François Darbon Movies
- 1968
The episodic romantic comedy Stolen Kisses is the third installment in François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series, which started with The 400 Blows in 1959. In 1968, Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is discharged from the military and comes home to Paris, getting an apartment in Montmartre with an excellent view of the Sacré-Coeur. He meets up with his sweetheart, Christine Darbon (Claude Jade, making her film debut), and joins her and her parents for dinner (Daniel Ceccaldi and Claire Duhamel). With the help of Christine's father, he gets a job as a hotel clerk but quickly gets fired after he unwittingly aids a private detective (Harry Max). After running into the detective at a coffee shop, Antonie then falls into a job at the Blady Detective Agency, assisting with the investigation of a magician. He is then assigned to the case of neurotic Georges Tabard (Michel Lonsdale), and ends up working in the stock room of his shoe store. After Antoine has coffee with Tabard's beautiful and intelligent wife, Fabienne (Delphine Seyrig), she inevitably tries to seduce him. He later meets Christine in a park and proposes to her, taking the pair into the next film: Bed and Board. One of the lightest entries in the series, Stolen Kisses was ironically filmed during a turbulent political time in France. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Léaud, Delphine Seyrig, (more)
- 1962
The eponymous French corporal, played by Jean-Pierre Cassel, is ensconced in a German POW camp. Cassel plots with his friends Claude Brasseur and Claude Rich to escape, but all three are recaptured. When the corporal plans another getaway, he finds that one of his chums isn't interested anymore. After a brief liaison with the daughter of a German dentist, Cassel once more tries to break out...and once more...and once more. Finally free from his captors, Cassel joins the resistance with his loyal pal Brasseur. The Elusive Corporal was a return to the themes of freedom and personal dignity inherent in Jean Renoir's earlier La Grande Illusion (1938); alas, Renoir had very little control over the final cut of the later film, and tended to dismiss the whole project as a mere "entertainment" in his declining years, though he remained proud of his closing panorama shot of Paris, which wordlessly expressed the euphoria of freedom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Cassel, Claude Brasseur, (more)
- 1962
A lovely young nurse finds herself framed for the murder of a hospital patient who died after she administered an injection. She goes to court where eventually, the real killer is revealed by his own jilted lover in this French drama. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1962
Several internationally known directors contributed to this generally adept and compelling series of five brief vignettes on love and its many ramifications. François Truffaut starts things off with a story of innocent love between a young man in his mid-teens and a slightly older woman. Renzo Rossellini continues in sketch two about a tough mistress who keeps her lover on a short tether. Shintaro Ishihara renders the only violent episode -- that of a disturbed young worker who becomes a real lady-killer. Marcel Ophüls (son of the late and great Max Ophüls) directs an upbeat tale about a journalist who accepts the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood when a brief fling with a woman ends in a pregnancy. The last vignette, directed by the well-known Polish helmer Andrzej Wajda, is about a brave act by a young soldier whose deed gains him the admiration of a woman, but the response from other men his age is something different. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, (more)
- 1960
Between 1951 and 1972 Bernard Borderie directed many "B"-grade films, and this low-budget, rapidly made comedy is one of them. Fernandel stars as Migonnet, a philosophy instructor who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He unintentionally ends up with the loot from a high-end robbery when the escaping thief needs somewhere to dump the evidence. The problem is that his newfound windfall is no secret from the underworld, and before he knows it, Migonnet is being chased by an assortment of greedy criminal elements. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fernandel, Barbara Laage, (more)
- 1959
In this drama, the hero finds himself beaten by gang members whose operation involves capturing young women and selling them as prostitute/slaves. When the hero's own fiancee ends up involved, he does everything he can to save her. Fortunately the police intervene, with guns blazing, and the day is saved. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Hossein, Philippe Clay, (more)
- 1957
Sois Belle et Tais Toi is more popularly known by its American-release title Be Beautiful but Shut Up. Mylene Demongeot plays a birdbrained young lady who gets mixed up with a gang of juvenile-delinquent smugglers. The crooks use the heroine as their go-between, intending to leave her holding the bag if and when the cops show up. Fortunately, a handsome police inspector (Henri Vidal) catches on to their scheme. One of the screenwriters for Sois Belle et Tais Toi was no less Roger Vadim. When the film was first released, its direction was often erroniously credited to Marc Allegret. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henri Vidal, Mylène Demongeot, (more)
