Marcel André Movies

A young woman justifies her life as a prostitute by stating every man wants sex, so why not charge for it? Kirsten (Anna Kristina) explains she sees over 1,800 men a year and 50 in one night. Although many hooker profess to start a new life, few are ever extricated from the situations of their seamy professions. The women put up with abusive pimps and johns, and Kirsten tries to lead a normal life outside of her work. Transsexual Dolly van Doll also appears in this uneven feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The grim Emile Zola "naturalist" novel Therese Raquin has been vividly cinematized by director Marcel Carne. Simone Signoret plays the title character, the long-suffering housewife who dreams of a more romantic life-partner than the bourgeois Camille (Jacques Duby). Therese enjoys a torrid affair with burly truck-driver Laurent (Raf Vallone), only to realize the true emptiness of her aspirations. Ultimately, Therese brings about her own destruction, never truly learning to appreciate what she already has. In the U.S., Therese Raquin was released under the come-on cognomen The Adulteress. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally titled Un Grande Campon, The Perfectionist is a tailor-made vehicle for Pierre Fresnay. The star plays a brilliant and celebrated surgeon, on the verge of achieving his life's goal: a membership in the Academy of Medicine. Unfortunately, the surgeon's medical accomplishments are counterpointed by his less-than-admirable private life. One of the victims of the surgeon's single-minded pursuit of success is his woefully neglected life. He finally awakens to his domestic responsibilities only to lapse back into his old habits at the first opportunity. A subplot concerns a young medical student who bids fair to achieve the same measure of success as the elder surgeon -- and to make the same grievous errors on a personal level. The Perfectionist was the 1951 winner of France's Les Victoire Cinema Francais, the Gallic equivalent to Hollywood's Oscar. The film was the third feature-length directorial effort of Yves Ciampi, himself a onetime medical student. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Cocteau's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast (originally released in France as La Belle et la Bête) stars Josette Day as Beauty and Jean Marais as the Beast. When a merchant (Marcel André) is told that he must die for picking a rose from the Beast's garden, his courageous daughter (Day) offers to go back to the Beast in her father's place. The Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage on a nightly basis; she refuses, having pledged her troth to a handsome prince (also played by Marais). Eventually, however, she is drawn to the repellent but strangely fascinating Beast, who tests her fidelity by giving her a key, telling her that if she doesn't return it to him by a specific time, he will die of grief. The film features a musical score by Georges Auric. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Absent from the screen since 1944's Kismet, the incomparable Marlene Dietrich returned in the French romantic melodrama Martin Roumagnac. La Dietrich is cast opposite Jean Gabin, here playing a small-town contractor with an eye for the ladies. He is entranced by Dietrich, a woman who's "been around" and who intends to remain in circulation even after trapping Gabin in her web. When Gabin figures out he's been had, the results are unexpectedly tragic. Martin Roumagnac was a second-choice project for Dietrich and Gabin, who'd originally been offered the leads in Marcel Carne's Les Portes de la Nuit, which frankly would have been a better vehicle for them. In America, Martin Roumagnac was released as The Room Upstairs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama is set in the Balkans just before WW II erupts and chronicles the marriage of a Serbian soldier to an Austrian woman. During the wedding, the bride is accompanied by a friend who objects to the union on nationalistic grounds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Marthe Richard (Edwige Feuillere) has grown up despising the memory of German army officer Von Ludow (Erich von Stroheim), who ordered the execution of Marthe's mother and father. Years later, Marthe offers her services as a secret agent on behalf of France. Dispatched to Spain, she once more crosses the path of Von Ludow, now in charge of the German secret service. Not recognizing the heroine, Von Ludow finds himself falling in love with her. Upon learning that he's been tricked by Marthe into betraying his country, the old soldier does the honorable thing by committing suicide -- and such is the power of Erich Von Stroheim's performance that the audience by now is on his side. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Produced and directed by exploitation specialist Dwain Esper and written by Mrs. Esper, Hildegarde Stade, this ultra low-budget "educational" melodrama not only defied logic but broke virtually every rule of narrative film-making. That would not necessarily be a detriment to a film ostensibly warning about the dangers of untreated insanity, but Maniac is so badly handled in an obvious attempt to both horrify and titillate that it defies description. Vaguely based on Poe's The Black Cat and referring in several scenes to the same author's Murders in the Rue Morgue, Maniac told a rambling, sometimes incoherent story of a vaudeville impersonator turned lab assistant to an insane scientist. Like most Mad Medicos, Dr. Meirschultz (Horace B. Carpenter) is attempting to bring dead tissue to life but this particular scientist is accidentally killed in the process. His assistant (Bill Woods) takes over his persona, walling up the dead doc in the process. The protagonist's increasing dementia -- which threatens to engulf the viewing audience as well -- is depicted via inserts from silent films such as Benjamin Christensen's classic Witchcraft Through the Ages and Fritz Lang's Siegfried. There is plenty of gratuitous feline footage and at one point the fake Dr. Meirschultz actually devours a cat's eye! ("Why," he exclaims, "It's not unlike a grape or an oyster!") For unexplained reasons, the faux doctor examines a couple of women in various stages of undress. The presence of these women remains vague and they never appear again. There is also a deranged person (Ted Edwards) who believes he is the re-incarnation of the orangutan killer in "Rue Morgue"; a couple of women fighting with syringes; and various shots of girls lounging about in their underwear for no apparent reason other than audience titillation. Like most exploitation melodramas, Maniac is cast with a mix of has-beens and unknown beginners who remained unknown. Poor Horace B. Carpenter, a silent era producer/director/actor who played whitehaired Western characters in sound films, was made a complete fool in a role perhaps written for the too-expensive Bela Lugosi. Bill Woods and Ted Edwards, as the vaudeville performer and the orangutan wannabe respectively, saw their careers go nowhere but down after Maniac.The Latter's wife, incidentally, was played by one Phyllis Diller, a starlet who had absolutely no connection to the later comedienne of the same name; and Marian Blackton, the sister of the film's assistant director and daughter of screen pioneer J. Stuart Blackton, appears in male drag as a cat-catching neighbor. Despite all that, Maniac actually delivered a lot less than it's lurid art-work promised, a fate it shared with the vast majority of exploitation melodramas. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

La Chance (Luck) was based on a story by Yves Mirande, who also supervised the production. Marie Bell plays Tania, a Russian widow who can't stay away from the gaming tables of the Riviera. A chronic gambler, Tania overextends her monthly allowance and is stone broke when she meets handsome surgeon Victor (Fernand Fabre). Convinced that Tania is interested in Victor only for his money, his best friend Gaston (Marcel Andre) tries to break up the romance. It turns out, of course, that Gaston is all wrong, and Tania is all right. And there's several songs in the bargain. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide