FRENCH
ACTION/THRILLERS
6 RUE DU CAVALAIRE (1973)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Jean Daskalidès. Stars: Nand Baert, Roger Bolders, Jean Daskalidès. Octave Verbrugge, a powerful Belgian building contractor, met Hugo Saint-Laurent, a brilliant French engineer, during a business trip and made friends with him. Now that his bureau of expertise is experiencing difficulties with one of their important projects he has the idea to hire his friend to help resolve the problem. Hugo agrees and stays as a guest at Octave's home in Ghent, where the promoter lives with his two unmarried sisters, Françoise, a beautiful but mysterious woman, and Aurélie, a very strict and withdrawn lady...Murder soon enters the picture!
BESTIAL QUARTET (1975)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Jacques Rouffio, Stars: Michel Piccoli, Gérard Depardieu, Jane Birkin. Dr Pierre Losseray works at a clinic in a French provincial town and is married to the lovely Muriel. When he suffers a heart attack, his rivals are quick to exploit the situation. Dr Breze advises Pierre that he must give up his practice, warning him that his next heart attack could be fatal. Pierre ignores this advice but then he learns that, ten years before, Breze managed to destroy the reputation of another doctor.
LE GOLEM (1967)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS. It always an event when a European Horror film from the 60s turns up! Directed by Jean Kerchbron, Stars: André Reybaz, Georges Douking, François Vibert. A man gets the wrong hat during a religious service. In his dreams, he will relive the life of the owner of this hat, Athanase Pernath, a diamond-cutter in the Prague ghetto. In spite of himself, the man is going to be mixed up in the life of his neighbors. Family stories, scams, jealousies and revenge will lead Pernath into prison, as the threat of the Golem, this monster created by a rabbi and waking up every thirty-three years, hovers over the city. In 1966, Gourmelin designed the elaborate, caligaresque sets for the ORTF’s telefilm of Gustav Meyrink’s Le Golem, directed by Jean Kerchbron from a script by Louis Pauwels, author of The Morning of the Magicians. Gourmelin also created the Golem’s mask, closely based on Meyrink’s description of the creature with large, slanted eyes. Le Golem was a bold experiment in le fantastique, the producers giving veteran director Kerchbron and his team complete control over the project. It is also remembered as one of the last French TV-movies made in black and white — which suited the film perfectly. Within a few months, the network had switched to full-time color.
5 DAY LOVER (1961)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Philippe de Broca, Stars: Jean Seberg, Micheline Presle, Jean-Pierre Cassel During Madeleine's fashion show Claire meets Antoine and becomes his mistress. Due to the fact that she's married (to a wealthy man) she only spends a few days a week with him. Antoine is also rich, and often taken to meetings by his chauffeur, Marius. However things are more complicated: Antoine is Madeleine lover (Claire's best friend) while George, Claire's husband is quite rich and has a modest job. Everything works perfectly until Madeleine discovers the truth. She prepares her vengéance and organizes a celebration which she invites Antoine, Claire and George.
THE LADY BANKER (1980)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Romy Schneider delivers one of her most memorable performances in this lavish period production from director Francis Girod. The Austrian born actress who became a star of French cinema in the 1960s was at her peak when she made this film and here she is simply stunning. The character she plays is a mass of contradictions but somehow Schneider renders the maverick banker Emma believable formidable, inconsistent yet nearly always sympathetic. The supporting cast is nearly as impressive, featuring some of the biggest names in French cinema (Claude Brasseur, JeanLouis Trintingant, MarieFrance Pisier, Jean Carmet) including some fledgling young actors who have yet to make it big (Daniel Auteuil and Thierry Lhermitte). It is a dream cast that works remarkably well, Trintingant's soliloquizing rival banker being particularly memorable. Even by French standards, the production values of this film are impressive. With great attention to period detail, the film offers a convincing portrait of the 1920s, capturing the mood and ethics of the period very well.
THE ADOLESCENT (1979)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Jeanne Moreau, Stars: Simone Signoret, Francis Huster, Laetitia Chauveau. The summer of 1939. Marie, at 13, goes with her parents to visit her grandmother in a small town near Avignon. Although rumors of war reach the countryside, it's an idyllic place. Marie's parents are constantly making love. Surrounded by sexual frankness, Marie fancies herself a woman and develops a crush on Alexander, the town's young Jewish doctor. She's despondent when he treats her as if she were a child. After Marie's father abruptly leaves for a few weeks to assist with a relative's harvest, Marie's mother and the doctor disappear into the woods for hours at a time. Marie tries to spy on them. When dad returns, what will the family and the doctor do?
THE JOKER (1960)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Directed by Philippe de Broca, Stars: Anouk Aimée, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Palau. Edouard Berlon (Jean-Pierre Cassel) is a happy-go-lucky rogue who takes nothing seriously and flits irresponisbly from one affair to another. When he meets Helene Larouch (Anouk Aimee), he woos her although she is married to Andre (Francois Maistre), until finally the combination of his youth, exuberance, absurd family (including a few infants of undetermined origin and a number of stray dogs)and eccentric way of life compared to the aridity of her marriage, overcome her resistance. They are both soon disenchanted.
REPRIEVE FOR THE LIVING (1959)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS. Directors: Ottorino Franco Bertolini, Víctor Merenda, Stars: Henri Vidal, Dawn Addams, Lino Ventura. Not long after Jean Monnier, a successful writer, narrowly escapes death in a car accident he is visited in hospital by a man who offers him an unusual service. For a substantial fee, Monnier will be taken to a pleasant alpine retreat, where his life will be terminated in the most agreeable manner possible. Intrigued, Monnier signs a contract and soon finds himself checking into the Pension Edelweiss, where he meets six other willing suicides and the mysterious owner of the establishment, Monsieur Borcher. Whenever the latter plays a particular air on the piano, one of the seven boarders will die a short while afterwards. Monnier's suspicion that this is some kind of elaborate hoax is dispelled when, one by one, his fellow guests begin disappearing. One of Borcher's clients, Nadia, decides that she no longer wants to die and coerces Monnier into helping her escape before her time comes. Regrettably, Borcher is adamant that no one who enters the Pension Edelweiss will leave it alive...
THE SLEEPING CAR MURDERS (1965)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. AT LAST THE DEFINITIVE VERSION OF THIS COSTA GAVRAS MASTERPIECE/GIALLO! Director: Costa-Gavras. Director: Costa-Gavras, Stars: Catherine Allégret, Jacques Perrin, Simone Signoret. Six people travel in a railroad sleeping car from Marseilles to Paris. Upon their arrival, a woman is found dead in one of the berths. The police investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them committed the homicide, but the suspects are killed one by one. The last two must solve the case themselves before they become the next victims.
STRANGE MR STEVE (1957)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS. Director: Raymond Bailly, Stars: Jeanne Moreau, Philippe Lemaire, Armand Mestral. "L'étrange Monsieur Steve" (1957) is a solid film noir. It even features Jeanne Moreau and Lino Ventura in substantial roles. The two male leads are handled by Armand Mestral as "Stève" and Philippe Lemaire as "Georges". Mestral is a thief who leads a gang wherever a feasible robbery opportunity appears. Lemaire is a bank clerk whom he blackmails into cooperating with him to rob the bank. Subsequently, Lemaire finds himself changing and moving more willingly into shady activities; we see two more of the gang's schemes executed. Lemaire likes the money and sees it as a way to escape, but even more does he love Moreau who initially seduced him away from his current amour, Anouk Ferjac. Mestral's threatening goon, Lino Ventura, also is present at all times to coerce Lemaire into doing Mestral's bidding. This movie features Moreau being very fetching and seductive.
I WAS A MALE SEX BOMB (1964)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Philippe de Broca, Stars: Jean-Pierre Cassel, Irina Demick, Catherine Deneuve. It starts out well enough with the loafer lodging himself cozily in the pad of a charitable friend's Montmartre mistress, whom Irina Demick appropriately enacts. Then he finds a nice home as the playmate of an eccentric aristocrat who is nuts about trains. There he helps operate the model system and sleeps in a room that is built like a compartment in a wagon. And here, we might note, the picture reaches its comic peak. For Mr. de Broca has managed to develop this antic conceit into a whirligig of nonsense that has the frenzy of old-time slapstick farce. The aspect of two grown-up fellows, Mr. Cassel and Jean-Claude Brialy, rigged out in trainmen's uniforms and playing with small electric trains is a sight in itself. And the clatter of whistles, wheels and bells coming over the hi-fi, and the rocking of the compartment at night, or the pouring of smoke through the window when Mr. Cassel opens it, makes for some funny business. The two actors are up to it.
THE MURDERER KNOWS THE SCORE (1963)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Maria Schell, Paul Meurisse, and Christa Lang. Lionel Fribourg is a musician who is desperate to compose his own symphony. For that reason, he needs peace and quiet, but his Parisian apartment is so noisy that it is impossible for him to write a single note. By pure coincidence, he meets Agnès, a woman who lives alone in a big house in the country. They start a relationship and Lionel quickly realises that her peaceful house would be perfect for him. However, there is a problem. Agnès’s father, Monsieur Devillard, intends to come and live with her. The man is a carpenter and his only interest is in making boats, which he does very noisily. When Lionel pays Devillard a visit, he realise that the man doesn’t like him and will be his eternal enemy. So why should he not kill him? Alas, this will only be the first in a series of murders...
SHOCK TROOPS (1967)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Costa-Gavras, Stars: Charles Vanel, Bruno Cremer, Jean-Claude Brialy. During the Second World War, somewhere in France, a group of fighters of the Résistance attacks a German police station to release some of its members imprisoned there. The released guys are taken, in a big hurry, to the camp of the people of the Résistance. Once in the camp, the résistance discover that among their companions who were released, there is a guy who was also detained by the Germans and who doesn't belong to their group. Initially, they think that this guy is a spy, and in this case they should kill him to protect their group. But this guy tells to them that he was detained because of his smuggling activities and that he doesn't support in any way the Germans. He fails to convince them, they decide to kill him and appoint one of them to do the job. When this résistance takes the guy in the forest to shoot him, the guy succeeds to convince the resistant to let him free. After walking for a while in the woods, the guy discovers that the Germans have surrounded the place and are about to catch the résistance. Instead of getting away, the guy walks back to the camp of the résistance to tell them that they are being attacked by the Germans. Eventually, after some fighting, most of the resistance are killed and a handful of them caught alive. The last scene is on an iron bridge across a mountain gorge. The Germans line up the resistance and go killing them one after the other. The guy who is a the end of the line takes advantage of the distraction of the Germans, to escape, climbing down the iron structure of the bridge.
THE COMPANIONS OF BAAL (1968)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, 334 MINUTES, 3 dvd set for $25. Director: Pierre PrévertStars: Claire Nadeau, Jacques Champreux, Gérard Zimmermann. "Les Compagnons de Baal" is a French television serial in 7 x 50 minutes episodes, in black and white, adapted by Jacques Champreux, carried out by Pierre Prévert, shown in 1968. A mysterious history, esoteric formulas pronounced by entreated seeking to dominate the world. Les Compagnons de Baal, directed by their Large Master Hubert de Mauvouloir, do not move back in front of nothing to extend their capacity: flights, removals, murder… "Les Compagnons De Baal" was written by Louis Feuillade's grandson and it was intended as a tribute to the grandfather's work circa 1914:"Fantomas" "Les Vampires" etc...Besides,the actor who plays the cop,René Dary, was famous in those days as "Bébé " ,one of the two Feuillade's wizz kids (the other was Bout D'Zan").Directed by Jacques Prévert's brother ,Pierre ,who directed three famous works "L'Affaire Est Dans Le Sac" "Voyage Surprise" and " Adieu Leonard" . A fantastic serial in the vein of films of George Franju.
THE MAN WITH SILVER EYES (1985)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Cast: Alain Souchon, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Tanya Lopert, Lambert Wilson. This detective-thriller focuses on the unfortunate Thierry (Alain Souchon), a released convict who returns to dig up the loot he buried near, a tree 15 years earlier. To his dismay the tree is so huge it is impossible to simply take his money and run. As he devises a way to tunnel out his cash, a vengeful police inspector (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is closing in with his own murderous intent. His police buddy was shot to death during Thierry's bank hold-up years before, and in the inspector's mind, justice has not been served.
A TASTE FOR WOMEN (1968)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. While visiting a vegetarian restaurant, a young writer finds a corpse in the restroom. When he returns with the police, the body is gone. The writer is left with the unlucky fellow's hat -- which leads a certain beautiful woman to believe that his identity is the same as the dead man's. Not only is his life now at risk, but things get increasingly bizarre as he meets up with a mysterious sect of cannibals and with a group of opium-smuggling gangsters. What's more, the woman herself seems to have a diabolical doppleganger. Aimez-Vous Les Femmes? was adapted by Roman Polanski and Gerard Brach from a book by Georges Bardawil. The distinguished Sacha Vierny contributed his cinematographic talent to this black comedy shortly after his successful collaboration (among many) with director Alain Resnais on Muriel, ou le Temps d'un Retour/Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963).
