Quote:
Salome was the daughter of Herod II and Herodias. According to the New Testament, the daughter of Herodias demanded and received the head of John the Baptist. This is a choreographed version of the play by Oscar Wilde.

Salomé - Koralnik 1969 1080p WEB.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 26 min
Size: 	2.74 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1440x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 348 kb/s
BPP: 	0.112
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/D8514603486F015/Salome_-_Koralnik_1969_1080p_WEB.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/5E7698E1E657B48/Salome_-_Koralnik_1969_1080p_WEB_-_eng_02.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Pierre Koralnik – Salomé (1969) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This is a retelling of Tristan and Isolde, set in 1940s France. The script was written by Jean Cocteau.

Leternel.retour.1943.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 53 min
Size: 	4.15 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1480x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	1.370
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	5 091 kb/s
BPP: 	0.133
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AAC LC @ 137 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/78E2F7C0817CE32/Leternel.retour.1943.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English (Hardcoded)

The post Jean Delannoy – L’éternel retour AKA Love Eternal AKA The Eternal Return (1943) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

It may be the first time they have used the theory of relativity in a story.

Croisieres.siderales.1942.DVDRip.x264-PTP.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 28mn
Size:	1.50 GiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	702x574 ~> 765x574
Aspect ratio:	4:3
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	2 235 kb/s
Audio
French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/EF0C37C510D76EA/Croisieres.siderales.1942.DVDRip.x264-PTP.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post André Zwobada – Croisières sidérales AKA Sideral Cruises (1942) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
‘His criminal activities exposed, a crooked financier named Géraudy takes flight and intends to make his escape across the alpine border with the help of a young smuggler, Manu. When his wife Florence declines to join him, Géraudy hangs himself, thus depriving her of his life insurance. Florence persuades Inspecteur Nansen that Géraudy’s death was murder not suicide, and Manu is soon arrested as the obvious suspect. Manu’s only hope is a suicide note written by Géraudy just before he killed himself, but this he has entrusted to his girlfriend. The latter cannot forgive Manu when she sees him with Florence and so it appears that an innocent young man will be condemned for Géraudy’s supposed murder…’
– James Travers

Le.dessous.des.cartes.1948.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 26mn
Size: 	1.37 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	720x576 ~> 768x576
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 004 Kbps
BPP: 	0.193
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/4E12D8F7880329B/Le.dessous.des.cartes.1948.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/EAE97EA21092346/Le.dessous.des.cartes.1948.DVDRip.x264.AC3.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post André Cayatte – Le dessous des cartes AKA Under the Cards (1948) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A word from an expert on the area: dbmonteil of the IMDb:

“La Foire aux chimères” is a jewel, a sparkling diamond. It would deserve one hundred comments, and that would not be enough.

Pierre Chenal was a film noir director who made moderately successful movies before the war: “L’Alibi” which featured von Stroheim too and his first version of “The Postman always rings twice “, “Le Dernier Tournant (1939). But the 1946 work is much superior, being at once a film noir, a baroque melodrama and a fairy tale.

Frank, a disfigured man (von Stroheim) meets at a fair a beautiful blind long-haired blonde Jeanne (Madeleine Sologne) who is a knives thrower’s partner; this man, Robert, has a lover, Clara. Jeanne marries the ugly man, undergoes an operation and recovers sight. But,as says Marilou, Frank’s housekeeper a proverb says “happiness is a misfortune you cannot see”.

There are at least ten (and maybe more) memorable sequences; each one is actually a work of art. Even if the movie is close to the realisme poetique dear to Carné, Chenal transcends it and makes a movie which verges on fantastic: when Jeanne appears for the first time at the fair (la foire aux chimères =the dreams fair), she looks like a fairy, or an angel, the angel she plays in the small circus where Frank is the only spectator. The baroque house where von Stroheim hides his beloved wife is a splendor. It’s also a trompe l’oeil.

The screenplay combines harshness and elegance, and works wonders: when Jeanne awakes after the operation, she pretends she cannot see because she has seen her husband’s frightening face. It’s only when she looks at herself in a mirror and bursts into tears that we get the picture.It might be the dark side of Cocteau’s contemporary “Beauty and the Beast”.

Stroheim outdoes himself and gives one of his greatest performances which compares more than favorably to that of Max von Mayerling in “Sunset Boulevard” – who was yet to come in 1946!- .His character will meet the wickedness of the human race (the flies in his mashed potatoes in the canteen, the gibes when he dances with his wife at the ball) He will become a counterfeiter to spoil his Jeanne.But everything is illusion: “everything is illusion in this house, the paintings, the furniture, your love for me!” he screams when he discovers his wife’s secret.

Chenal’s camera goes crazy during the stunning last minutes: a distraught Stoheim rushes in the streets to get to his enemy’s house, and it leads to a double ending (both sad and happy) that will haunt you long afterward. Chenal uses slopings with absolute skill

One should also mention the extraordinary use of the [I]Pont Mirabeau où coule la Seine[/I] (as poet Appolinaire wrote).

