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408,869 | 2,567,136 | 108,290 | 8 | Dance In The Old Fashioned Way | SPOILERS SPOILERSThis is Leconte in his Francis Veber-Billy Wilder mode and no worse for that , indeed an early - and arguably the best - gag has Wilder written all over it . After one of the leisurely openings he favored at that time ( see also Tandem ) Leconte introduces Vincent Baradoc ( Richard Bohringer ) , a some... |
410,278 | 2,567,136 | 36,803 | 8 | I Liked It ; That's The Gospel Truth | There's something nicely symmetrical in the fact that this movie was adapted from a play by Maxwell Anderson . Almost forgotten today Anderson began his career with the Broadway hit play What Price Glory ( c0-written with Lawrence Stallings ) . Produced in 1924 and twice filmed it was , of course , set in World War One... |
410,076 | 2,567,136 | 120,857 | 8 | Everything Stops ( Or It Should In This Case ) For Tea ) | If you like 1 ) Nostalgia , 2 ) great acting , 3 ) loving period detail and 4 ) lavish location shooting then you can't not like this wallow in pre-war sentiment . If , on the other hand , you go wild , simple wild , for Multiplex fodder then you'll seriously wonder what is the point , in any , of this subtle , gracefu... |
408,967 | 2,567,136 | 86,420 | 8 | Tchao , Tchao , Bambino | Little known outside France but beloved in it Coluche , like Bourvil ( of whom the same may be said ) excelled at comedy but was more than competent at drama as he demonstrates here . Those who know Claude Berrit mostly and / or if only for his international successes Jean de Florette and Manon des Source will perhaps ... |
410,200 | 2,567,136 | 31,067 | 8 | If The Slipper Fits . . . | This is yet another Depression Era take on Cinderella - not for nothing is is the David Niven character named Merlin - designed to take people's minds off both the recent austerity and the global war waiting in the wings . What comes across strongly is the sheer professionalism from all Departments , Script , Directing... |
410,106 | 2,567,136 | 211,900 | 8 | Les Acteurs or . . . | . . . Hawk Heaven for lovers of French cinema and by extension French Screen actors / actresses . At its worst it's an indulgence , actors getting to bitch about other actors , question the validity of acting as a profession at all , etc whilst at its best it's a glorious celebration / send-up of some of the finest act... |
410,021 | 2,567,136 | 77,539 | 8 | High Hat | For Wilder buffs - and what serious film fan isn't - his penultimate film is a referentialists dream . The setting , Corfu , is not a million miles from Ischia , the setting for Avanti and where Avanti boasted two stiffs Fedora boasts one in a literal sense and one in a symbolic sense . The casting of Bill Holden in th... |
409,070 | 2,567,136 | 36,910 | 9 | The Brightest Heaven Of Invention | Let me say at once that I find Olivier vastly overrated - if not actually INferior to his great contemporaries , John Gielgud , Ralph Richardson and Michael Redgrave , he was equally far from SUperior - as both a stage and film actor and if somehow he lucked into a self-perpetuating hype out of all proportion to his ta... |
409,829 | 2,567,136 | 184,483 | 9 | Dark Fair | It's strange to realize that Pierre Chenal was also responsible for Clochemerle , a farce about a public toilet that went down well in England where public toilets are anything but . He had also worked with Stroheim earlier in L'Alibi ( now available from Rene Château ) and indeed it may be argued that Stroheim did som... |
409,234 | 2,567,136 | 30,652 | 9 | Danielle In The Lion Cub's Den | Danielle Darrieux was just 21 years old with 27 films behind her when she went to Hollywood for the first time . She or her connections chose well and she lights up the screen in this charming screwball comedy which cast her opposite Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Louis Hayward with outstanding comic support from Helen B... |
409,753 | 2,567,136 | 68,240 | 9 | Dead Meat-Cute | Perhaps the highest praise one can heap on this film is that despite it being obvious what is going to happen within the first twenty minutes we still keep watching with silly smiles on our faces basking in the warmth of Wilder's genius and licking the cream of his jests off our metaphorical whiskers . Wilder was , of ... |
409,270 | 2,567,136 | 273,148 | 9 | Chamber Of Horrors | World War One has been enjoying something of a vogue recently and not least in French Cinema , which on balance is currently the best in the world . Only a couple of years ago we had the superb Les Ames Grises and a couple of years before that Francois Dupeyron adapted a best-selling novel into this wonderful movie . F... |
