Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an...
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a...
In the early 16th century, Italy is ruled by the powerful Borgia family, led by César Borgia and his sister Lucrèce. In a ruthless power play, César plots to have his sister’s husband murdered. But without her brother’s knowledge, Lucrèce has taken a strong lover who will challenge the...
Elsa Lundenstein is accused of having murdered her lover. The jury discusses the case vividly. All members are somehow prejudiced because of personal life experience and subsequently each member reads something different into the presented facts.
Police Commissioner Jules Maigret returns to the small village where he spent his childhood at the request of the Countess of Saint-Fiacre, who has received a disturbing anonymous letter.
Soon after the death of his first wife (whose dowry was inadequate), Charles Bovary, a country doctor in Normandy, marries Emma Rouault. In her new home, Emma finds conflict with her mother-in-law, a husband uninterested in the social whirl, and general discontentment; thereby proving an easy...
The story takes plays during the annual Good Friday pageant in a tiny Italian village. Local priest Don Vincenzo faces a crisis when the girl selected to play the Virgin Mary shows up pregnant.
When Michel gets the life-sized sex doll he ordered, shipped directly from Japan, he is only intrigued by it at first. Then the silent unresponsiveness of the thing begins to haunt him, and he finds himself reacting to it as if it were an equally unresponsive living woman. As time passes, more and...
After being hurt in the face, Count de Roger Tinchebraye is forced to hide his disfigured face behind a leather mask. Dispirited for a while, he decides to become a Casanova-like seductor. When he meets true love, cynical Roger does not believe in it and lets pure Judith marry an old marquis. But...
Léopold, a young schoolboy, returns from boarding school to spend the summer vacations with his family. He is delighted to see his grandmother Eglantine again. The good times spent with all those close to him make him forget the stress of school. But with the start of the new school year fast...
In his prison cell, the composer Remi Bonvent composed an opera, The columns bed. The director of the prison, Porey Cave, succeeds made believe he is the author of this work. The death of the two protagonists will prevent the discovery of the truth.
Recently released from reform school, Élisa works at Madame Irma's before moving to Paris, where her success is growing. On a trip to the provinces, she meets Bernard, a blind man. They soon fall in love, but Élisa hides her activities from him. When he finds out, he hits her. The situation...
In a maternity hospital, young single mothers are accompanied by social worker Hélène Lambert, who tries to make them aware of their new responsibilities, while Dr. Baurain stresses the importance of their moral and sexual education. They come to the aid of several young women: one who would like...
French version of the Selma Lagerlof story, most famously filmed in 1921 by Victor Sjostrom, about a poor sinner who only realizes what misery he's wrought when he dies on New Year's Eve and is collected by Death in his carriage.
Martine discovers, on the eve of her wedding, that her mother, whom she believed to be dead, leads an adventurous life. Pierre, her fiancé, unable to overcome his family's opposition to the revelation of this news, decides to kidnap Martine. The adventurer, who is not recognized by her daughter,...
A hero of the Paris streets is recruited for a conspiracy against Mazarin in the court of the King, but he reveals the subversive plot to Anne of Austria.
