Henri Decoin

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 »

An aging musketeer is called out of retirement to help a king in this comic swashbuckler. The king’s twin brother is freed after twenty years in an iron mask. He is to be used as a decoy for the monarch while the real king and his court roust some rebels to foil their insurgent uprising. D’Artagnan (Jean Marais) leads the way with his expert fencing to aid in the royal flush.Read More »

Synopsis (possible spoilers):

‘A port swathed in dense fog sees the coming and going of boats all day. During the night, Maloin is the man who controls the trains that transport goods to and from the port. One evening, he sees a man get off the boat from London and hand his suitcase to another man who has been waiting for him. Unaware that Maloin is watching them, the two men get into a fight, which ends with one of them falling into the water with the suitcase. As the other man flees, Maloin dives in and recovers the suitcase. To his surprise, it is full of money. Back home, he tells nothing about this to his wife and daughter but hints that they will soon have a better life. What follows will prove otherwise…’
– Willems HenriRead More »

Synopsis:
Gérard Favier is a famous composer who has been married to the charming Sylvia for almost 20 years. Still deeply in love, they walk the streets of Paris and, one day, they hear a sonata that Gérard once wrote, played on a piano in a house. Gérard is surprised to find that the piano player is a 20 year-old girl named Monelle. Impressed by her talent, Gérard decides to adopt Monelle as his protégé, but very soon his interest in her takes a less paternalistic turn. It is through a gossip magazine that Sylvia learns about her husband’s infidelity but she is uncertain how to react. After all, he did write a new song for her, “Lovers are alone in the world…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 »

Director Henri Decoin and actress Danielle Darrieux made many fine films together (Le Domino vert, Abus de confiance, La Vérité sur Bébé Donge), but few are as charming and funny as the romantic comedy Battement de coeur. Thanks to its prestigious cast, witty dialogue and abundance of comic situations, this fifth Decoin-Darrieux offering is a delight. It was also the last film they made together before their divorce the following year, although they remained friends afterwards and worked together on four subsequent films.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 »

Synopsis: Paris 1943. After her husband’s death, killed by the Germans, Cora joins the résistance under the pseudonym “La Chatte” (the she-cat). Very skillfully she succeeds in a dangerous mission. The same evening she meets a Swiss journalist, Bernard, and falls in love with him. Bernard is a German officer who now has to decide between his love for Cora and his mission.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘François Roques, a power-and-money-mad editor of a Paris newspaper (who justifies his actions by calling attention to his poverty-stricken childhood), invites four women to a housewarming at his penthouse apartment. He plans on one of them to meet death by means of a loose railing on the balcony. The invitees are: Constance, François’ first wife, whose love and integrity also stood in the way of his schemes; Véra Volpone, his second wife, from whom he is seeking a divorce, and who, with the aid of her lover, is blackmailing François; Maggy, his mistress who aids him in his illegal transactions; and Cécile, his fiancée, who is pregnant by another man. The women arrive, tension overwhelms them and the host, three of the women depart…and Francois is alone with his intended victim.’
– Les AdamsRead More »