Small time crook Napoleone falls into an unlikely gang made up of a gangster, called The Baron, and his two cohorts, Agonia and The Captain, where Napoleone takes them to Rome where they shack up with a shady used car dealer caled Il Cajella to help finance their new life of crime by planing to rob a statue from the Vatican. But a big-time American gangster, named Joe Ventura, hears about the heist and wants the priceless statue for himself by having his mistress, Samantha, come onto and betray the woman-hungry Cajella to give the statue away to her. Read More »

Synopsis:
Of the hallowed group of Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers who transformed French film history, Claude Chabrol was the first to direct his own feature. His absorbing landmark debut, Le beau Serge, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean-Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up. There, he finds himself at odds with his former close friend (Gerard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents. The remarkable and stark Le beau Serge heralded the arrival of a cinematic titan who would go on to craft provocative, entertaining films for five more decades. Read More »

In Les cousins, Claude Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil, love and jealousy, and success in the modern world. A mirror image of Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s debut, Les cousins recasts that film’s stars, Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain, in startlingly reversed roles. This dagger-sharp drama won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was an important early entry in the French New Wave. (-Criterion) Read More »

Quote:
This Francois Truffaut thriller is based on a novel by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich), whose books had been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock on many previous occasions. Jeanne Moreau stars as a woman whose fiancé is nastily murdered by five men. Utilizing a series of disguises, the cool-customer Moreau tracks down all five culprits, sexually enslaves them, and then engineers their deaths. The ominous musical score was written by Bernard Herrmann, another frequent Hitchcock collaborator. The Bride Wore Black was initially released in France as La Mariee etait en Noir. — Hal Erickson Read More »

Quote:
Set in central France, the film follows French resistance fighters who press the battle on the Germans. Along the way, they break into a prison and release some German prisoners, but discover there may be a spy deliberately planted to flush them all out. Read More »

Plot summary
Born in a small town in the countryside surrounding Pistoia, Adriana is an attractive young girl who counts on using her looks to go places in the entertainment business in Rome. Moving to the capital, she works first of all in a hairdressing salon, then in a small cinema where she manages to get a job working in fancy dress. Meantime, she socializes with young men of the upper middle classes, who take her to parties and out on the town with the sole aim of taking advantage of her. Adriana knows their game, but plays along. In the meantime, she meets an agent called Cianfanna, a modest money-grubber who introduces her to a journalist friend of his so he can write an article on her. Having thus launched her career in advertising, Adriana decides to go home to visit her parents. Once home, however, she is distraught to learn of the death of her sister. Returning to Rome, she takes acting lessons, but during one lesson she suddenly faints: she is pregnant, with no idea of who the father of her child is. The days go by and Adriana tries to forget about her pregnancy, while sleeping with an increasingly long list of lovers. And yet, despite the fact these encounters are often less than enjoyable, at one point she actually falls in love: his name is Antonio and he’s a decent young man from a respectable family, but still in love with a former girlfriend he is unable to forget… Read More »

Synopsis
Midnight in Paris, Faubourg St Honoré. In one house, a woman suddenly screams and the sound of a gunshot is heard. A short time later, Laurent Lénaud, a young painter, is running away with a suitcase. Arriving at a hotel, he enters a room where a young woman named Rossana is crying. The room is strewn with broken furniture and clothes lie on the floor. Laurent is almost certain that his wife Danielle is to blame for this. Meanwhile, in an expensive apartment a woman is responding to the questions put to her by police officer Bertrand. She is Renée Plèges, the owner of an antiques shop. That evening, she found her daughter Danielle shot dead. Renée explains that Laurent, her son-in-law, wanted to leave Danielle. When she refused to divorce him, he killed her. While Bertrand asks Renée to tell him everything she remembers since the first day she met Laurent, the latter recounts to his mistress Rossana the events that took place before Danielle’s death. Two completely different stories emerge. Then Danielle’s personal diary is found, bringing a third explanation of what took place that evening… Read More »