COUNTDOWN TO VENGEANCE (1971)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Roger Pigaut, Stars: Michel Bouquet, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Hubert Deschamps. 10 years ago, François Nolan and his brother have been betrayed by one of their accomplices after a break-in. During the fight with the police, Francois's brother was killed, and a cop disfigured by François. Now, François is back for revenge. As nobody knows who the traitor was, the former accomplices lose their head. The disfigured cop is also waiting for the right moment to take his revenge on François.
DEADLY CIRCUIT (1983)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, UNCUT 116 MINUTE VERSION! Director: Claude Miller, Stars: Michel Serrault, Isabelle Adjani, Guy Marchand. Beauvoir, lonely, aging private detective, is put on the bloody track of beautiful Catherine Leiris who kills and robs her rich husband(s) on their wedding night. Although he never approaches her directly, he follows her and increasingly feels to be telepathically connected to her, because she reminds him of his daughter he never met. After he led a blind artist, Catherine's truly beloved spouse, into a bus accident, she makes a living by bank robbery with young Betty till Betty gets shot. Alone again, Catherine leads a sad, uneventful life as a waitress, when she meets her follower.
A LITTLE VIRTUOUS (1968)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Serge Korber, Stars: Dany Carrel, Jacques Perrin, Robert Hossein. Man, dany Carrel is hot in this one! 'Ferdinand, a young photographer, meets Claire, a supposed cover girl, in a café. Although he is instantly attracted towards Claire, Ferdinand soon learns that she is a professional thief, working for [Hossein] a thug named Brady. Claire has had enough of her criminal life and hopes to make a fresh start with Ferdinand. The police have other ideas...
SORCERY (1962)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Henri Decoin, Stars: Juliette Gréco, Jean-Marc Bory, Liselotte Pulver. François is a vet surgeon on the Noirmoutier island .He is married to Catherine .One day ,he is called by a mysterious attractive woman,Myriam ,whose leopard is sick.They become lovers. But Myriam lived in Africa for years and she seems to have maleficent powers.Besides ,she is a jealous possessive woman who wants to keep François for herself alone.She owns a strange statuette which might cast a spell on someone who's on the way ,François 's wife for instance.And Catherine falls suddenly seriously ill. a diabolic(!) suspense by Boileau- Narcejac :must it be repeated that ,without them "Les Diaboliques" and "Vertigo" would never have existed .
3 MILLION LOST ON AN ELEVATOR (1972)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS, LETTERBOXED PRINT. Director: Roger Pigaut, Stars: Michel Bouquet, Marcel Bozzuffi, Dany Carrel. Seven small rogues dream of stealing the beautiful jewels which are in Paris for an exhibition. One of them tries to involve Raphael who is a big shot in finance. Raphael refuses. The seven rogues will decide to try to carry out the theft themselves.
THE RAPE OF A SWEET YOUNG GIRL (1968)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS. Director: Gilles Carle, Stars: Julie Lachapelle, Jacques Cohen, Katerine Mousseau. Julie is an 18-year old technical designer living in Montreal. Liberal and carefree, one day she finds herself pregnant as a result of her sexual promiscuity and is unsure who the father is. She meets and falls in love with a Moroccan-born man recently immigrated and moves in with him. She decides upon the course of an illegal abortion but her lover steals the money she saved for it and disappears. Her three brothers, Raphael, Gabriel, and Joachim arrive from the country and seeing her pregnant and not married, they decide that she has been raped and vow to punish the man responsible to reclaim the honor of their family. Julie accompanies them on their mission and watches as her brothers beat up the wrong man and then inexplicably rape a random young girl themselves.
UNTIL THE LAST ONES (1957)-IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBS. Director: Pierre Billon, Stars: Raymond Pellegrin, Jeanne Moreau, Paul Meurisse. After a short stretch in jail, Fernand Bastia turns up at a travelling circus and persuades his sister to find a temporary job and accommodation for him. There, he is attracted towards the shapely young dancer Gina. He reveals to her that before his arrest he was involved in a spectacular robbery, and that he alone knows the whereabouts of the stolen money. Unfortunately, Bastia’s former colleagues are also eager to retrieve the loot... The film will probably be best remembered for the excellent acting performances, most notably from Raymond Pellegrin, Paul Meurisse, Jeanne Moreau and Howard Vernon (not to mention the incomparable Mouloudji). Although the film has some difficulty maintaining its dramatic intensity, this is more than compensated for by the larger than life characters which bring it to life, aided and abetted by the dialogue and dry wit of script-writer Michel Audiard.