409,488 | 2,567,136 | 41,786 | 9 | The Bad Shepperd | Ophuls plants a bold visual clue at the very beginning of this masterpiece that alerts us to the fact that things are not always what they seem ; as a narrator's voice-over sets the scene , Balboa , a small town 50 miles from Los Angeles , Joan Bennett emerges in a HEAVY WOOLLEN TOPCOAT and gets in her car to drive to ... |
408,813 | 2,567,136 | 814,768 | 9 | What Price Class | Alexandra Leclere is clearly going to become yet another French female director to reckon with ; she followed the Short Bouche a bouche with the full-length Les Soeurs fachees for which she secured the services of Isabelle Huppert , Catherine Frot and Francois Berleand and did them all proud with a fine light comedy . ... |
408,768 | 2,567,136 | 39,150 | 9 | Into The Woods | For a man whose first love was the theatre - where he distinguished himself as both actor and director especially in the works of Jean Giradoux - and who only took on film roles to bankroll his theatre company Louis Jouvet appeared in some pretty classy movies not least Un Carnet du bal , La Kermesse Heroique , Drole d... |
408,769 | 2,567,136 | 43,915 | 9 | The Crain Is Flying | Thanks to Fox celebrating its 70th anniversary by issuing many of its 40s / 50s titles on DVD it's now possible to build up a reasonable library of what is undoubtedly the cream of writer-director Joseph L . Mankiewicz including this gem which is often overlooked . It's doubtful if No Way Out will make it to DVD in thi... |
409,289 | 2,567,136 | 256,259 | 9 | Sister Act | It's almost inevitable that some smart-ass is going to dismiss this as Rain Man with tits and equally inevitably the remainder of his / her comment can safely be ignored on the grounds that he / she knows as much about film , life , the human condition as George Doublya knows about nuclear physics . In a remarkably sho... |
409,760 | 2,567,136 | 47,688 | 9 | Seems Two Into One DOES Go | In musical terms this is , in many ways , two separate films ; in one we have Doris Day singing the kind of sunny , feel-good songs she was recording successfully at that time - the mid fifties - and in the second we have Sinatra singing songs for Adults - with one exception ' standards ' - as only he can . The story i... |
409,559 | 2,567,136 | 28,333 | 9 | ForEVER Gonna Dance | There are three strong contenders for the best Astaire-Rogers film ( excluding the Barkleys of Broadway ) of the nine they made at RKO , Top Hat , Shall We Dance and this one which may just have the edge . The success of Top Hat the previous year led to a similar approach - Helen Broderick was again on hand to dole out... |
409,921 | 2,567,136 | 66,207 | 9 | The ( Folk ) Lore Is An Ass | This is at once ravishing , enchanting and sumptuous , a fairytale told the way fairy tales should be told with a cast of heavy-hitters led by Catherine Deneuve and featuring Jean Marais , Micheline Presle , Jaques Perrin and Delphine Seyrig . To those who only know him as the top-and-tale narrator of both Cinema Parad... |
409,612 | 2,567,136 | 99,200 | 9 | Golden Baule | This was the fifth of the nine films Diane Kurys has so far directed and the third of three ( Diabolo Menthe , Coup de Foudre being the others ) that deal with her own experiences in childhood and adolescence . In the second film , Coup de Foudre , the character based on Kury's own mother and fictionalised as Lena was ... |
409,699 | 2,567,136 | 103,103 | 9 | The Spy Who Loved Me | First off I haven't seen the Hollywood remake nor have I any plans to do so ; for one thing Arnie's kind of movie is not my kind and for another you're never going to get me to believe that Arnie is as good an actor as Thierry Thermitte , actually you're not going to get me to believe Arnie is an actor period . Okay , ... |
409,297 | 2,567,136 | 814,659 | 9 | Madness In Great Ones . . . | . . . should not unwatched go . Shakespeare came up with that line some 400 years ago yet he might have been referring to Isabelle Carre's tour de force in this movie . Carre IS without doubt a Great actress and seems to have made a speciality out of sickness ; her portrait of a young woman stricken with Alzheimer's in... |
409,390 | 2,567,136 | 37,008 | 9 | Oh , What A Tangled Webb . . . | This is arguably Otto Preminger's finest hour albeit he inherited the project from Rouben Mamoulian . In my case the jury's still out on whether or not it was wise to jettison the several points of view that Vera Caspary employed in her novel but so long as we're stuck with a more or less straight-ahead narrative struc... |
409,943 | 2,567,136 | 32,701 | 9 | The Right Note | This is a prime candidate for They - Don't - Make - Them - Like - That - Anymore nostalgists with several key ingredients present and accounted for ; it was released in 1940 , as close to the heart of the ' Golden Age ' of Hollywood as makes no difference ; it top-billed Bette Davis at the height of her fame and with n... |
