Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?
Witty narration follows the history of Versailles Palace; founded by Louis XIII, enlarged by autocratic Louis XIV, whose personal affairs and amours, and those of his two successors, are followed in more detail to the start of the Revolution, after which the story is brought rapidly up to date. A...
A love story that follows the maneuverings of a society lady as she connives to initiate a scandalous affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a prostitute.
The film is based on the true story of Special Operations Executive French-born agent Odette Sansom, who was captured by the Germans in 1943, condemned to death and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp to be executed. However, against all odds she survived the war and testified against the...
It all begins with the discreet romance between the Creole maid Lea Mariotte and her young boss, George Brissac, an amoral bourgeois who plans to inherit his uncle's fortune and marry a young woman from a good family. After an incident where she kills a man, she is saved from the gallows by Fabian,...
Political intrigue and psychological drama run parallel. The queen is in seclusion, veiling her face for the ten years since her husband's assassination, longing to join him in death. Stanislas, a poet whose pen name is Azrael, is a suicidal anarchist, his imagination haunted into hate by longing...
One of four film sketches on the problems of adolescents facing the adult world in the 1960s. The three other sketches were directed by Michel Brault, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Gian Vittorio Baldi.
Exiled from the court of Spain, Don Salluste, the chief of police, wants to take revenge on the Queen. One day he meets Ruy Blas, a young student who happens to be a lookalike of Don Cesar, his nephew. Salluste disguises Ruy Blas and presents him as Don Cesar. It doesn't take long before Ruy Blas,...
Six vignettes set in different sections of Paris, by six directors. St. Germain des Pres (Douchet), Gare du Nord (Rouch), Rue St. Denis (Pollet), and Montparnasse et Levallois (Godard) are stories of love, flirtation and prostitution; Place d'Etoile (Rohmer) concerns a haberdasher and his umbrella;...
Micheline Chevassu is a young, naive woman living in an orphanage. Through classified ads, she has a date with an unknown man. She escapes from the orphanage to go to it, dreaming of the Prince Charming. But comes Nicolas Rougemont, an unattractive middle-aged man... He pretends not to be the...
Les inconnus de la terre starts like a traditional feature film: in the beginning of the film all the leading roles are given a short introduction. This is followed by a number of interviews, in which the makers unashamedly appear themselves. They include an interview with a lonely shepherd and one...
Director Chris Marker begins by recounting his childhood dream of visiting the city of Peking - a city he was once only able to admire in books. The viewer is taken on a journey through this city, as if experiencing it from the mind and through the eyes of Marker. His thoughts and observations...
A plucky businesswoman agrees to receive love letters to a prefect’s wife from a young official, and soon finds herself embroiled in a scandal that inflames a town’s class tensions.
"Poisoner" - After her fiancé is arrested Claire finds herself alone and forced to find work. She is hired by a country squire, Etienne de Montenoy, as the tutor of his goddaughter. It does not take long before Montenoy falls for her but a little longer before the young woman, reluctant at first,...
A partially blind Englishman retires to the French Riviera. He meets and falls for the Widow of a French Resistance fighter but is horrified when he discovers she is involved with smugglers and murderers.
In a small fishermen's village in the Azores, an enormous whale is being jointed, carved and stocked. Once this task is over, the whalers ready themselves for another hunt, a fascinating but trying and dangerous experience...
One of Alexandre Dumas's most popular adventure novels is "The Count of Monte-Cristo". What is little known is that the famous writer made up neither its plot nor its characters. Dumas actually heard the true story of a man named François Picault during a stay at a private mansion and only adapted...