French

Afrique 50, France’s first anticolonialist film, was banned by the censorship board, yet has recently been awarded a prize by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On its completion, this biting pamphlet against French colonialism in black Africa earned its author thirteen indictments and a year’s prison sentence. In the post-war period of European reconstruction, France wanted to show her colonies in the best possible light and promoted the image of the Republic leading her child-like pupils with a maternal hand to the light of reason and progress. Not everybody, however, subscribed to this vision.Read More »

Hannah and Violetta are an odd couple: an elusive mother and a little girl in search of maternal love, a fanciful artist and her reluctant model.
When Hannah asks Violetta if she would like to be her model, her life with her loving grandmother is turned upside down. From a normal childhood to muse of the trendy Paris art scene…Read More »

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Pauline a la Plage is the third of French filmmaker Eric Rohmer’s “Comedies et Proverbes.” Pauline (Amanda Langlet) is the teen-aged cousin of the seemingly more worldly and sensible Marion (Arielle Dombasle). Both girls become entwined in amorous escapades while vacationing at the beach. It gradually develops that Marion is the one least capable of handling herself, while Pauline grows in maturity from her summertime experiences. It is nothing short of amazing how Eric Rohmer can take the most conventional and obvious of material and weave something as charming and profound as Pauline at the Beach. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviRead More »

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Le Roi et L’Oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird) is one of the true classics of animation in France, and although its renown and popularity haven’t made it across to this side of the channel, it has been a source of inspiration to many of the current generation of Japanese animators. Scripted by the celebrated poet, Jacques Prévert (who also scripted Quai de Brumes and Les Enfants du Paradis), designed by the master of French animation, Paul Grimault, based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson, Le Roi et L’Oiseau’s credentials are impeccable and its reputation unassailable.Read More »

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One night, a fading entertainer intervenes when a woman contemplates suicide, beginning a strange, unpredictable relationship.Read More »

Synopsis:
A middle-aged waiter has long harbored dreams of becoming a singer, and is also anxious to prove he’s as virile as he was when he started pushing plates. He gets a chance to rev up his sexual energy and his musical skills when an old flame reenters his life after 17 years.Read More »

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Albert Spaggiari (Francis Huster), a legendary bank robber, assembles a team of assorted experts, all with great gangster names such as 68, Mike La Baraka, The Egyptian. Together they plan to tunnel up through the sewers and break into the vault of the bank in Nice. Director José Giovanni, himself an ex-convict and a successful crime writer, steps up to helm this film about a super-robbery. Will it work? Will they crack? Will Albert and Charlotte (Lila Kedrova), resolve their differences, or will the police catch them all? Albert Spaggiari was one of the most notorious and successful bank robbers in history, this film tells the tale of just one job!Read More »

Plot: Maurice Maïeux lives in a small modest flat near Paris together with his father, Marcel. Marcel used to be a successful heavy-weight boxer 20 years ago, however, would not take part in sham fights. Consequently he was made to disappear from public by hitting him below the belt during one of the fights, him thus being impotent and having to walk on crutches for the rest of his life. His son Maurice is 18 years old, 1.90m tall and weighs 100 Kg. Be it for the sake of taking revenge or for the mere wish that his son should reach more in life that he himself did, Marcel’s heart-felt wish is that Maurice should become a successful boxing champion – and one day even world champion ! Yet, Maurice fights against being patronized by his father.Read More »

Lemmy Caution investigates a German ruins.
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Jean-Luc Godard’s Germany Year 90 Nine Zero – the title being a pun on Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1947) – was made for French television in 1991 and continued his reflexive cinema/video image/sound practice that reached its zenith with Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1989-97). Germany Year 90 Nine Zero can be considered a sort of loose sequel to Godard’s Alphaville (1965). The film follows the adventures of Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine), “the last of the secret agents,” as he wanders through a post-Berlin-Wall Germany (from the East to the West) through a landscape littered with history. It is 26 years later, and Lemmy is looking exhausted, vulnerable, as befits the landscape of East Germany.Read More »