Michel Auclair Movies

This filmed version of the 1927 George Gershwin Broadway musical Funny Face utilizes the play's original star, Fred Astaire, and several of the original tunes, then goes merrily off on its own. Astaire is cast as as fashion photographer Dick Avery (a character based on Richard Avedon, the film's "visual consultant"), who is sent out by his female boss Maggie Prescott (Kay Thompson) to find a "new face". It doesn't take Dick long to discover Jo (Audrey Hepburn, who does her own singing), an owlish Greenwich Village bookstore clerk. Acting as Pygmalion to Jo's Galatea, Dick whisks the wide-eyed girl off to Paris and transforms her into the fashion world's hottest model. Along the way, he falls in love with Jo, and works overtime to wean her away from such phony-baloney intellectuals as Professor Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair). The Gershwin tunes include the title song, "S'wonderful", "How Long Has This Been Going On" and "He Loves and She Loves"; among the newer numbers is Kay Thompson's energetic opener "Think Pink". For years available only in washed-out, flat prints, Funny Face was eventually restored to its full Technicolor and VistaVision glory. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Danielle Darrieux stars in this Belgian chiller as a songstress whose obsessively jealous husband suddenly dies. Feeling free for the first time in years, Darrieux inaugurates a romance with Michel Auclair. But even now she is the victim of her husband's omnipresence; evidently returning from the grave, the dead man haunts both Darrieux and her new lover. If you've seen Diabolique, you may catch on to a few of this film's many plot twists. Oddly, Murder at 45 R.P.M (produced in 1960, released in the US five years later) is frequently absent from the published resumes of both Danielle Darrieux and Michel Auclair. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An evil and manipulative leader has pushed some of his subjects too far. They join together to stage a revolution. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A slight screenplay and surface characterization undermine the telling of this dramatic tale by director Roger Leenhardt. Like a few other directors during this period, Leenhardt works with the idea of the story in a film being juxtaposed with real life. When a film critic comes across a woman crying her heart out during a tragic movie, he decides to find out what is going on. It turns out that Eva (Lili Palmer) the movie fan, has identified herself with the suicidal heroine of the film and plans on ending it all in the same fashion. The celluloid scenes and Eva's own circumstances alternate as the drama unfolds and the film critic tries to find a way to stop her self-destructive obsession. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Trouble begins when five Frenchmen pool their money in an attempt to pull off a huge drug deal. One intercepts the money and kills his friend to cover his tracks. The others are haunted by doubt and innuendo to the point where they all point fingers and guns at each other. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Laure (Pascale Audrei) enters a convent to escape the real world and surround herself in pity in this distaff drama that plays like a soap opera. As a young girl she is accused of lesbian leanings towards another girl when her brother turns her letter over to her father. A priest tries to help Laure when she attends a religious school, and a man with an invalid wife falls for Laure before she loses her virginity to a doctor. She chooses to take refuge in a convent to isolate herself from any further bad experiences. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This is an updated version of the Alexander Dumas classic. Edmond Dantes (Paul Barge) is framed and imprisoned for collaboration with the enemy during World War II. When he escapes from jail he travels to South America where rumors of his death are soon taken to be fact. He discovers a treasure and plots his return to seek revenge against those who had falsely accused him of being a traitor. Cars replace horses for the chase scenes in this modernized version of Monte-Cristo as Edmond fights to regain his name, his property, and the woman who was taken from him years earlier. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

This film is a French period comic romance, set in the time just surrounding the French Revolution (1789). "Year Two," of the French title refers to the second year following the revolution. Those who guided the French Revolution renamed the days of the week, the months of the year, and much more. They also began their calendar from the time of the revolution. In this film, Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the husband of a vivacious, two-timing, and socially ambitious young woman (Marlene Jobert). After he kills one of her aristocratic lovers, the husband flees to the New World (the Americas). He returns to France after the revolution, finds that he has been divorced, and then works hard to woo his ex-wife away from all the important men and outlaw aristocrats she is spending time with. Happiness reigns anew as, remarried, they both attain aristocratic status in Napolean's regime. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In Paris, in 1942, on a Thursday, the Parisian police herded together some 13,000 Jews for deportation to German territory. In this story, Paul (Christian Rist) is a teenager who tries to prevent this from happening. At first he attempts to save two elderly Jews, but they are resigned to their fate and comply with the order to assemble. For a short while, he is able to keep Jeanne (Christine Pascal) from joining them, but, after a long and strenuous day, she finally escapes from him he is too tired to chase after her. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Director André Téchiné brings his usual obsessions -- including a preoccupation with the fortunes of the bourgeoisie -- to this episodic drama, which serves as a thinly-veiled portrait of France's economic peaks and valleys from the 1930s through the 1970s. Jeanne Moreau stars as Berthe Pedret, a simple laundry woman who marries Hector (Michael Auclair), son of a wealthy, upper class, Spanish immigrant family that owns a successful farm machinery factory. Through a series of vignettes, Techine depicts the passage of years, during which the ambitious working class woman blooms through several bold moves, such as negotiating a workers' strike settlement and using her alliance with the war-time French Resistance movement to increase the enterprise's prestige. Eventually, Berthe comes to control the family's fortunes, but economic challenges in the 1950s force her to turn to an unlikely source for financial help: her obnoxious sister-in-law Regina (Marie-France Pisier). Regina, who ran off with a wealthy American after the war, may now be willing to aid Berthe in exchange for her freedom. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Fayard (Patrick Dewaere) is a magistrate of the French courts, who is unusually enthusiastic in seeking justice. For instance, when his girlfriend is trapped in a store-front bordello, he has no qualms about arranging (and joining) a police raid on the place. This stunt earned him the nickname "the Sheriff." However, this otherwise shy and diminutive fellow has made many enemies, both in the bureaucracy and among the criminal classes, and before long they catch up to him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The "pieds-noir" were Algerians of French heritage who were forced to return to France in 1962, when Algeria became independent. In the first part of this film, based on a novel by Daniel Saint-Hamon, the Narbonis run a little grocery in Algeria and keep their noses out of politics entirely. They are content to mind their own business, in the hopes that others will be equally sensible. Thus, they are bewildered when, in 1962, they are forced to leave what has by now become their native land for the strange country of France. In the second half of the film, their adjustment to life in France is aided by the same stick-to-business attitudes which earlier gave them difficulty. Nonetheless, they experience a number of setbacks, as when a slick Parisian (Michel Auclair) tries to talk them into going into business with him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi