A dam is under construction in the Pyrénées mountains. All the workers only have eyes for pretty, sensual Clara, the canteen waitress. And what she exchanges with many of them is more than just looks, this is for sure. Nevertheless, despite her frivolity, Clara falls truly in love with Tonio Borelli, the site foreman. The latter takes her to Paris and they marry. But Clara soon realizes that the call of the flesh still consumes her…Read More »
Synopsis
One Christmas Eve, a carefree young man, Eric, arrives in a small provincial town. Here, he meets Julien, a bar pianist who is his exact double. Julien is in love with Marinette, a pretty waitress, but he is too shy to make any romantic overtures. Eric decides to give the course of true love a helping hand by pretending to be Julien. Meanwhile, Eric’s fabulously wealthy uncle has sent his minions out to bring him back home, so that he may celebrate Christmas in the bosom of his family.
Julien, pianiste de bar est follement amoureux de la petite Marinette, serveuse dans le même local. Mais il ne parvient pas à déclarer sa flamme. Arrive, la veille de Noël, dans le petit village enneigé, Eric, le sosie du jeune musicien…Read More »
Synopsis:
Paris, 1943. With the country still under Nazi occupation and commodities severely rationed, ordinary French people muddle through as best they can. Charles Michaud is a law-abiding man of impeccable morals who becomes duly anxious when he finds that his 17-year-old son Antoine has been regularly absconding from school. Little does he know that his wayward offspring has been busy engaging in black market activities with his friend Paul Tiercelin, so that he can earn enough money to keep his mistress Yvette in the manner to which she has grown accustomed.Read More »
Quote:
The multi-part film is a difficult kind of cinema to get right but Duvivier’s Le Diable et les dix commandements is a rare exception where the form succeeds admirably. The film consists of seven roughly 15 minute sketches, each showing what may happen if one or more of the Ten Commandments is broken. Each sketch is self-contained (except for the last which returns to the first) and linked by a nasty slithery serpent who has a very strange sense of humour. The sketches are either mini-dramas, usually with a clever twist at the end (the best instance of this being the second sketch: “Do not commit adultery”), or comic. The sketch featuring “Do no steal” is an outrageous comic farce with Jean-Claude Brialy and Louis de Funès, made even more hilarious by Duvivier’s unsubtle attempt to ape the New Wave film directors.Read More »
User Review by dbdumonteil
Pierre Chenal’s last hurrah-although not his last movie, it’s easily the best of the four thrillers he made when he was back from Argentina. “Jeux Dangereux” the precedent year suggested a return to form for a director who made interesting film noirs in the thirties and a masterpiece in the forties (“La Foire Aux Chimères”). All promises were fulfilled in “La Bete A L’Affut” .Read More »
Synopsis:
‘Jean-Louis catches vipers he sells to the laboratories. A trivial incident causes his descent into hell: he forgets to use the pedestrian crossing and the policeman is cross. Who could have believed then where it would lead the unfortunate Jean-Louis to? Two unscrupulous journalists depict him as a monster, who releases vipers in town. Because of a hold up, the city is looking for a scapegoat, and this poor lad looks the part too much. Although the superintendent insists there’s really nothing against him, Jean-Louis becomes paranoiac and hides in shady places. He leaves his girlfriend, meets a hooker and a shifty aging man…’
– dbdumonteilRead 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 »
In his last film, legendary writer/artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an 18th-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. With an eclectic cast that includes Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner, Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.Read More »
Synopsis:
Henri Danglard, proprietor of the fashionable (but bankrupt) cafe ‘Le Paravent Chinois’ featuring his mistress, belly dancer Lola, goes slumming in Montmarte (circa 1890) where the then-old-fashioned cancan is still danced. There, he conceives the idea of reviving the cancan as the feature of a new, more popular establishment…and meets Nini, a laundress and natural dancer, whom he hopes to star in his new show. But a tangled maze of jealousies intervenes…Read More »