Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband – who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène’s sister, Catherine – marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress. Having dissolved the bodies in sulphuric acid, Georges hires another man to pose as Chambon so that he can secure his assets. Flush with the success of this venture, Georges proposes his most ambitious scam: he will insure Catherine’s life with five separate insurance companies; a young orphan woman who is dying from tuberculosis will provide Catherine’s death certificate when the moment comes. Unfortunately, the scheme does not go quite as planned…
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Tag Archives: France
Sous les toits de Paris / Under the Roofs of Paris (1930) René Clair, Albert Préjean, Pola Illéry, Edmond T. Gréville
While singing in a lower class quarter in Paris, the street singer Albert falls in love with the Romanian party girl Pola, who is the companion of the gangster Fred. One night, Albert meets with Pola, who has just found that Fred had stolen her key, and his friend Louis proposes to toss to date her. However, Albert brings her to his room and they spend the night together, with Albert sleeping on the floor and Pola on his bed. Early in the morning, the pickpocket Émile brings a bag with stolen pieces and asks Albert to keep the bag for him. When the police busts Albert’s room and finds the stolen goods, he is arrested and sent to jail. Meanwhile Fred travels and Pola seeks comfort with Louis, and they stay together. When Émile is arrested by the police, he confesses that Albert is innocent and he is released and seeks out Pola. Meanwhile Fred returns to Paris and also seeks out Pola that is with Louis.
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Homo Eroticus / Man of the Year (1971) Marco Vicario, Rossana Podestà, Lando Buzzanca, Luciano Salce
Michele is a three-testicle, sexually insatiable man who goes around bedding all women in town (regardless of age), until one day things goes terribly wrong.
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Anna (1967) Pierre Koralnik, Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, Marianne Faithfull
Anna is a bizarre pop art/comedy/musical filled with bright vibrant colors, strange, hallucinatory scenes and some of the best songs Serge ever wrote. The story is about a man obsessively looking for a woman he saw in a photograph. A truly charming and entertaining movie that every Gainsbourg fan should see.
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Transe / Trance (2006) Teresa Villaverde, Ana Moreira, Viktor Rakov, Robinson Stévenin
Sonia, a girl from St Petersburg, decides to seek a better life in western Europe. She first gets a job at a car dealer in Germany. But she is suddenly kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. She will be dragged from country to country and resistance will only bring her misery and humiliation.
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Sous les bombes / Under the Bombs (2007) Philippe Aractingi, Nada Abou Farhat, Georges Khabbaz, Rawia Elchab
Under the bombs, a woman searches for her son. A man accompanies her. They have nothing in common. Toni is Christian and dreams of leaving the country. Zeina is Shiite, and has emigrated to Dubai. Back in Lebanon to try and save her son, she realizes she doesn’t want to leave anymore. And yet, despite this all, Toni and Zeina will love each other, as a kind of response to the death striking all around them.
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La comtesse perverse / Countess Perverse (1974) Jesús Franco, Alice Arno, Robert Woods, Howard Vernon
Two wealthy aristocrats lure a virginal girl to a Spanish island for a night of sex, death and cannibalism.
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The Comedians (1967) Peter Glenville, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness
Set in the Haiti of “Papa Doc” Duvalier, The Comedians tells the story of a sardonic Welsh hotel owner and his encroaching fatalism as he watches Haiti sink into barbarism and poverty. Complications include his inability to sell the hotel so he can leave, a friendship with a rebel leader, some politically “charged” hotel guests, an affair with the German-born wife of a South American ambassador, and the manipulations of a British arms dealer who’s in over his head.
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Le roman de Werther (1938) Max Ophüls, Pierre Richard-Willm, Annie Vernay, Jean Galland
Adaptation of “Werther”, a novel by Goethe. A young poet falls passionately in love a girl and when lost, desperately trying to recover.
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Une femme à sa fenêtre (1976) Granier-Deferre, Romy Schneider, Philippe Noiret, Victor Lanoux
On August 4, 1936, General Metaxas declared martial law in Greece. A union leader using the name Boutros is sought in Athens by Primoukis, a ruthless police leader. Boutros narrowly escapes and, early the next morning, jumps through the window of Marchese Margot Santorini, the wealthy Austrian-born wife of Rico, a penniless Italian diplomat and playboy. Margot is bored and without purpose: aiding Boutros’s escape invigorates her, and soon she is in love. The film briefly jumps to 1945 when Rico and Raoul (who assisted her out of love) meet in France to talk about her fate, and then jumps 30 years to Margot’s daughter’s visit to Greece to find out about her father.
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