The film follows the life of Napoleon from his early life in Corsica to his death at Saint Helena. The film is notable for its use of location shooting for numerous scenes, especially at the French estates of Malmaison and Fontainebleau, the Palace of Versailles, and sites of Napoleonic battles...
The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the...
Jules Duraton is the headmaster of Chatelbourg's high school. He is happily married, has a teenage daughter named Solange, and everything would be for the best of all possible worlds if he and his family were not the namesakes of the protagonists of a famous comic series broadcast every day on...
Nobel-prize-winning author, social justice crusader, anti-colonialist, adventure traveler, musician, and one-time Communist: André Gide was a larger-than-life character who dominated French letters from the turn of the 20th century to his death in 1951. Directed by Marc Allégret, with whom Gide...
Professor Louis Delage is a kidney transplant specialist. He is so good in his field that his peers nickname him the "great man". But one day, one of his patients die during surgery and Delage starts doubting. Is he actually such a great man? To fight desperation he decides to take in the deceased...
Jacques Montet, a successful crime story writer, has already written a hundred books and would like to call it quits now to devote himself to loftier writing. But his wife, a cold-hearted, money-minded, bossy woman won't allow. All the more as she is the one who supplies Jacques with the plots of...
Irène is the unhappy wife of a wealthy publisher, Jacques Voisin-Larive, who cares about her no more than a beautiful piece of furniture. Her meeting with Étienne, a young cabinetmaker with whom she falls in love, turns her dismal existence upside down. Not wanting to reveal her condition to her...
Young and handsome Armand Duval falls in love with Marguerite Gautier, a 'demi-mondaine'. He manages to persuade her to give up her life as a courtesan and they both settle down in the country. Tthe beginning of their idyll is like a dream but a short-lived one as their relationship is considered...
Several men have been murdered lately, mostly rich lovers on their way to meet their mistresses with gifts of fine jewelry. To fight this scourge, King Louis XIV decides to create a special court named "La chambre ardente", designed to find and punish the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. An...
Jean-Pierre, a pianist, is also the composer of a revue he would very much like Maroni, a famous theater producer, to put on. Maroni is not interested. All he wants at the moment is to impose Violette, a pretty young singer whose career he supervises. He has her dressed up as a flower seller. When...