410,062 | 2,567,136 | 35,140 | 9 | Vale Of Tears | Despite credits on several ' important ' feature films gay director Irving Rapper ( or , if you will , Puff Daddy ) was never much more than a journeyman but with Bette Davis , Claude Rains and Gladys Cooper on set it would have been difficult to screw up and Casey Robinson's script includes a worthy contender ( along ... |
410,291 | 2,567,136 | 73,864 | 9 | Son Of A Gun | Overall the Cesars get it right in terms of Best Film and if they occasionally make a complete dog's breakfast of it - as they did with L'Esquive - they have a large backlog of rewarding films as fine as this one . Robert Enrico dealt with War memorably in Au Coeur de la vie and here he does so again ; different war , ... |
408,848 | 2,567,136 | 177,912 | 9 | And God Created Arletty | For reasons largely involving elitism , snobbery and a deeply-rooted belief amongst academics that Craftsmanship , Accessibility and Entertainment are negative qualities plus a childlike faith that New equals Better the name of Roger Richebe has been unjustly neglected . On the other hand the ordinary film fan who woul... |
408,986 | 2,567,136 | 33,229 | 9 | Badger Game | It's superficially easy to ' read ' this 1941 entry centering on greed as a metaphor for the Teutonic hunger / greed for power but I'll leave that to the academic pseuds . This is simply a brilliant filmic interpretation of a classic play - Ben Johnson was writing out of London around the same time as Shakespeare - and... |
409,763 | 2,567,136 | 61,376 | 9 | Design For Leaving | The winning two-men-one-woman formula has been around a long time . Three quarters of a century ago Noel Coward wrote Design For Living as a stage vehicle for himself and the Lunts and it reached the screen soon afterwards albeit greatly rewritten by Ben Hecht and directed by Ernst Lubitsch . MGM got lots of mileage ou... |
409,081 | 2,567,136 | 154,111 | 9 | Natural Selection | In 1935 writer-director Henri Decoin married actress Danielle Darrieux and they celebrated by offering the public their first film together La Domino Vert . In 1941 in the wake of their sixth film together , Premiere Rendez-vous , they divorced and Darrieux subsequently married Porfirio Rubirosa but between 1935 and 19... |
410,255 | 2,567,136 | 914,798 | 9 | Here Be Dragons | This is as fine an illustration of the saying be careful what you wish for . . . as any I can think of . Bruno , the eight-year old protagonist , wishes to be an explorer and explore he does albeit without being totally aware that that's what he's doing . I did have a problem with Bruno's Jewish counterpart , Smuel , b... |
408,966 | 2,567,136 | 52,311 | 9 | A Touch Of Class | It seems that once again all the superlatives have been exhausted while I was out watching lesser fare - I have seen this one a few years ago but I make it a rule not to rely on my memory and post a comment only when I acquire a DVD and / or catch a given title on TV or at a Revival house . At first this feels like Kan... |
409,319 | 2,567,136 | 97,322 | 9 | Diamond Is A Boys ' Best Friend | This is a gem that stands up to repeated viewings . It manages to blend the sleazy , small-time world of fringe lounges , clubs with the affluent Resort Hotels seamlessly . Jeff Bridges plays his role not unlike a down-at-heels private eye - think Paul Newman in Harper , for example - while real-life brother Beau contr... |
409,203 | 2,567,136 | 106,573 | 9 | Bullseye | As black comedies go this is right out of the top drawer . A year before ( 1972 ) Michael Winner's ' The Mechanic ' featured a hit-man , Charles Bronson , who takes on an apprentice but that movie played it straight as opposed to this one in which ace hit-man Victor Meynard ( Jean Rochefort ) decides to teach a deliver... |
408,797 | 2,567,136 | 418,773 | 9 | Carolina Moan | I took delivery at an early age of a healthy dose of cynicism and as I grew older and saw more and more movies I added a strong wariness of and aversion to the over-hype all of which makes it more refreshing and satisfying to discover a movie that fully justifies both its hype and word-of-mouth . There's nothing new , ... |
408,901 | 2,567,136 | 35,017 | 9 | Devil's Claw | Trivia buffs may like to note that even as Maurice Tourneur was shooting this Gothic tale for Continental in Paris his son Jacques was shooting Cat People in Hollywood . This is a very superior piece of Gothic if anybody asks you ; it bows to convention insofar as in a lonely inn subject to power failure a stranger nar... |
