Raimu

Synopsis wrote:
Honoré Panisse is dying, cheerfully, with friends, wife, and son at his side. He confesses to the priest in front of his friends; he insists that the doctor be truthful. But, he cannot bring himself to tell his son Cesariot that his real father is Marius, the absent son of César, Cesariot’s godfather. Panisse leaves that to Fanny, the lad’s mother. Dissembling that he’s off to see a friend, Cesariot then seeks Marius, now a mechanic in Toulon. Posing as a journalist, Cesariot spends time with Marius and leaves believing tales he is a petty thief. Only after the truth comes out can Marius, Fanny, César, and Cesariot step beyond the falsehoods, benign though they may be.Read More »

Synopsis wrote:
Picking up moments after the end of Marius, this film follows Fanny’s grief after Marius’s departure—and her realization that she’s pregnant. Panisse continues courting her and embraces the baby’s impending arrival as a gift, so long as its paternity remains a secret. Fanny and Panisse wed, but after her baby’s birth, Marius returns unexpectedly and demands what he believes is still his.Read More »

Synopsis wrote:
César runs a bar along Marseilles’ port, assisted by his 23 year old son, Marius. Colorful characters abound: M. Panisse, an aging widower and prosperous sail maker; Honorine, a fishmonger with a sidewalk stall near the bar; her daughter, Fanny, who helps her sell cockles; and, various old salts. Friends since childhood, Fanny and Marius love each other, but Marius has a secret wanderlust: every ship’s whistle stirs a longing for foreign lands. When M. Panisse seeks Fanny’s hand in marriage and when a departing clipper needs a deckhand, Marius and Fanny must decide who and what they love most. César, with his generous, comic spirit, tries to guide his son.Read More »

Ginette, a Parisian seamstress, lives poorly but happily with her musician lover. When Count la Ferronnière offers to teach her the manners and behaviours that will open her the doors to a richer world, she quickly chooses wealth over love.Read More »

Quote:
One day, Camille Morestan, owner of a bicycle shop, finds himself juryman in the trial of a young woman, Nathalie, who is accused of murdering her lover. Moved by Nathalie’s story, Camille manages to convince his fellow jurymen of her innocence and she is acquitted.
With nowhere to go, Nathalie accepts Camille’s kind offer of a room in his house and a job in his shop. Only Camille’s son, Claude, knows that Nathalie was tried for murder, but he falls madly in love with her. Meanwhile, one of the jurymen continues to harangue Camille…Read More »

The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.Read More »

An adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Le Eternel Mari”, a somber story of marital infidelity, revenge and near madness, and starring Raimu in his last film appearance.Read More »

From frenchfilms.org

Georges Simenon’s 1940 novel Les Inconnus dans la maison is a brooding study in social breakdown and youth disaffection that contains a powerful critique of western society of the 1940s. The same can equally be said of Henri Decoin’s magnificent film adaptation, one of the earliest and most successful attempts to bring Simenon’s bleak, melancholic world to the big screen. This was the second film that Decoin made for the German-run film company Continental-Films during the Nazi Occupation of France and it could hardly be more different in tone and subject from his first, the American-style romantic comedy Premier rendez-vous (1941).Read More »

Synopsis
Paris, 1817. The wealthy Countess Ferraud is distressed when she begins to receive letters from her husband, Colonel Chabert, who was reported to have died during the Napoleonic wars ten years before. After an attempt to have him committed to a lunatic asylum fails, the now destitute Chabert appeals to a lawyer Derville to help restore his identity and his fortune. The Countess has since remarried and has no intention of surrendering the wealth she inherited from Chabert…Read More »