Jules Berry

Richard T. Jameson wrote:
Little known stateside but long esteemed in Europe, The Crime of Monsieur Lange is simply one of the very greatest films directed by Jean Renoir (it was made a few years before Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game). René Lefèvre (Le Million) takes the title role of a nebbish who clerks for a penny-press publisher by day, and by night writes feverish potboilers about a Western hero named “Arizona Jim”. Lange’s encyclopedically venal boss (Jules Berry) discovers his secret and immediately starts exploiting it, as he exploits everybody and everything within range. Life sublimely imitates pulp fiction and vice versa in the brilliant screenplay by Jacques Prévert (who would later write Children of Paradise). The movie blends sociopolitical protest, tender satire, and astonishing poetry without breaking a sweat, and its climax – an amazing synthesis of theme, dramatic, emotion, and inspired camerawork – is one of the transcendent moments in screen history.Read More »

Synopsis
Two rival police inspectors, Boucheron and Baumer, investigate the murder of the owner of a well-to-do apartment block. Madame Mathieu has been found stabbed to death in the lift, and there is no shortage of suspects. The murder weapon is a knife which belongs to a resident knife thrower, Picking, and which is found in the room of a kleptomaniac, Corbeau. No sooner have these two suspects been arrested than a young bank clerk, André, confesses – not to the murder but to defrauding his employer. Could the murderer be the sinister Eric, who is revealing his nasty character during a game of cards? Could it be the unscrupulous Alfredo, a classy crook who abuses women? Or could it be the son of the respectable Président Bernier, eager to repay his father for having a mistress? As they delve deeper into the private lives of the dead woman’s tenants, Boucheron and Baumer make more than a few surprising discoveries. But will they solve the crime..?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 »

IMDB:
Two journalists from different papers are looking for the same story. They want to know, who a group of gangsters getting young women from Europe to South America, where they are forced to work in brothels. But the gangsters have their own battels against each over, so the journalists can escape the danger, in which they’ve brought themselves.Read More »