René Clément

In Nazi-occupied France during WWII, a French woman helps two downed Allied airmen to evade capture by the Germans and make their way into neutral Spain.Read More »

Ulisse is a naive young man out looking for a job after being released from the army. He drops the offer he gets from a group of fascists to go in with the Fossatis, a family of anarchists (unknown to him).Read More »

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.Read More »

Quote:
While some other mid-20th-century directors were pursuing the chimera of “total cinema,” Jean Cocteau was chasing down the dream of a “total art.” But if “total cinema” meant capturing on screen the actual world as it really was, Cocteau’s “total art” meant giving form, instead, to the otherwise impalpable worlds of desire and dream. Both quests were fundamentally unrealistic, but Cocteau embraced this truth in ways both joyously inventive and technically rigorous.Read More »

At Oslo in 1945, a French doctor, Guilbert, is abducted by a group of Nazis and taken aboard their submarine. The Germans plan to evade capture by the Allies by steering a course for South America. Guilbert finds himself in the company of several unsavoury fugitives, including a Gestapo chief, a German general, an Italian industrialist and a French journalist who collaborated with the Nazis. When news of the armistice is received, mutiny breaks out aboard the submarine.Read More »

Synopsis:
Jill is surprised and angry when her computer-genius boyfriend decides to quit his job in a big company for unclear reasons. But when her children disapear mysteriously and seem to have been kidnapped, she wants to know more, and discovers that she may be caught in a DEADLY TRAP…Read More »

L’Arabie interdite (1937)

Documentary made in Yemen (and first film ever shot in this country) under the leadership of archaeologist Jules Barthou. During the adventure of this film, René Clément will serve four days in prison for having concealed a camera under his clothes, then will be captured by rebels and threatened with being shot. The majority of the negatives will be seized by the guards of Imam Yahia, and it is with the remaining rushes that Clément will edit what becomes The Forbidden Arabia, a film entrusted to the Musée de l’Homme in 1965 where it is forgotten until that ethnologist Claudie Fayein unearths it and has it restored.Read More »

Droll French comedian Noel-Noel essays the title role in Le Pere Tranquille (The Quiet Daddy). Contrary to expectations, the star isn’t a secret father, but in fact the unknown head of a WW2 resistance movement. By playing the fool whenever the Nazis are around and about, Noel-Noel is able to conceal his double life and successfully carry out his various sabotage missions. This deft combination of comedy and melodrama builds to a particularly suspenseful climax. Le Pere Tranquille was directed by Rene Clement, who also helmed the classic “underground” film Battle of the Rails. (All Movie Guide)Read More »

Synopsis:
Gervaise Macquart, a young lame laundress, is left by her lover Auguste Lantier with two boys… She manages to make it, and a few years later she marries Coupeau, a roofer. After working very hard a few more years, she succeeds in buying her own laundry (her dream)… But Coupeau starts to drink after having fallen from a roof, and Lantier shows up… A faithful adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel “L’Assomoir”, depicting the fatal degeneration of a family of workers, mainly because of alcohol.Read More »