“La Foire aux chimères” had remained a sleeper for about forty years when it was praised to the skies during the eighties; but too many people who like French cinema do not even know its existence. Yes,there was a cinema before the nouvelle vague.

https://nitro.download/view/53EB7FA08C21C16/La_Foire_aux_chimeeres.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/C4CE59FA2190138/La_Foire_aux_chimeres_Revised.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English

The post Pierre Chenal – La foire aux chimères aka Carnival of Illusions (1946) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
In this sci-fi film, a scientist invents a prescient machine that can tell people when they will die. Oddly enough, the people do not want to know and therefore begin to riot…

Review:
With capital supplied by the unscrupulous banker Emil Lasser, Dr Jean Durand succeeds in creating a machine that can predict, to the nearest minute, when an individual will die. A ruthless man facing financial ruin, Lasser intends using Durand’s invention for a crooked life insurance business, but the scientist refuses to go along with the scheme, even though he is in love with Lasser’s daughter, Marie‐France. Subjecting himself to Durand’s machine, Lasser learns he has only a few days left to live. He ends up committing suicide, after leaving a note to his daughter warning her to stay away from Durand. As Marie‐France embarks on a new romance with Durand’s best friend Dr Gérard Gallois, Durand begins capitalising on his invention and soon has a steady stream of clients eager to know the exact date of their demise. The implications of Durand’s discovery soon hits home when people, knowing they have only a short time to live, begin behaving in an irresponsible manner. Durand realises too late that he has created a monster…

Sci‐fi is not a genre that is well‐represented in French cinema, and until recently it was practically non‐existent, and this in spite of the fact that France had a crucial part to play in the origination of science‐fiction, through the novels of Jules Verne. The number of French sci‐fi features made before 1950 barely makes it into double figures, and most of these are creaking potboilers that are hardly worth the trouble of watching. Richard Pottier’s Le Monde tremblera (a.k.a. La Révolte des vivants) is one of the few pre‐WWII sci‐films that stands up reasonably well today, although it is more a melodrama‐cum‐morality piece with sci‐fi trimmings than a fullblown sci‐fi movie in the traditional sense. For non‐sci‐fi addicts, the film’s main appeal is its exceptional cast, which includes Madeleine Sologne and Erich von Stroheim, who would be memorably reunited in La Foire aux chimères (1946).

Right from the off, it’s pretty clear that Pottier, not the most inspired or original of filmmakers, is taking his cue from an earlier sci‐fi classic, namely James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). There’s a driven young scientist (Claude Dauphin at his creepiest) who sacrifices love for his demonic researches, a laboratory generously fitted out with gizmos, flashing lights and buzzing electrical discharges, and a monstrous creation that ruins lives and threatens to overturn the social order without meaning to. The ultimate fate of the scientist and his monster mirror those in Whale’s film, with the unwashed masses rising up in their ‐ er ‐ dozens, to thwart the evil that has been unleashed on the world (hence the film’s alternative title).

Yet Le Monde tremblera is more than just a crafty homage to Universal’s Frankenstein movies; it is actually a canny reworking of the themes underpinning Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel ‐ the morality of scientific endeavour and man’s striving to claim mastery over his own destiny. The film looks as if it was based on a novel by H.G. Wells but in fact it is adapted from a work (La Machine à prédire la mort) by a lesser known pair of writers, Charles Robert‐Dumas and Roger‐Francis Didelot. Misguided scientists abound in science‐fiction and, like Dr Frankenstein, the protagonist of Robert‐Dumas and Didelot’s novel is another vain Faustian fool who sells his soul in the pursuit of what we would now term ‘irresponsible science’. Compared with the film’s other scientist (Roger Duchesne’s nice Dr Gérard Gallois), who prefers healing sick children to telling people when they will die, Dr Durand is positively evil.

Now that analysis of a person’s DNA can give an accurate predictor of his or her life expectancy, the premise of Le Monde tremblera is no longer the stuff of fantasy but has become a very real possibility. The moral concerns that the film raises are now real concerns that have far‐reaching consequences for both individuals and society, if not humanity. Indeed, this could well be the most significant development in human history, knowing at birth the date on which an individual is most likely to die. Pottier’s littleknown film never had a greater resonance than it has today, and many of the moral issues relating to predicted life expectancy are effectively addressed in the course of the film.

Made on the eve of WWII, Le Monde tremblera has an unmistakeable aura of apocalyptic doom about it, very similar to what we find in William Cameron Menzies’s Things to Come (1936) and Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1938). When the implications of Dr Durand’s revolutionary death predictor start to become apparent, the mood of the piece darkens considerably ‐ it shifts abruptly from dark melodrama to desperately bleak film noir (a transition that seems to be a hallmark of H.G. Couzot, here employed as a screenwriter).

After a brief comic interlude in which Armand Bernard, unhappy at being told he will live to a hundred, tries in vain to kill himself, there is a frenzied descent into chaos as the world’s stock markets come crashing down and everyone rises up against Durand and his diabolical contraption. The Luddite spirit saves the day in the end, but just four months after the film’s release in May 1939 the world really would shake… Le Monde tremblera is a film that now seems eerily prophetic, offering a glimpse perhaps of the nightmare that is yet to come.

— James Travers (lefilmguide.com)

https://nitro.download/view/4E4B851E51DBC5B/The_World_Will_Shake_(1939)_–_Richard_Pottier.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/C292A486AD836A8/The_World_Will_Shake_(1939)_–_Richard_Pottier.srt

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English (muxed & srt)

The post Richard Pottier – Le Monde tremblera aka The World Will Shake AKA The Revolt of the Living (1939) first appeared on Cinema of the World.