Annabella

  • Jean Stelli – Dernier amour AKA Last Love (1949)

    1941-1950DramaFranceJean Stelli
    Dernier amour (1949)
    Dernier amour (1949)

    Synopsis:
    One day Hélène, happily married to Alain, sees her husband reading a telegram signed by a mysterious “Minou”. Soon Alain goes on a business trip to London and brings back his young and pretty relative named Michèle. Tormented by jealousy but still uncertain about the nature of Michèle and Alain’s relationships, Hélène tries to insinuate herself into the girl’s life, – with unforeseen consequences.

    Jeanne Moreau’s film debut.Read More »

  • René Clair – Le million (1931)

    1931-1940ComedyFranceMusicalRené Clair

    An impoverished painter and his rival engage in a race across Paris to recover a jacket concealing a winning lottery ticket.Read More »

  • Pál Fejös – Sonnenstrahl AKA Ray of Sunshine [+ Maifest Wien 1932] (1933)

    Drama1931-1940AustriaClassicsPál Fejös

    Vienna as a light, modern city and a place that encourages improvisation of the mind. The jobless Hans Schmidt and Ann Berger become true champions in the city. However, setbacks and false interpretations underlie their attempts at economic stability. Hans gets involved in a serious accident, which renders him unable to work. Anna alone can’t the bill for the taxi. The community helps her. Hans and Anna become a part of Socialist Vienna.Read More »

  • René Clair – Quatorze juillet AKA Bastille Day (1933)

    1931-1940ComedyFranceRené ClairRomance

    Quote:
    René Clair, the most distinguished of the French motion-picture directors, is one of the great men of the cinema. His triumphant photoplays, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million and, the finest of them all, A nous la liberté, stand among the genuine classics of the films. Now M. Clair, who has tried cheerful sentiment in Sous les toits, farce in Le Million, and brilliant social satire in A nous la liberté, gives up some of his adventurousness and returns to the quiet romantic mood of his earliest success in the new work called Quatorze juillet (“Fourteenth of July”). Read More »

  • Anatole Litvak – L’Équipage aka Flight into darkness (1935)

    1931-1940Anatole LitvakDramaFranceWar

    Filmmaker Anatole Litvak was still one year away from his “breakthrough” picture Mayerling when he co-wrote and directed L’Equipage (The Crew). Charles Vanel and Annabella star respectively as a daring WW I aviator and his loving but neglected wife. Ostracized by the other pilots because of his recklessness and standoffishness, Vanel nonetheless befriends a young flyboy (Jean-Pierre Aumont). It is therefore a great source of consternation for Aumont when he discovers that the woman with whom he’s fallen in love is none other than Vanel’s wife Annabella.Read More »

  • Marcel Carné – Hôtel du Nord (1938)

    1931-1940DramaFilm NoirFranceMarcel Carné

    Quote:
    L`Hôtel du Nord is an award-winning novel of the first Prix du Roman Populist and is a loose collection of sentimental tales about simple people residing in a hotel. The novel begins with Monsieur and Madame Lecouvreur buying and transforming a rundown hotel. The film begins with the hotel already up and running and gives no real mention of how the hotel came about. So too, the novel ends with the Lecouvreur`s reluctantly selling the hotel to a large company that plans to construct an office building on the site and the tenants must unhappily leave and separate. The film`s ending is entirely modified and not only is the hotel not being demolished, but the film ends with the sense that this place and the people there are left standing in time untouched by the outside world. So too, the film focuses on criminals, prostitutes, and vagabonds, and develops the novel`s sentimental, rather than political, themes.Read More »

  • Pál Fejös – Marie, légende hongroise aka Spring Shower (1932)

    1931-1940DramaFrancePál Fejös

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Fejos’s Spring Shower is one of the key Hungarian films of the 1930s and 1940s to explore the miserable lives led by maidservants. It tells the story of Mari, an austerely beautiful young peasant girl played by the French star, Annabella. Mari is seduced beneath a flowering tree by the admirer of one of the daughters of the prosperous family for whom she works, becomes pregnant and is cast out.Read More »

Back to top button