French

In The Trilogy, three different but parallel stories unfold revealing the lives of a husband and wife, a policeman and his drug-addicted wife, and a prison escapee and his friends. The characters wander in and out of three films where we see them switch from leading men and women to supporting actors. The three films, all of different genres (the first is a thriller, the second a comedy and the third a melodrama), provide the same action from different angles and perspectives. Each film can be appreciated on its own, but together they form a cohesive whole allowing the viewer to gain a deeper understanding of the characters. Although it is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Balzac’s novels, Lucas Belvaux’s project is unprecedented.Read More »

In The Trilogy, three different but parallel stories unfold revealing the lives of a husband and wife, a policeman and his drug-addicted wife, and a prison escapee and his friends. The characters wander in and out of three films where we see them switch from leading men and women to supporting actors. The three films, all of different genres (the first is a thriller, the second a comedy and the third a melodrama), provide the same action from different angles and perspectives. Each film can be appreciated on its own, but together they form a cohesive whole allowing the viewer to gain a deeper understanding of the characters. Although it is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Balzac’s novels, Lucas Belvaux’s project is unprecedented.Read More »

In The Trilogy, three different but parallel stories unfold revealing the lives of a husband and wife, a policeman and his drug-addicted wife, and a prison escapee and his friends. The characters wander in and out of three films where we see them switch from leading men and women to supporting actors. The three films, all of different genres (the first is a thriller, the second a comedy and the third a melodrama), provide the same action from different angles and perspectives. Each film can be appreciated on its own, but together they form a cohesive whole allowing the viewer to gain a deeper understanding of the characters. Although it is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Balzac’s novels, Lucas Belvaux’s project is unprecedented.Read More »

Brisbane, Australia, late 1910s. A man on the run from a murder charge buys a place as a stowaway on a smuggler ship bound for Mexico, by way of a tiny coral reef atoll.

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Between 1923 and 1952 Maurice Gleize managed to direct twenty two films in France without distinguishing himself. This one, with a screenplay by top French scriptwriter Charles Spaak, had arguably the best cast he ever got to work with (on other occasions he directed Fenandel, Charles Vanel and Marie Bell) from co-stars Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan – hot on the heels of Quai des brumes that same year – to Saturnin Fabre, Gaston Modot and Julien Carrette but for all Gleize extracted from them it might as well have been John Lund and Maria Montez supported by Leo Gorcey and the Bowery Boys.Read More »

Plot: The story takes place in the 1920s. William, a young aristocrat, has just won a property in Chili, near Santiago, in a poker game. He takes his wife Anne-Marie there so that she can rest. Right from the moment they arrive, they are welcomed by strange and intrusive characters bound together by an oppressive and poetical figure, the ghost of Léonor, who died accidentally. The house, with its suffocating presence, becomes the theater of an incredible substitution linked to the anxieties and desires of an unsatisfied man. (uniFrance)Read More »

A Parisian experimenter with Lumiere’s Kinematograph (Charles Denner) dies in WW1, and his son (Charles Denner) grows to be a man who barely survives WW2 in a concentration camp. He marries another refugee (Marthe Keller) who dies in childbirth, leaving him a daugher, Sarah, who at age 16 (Marthe Keller) is a spoiled debutante hopelessly in love with pop singer Gilbert Bécaud (Gilbert Bécaud) she goes through the 60s trying every fad while her father wishes she’d settle down. Meanwhile, sneak thief Simon Duroc (André Dussollier) winds up in prison, where he slowly turns his devious energies to their least-antisocial use: filmmaking.Read More »

In the months following the terrorist attacks in Paris, the youth has taken the night. A community has risen, that looks for belonging in a world they don’t understand and seek to change the rules. Led by new faces and unheard groups, with their values and ideals, they open a new dialog, challenge the state and get ready for a new kind of revolution.Read More »

Veteran gangster Gustave (Lino Ventura) escapes from prison to find his sister is being blackmailed by some petty thugs in this crime thriller. He plans one last caper to steal enough money in hopes of retiring to a tropical paradise. He and his gang are sought by a detective (Paul Meurisse), the cop who plays by the book and avoids the sadistic torture practiced by his less-honorable cohorts. Soon Gustave is caught between the police and the double-crossing gangsters and discovers too late that there is no honor among thieves.Read More »

La Bataille du Rail (Battle of the Rails) is regarded by many cineastes as the one truly great French “resistance” film. Based on fact, the episodic plotline details the courageous efforts by French railray workers to sabotage Nazi reinforcement-troop trains. The film’s thesis is that this underground activity was largely responsible for the allied victory on D-Day. Writer-director Rene Clement enhanced the reality of the story by filming on actual locations and using genuine railway employees and resistance fighters in the cast. Admittedly slow going at times, La Bataille du Rail is more successful as a morale-booster than as pure entertainment.Read More »