Jean Negroni Movies
- 1976
In France, the slang-word for "bounty hunter" is "alpagueur." When the police are working on cases where they do not want their presence officially known, they arrange for private individuals who specialize in this work to perform certain services, such as setting up major arrests. In this film, L'Alpageur is Jean-Paul Belmondo, who does his work with a considerable sense of humor, great charm, and in as "clean" a way as possible. First, he busts a drug-trafficking ring operating out of Rotterdam by observing that a certain "pregnant" woman moves in an unusual fashion. Her "baby" turns out to be a large, specially shaped package of heroin. The drug kingpins stung by his operation seek to find the man who thwarted them, but because L'Alpageur is known only to a few in the police department, the drug barons' corrupt police friends cannot determine who he is. Later, he busts the leaders of a prostitution ring. While they were all gathered in one room, he fed nitrous oxide into that space, and they all fell unconscious following a few giddy, laugh-filled moments. This made it possible for him to arrest them without their ever seeing him. His most important case, however, is his search for "The Hawk," a bank-robber who uses local juvenile delinquents in each town to help him set up his thefts. After each robbery, he kills his helpers. One of them, however, has survived and has been put in jail. L'Alpageur is given a false identity and is put into jail alongside the youth. His job is to help the lad escape, and find the elusive, murderous bank robber. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Bruno Cremer, (more)
- 1969
This film documentary of Paris combines the earliest known photography with modern color. Famous personalities that have lived and worked in the city of lights will be more familiar to Parisian viewers. Jean-Paul Belmondo narrates the feature throughout. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo
In 1944, with Paris on the verge of Liberation by the allies, Adolph Hitler ordered that the City of Light be blown up and burned to the ground. General Dietrich Von Choltitz, after much rumination, decided that he didn't want to go down in history as the man who destroyed Paris. His refusal to follow Hitler's orders would make him a pariah in Germany for the rest of his life; nor was his gesture ever rewarded by the Allies. From this very human story in the midst of one of the most inhuman conflicts in history grew the screenplay (by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola) of the all-star, internationally produced Is Paris Burning? Whereas the earlier The Longest Day was able to support a castful of celebrities and brief subplot vignettes, Is Paris Burning? seems more weighted down than weighty. Still, a modern audience will have fun playing "spot the star" throughout the film, especially when those spotted stars include the likes of Gert Frobe (as Choltitz), Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Kirk Douglas (as Patton), Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Robert Stack, and even Anthony Perkins as a wide-eyed GI. Filmed on a gargantuan scale, Is Paris Burning? was based on a book by Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre. The film was lensed in black and white, save for the Technicolor finale (in the original road-show prints). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, (more)
- 1965
The title of this political drama is a reference to the glass cage in which Adolph Eichmann sat in at the Nuremberg trials. Pierre (Jean Negroni), a French Jew and survivor of a concentration camp, has become an Israeli citizen along with his gentile wife Helene (Francoise Prevost). Sonia (Dina Doron) is a young Jewish woman who, like Pierre, also survived the Holocaust and hopes for a better life. Azaria Rapaport plays the news reporter whose coverage of the trials has jostled some terrifying and long-suppressed memories in Pierre. He feels that an elevator is a furnace that was used to liquidate concentration-camp victims. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Françoise Prevost, Jean Negroni, (more)
- 1962
The movie that inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Chris Marker's La jetée is a landmark of science-fiction filmmaking, a 28-minute masterpiece told almost entirely in still frames. Set in a post-apocalyptic near-future, it tells the story of an unnamed man whose vivid childhood recollections make him the perfect guinea pig for an experiment in time travel. After a lengthy and nightmarish period of conditioning, he is sent into the past, where he falls in love with a woman whom he once saw on a pier. At the experiment's conclusion, he is visited by an advanced race, who offer him the opportunity to journey into their future world, but he instead requests that they send him permanently into the past, where he can remain with the woman of his dreams. A singular experience. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Negroni
- 1960
This prison camp drama by director and co-scripter Armand Gatti, his first film, reflects the early '60s resurgence of interest in the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis in World War II. (In another year, the Adolph Eichmann trial would be the first ever seen live on American television.) Gatti focuses on two men in a German concentration camp who have been cruelly penned inside an enclosure. One of the men, Karl (Herbert Wochinz), is a strong, bitter anti-Nazi German -- a target of the Gestapo. The SS wants information on a rumored organization of resistance fighters inside the prison and they know he has it. The other man, David (Jean Negroni) is a Jew. If one of the men dies within a certain time then the other will be released. He will not be killed. Otherwise, both will be executed. The resistance fighters in the prison try to help the two as best they can, while the pair inside the enclosure slowly come to know each other as though they were brothers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Negroni, Hans-Christian Blech, (more)
- 1959
The biggest attraction of this drama by French director Jacques Dupont lies in its exotic setting -- Afghanistan. The story centers on a young boy anxious to go to an annual competition of horseback riders that requires both equestrian and fighting skills. The riders face off in a closed ring, a kind of sport that would have had its origins centuries earlier in the nomadic peoples of this region and Central Asia. (Afghanistan lies at one end of the ancient Silk Routes to China.) As the boy travels toward the meet, he is befriended by a mysterious stranger, a man who may symbolize more than just an ordinary person, based on what lies in store for the young lad. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
