An essay film critiquing post-war France's urban developments- Pialat states that modernity and suburban convenience have limited Parisian freedom and widened class gaps.
Luc Lagier puts Alain Resnais' film back in its historical context and in the filmmaker's biography. He tells the story, then the development of what was originally intended to be a short documentary film and which turned into an unusual allegory. Composed of fascinating archives, including notably...
This documentary brings the audience into the creative process of film scores by featuring the interviews of some of the world’s most renowned film composers, including Maurice Jarre (Lawrence of Arabia), Bruno Coulais (The Chorus), Georges Delerue (Jules and Jim) and Alexandre Desplat (The Shape...
Following a robbery in a circus, a young mobster, Jean, is arrested by Inspector Borelli. The thug denies involvement. To compel him to sign a full confession, Inspector Muller encourages the suspect to get married for - he says - to move the jury. This being done, he lets Jean believe that he can...
La Corne d'or is mostly concerned with religious ritual, examining the mosque (and former cathedral) discussed in Byzance. As a contrast against Istanbul's status as a center of historical religious conflict, Pialat — drawing here on texts by the French poet Gérard de Nerval — also describes...
Tongue-in-cheek look at the French Riviera, especially in summer when it overflows with tourists. Reviews its history and famous visitors; displays its faux-exotic buildings, its crowded beaches, its trees and monuments; and, pokes fun at the colors women wear and the vagaries of fashion. The film...
If love is a universal phenomenon, it is never the same: the animal world experiences brutal and rapid unions, or, on the contrary, slow and difficult approaches, followed by sometimes interminable embraces.
When Guillaume Valmont dies in a car accident, the only thing he leaves his wife Isabelle is his pharmacy. She never loved her older husband and she regards his death as a deliverance. At the funeral, she meets Judith, widow too, and she soon realises that her husband had been leading a double...
A young American girl at a French boarding school develops a crush on an egotistical sculptor living next door. One night, driving in a drunken stupor, he runs over and kills a man, and she witnesses it.
The star of a magazine company suffers an appendicitis attack during a shift and has to stay in a small Spanish town to be operated. But the doctor who takes care of his speech falls in love for her and tries to prolong their convalescence.
Love Comes Quietly (aka Angela) tells the story of a free-spirited girl who was born in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the 1920s, even the somewhat more tolerant people of the Netherlands (relative to the rest of Europe) did not easily suffer the open flouting of the rules of society....
A residential area schoolboy discovers the odd universe of the Parisian metro. At one point, he glimpses the beautiful face of a blond-haired girl. Later on, he falls asleep and possibly dreams his first love dream…
A voice, warm and heartbreaking, that of Brisseau himself, coils over black and white images. The tone was set very quickly: "To wake up is to be born again in the world of despair." 'On Sunday afternoon' is a film all at once clinical and theoretical on melancholy in the strong sense of the famous...
Pierrot, a short-sighted, indolent and distracted young boy gets involved in a carnival at the Palais de la Rigolade whose main attraction is to place the women in an ascending current of air which makes their skirts fly. A fight in this Palace makes him lose his job. Then he meets Yvonne, the...
The tranquility of a Romanian village is shattered by the arrival of a beautiful unknown coinciding with the discovery of a new star by a modest professor of astronomy ...
This brave, lonely man who arrives in Corsica, in a poor village, has no idea that he will have to take in this 9-year-old child whose mother has just died and of whom he is undoubtedly the father. His only hope is to find a place for the child, a place where he can get rid of his mother, a place...
Documentary devoted to the architectural and urban planning designs of Le Corbusier. The architect supports his in-depth reflection on the city and its necessary adaptation to modern life with plans, drawings and images, particularly Paris, whose revolutionary development dreamed of by Le Corbusier...