Viviane Romance

In Southern Tunisia, Mattéo, a local who lives off the generosity of his listeners as he spends his time telling stories in the streets of Sfax, falls in love with a prostitute, Safia. She gives up her profession and they move, Matteo working at the port, in a house on the edge of the desert in which Mattéo’s father (the Maltese) live. But Safia being pregnant, Mattéo gets involved with a gang of gun smugglers, hoping to earn more money to provide for his family. But Matteo doesn’t come back and Safia belives him dead. Matteo’s father kicks her out of the house and she meets André, an archeologist who falls under her spell and she accepts to follow him to Paris. Three years later, out of jail, Matteo goes to Paris, hoping to find his beloved Safia and their child.Read More »

Synopsis:
The beautiful Clarisse learns that she is going blind, and in order to prevent her lover Madére, a boatman, from sacrificing himself for her, she decides to break with him, pretending she no longer loves him. Madère angrily leaves, and Clarisse takes a job as a singer in a harbour bar to support herself and her crippled sister Mireille. When she discovers that she is pregnant, she wants to confess everything to Madère, but he has left on a year-long voyage with a new lover Giselle…Read More »

The Marquise de Montespan is a scheming adventuress who hopes to become the favoured mistress to King Louis XIV of France to advance her social status. However, she is thwarted by the young Angélique de Fontanges, who is the King’s current favourite. Out of desperation, the Marquise de Montespan engages the services of a professional poisoner, the venomous La Voisin, to render her rival ugly. The potion unfortunately kills the young Angélique, and the royal court is thrown into turmoil…Read More »

Synopsis
The Marquise de Montespan is a scheming adventuress who hopes to become the favoured mistress to King Louis XIV of France to advance her social status. However, she is thwarted by the young Angélique de Fontanges, who is the King’s current favourite. Out of desperation, the Marquise de Montespan engages the services of a professional poisoner, the venomous La Voisin, to render her rival ugly. The potion unfortunately kills the young Angélique, and the royal court is thrown into turmoil…Read More »

Criterion wrote:
Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town (Viviane Romance), discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him, and is framed for the murder. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, Julien Duvivier’s first film after his return to France from Hollywood finds the acclaimed poetic realist applying his consummate craft to darker, moodier ends. Propelled by its two deeply nuanced lead performances, the tensely noirish Panique exposes the dangers of the knives-out mob mentality, delivering as well a pointed allegory for the behavior of Duvivier’s countrymen during the war.Read More »

One of the most expensive French films of the immediate postwar years, L’Affaire du Collier de la Reine is primarily a vehicle for the formidable Vivian Romance. The star plays an aristocrat in the court of Louis XVI, who helps engineer a scheme to divest the Queen of her royal necklace. On the verge of success, the “heroine” is found out, and forced to submit to whipping and torture. Read More »

Very weird piece of mystic low-life exotica, with perennial foreigner Valery Inkijinoff as Eastern sage dispensing strange wisdom and Viviane Romance looking stunning in Betty Page fringe as a prostitute and femme fatale. Lots of Third Manic running around in a sort of non-specifically-exotic soukh set, crime, atmosphere and Marcel Dalio. Quite peculiar by Raymond Bernard’s standards, but VERY diverting.Read More »