes after her, she takes refuge at "SOS Distress", run by two neurotics, Thérèse and Pierre.
When the boss' unlucky daughter is missing in South America, Campana is sent to watch the boss' most unlucky employee who is sent as a private detective in hopes he can duplicate the daughter's mistakes.
A tale of sexual encounters of one woman and several friends, family members and acquaintances, as seen (and told) from the perspective of a pair of satin blue panties.
Isabelle and Maxime are a pair of lighthearted lovers -- that is, until Isabelle gets the itch for motherhood. When she confesses her desire for a child, Maxime panics. As a cartoonist by trade he is far from financially stable, so he outright rejects the idea of parenthood. What follows is a roller-coaster romance full of recriminations and reconciliations, until Maxime must ultimately decide whether his fear of becoming a parent is a reason to leave.
Jules, a young Parisian postman, secretly records a concert performance given by the opera singer Cynthia Hawkins, whom he idolises. The following day, Jules runs into a woman who is being pursued by armed thugs. Before she is killed, the woman slips an audio cassette into his mail bag...
A detective, fresh out of the academy (lowest mark in class), gets the assignment to bodyguard a spoiled rich girl reporter. She's been interviewed on TV and has questioned the virility of a mobster who kidnaps her later.
At forty years old, Martin Belhomme leads a quiet life with his wife and two children. One day, he falls hopelessly in love with Eva, a cabaret singer. He decides to follow her to Amsterdam. From then on, his life becomes very eventful!
François Perrin is a journalist who reads the news on RTL radio. Alone in life, his only "amusement" is his neighbor from Africa, who makes mildly fun of him from time to time. One evening, François is bored, and decides to call a random telephone number. He gets Christine on the line, a bit of an old school pharmacist, who hesitates to put down the phone, and plays the game of seduction with the charming "Mr X"...
A girl, Marie is led into prostitution by her pimp boyfriend, Gerard. She must not only give money to him but to the gangsters that explore him as well. Marie, together with a friend, Maloup, will try to become independent. They start to work the streets on their own but they will meet physical and sexual violence. They return to the brothels, and Marie goes back to her pimp, but Gerard has his caprices and wants more and more – he's in a spiral downwards and he's leading Marie with him. There's seems to be no escape.
The independently-minded daughter of lower-middle class French shopkeepers, Brigitte, one of three sisters, refused to marry the father of her child when she became pregnant. In this film, she reminisces about her family life beginning when she was about five years old, up to the present when she is in her early 20s. Of her two sisters, one has a nervous breakdown and the other one becomes something of a baby factory. Colorful anecdotes of her eventful life lend additional depth to her insights.
David McCallum stars as the rebellious Alan Breck Stewart, and this ambitious serial (a co-production between HTV and Germany's Tele-Munchen) also features a host of British character actors, including Bill Simpson, Patrick Allen, Andrew Keir, Patrick Magee and Frank Windsor. When young David Balfour arrives at his uncle's bleak Scottish house to claim his inheritance, his relative tries to murder him then has him shipped off to be sold as a slave in the colonies. Luckily for the lad, he strikes up a friendship with Alan Breck Stewart, who is on the run after Bonnie Prince Charlie's defeat at Culloden. When a ship's captain tries to kill Breck for his money, the two manage to get to land and set out for Edinburgh, dodging the ruthless Redcoats along the way.
Guillaume has made it: A machine that can clean dirty air by simply sucking all dirt into air balloons and then shipping them far far away so his explanation. Some Japanese business guys, after dinner with a lot of alcohol, order 5,000 pieces. His only problem: His production capacity is way to small so he gets to produce the machines in his private house. His wife Bernadette is far from being happy about it. Her private life goes down the line so she decides to leave Guillaume and to finally have revenge she candidates for major against her husband...
The film is the immediate continuation of Un éléphant ça trompe énormément, released the previous year. Having fortuitously discovered a photograph in which Marthe embraces someone unknown, clothed with a chequed jacket, Étienne Dorsay becomes jealous, and imagines various stratagems to identify the lover. In the meantime, Étienne and his friends acquire a weekend house for a very low price. As in the previous work, the film is largely narrated by the character Étienne, whose tone shifts with the reality of the images. The film contains a certain number of allusions to the films of Blake Edwards (the Pink Panther series).
Mike (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a stuntman who works with his girlfriend Jane (Raquel Welch). On their wedding day Mike and Jane are forced by producers to do a stunt for a film they are working on. Mike, annoyed doesn't look on the road and crashes the car causing them to end up in a hospital. After they come out Jane doesn't want to talk to Mike so he decides to get her a job in a film in which he is a stunt double for his double who is a star in action pictures but is in fact a wimp.
Etienne falls in love with a sexy woman he meets in his bureau. This woman is then chosen for an advertisement... He will do everything for conquering her, unless telling it his wife.
Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save the French art of cooking. After having agreed to appear on a talk show to show his skills in naming food and wine by taste, he is confronted with two disasters: his son wants to become a clown rather than a restaurant tester and he, the famous Charles Duchemin, has lost his taste!
A young pianist is shocked when she witnesses a strange chess tournament with a robot. Could there be a gruesome secret behind this exhibition?
With angry villagers driving them away from their castle in Transylvania, Dracula and his son Ferdinand head abroad. Dracula ends up in London, England where he becomes a horror movie star exploiting his vampire status. His son, meanwhile, is ashamed of his roots and ends up a night watchman in Paris, France where he falls for a girl. Naturally, tensions arise when father and son are reunited and both take a liking to the same girl.
The whole intrigue is centered around carte-blanche documents kept in a vault. Whoever fills in the blank becomes the owner of a revue. Big money is involved. The nephew of the owner of the vault is trying to cheat his uncle and have his name in the documents. Everything is even more complicated because the manager of the bank has a finger in the pie, too. Who but a humble bank-teller (Pierre Richard) will ruin the scheme?
The main character is the owner of a small enterprise in the southwest of France. An American corporation plans a take over. In order to smoothen the negotiations they invite the guy to Paris and wine and dine him. Furthermore he is introduced to the "niece of the PR director" who in reality is a hooker they rented for the occasion.
4-part TV series of Jules Verne's "Michael Strogoff: The Courier of the Czar"
As every summer, Georges Lajoie, his wife Ginette and grown-up son Léon go on holiday to Loulou's campsite. They join old friends, the Schumachers and the Colins. Brigitte Colin, the daughter, is quite a pretty young girl now. One day, Georges rapes and murders her. He hides the body near the barracks of the immigrant Arab workers. The racism of the campers will do the rest... A virulent lampoon against the average Frenchman's racism.
A young couple discover an ancient book in the attic and start reading the story of the Malemort family: a sombre household set in the nineteenth century in rural France. The old man Deroze plays his violin and tries to seduce the maid. His elder daughter Maxime "qui tue les mouches et deguste en cachette des fruits juteux". Underneath her bourgeois facade her senses are not yet put to rest. There is the rest of this upstairs/downstairs family who is visited by a sea captain who learns of a hidden treasure The storyline of this adult fairy tale is less important than the cinematography and the lyric fairy tale atmosphere that surrounds this movie. A little masterpiece still to be rediscovered.
Pierre is a clumsy, overly serious math teacher at an all-girls high school. His life is thrown into chaos after encountering a beautiful British actress and the paparazzi that follow her around.
With 'little captain' Cambrai raising serious doubts about the reality of the so-called "super spy", Colonel Toulouse kidnaps Christine and forces Francois to play again the character of "The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" in some fake adventures. All this to stop the investigation into the death of Colonel Milan.
Marcello Mastrioanni stars as an aging actor whose career has dwindled to TV commercials. Seeking an anchor in his life, Mastrioanni attempts a reconciliation with his ex-wife. But in this, as in his professional life, Mastrioanni is doomed to disillusionment and failure.
Linda comes to the big city in search of fun and excitement. What she finds is exploitation and abuse at the hands of a succession of sleazy guys. Searching for love, she enters into a lesbian relationship with a beautiful countess, discovers drugs and swingers' parties and starts acting in porno movies. She also begins to write a secret diary... With a cast of some of the most stunning Euro actresses of the period, wall-to-wall sex and nudity, pot parties, porno shoots and a psychedelic soundtrack, this is a gem of 1970s exploitation cinema from Jess Franco. Street scenes shot in Benidorm (Alicante, Spain) and Las Palmas (Gran Canaria, Spain).
In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assasins from Slimane's country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who's returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. Adding to the confusion are Pivert's dentist-wife, who thinks her husband is leaving her for another woman, their daughter, who's about to get married, and a Parisian neighborhood filled with people eager to celebrate the return of Rabbi Jacob.
Julien, the son of a minister has just married Birgitt, a Swede she met during her holidays on the French Riviera. She was recovering, having come to rest with Julien's father, a friend of her family. During the wedding cocktail, Julien remembers these holidays.
Hapless orchestra player becomes an unwitting pawn of rival factions within the French secret service after he is chosen as a decoy by being identified as a super secret agent.
An American soldier is wounded in Israel and slowly begins to lose his sight while hospitalized.
A comedy about an absent-minded man who works at a advertising company and topples from one problem to another.
The film is a continuation of the story of Tom Sawyer and his friends, the second part of the Romanian screenplay after the famous novel by Mark Twain. The three friends Tom, Huck and Becky continue their adventures full of puzzles and suspense.
Alexandre, a young and honest farmer, is oppressed by an authoritarian wife, who makes him work like a dog. When she dies in a car crash, he decides to stay in bed, absolutely free and inactive. Just a dog is occupied to carry food and newspapers to him.
