Andrex Movies

In this WWII comedy, a French POW escapes and hides at an inn. After the war, he stays at the inn to help the innkeeper, whom he has become involved with, rather than return to his wife. When the innkeeper's husband shows up ten years later, the POW goes back to his wife, whom he finds married to the chef at the cafe he ran. His wife refuses to sleep with the chef until a divorce is granted. The chef returns home to Normandy, thinking that he is out of luck, but the POW follows him and tells him that if he takes responsibility for his wife and the cafe, he will grant the divorce. The POW's loneliness is relieved when the innkeeper tells him that her husband has gone to Siberia and they are free to get married. ~ Steve Huey, All Movie Guide

France's Fernandel and Italy's Alberto Sordi provide an abundance of laughs in Sous le Ciel de Provence (Under Skies of Provence). Fernandal plays a travelling salesman who makes the mistake of his life when he offers to help his fellow bus passenger, a very pretty and very pregnant young lady (Tina Roca). For purposes of decorum, the girl begs the salesman to pose as her husband. He agrees, little realizing how inextricably he will be involved in her family's trials and tribulations. A remake of the 1943 Italian comedy Four Steps in the Clouds, Sous le Ciel de Provence was wittily scripted by the great Cesar Zavattini. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Circonstance Attenuantes (Circumstantial Evidence) stars Michel Simon as a judge known as Le Sentencier because of his stern adherence to the letter of the law. In private life, however, the judge is hardly a bastion of severity, concocting an elaborate excuse to visit his mistress while on vacation with his terrifying wife. En route to his assignation, the judge stumbles onto a criminal gang headed by the lovely Marie (Arletty). Because of his thorough knowledge of the law, the judge is mistaken for a criminal mastermind whom the gang has been waiting for. Revelling in this misapprehension, our hero decides to supervise a series of robberies, using his knowledge of due process and rules of evidence to escape detection--though he soothes his conscience by secretly paying for all his ill-gotten gains. As a climax to his short life of crime, the judge leads the gang to his own home, where he gleefully orders them to remove all the hideous furnishings with which his wife has adorned the place over the past several years! Delightfully acted, Circonstance Attenuantes arrives at a moralistic conclusion, though one half-wishes that the judge and his new friends will escape scot-free. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Renoir's epic account of the French Revolution juxtaposes the opulent life of King Louis XVI with the poverty of the commoners who rose up to overthrow the monarchy in 1789. The film's title comes from the rallying song which grew out of the peasants' march on the Bastille, the song that ultimately became the French national anthem. Filmed with a cast of thousands, the focus is on two members of a large volunteer battalion who help the revolutionary army in its takeover of the Tulleries, which resulted in the publication of the Brunswick Manifesto and ultimately led to King Louis' downfall. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

French writer/director Marcel Pagnol didn't do much editing when he transferred Jean Glono's excessively long novel Angele to film. Orane Demaziz plays the title role, an innocent country girl who becomes a Parisian streetwalker thanks to a smooth-talking pimp. Angele's father fetches her back to the farm, forcibly locking the girl and her newborn baby in his cellar. Her faithful rustic boyfriend rescues Angele, and together the two attempt to escape for a new life. But Angele still loves her father and returns home, whereupon daddy does an about-face and welcomes her with open arms. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide