Jean-Claude Brialy

  • Claude Chabrol – Le beau Serge (1958)

    1951-1960ArthouseClaude ChabrolDramaFrance

    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 »

  • François Truffaut – La Mariée était en noir AKA The Bride wore Black (1968)

    1961-1970ArthouseFilm NoirFranceFrançois Truffaut

    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 EricksonRead More »

  • Costa-Gavras – Un homme de trop AKA Shock Troops (1967)

    Drama1961-1970Costa-GavrasFranceThriller


    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 »

  • François Villiers – Le puits aux trois vérités AKA Three Faces of Sin (1961)

    1961-1970DramaFranceFrançois Villiers

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    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 »

  • Luis Buñuel – Le Fantôme de la liberté aka The Phantom of Liberty (1974)

    1971-1980ArthouseExperimentalItalyLuis Buñuel

    Quote:
    Bourgeois convention is demolished in Luis Buñuel’s surrealist gem The Phantom of Liberty. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Buñuel throughout his career—from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements.Read More »

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