408,838 | 2,567,136 | 841,044 | 9 | Two Days , Five Stars | We have yet another great French female triple-threat as Julie Delpy hits one out of the park in her first At Bat . We knew of course that she was a first-rate actress and a worthy Oscar winner for her screenplay of Before Sunset but now she shows that she's an equally talented director as well ( and for good measure s... |
409,920 | 2,567,136 | 30,457 | 9 | Wolf In Ship's Clothing | Seasoned film buffs will hardly need reminding that both Robert Siodmak and Billy Wilder worked on Menshen am Sonntag in Germany but it may be useful to remind ourselves that both arrived in Hollywood via France and both of them directed at least one exceptional film there ; in Wilder's case it was Mauvaise Graine whic... |
409,229 | 2,567,136 | 39,208 | 9 | No Comebacks | The first thing that impressed me about this - I saw it earlier today on TV - was how well it stands up after exactly 50 years . Whichever way you look at it 1947 was something of a bumper year for Gadg ; he directed both Arthur Miller's All My Sons and Tennessee Williams ' A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway and as i... |
409,298 | 2,567,136 | 37,300 | 9 | The Little Madeleine | At first glance you could be forgiven for assuming that Christian Jacque was revisiting L'Assassinat de Pere Noel which he made for Continental three years earlier ; remote setting , wintry landscapes , etc but actally there is much more on offer , not least Madeleine Robinsion who , as a previous poster has rightly sa... |
409,445 | 2,567,136 | 32,904 | 9 | Philly When It's Silly | I saw this earlier today in a double bill with Bringing Up Baby , made two years earlier ( 1938 ) with the same two stars Grant and Hepburn . In both cases the prints were bad , full of sparkle , bad sound and missing frames so that occasionally a word was lost but despite this both films oozed the style and class that... |
409,059 | 2,567,136 | 46,022 | 9 | Swings And Roundabouts | It's going to be difficult to discuss this film without sounding like an Academic manque ' so if I start throwing in jargon like ' metonyme ' , ' diagenetic ' , ' mimentic ' , etc give me a solid nudge , flash me a snapshot of the Accatone and send me to bed without any supper . One of the reasons for an Academe feedin... |
409,079 | 2,567,136 | 32,961 | 9 | Get Me To The Church On Time | This is yet another of those films set in an England in which no one I have ever met actually lived in or remembers and which all of us should be allowed to live in just once in a lifetime . Esther McCrachan's original play was a hit at Wyndham's in the late thirties and a revival starring Sarah Churchill closed at the... |
409,856 | 2,567,136 | 41,635 | 9 | Riding For A Fall | This may be Yves Allegret's finest hour and it's unquestionably the first really Great performance from Simone Signoret , who would , of course , go on to give dozens more . Younger brother of Marc , Yves Allegret is often dismissed as little more than a Journeyman director but here he gives us one of the first importa... |
410,188 | 2,567,136 | 34,893 | 9 | Town On Trial | The element of the burnt-out case who discards the bottle to pursue justice was used much later by Paul Newman in The Verdict but Raimu got there first in this excellent movie which may be Henri Decoin's finest hour . There's a fantastic opening which establishes the provincial town and manages to convey the feeling of... |
408,730 | 2,567,136 | 361,127 | 9 | Woodman , Woodman , Spare That Three Year Old | A good friend of mine has a built-in aversion verging on phobia against manipulative movies to the extent that it blinded her to the brilliance of Million Dollar Baby and I'm dreading what she will make of this . On the other hand she could reply that I am overly susceptible to manipulation at the hands of skilled , pr... |
408,895 | 2,567,136 | 47,892 | 9 | Chips With Everything | Jean-Pierre Melville has a lot to answer for ; had he not turned out such a great professional low-budget-shot-on-location movie as this then amateurs like Godard may have been content to watch instead of attempt to MAKE movies . That to one side this remains , at more or less fifty years old , a great film ( though th... |
410,139 | 2,567,136 | 889,652 | 9 | Station Master | It's always a pleasure to see someone who has gone through a bad patch return to form so I'm glad to be able to salute this new - albeit now two years old - entry from Claude Lelouch . There are elements of both David Mamet and Harlan Coben in the labyrinthine plotting that's hard to second guess - indeed Lelouch seems... |
408,775 | 2,567,136 | 65,554 | 9 | Fathers Day | There's a lovely symmetry in a movie that was made in defiance of the new wave has been screened again in a year when a lot of people who should know better are growing orgasmic ' celebrating ' - if that is the right word - an anniversary that can't really be pinned down but which the pseud / academic axis have decreed... |
408,847 | 2,567,136 | 43,465 | 9 | All The Kingsley's Men | The concept of an environment rather than a specific character as the focus of a drama is not exactly new ; personally I can trace it back to Maxim Gorky who set The Lower Depths in a Russian tenement , though it may well have existed before that . In the 20th century Elmer Rice located Street Scene in a New York tenem... |
409,196 | 2,567,136 | 35,753 | 9 | A Fine , Feathered Friend | After establishing a small , bleak town the camera moves to open farmland before closing in on three old crones . After a moment a man emerges from a building with bloody hands which he proceeds to wash in a bucket . If this makes you think of Macbeth you're either 1 ) reasonably erudite , 2 ) the kind of academic inca... |
409,397 | 2,567,136 | 113,362 | 9 | Cast A Cold Eye | Having begun like most directors with small subjects Jean-Paul Rappeneau seems to have acquired a penchant for the crowded canvas given that his last three films - including this one - comprise Cyrano de Bergerac and Bon Voyage . My knowledge of the period - 1830s - is skimpy to say the least so I have no basis for que... |
409,694 | 2,567,136 | 54,997 | 9 | Cue Heavy Mitting | I've just seen this movie days after Paul Newman died ; it is , perhaps , inevitable and certainly fitting that the television channels will be screening tributes in the near future and if they are all of this quality then I for one will be content . Like all actors of the first rank Newman made his share of turkeys an... |
409,206 | 2,567,136 | 51,172 | 9 | No Time To Kill ? Make Some And Check Out This Gem | When you post as many comments on this site as I do the Law of Averages dictates that you receive a certain amount of feedback in the form of PMs and I guess I've had my share both pro and con . A little over a year ago I posted a comment on a French film made during the war and largely forgotten certainly outside Fran... |
409,014 | 2,567,136 | 175,503 | 9 | Marcelle Wave | If Marcel Pagnol had made Le Corbeau it might have turned out like this great movie of provincial life which is not so much warts and all as a surfeit of warts . There's a lovely irony at work here inasmuch as when a travelling circus visits the village in question - which it does every thirty years or so - instead of ... |
409,469 | 2,567,136 | 969,701 | 9 | In A Lonely Place | As first feature films by French Female Directors go this is right up there with La Buche , Il Est plus facile pour une chameau , Parlez-moi d'amour , Se Souvenirs des belles choses and Le Gout des autres and it may be no coincidence that Anne Le Ny acted in the last three and clearly kept her eyes and ears open . This... |
409,010 | 2,567,136 | 1,155,621 | 9 | Atmospheric | As if Arletty weren't enough - and she is , of course , more than enough - we get sound-bites from Henri Jeanson and Jacques Prevert , both of whom wrote for Arletty ( it was Jeanson , of course , who wrote the ' atmosphere ' speech for her in Hotel du Nord whilst Prevert wrote not only three of Arletty's finest movies... |
408,945 | 2,567,136 | 449,059 | 9 | Let Me Entertain You | Make way for yet one more dysfunctional family and this one's a doozy . No one , but no one is anything but totally fouled up . We get to meet each one in an economical opening sequence which establishes that father is heavily into WINNING which means , of course , that he's a Loser , right . Teenage son hasn't spoken ... |
409,850 | 2,567,136 | 47,250 | 9 | Eat Your Heart Out , Alec | It would be both incorrect and foolish to suggest that Alec Guiness was anything less than a fine actor but in the area where he is arguably best remembered , multiple roles , Fernandel can give him cards and spades as well as illustrating that less is more . In Kind Hearts And Coronets - as fans never cease of remindi... |
409,866 | 2,567,136 | 100,851 | 9 | Communists Are From Mars , Petainists From Venus | Claude Berri seldom lets you down whether as Producer , Writer , Actor or Director and if he has a signature when Directing it is in the beautiful compositions he delights in even if dealing with a serious subject as he is here . Although he is no slouch as a writer of Original Screenplays himself some of his finest wo... |
409,810 | 2,567,136 | 45,081 | 9 | A Bell For Camillo | Sequels don't often deliver though people who should know better keep doing them - see Claude Lelouch and the sequel to A Man And A Woman for example - but one almost foolproof way to ensure they come off is to entrust them to an expert like Julien Duvivier , who manages effortlessly to continue the episodic life of th... |
409,200 | 2,567,136 | 104,658 | 9 | Look After Lulu | It's unfortunate that at first glance the leading character Lulu ( Didier Bezace ) looks like someone wearing a Groucho Marx mask in order to rob a bank but once you realize that that's how Bezace actually LOOKS you can settle down to enjoy what is essentially a lightly fictionalized documentary chronicling the uphill ... |
410,115 | 2,567,136 | 45,302 | 9 | Cold War Thriller | Henri Decoin , a great unsung French director , was never better than when directing Danielle Darrieux and the proof lies in the nine top-class movies they made together both during and after their six-year marriage ( six during , three after ) ; indeed if one were seeking a new definition of ' civilized ' you could do... |
410,045 | 2,567,136 | 45,251 | 9 | Moor , Moor , PLEASE ! | If you would seek some kind of perspective on the Motion Picture industry you could do worse than study the career of old Awesome ; a string of masterpieces - Kane , Chimes At Midnight , Touch Of Evil - and nearasdammit masterpieces - Ambersons , Mr . Arkadin , Journey Into Fear - which he either wrote , directed and a... |
409,980 | 2,567,136 | 51,036 | 9 | Think Stink . . . | . . . to paraphrase the opening number in another Paramount movie , Funny Face , released that same year . The fifties were bonanza years for fans of Cliff Odets with no less than five good-to-great movies either adapted from his theatre productions ( Clash By Night , The Country Girl , The Big Knife ) adapted by Odets... |
409,884 | 2,567,136 | 32,138 | 9 | Wicked | Some sixty plus years after it was released ( in that extraordinary year for Hollywood movies , 1939 ) The Wizard Of Oz is back ( albeit temporarily ) where it belongs , on the Big screen and digitally remastered to boot . It's sad to think that the children of today will probably scorn its simplistic message and compu... |
409,088 | 2,567,136 | 948,535 | 9 | La Belle Equipe | Imagine you've got a hard-on for thirties Hollywood - Fred , Ginger , the Golddiggers , Bill Powell , Myrna Loy , Frank Capra , Carole Lombard , Jean Arthur , Screwball Comedy , Katie Hepburn etc - and you check out your local Multiplex and damned if someone hasn't turned out a perfect pastiche . Alas , you'll have to ... |
409,944 | 2,567,136 | 111,342 | 9 | Dorks Rift | This is just one more example of why French cinema is the best in the world . No real story , no suspense , no sex , no violence BUT ! also no cgi , no slasher movie # 24 , no Hollywood Formula - The Sequel . In short just two of the finest actors on the planet running with a situation in which virtually out of the blu... |
409,824 | 2,567,136 | 27,818 | 9 | Spinning Jenny | In retrospect it's fascinating to note that one of the elements that launched what is arguably the greatest writer-director team in French cinema would be responsible for its demise exactly one decade later . Within that decade - - Jacques Prevert and Marcel Carne ' jointly wrote and directed Jenny , Drole de Drame , Q... |
410,233 | 2,567,136 | 30,062 | 9 | Now You See Them . . . . | You can get a great Trivia question out of this movie : In which film did Charles Aznavour and Serge Reggiani have uncredited roles and Jacques Prevert supply uncredited dialogue . Dix sur dix . You got it in one . This would probably be a great film even without Prevert's linguistic touches because all the elements ar... |
409,301 | 2,567,136 | 154,609 | 9 | Uneasy Money | It's possible that it was me who misled the previous poster when I mentioned - erroneously as it happens - that I had identified 31 Continetal releases when in fact there were only 30 so for the record this was released by S . P . D . F . Some four years later Lance Comfort remade it in England as Temptation Harbour an... |
409,892 | 2,567,136 | 43,303 | 9 | White Comedy | A remake , some 56 years after this one , is now in Post Production with a screenplay by Christian Clavier - who also plays the host played here by Carette - and co-starring Gerard Jugnot and Josie Balasko . This trio were , of course , founder members of Splendid and all have several tasty writer-director-actor credit... |
409,803 | 2,567,136 | 206,569 | 9 | Killing Mockingbirds | It's difficult to believe that the Robert Enrico who made Les Aventuriers also made Au Couer de la vie a decade previously because the two are chalk and cheese having only directorial talent in common . A cynic may remark that Enrico had been frightened by Max Ophuls after noting the way his camera is seldom if ever st... |
409,726 | 2,567,136 | 443,072 | 9 | Hands Off This One | Ann Fontaine doesn't like to repeat herself . This is as different from Nathalie as that was from How I Killed My Father and equally good . It would be easy to describe this as a cross between Brief Encounter and Le Boucher because it displays elements of both , the former inasmuch as it features a young , fairly unrem... |
