Yves Montand
A captivating portrait of French actor Michel Piccoli, who has worked with the greatest filmmakers of his time and has built a dazzling career of remarkable merit and success, focusing on his work during the 1970s and his professional relationship with Claude Sautet, Romy Schneider, Marco Ferreri and Luis Buñuel.
A behind the scenes and in-depth look at the making of John Huston's the Misfits
Young graffiti artist Tony (Olivier Martinez) and his friend Jockey (Sekkou Sall) jump-start an unexpected adventure on the streets of Grenoble, France, when they steal a car that's already occupied by an older man (Yves Montand) who's been sleeping in the back. Writer-director Jean-Jacques Beineix's foreign-language drama marks the final feature film for renowned actor Montand, who died in the midst of shooting.
A document of Perestroika, to be viewed as (nearly) unedited rushes of a voyage to Moscow, preserved by compatriot Costa-Gavras. Says Émilie Cauquy of the French Cinémathèque, "Astonishing unpublished travel diary, shot by Chris Marker in analog video on the occasion of a screening of L'Aveu in Moscow in 1990 [...] Armed with his camcorder, Marker films and records the comments, takes on the role of contemporary capital according to this unique ethnographic method that he has perfected".
In a charming mixture of fantasy and reality, this film recalls the great musicals of Hollywood's Golden Age. Yves Montand, playing himself, returns to his hometown of Marseilles to appear in an autobiographical musical. Once there, he searches for the barmaid he once loved and also encounters young hopeful Marion, giving her the chance of a lifetime
In this, the sequel to Jean de Florette, Manon (Beart) has grown into a beautiful young shepherdess living in the idyllic Provencal countryside. She plots vengeance on the men who greedily conspired to acquire her father's land years earlier.
In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.
In «1984», the novel he wrote in 1948, George Orwell sees the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother in a totalitarian state. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik was keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends such as the intercontinental exchange of culture combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and hooking up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even (including the later repeat transmissions) 25 million.
After a life of emotional and professional upsets, Alex finds himself headwaiter in a chic Parisian restaurant. Well into middle age, divorced but still very much a ladies’ man, he has one great ambition: to open an amusement park by the sea. One day, an old flame, Claire, suddenly re-enters his life. For Alex, the fires of love are easily re-kindled, but Claire has another man in her life…
TV series directed by Varda in which she gives thoughts to her favorite images and why she is drawn to them (in short one minute segments per image)
Victor Valance a quitté Paris depuis plusieurs années, laissant derrière lui sa mère et ses trois filles, pour réaliser de sombres opérations de casinos aux Bahamas et au Canada. Sa fille ainée, Pauline, est polytechnicienne, attachée au ministre des finances, et s'occupe de toute la petite famille.
Two men break out of prison; a rival gang ambushes them. One is mortally wounded and tells the other, Mickey, to take him to the estate of a retired robber, Noel, who lives in comfort with his lovely and beloved wife, Nicole. The man dies, and Mickey, a menacing hothead, demands money of Noel. A few days later, Mickey returns to the estate, shoots up a dinner party and threatens them again. Noel sends Nicole to an hotel and goes to his old gang to help him hunt down the dangerous Mickey. Mickey has other problems, too, including heartache for a daughter he hardly knows. Young, eager cops tail Nicole, and all are on a complicated collision course.
The film's plot is based on the Kennedy assassination and subsequent investigation. The film begins with the assassination of President Marc Jarry, who is about to be inaugurated for a second six-year term of office. Henri Volney, state attorney and member of the commission charged with investigating the assassination (based on the Warren Commission) refuses to agree to the commission's final findings. The film portrays the initial controversy about this, as well as Volney and his staff's reopening of the investigation.
Having both suffered extreme losses, a man and a woman try to form a relationship.
France, 1975. Jean, an exiled Spanish Communist, is a successful screenwriter who, after a tragic event, struggles with his political commitment, his love for his country, under the boot of General Franco, whose death he and his comrades have waited for years, and his complicated relationship with his son. (A sequel to “The War Is Over,” 1966.)
French essay film focusing on global political turmoil in the 1960s and '70s, particularly the rise of the New Left in France and the development of socialist movements in Latin America.
Henri Savin has managed a trucking company for his lover, Dominique Montlaur, for many years. Now he is planning to leave her for Julie Manet, the woman he has made pregnant, and Dominique is hysterical. She first threatens suicide, then shows up at a meeting of Savin and Julie. Dominique tries everything she can think of to break Savin and Julie apart, to no avail. Frustrated in her efforts, she jumps off a cliff and dies. Savin insists that he and Julie lie to the police about the encounter, although Dominique's death was a suicide and therefore they had no direct hand in it. Detective Waldeck investigates Dominique's death.
The aging villain Émile Morland talks his old friend Aristide into helping him with to kidnap the son of a millionaire.
A tough but honest cop must clear his name after a corrupt colleague implicates him in a murder in this French thriller. Ferrot is a hard-as-nails police detective who is attracted to a beautiful woman named Sylvia. Sylvia, however, is having an affair with Ganay, who happens to be Ferrot's superior on the force; Ganay happens to be married to Therese, who is handicapped. Sylvia is found murdered, and Ferrot is assigned to investigate; Ferrot is convinced that Ganay killed Sylvia because she wanted to end their relationship, but to his dismay, Ferrot discovers that the killer has placed a number of false clues that point the blame toward Ferrot.
A young Frenchwoman fleeing her Italian fiancé in Caracas thrusts herself and those around her into madcap events.
In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy government decides to pin the murder on six petty criminals. Loyal judges are called in to convict them as quickly as possible.
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.
This documentary chronicles an Yves Montand concert for Chilean refugees in France.
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?
Ange leaves New York to fly to his native Corsica. His mother is dying and Ange, who was not present when his father died, wishes to be present at her death. In Corsica Ange finds his brother Baptiste who married Maria, the woman he loved. He finds out that his father was killed, but nobody wants to tell him the name of the killer. And finally he finds two killers expecting him.
Claude Sautet's romantic drama stars Romy Schneider as Rosalie, a beautiful young woman involved with successful businessman Cesar. One day, Rosalie's former flame David appears and attempts to win her back. Cesar reacts with a jealous intensity never before seen by Rosalie, and because of that, she returns to David. She remains conflicted regarding her choice of partner, but eventually, one of the men does something which resolves the situation.
A strike at a French sausage factory contributes to the estrangement of a married filmmaker and his reporter wife.
Using the interrogation of a US counterinsurgency agent as a backdrop, the film explores the consequences of the struggle between Uruguay's government and the leftist Tupamaro guerrillas.
Don Sallust (Louis de Funès) is minister of the King of Spain. It is a being disingenuous, hypocritical and greedy that collects the taxes himself, he turns in part to his advantage. He is hated by the people he oppresse.Accusé by Queen, a beautiful princess Bavarian, of having an illegitimate child to one of her maids of honor, he was stripped of his duties and ordered to retire to a monastery. Decided to revenge, it comes in contact with his nephew seducing Caesar ...
Artur London was arrested in 1951 in a Stalinist purge, imprisoned and tortured for two years and forced to confess in the Slansky Trial, one of the last Stalinist "show trials" in Eastern Europe. The documentary explores some of the reasons for the controversy aroused by Costa-Gavras' The Confession, which had been accused of being anti-communist, and it highlights the political importance of filmmaking which, by its nature, is a fiction intended for the general public.
When French criminal Corey gets released from prison, he resolves to never return. He is quickly pulled back into the underworld, however, after a chance encounter with escaped murderer Vogel. Along with former policeman and current alcoholic Jansen, they plot an intricate jewel heist. All the while, quirky Police Commissioner Mattei, who was the one to lose custody of Vogel, is determined to find him.
Under hypnosis while trying to quit smoking, Daisy Gamble revisits past lives and different personalities.
The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement by his blackmailers.
Repression is the rule of the day in this film that skewers Greek governance of the 1960s. Z, a leftist rabble rouser, is killed in what appears to be a traffic accident. But given the political climate, the death of such a prominent activist raises troubling questions. Though it's too late to save Z's life, a postmortem examination suggests that the ruling party was behind his death. As the facts leak out, those who tell the truth pay the price for their honesty.
In this comedy, a run-down hotel drums up customers by sabotaging passing cars. The stuck motorists are then obliged to stay. Unfortunately, one of the sabotaged cars belongs to a bank robber. The hotel staff wants the robber out, but they also want to keep his ill-gotten money.
A pro-America superhero destroys France to prevent Communists from taking over.
The Belgian linguistics professor Matthias is going through a difficult period in relations with his girlfriend Anne. She is French, he is Belgian, and, oddly enough for an enlightened Europe and a doubly enlightened university environment, this small difference is a shadow on the couple’s personal life. One day, during a train ride, Anne disappears and Mathias goes looking for her in an unknown city.
Famous TV newscaster Robert Colomb is married to Catherine, but is continually unfaithful to her. Then he meets, and becomes fascinated with Candice.
The story tells about the confrontation of four first-class racers of Formula 1. Each of the competitors had their own additional motivation to become a champion. Their world is a risk and extreme, fast driving on the highway. The taste of adrenaline is what race lovers live. Outside of competition, they all experience personal dramas and upheavals, and the more important the desired title becomes for them.
France, 1965. A man with many names, an exiled Spanish Communist in his forties, begins to accept the futility of his long struggle against the dictatorship of General Franco, who has suffocated his country with an iron hand since the end of the Civil War in 1939, when he learns that some of his comrades who work undercover in Spain are being cornered by the authorities. (Followed by “Roads to the South,” 1978.)
Near the end of World War II, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he cannot maintain control of the city. After much contemplation Choltitz decides to ignore his orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, along with Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a resistance leader organize his forces.
Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.
Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and fundamentally egalitarian ideals of self-betterment, prosperity, tolerance, economic opportunity, and freedom.
In 1920s rural Mississippi, Nancy Mannigoe, an African-American servant, is placed on death row for the murder of Temple Drake's infant child. Temple, the daughter of the governor, pleads with her father to exonerate Nancy of the charges, explaining that Nancy acted in haste to prevent her from resuming her affair with a roguish Cajun called Candy Man. Details of Temple's sordid past are uncovered as she begs mercy for her faithful servant.
Middle-aged businesswoman Paula Tessier resists the advances of Philip Van der Besh, the 24-year-old son of one of her clients. But when her longtime paramour, Roger Demarest, begins yet another casual affair with a younger woman, Paula decides that two can play that game. However, it seems that society looks differently at May-December romances when the woman is the older partner.
When billionaire Jean-Marc Clement learns that he is to be satirized in an off-Broadway revue, he passes himself off as an actor playing him in order to get closer to the beautiful star of the show, Amanda Dell.
The tour of the French singer Yves Montand and actress Simone Signoret to the USSR in 1956.
Salem, 1692. Industrious farmer, John Proctor, has twice made love to 17-year-old Abigail, a youth he and his wife have taken in. (His wife Elisabeth has rebuffed him for seven months; she is puritanical and cold.) When she finds John and Abigail embracing, she sends the lass from her home and John, feeling damned, agrees. Abigail vows revenge. Her chance comes when she accuses Elisabeth of witchcraft and manipulates younger girls to support her claims of seeing spirits. The town's minister and politicians want a cause: ridding the town of witchcraft is the ideal repression.
Squarciò, a fisherman, lives with his family on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Like his fellow villagers, Squarciò struggles against harsh living conditions, a scarcity of fish in nearby waters and exploitation by the local wholesaler. But while the other fishermen continue to use nets, he goes out to the open sea to fish illegally with bombs. But Squarciò borrows money, loses his boat, and in a moment of supreme desperation, has to bomb directly off-shore, causing the hatred and rejection of his fellow fishermen. Trying to save his family, Squarciò and his young sons sail their new boat out beyond the local waters and bomb-fish again. But this time, the sea exacts a terrible toll…
Two young hunters of wolves are involved in a conflict. Besides the dangerous wild wolves, beautiful Teresa is the center of attention.
It tells the story of an older pedant who buys adolescence from Satan.
A good cast smooths over the rough spots of Les Heros sont Fatigues. The scene is the African republic of Liberia, which in this film proves to be a stopping-off point for a number of shady characters. Yves Montand plays a French ex-pilot who becomes involved in a scheme to smuggle stolen diamonds. His cohorts include a Nazi collaborator, a German refugee, and the white mistress of a prominent Liberian. A romance develops between the ex-pilot and the aforementioned mistress. Meanwhile, one of the conspirators (Curt Jurgens) has a last-minute attack of conscience, effectively queering the deal. The steamier romantic passages in Les Heros sont Fatigues had to be trimmed for American consumption.
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.
Five part vignette film; episodes include "The Baby" "The Hand of Providence" and "On Location"
In the South American jungle, supplies of nitroglycerine are needed at a remote oil field. The oil company pays four men to deliver the supplies in two trucks. A tense rivalry develops between the two sets of drivers on the rough remote roads where the slightest jolt can result in death.
A gentle cultural clash between a band of Italian sports fans and the citizenry of Paris. DeAngelis has heard so much about “naughty Paree” that he’s determined to experience that naughtiness first hand. Ultimately, he realises that reports of French libertinism have been grossly exaggerated, but he has a high old time finding this out.
A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard.
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...
