Alain Cuny Movies
A former medical student, Alain Cuny briefly pursued a painting career, entering the French film industry in the early '30s as a set and costume designer. In 1941 he turned to acting, at first playing leading roles but later specializing in character parts as priests and aesthetes. Most American audiences first caught up with Cuny when he played the villainous cleric Claude Frollo in the Anthony Quinn version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956). He worked frequently in the films of Federico Fellini, playing the anguished intellectual Steiner in La Dolce Vita (1960) and Lycas in Fellini Satyricon (1970). Alain Cuny's final screen role was as the title character's father in Camille Claudel (1988). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1992
When Silvano (as a boy, played by Federico Zanola) revisits his childhood home for the first time in years, he is soon overwhelmed by memories of the last days of World War II. It was a time when he witnessed murders and executions, formed a friendship with an elderly outcast, and learned that his father was not a heroic man of principle, but rather was a fearful man who was all-too ready to bend to whatever political winds were blowing. This story is based on director Silvano Agosti's autobiographical novel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Federico Zanola, Alain Cuny, (more)
- 1992
If this had been a western, the older gunfighter would have taught his younger rival a thing or two about the perils of a scandalous reputation before passing on the torch and (more than likely) dying tragically just as he is about to reform. Instead, in this film based on a novel celebrating the exploits of the legendary seducer Casanova, the younger competition is humbled by the fiftyish fugitive from justice because, in the art of seduction, experience is everything. In the story, Casanova (Alain Delon) is a fugitive from the wrath of the authorities of France and Italy, and he is being sheltered beneath the roof of an old friend, for whom he once did an important favor. The friend has an attractive niece, whose charms interest the almost elderly roué. However, he has two problems: his friend's wife is an old conquest who has been longing for him to show up and bed her for almost twenty years, and the niece is being courted by a handsome young soldier whose ambition is to outdo Casanova in the area of amorous adventures. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Delon, Fabrice Luchini, (more)
- 1991
The director of this film, noted French stage and film actor Alain Cuny, was for years a friend and associate of the diplomat, playwright and symbolist poet Paul Claudel (1868-1955), whose sister Camille was perhaps better known outside the French-speaking world. In fact, one of Cuny's last movie performances was in the 1988 film Camille Claudel, based on the sculptress' life. Before he died in 1955, the playwright asked that Cuny direct a picture based on his play L'Annonce faite a Marie, and in this somewhat stage-bound production, he is honoring that request. Set at the time of the Crusades, it tells the story of love and tragedy, intermingled with mysticism. Jacques is betrothed to marry Violane, a beautiful and gentle woman. When she discovers that she has leprosy, however, the marriage is off, and she retires to a life of prayer at an isolated hermitage. Instead, Jacques marries her sister Mara. When Jacques and Mara's child dies shortly after birth, Mara implores her saintly sister to come out of isolation to bring her child back to life. In 1991, this critically esteemed and poetic film won the Prix Georges Sadoul. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Cuny
- 1989
In this meditative, poetic comedy, a strait-laced young bureaucrat has been informed that, rather than being promoted, he is being apprenticed to the town archivist in anticipation of taking over his job whenever the old man retires, which doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. A vengeful anarchist sets the town hall aflood, and something changes in the minds of the lad and his new mentor, so that we see them happily folding soggy, ruined official forms into boats and sending them down the river. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Magali Noël, Michel Robin, (more)
- 1987
This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year absence to investigate the murder that occurred just before he left. A flashback ensues. All the trouble began when a wealthy general's son came to town searching for a bride. He found an appropriate girl and was very happy until he discovered that his bride was not a virgin. In a terrible rage he sent the poor girl back to her family where her father beat her into revealing her lover's name. Her twin brothers then set out to punish the guilty fellow, a much-despised womanizer. Though the entire town knew that the brothers planned to kill him, no one intervened. Strangely, the victim died without a fight. The story jumps back to the present to witness the return of the general's son. He runs into his former fiancee and quietly hands back all of the letters she had written him over the years. Not a single one is opened. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rupert Everett, Ornella Muti, (more)
- 1987
Set in Vienna, Austria before World War I, an industrialist grows weary of his cold-hearted wife. He seeks vengeance in a dual with the young officer who desires her affections. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Bulle Ogier, (more)
- 1987
In this slow-paced and chaotic film, Ravi has been bedding a beauty queen who is on the outs with her former lover and has been drinking a lot. They are at a hotel in Provence which a local landowner has a grudge against. Before the hotel came, the main livelihood in the region was fruit-growing. With the arrival of the hotel, it is only a matter of time before tourism takes over. The landowner has hired some drifters to set fire to the hotel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Didym, Assumpta Serna, (more)
- 1986
Unless audiences love Strindberg or are fascinated with avant-garde performances, this documentary on Strindberg's play about a man who dies will not be exceptionally absorbing. Star Alain Cluny is shown both on and off stage, as he performs the play and prepares for his role. On the stage Cluny sits at a table and reads from a script while images are projected on screens next to him, figures enter and exit silently, and sets are exchanged behind him. The story itself deals with a man who goes to the island of the dead with a lot of questions he wants answered. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Cuny
- 1984
After several years of making films to please only himself, French director Jean-Luc Godard once more invites the audience to the party with The Detective. Not that there's anything so blase as a linear plot or appealing characters, but at least some of Godard's isolated vignettes are accessible this time around. Set in the Hotel Concorde at St. Lazare, the film is set in motion when miserably married Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur attempt to collect a debt from mob-plagued boxing manager Johnny Hallyday. Meanwhile, hotel detective Jean-Pierre Leaud tries to solve an old murder case. These two gossamer plot strands are used to tie together Godard's scattershot views on modern life, with emphasis on the voyeuristic potential of the recent video-camera boom. The director dashed off The Detective to raise money for a film he truly cared about, the controversial Hail Mary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claude Brasseur, Nathalie Baye, (more)
- 1982
An animated science fiction tale designed by artist Jean Giraud. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Valmont
- 1982
The internationally renowned string quartet had been performing together for most of their adult lives when their lead violinist suddenly died, leaving the remaining three confused about their lives and careers. Up till then, all they had known were the rigors of constant practice and traveling. Music was everything, and they never took the time to sample Life's other pleasures. The trio decide to split up, but then a young violinist shows up and convinces them to reform the group and let him take over. He is one of the most talented players they have ever heard and the quartet once again makes sweet music. But as good as he is on stage, the youth is a wild man off stage who freely smokes dope, sleeps with fans, and parties whenever he can. Seeing that his private life has not affected the brilliance of his playing and even suspecting that it may even improve his playing, the three old players are thrown into personal tail spins as they look back at their own austere life choices. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Héctor Alterio, Omero Antonutti, (more)
- 1980
The career and character of Dr. Ignazio Filippo Semmelweis is the focus of this sometimes confusing but informative biographical film. Semmelweis is the Hungarian doctor who first proposed that infections are transmitted by germs from one person to the next. His biggest contribution to the advancement of medicine is when he discovers why fevers can occur during childbirth (and sometimes cause death). The good yet often surly doctor notes that his students go directly from anatomy class to gynecology and do not wash their hands in between. When they examine their female patients, the germs from the cadavers are passed on to the women. This simple discovery is revealed in flashbacks, along with the scientific community's resistence to the idea. The doctor's own ironic death is noted right at the beginning of the story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giulio Brogi, Alain Cuny, (more)
Based on an autobiographical novel by Carlo Levi, Cristo si e fermato a Eboli stars Gian-Maria Volonte as Levi, a prominent anti-fascist author and artist who, during Mussolini's regime was exiled to Eboli, a tiny village in Southern Italy. The government believed Levi's controversial views would fall on deaf ears, but as he spent time in the small pastoral community, the simple wisdom of the peasants came to have a profound impact on Levi, and his beliefs would also impact the people of Eboli. Francesco Rosi's film is usually screened in a version running 150 minutes, though a longer 210 minute cut is also available. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gian Maria Volontè, Paolo Bonacelli, (more)
- 1978
Set in the early 1900s, this film charts the rule of a Latin American dictator as he moves from being a charming despot to a tyrannical ruler before he is finally ousted, only to die in obscurity in Paris. Early in his regime, the resources and agricultural products his country sells command high prices, and he is a reasonably confident, even gentle, ruler who likes to take long vacations with his daughter in Paris. After World War I, with falling prices and a number of coup attempts behind him, his rule becomes quite cruel. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nelson Villagra, Katy Jurado, (more)
Marcello Mastroianni stars in this French farce, an absurd "western" set in Paris, with Mastroianni as the incurably vain General George Armstrong Custer. Richard Nixon is the American president, but everyone is costumed appropriately for the previous century. Buffalo Bill (Michel Piccoli), the famous scout, is here portrayed as a limp-wristed bungler. Ugo Tognazzi plays one of Custer's Native American opponents; he runs a curio shop selling Native artifacts made in sweatshops by white women. The climactic battle is held in a large construction excavation where Les Halles market used to be. The language the two sides use to justify their conflict is lifted from that used in the then-current Vietnam War. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, (more)
- 1973
The harbor of Trieste, at the head of the Adriatic, has at various times been an independent state, a port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of Yugoslavia, and part of Italy. This film, set in 1917 when the city was still Austrian, examines the last days of the life of a fading nobleman (Alain Cuny) of Italian/Austrian lineage, and the change in that city's fortunes which his death prefigures. Only two years later, Trieste was ceded to Italy. This Italian movie is based on the novel La Rosa Rossa by Perantonio Quarantotti Bambini. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
This strident Yugoslavian/Italian film is a very uneven adaptation of a small portion of the famous and much-loved whimsical novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulghakov. It attempts to deal only with the Moscow portion of the novel. Even so, it was a brave attempt to film the unfilmable, and uses animation and other techniques to portray the more fantastic aspects of the story. In the film, which lovingly recreates the Moscow of the 1920s, the Master (Ugo Tognazzi) is a playwright. He is attending the dress rehearsal for his play, which is being performed over the objections of everyone involved, except for his girlfriend Margarita (Mimsy Farmer) and Professor Woland (Alain Cluny). He grows frantic when he discovers that the Professor is actually the Devil (the actual supernatural being, not just a very bad man). The Master tries to warn people but is committed to an insane asylum for his pains. At the play's premiere, the Professor uses his magical powers to add terrifying special effects which send the audiences screaming out of the theater. The film makes many guarded references to the persecution (past and present) of artists under communism. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1971
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. This is a French language film, with no dubbing or subtitles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Cuny, Bernadette Lafont, (more)
- 1971
This tiresome comedy features pop singer Enzo Jannacci as Amedeo, a country rube who comes to Vatican City seeking a personal audience with the Pope. Detailing Amedeo's battle with officious Vatican bureaucrats and bungling attempts to catch the Pope off-guard, the film rarely rises to the level of director Marco Ferreri's more subversive farces and resembles nothing more than a 1970s Neapolitan-style Pauly Shore vehicle. Italian film buffs will still appreciate the cast, which includes Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Piccoli of La Cage aux Folles as well as Claudia Cardinale, Vittorio Gassman, and Alain Cuny. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1970
Italian army regulars resist the orders of a cruel general whose rigid interpretations of the rules call for a man to be shot. Leone (Alain Cuny) orders the execution of an army regular who halted the troops while under enemy fire. A sympathetic lieutenant substitutes a dead body for that of the doomed soldier because he believes the general has been wrong and the man acted normally. Another lieutenant is shot when he refuses to shoot men who have exited quickly from a foxhole under bombardment. This anti-war film illustrates the enemy is not the only force of evil on the battlefield and that war is inherently wrong for everyone involved. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mark Frechette, Alain Cuny, (more)
- 1963
The young son of a wealthy industrialist eschews the material pleasures of life and decides to enter the priesthood. His father wishes his son to follow in his footsteps and recruits his young girlfriend to help change his mind. The girl seduces the inexperienced lad, and he quickly falls prey to the material and sexual pleasures of the flesh. Father and son argue over the boy's future as the son agonizes about his fall into hedonism. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Cuny, Jacques Perrin, (more)
- 1963
In this melodrama a prodigal son returns to his home village after he is acquitted of his stepfather's death to find that most of his former neighbors now shun him. At least his best friend sticks by him. Soon the young man finds himself drawn to his loyal buddy's lover. He and the woman have an affair. Later his friend finds out and vows to kill him. He cannot do it. At the same time, the young man cannot keep hurting his only true friend. As a result he spurns the woman, who runs off into the darkness and gets hit by a car driven by her first lover's mother's car. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In this lightweight French comedy a pair of sharpers, Cathy (Jeanne Moreau) and her ex-husband Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) attempt to bilk a miserly millionaire out of his fortune during his visit to the French Riviera. Unfortunately for them, he is just as crafty as they are. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, (more)
- 1961
Set in a small coastal fishing village, this low-budget, undistinguished melodrama penned by no fewer than six writers is about the misfortunes of a young woman. After her father takes her into the village, the poor woman is raped by the local lothario, yet her victimization does not end there. Low catches drive her fisherman father farther down the poverty scale, and later on he is killed. The final injustice is that the woman becomes pregnant and eventually gives birth to a child that is the result of her rape. This makes the rapist change his feelings towards her. As might be expected, the six writers are all men. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José Suárez, Carla Gravina, (more)