408,962 | 2,567,136 | 39,822 | 9 | Speaking Volumes | This fine film has a lot to answer for : when , in 1949 , Jean-Pierre Melville shot it he did so with virtually no formal training in film making and , as a non-union member he employed other non-union members , specifically cinematographer Henri Decae , who went on to enjoy a distinguished career . Finally Melville di... |
408,819 | 2,567,136 | 60,424 | 9 | I Leica | Another brilliant movie from genius Billy Wilder . Aspiring screenwriters would do well to analyse the painstaking construction of this great screenplay from the way the principals are introduced - Lemon as the CBS cameraman covering a football game , docilely moving up and down the touchline as instructed , freezing c... |
409,222 | 2,567,136 | 85,370 | 9 | They Were ' Sisters ' | This is a fine movie any way you look at it in fact I'll amend that to Fine / Great and I'd love to own it on DVD so that I could run it just before La Baule-les-pins ( which I do own ) and which covers the same autobiographical data from another angle . For the record both films are based on the early life of writer-d... |
409,587 | 2,567,136 | 29,826 | 9 | To The Victor . . . The Spoils | Anyone who loves French cinema is likely to salivate just reading the Opening Credits of this entry . Despite propaganda to the contrary films begin with SCREENPLAYS - show me the ' auteur ' who can shoot a ream of Blank paper and I'll show you someone who doesn't exist - and here we have not only Charles Spaak , one o... |
409,607 | 2,567,136 | 60,474 | 9 | Two For The Road | This was the ' old-fashioned ' film that finally sunk the New Wave in 1966 and has gone on to become - with more than 17 million paid admissions - the most successful / popular French film ever . It proves , if proof were needed that Truffaut was full of merde when he attacked so viciously just this kind of film and fi... |
409,366 | 2,567,136 | 57,207 | 9 | Masked Ball ( For Viewers ) | There is , as the Good Book tells us , nothing new under the sun but old wine in new bottles occasionally has a lot going for it . In 1981 Spielberg let it be known he was harking back to the serials of his youth when he created Indiana Jones but Georges Franju beat him to it by almost twenty years when , in 1963 , he ... |
409,330 | 2,567,136 | 50,850 | 9 | Lilac Wine | It was reasonable to suppose that poetic realism had had its day by 1957 but clearly Rene Clair thought otherwise and turned out a masterpiece to prove it . In some ways it is reminiscent of a pre-kitchen-sink English film of about ten years earlier called It Always Rains On Sunday ; the English movie was set in the Ea... |
408,802 | 2,567,136 | 35,583 | 9 | Padua - West | Given the success of You'll Never Get Rich the previous year it would have been foolish to say the least for Columbia not to rush into production with another vehicle for the dream team of Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth ; often , of course , this can be a mistake but in this case the follow-up movie eclipses the first ... |
408,777 | 2,567,136 | 27,996 | 9 | Good Deeds Shines in a naughty world | Sometimes it all comes together , writer , director , cast , and this is as good an example as most . It's a while since I saw it on television - I wasn't even around when it was released - and remembered it as being not bad , I'd also read quite a bit about ' Capracorn ' , which appeared to be an excess of sentimental... |
409,361 | 2,567,136 | 27,987 | 9 | Hams On Wry | Carlo Rim is one of those writers who don't really register until one day you realise he was involved in several films you enjoyed watching ; he started out with Marc Allegret on the Josephine Baker vehicle Zouzou and just before this one he wrote Justin de Marseille for Maurice Tourneur and went on to write three of t... |
409,447 | 2,567,136 | 29,947 | 9 | The ( Big ) Cat's Pajamas | Even with a bad print - like the one I've just seen - the class shines through . It's mind-boggling to think that just after she made this gem Katie Hepburn acquired her infamous sobriquet ' box-office poison ' so quit Hollywood and persuaded Philip Barry to write a vehicle in which she could appear on Broadway ( the r... |
409,906 | 2,567,136 | 325,030 | 9 | This one WON'T Give You The Hump | It's difficult to believe that no one has seen fit to comment on this charmer - that word does double duty here for it's equally applicable to triple-threat writer-director-star Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in her first time at bat on bullhorn . Tedeschi is a fine actress and has illuminated many films with her quiet , under... |
409,053 | 2,567,136 | 778,784 | 9 | L'Homme du taxi | With L'Homme tu train Patrice Leconte strayed into territory that Francis Veber has more or less made his own , the conceit of two mis-matched guys being thrown together and forced to bond , but where Veber contrives situations in which they must remain together - often they are on the run - Leconte had the protagonist... |
410,284 | 2,567,136 | 33,373 | 9 | You'll Be Glad To Be Behind THIS 8-Ball | This was Billy Wilder's last ' writer only ' credit in Hollywood ; Ball Of Fire opened in 1941 when he was already working on The Major And The Minor , his first ' writer-director ' credit . He had written the screenplay before leaving Germany but it was greatly revised to accommodate the American vernacular which form... |
409,507 | 2,567,136 | 39,689 | 9 | Gallows Humour | Trust a Frenchman to make a classic of film noir shot mainly in daylight and wide open spaces . At the time the casting was probably unremarked on but in retrospect what we have here is a couple of icons in their salad days , like young stags trying out their first pairs of antlers on each other . There's more than a n... |
410,282 | 2,567,136 | 864,770 | 9 | Grocer Jacques | Those who seek to compare and contrast , trace lineage etc will cite as distinguished forbears of The Grocer's Son such titles as Une Hirodelle a fait le printemps , Le Grand chemin etc on the grounds that all three titles feature an urban protagonist either choosing or being obliged to move to a rural setting . Writer... |
410,082 | 2,567,136 | 47,472 | 9 | Two Sevens But Not One Weak Link | This is arguably the most virile musical in screen history and chock full of brilliant songs and choreography . I was a tad bemused to note that a poster writing from Johnny Merecer's home town , Savanna , Ga , dismissed the songs as ' forgettable ' when in fact they are the exact opposite . Therein lies an irony : Mer... |
408,868 | 2,567,136 | 94,105 | 9 | Two For The Road | Another great movie from Leconte and one that marked a departure from the strictly laugh-filled movies he'd done up to this point . This one has everything , comedy , certainly , but seasoned with a dash of pathos and honest sentiment . Rochefort is outstanding as usual - not for nothing does Leconte use him time and t... |
409,834 | 2,567,136 | 45,505 | 9 | What's Up , Doc | Seeing this movie for the first time yesterday I was struck by the commanalities it shares with Philippe Lioret's L'Equipier ; both share a location , Ouessant , both feature a lighthouse and both deal with outsiders coming in to close-knit communities . Indeed if Academics ever contemplated abandoning their lofty Ivor... |
409,682 | 2,567,136 | 39,739 | 9 | ( Don't ) Shoot The Pianist | Clouzot followed Le Corbeau , where no one knew who was penning the poison thus everyone was suspected , with another masterpiece , Quai des Orfevres four years later in which we know from the outset ( or think we do ) whodunnit . Top-billed Louis Jouvet doesn't appear for forty minutes by which time Clouzot has establ... |
409,589 | 2,567,136 | 111,495 | 9 | Red Sails In The Sunset | I've just been reading some of the comments posted here and I couldn't find a single pan which makes me very pleased because I can only add my voice to those others who have heaped praise on this remarkable and truly wonderful film . This is one of those films that works no matter which angle you approach it from ; as ... |
408,952 | 2,567,136 | 450,664 | 9 | Blanc Check | Yet another French actress has turned , via screen writing , to directing and turned out a minor gem first crack out of the box . Inasmuch as it's set on a farm and involves an older man and a young woman it is reminiscent of The Girl From Paris - and that's not a criticism ; Mathilde Seigner and Michel Serrault were b... |
409,049 | 2,567,136 | 33,523 | 9 | Last Of Six , First Of Two | The thirty one feature films produced by the German-run Continental Films between 1941-43 were a fairly mixed bag ranging from the two sub-standard Fernandel directed titles ( Adrien , Simplet ) to the wonderful Decoin-Darrieux Premiere Rendez-vous but luckily there was quite a bit of very good indeed stuff including t... |
409,317 | 2,567,136 | 111,507 | 9 | French Polish | The triumph of this film is that it DARES you to find fault with a plot that makes a Swiss cheese resemble a block of granite . Take the protagonist , Karol Karol , this is a wimp who makes Mr Bean look as hard as Clint Eastwood yet a gangster hires him on the spot as a bodyguard ? This is the same guy who smuggled him... |
408,843 | 2,567,136 | 18,187 | 9 | Towering Achievement | To be able to see this rare gem at all is fortuitous ; to be able to see it in time for it to be my 1 , 000th review for IMDb is a new definition of serendipity and once again I am deeply indebted to the guy in Norway who has supplied me with so many great French movies . Well over my 1 , 000 reviews are French movies ... |
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