Lyne Clévers Movies

Released in France as La Kermesse Heroique, Carnival in Flanders is set during the long-ago war between the Dutch and Spanish. A tiny village in Flanders is invaded by Spanish troops. The townsfolk have heard of Spanish cruelties in other towns, and decide to deflect the vanquishers by playing dead. This isn't terribly effective (you have to take a breath once in a while), so the wife of the burgomaster tries to soften up the invaders with a lavish carnival. So successful is this venture that the Spaniards allow the village to escape being decimated, or even taxed. An award-winner many times over, Carnival in Flanders was banned in Germany; evidently, Goebbels caught on that director Jacques Feyder and scenarists Bernard Zimmer and Charles Spaak were drawing deliberate parallels between the Spanish and the then-burgeoning Nazis. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jacques Feyder's sole directorial contribution in 1934 (and his first film since 1931) was the superior Foreign Legion melodrama Le Grand Jeu (The Full Deck). Scripted by frequent Feyder collaborator Charles Spaak, the film focuses on Pierre Martel (Pierre Richard-Willm), whose efforts to support his beloved Florence (Marie Bell) in the style to which she's accustomed cause him to run afoul of the Law. Escaping a charge of embezzlement, Pierre signs up with the Foreign Legion, intending to "forget." After a particularly violent skirmish with the natives, Pierre briefly loses his memory, whereupon he begins keeping time with Irma, a sexy camp-follower whom he imagines to be Florence. When his tour of duty is over, Pierre prepares to return home to Paris to collect an unexpected inheritance. Reunited with the real Florence, he finds he cannot get over Irma, the little trollop who gave him a new lease on life back in the desert. Unwilling to go back to France without Irma, Pierre returns to the Foreign Legion -- where, inevitably, he meets his doom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Released in English-speaking countries as Eddies, this feverish romantic melodrama involves a "damaged" husband and a restless wife. Paralyzed from the waist down in an auto accident, Henri St. Clair (Jean Gallard) is all too aware that he can no longer satisfy his young wife Jeanne (Jeanne Botel). Even so, Jeanne tries to be faithful but eventually succumbs to the charms of virile Robert Vannier (Maurice Mallot). Jeanne's inner torment and sexual yearnings are represented in purely symbolic terms, not unlike the implied eroticism of the recent Czech film Ecstacy. This distinctly continental production was, surprisingly, the brainchild of an American screenwriter named Peggy Thompson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide