Jean Martinelli Movies

Three screenwriters pooled their talents for the French racetrack drama Duke of the Derby. Jean Gabin plays a handicapper who's been living high on the hog (or horse) for years. While playing the ponies at Britain's Epson Downs, Gabin finally outsmarts himself. The rest of the story concerns his feverish efforts to recoup his former glory. Originally Le Gentleman D'Epsom, the film is also known as Grandes Seigneurs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Claude Autant-Lara's 1961 Count of Monte Cristo is one of the most faithful screen versions of the evergreen Alexandre Dumas story -- and one of the most compelling, thanks to the director's ability to squeeze the last drop of romanticism out of the original. While Louis Jourdan seems ill at ease as the younger Edmond Dantes, he is ideally suited for the film's later scenes, when the older, sadder, and wiser Dantes begins exacting revenge upon those who had him condemned to prison. Honoring the spirit of the original, Autant-Lara avoids inserting the leftist proselytizing which weighed down many of his later films. To perk up the pace and ensure double-bill bookings, the American distributor of Count of Monte Cristo removed 90 minutes from the film's 3-hour length. This was the seventh movie adaptation of the Dumas classic, which was first filmed by Hobart Bosworth in 1912. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A jewel thief is at large on the Riviera, and all evidence points to retired cat burglar Cary Grant. Escaping the law, Grant heads to the Cote D'Azur, where he is greeted with hostility by his old partners in crime. All of them had been pardoned due to their courageous activities in the wartime Resistance, and all are in danger of arrest thanks to this new crime wave. But Grant pleads innocence, and vows to find out who's been copying his distinctive style. With the reluctant aid of detective John Williams, Grant launches his investigation by keeping tabs on the wealthiest vacationers on the Riviera. One such person is heavily bejeweled Jessie Royce Landis, who is as brash and outspoken as her daughter Grace Kelly is quiet and demure. But "still waters run deep," as they say, and soon Kelly is amorously pursuing the far-from-resistant Grant. Part of Kelly's attraction to Grant is the possibility that he is the thief; the prospect of danger really turns this gal on. Being Cary Grant, of course, he can't possibly be guilty, which is proven in due time. But by film's end, it's obvious that Kelly has fallen hard for Grant, crook or no crook. Occasionally written off as a lesser Alfred Hitchcock film (did we really need that third-act fashion show?), To Catch a Thief is actually as enjoyable and engaging now as it was 40 years ago. Though the Riviera location photography is pleasing, our favorite scene takes place in a Paramount Studios mockup of a luxury hotel suite, where Grant and Kelly make love while a fireworks display orgasmically erupts outside their window. And who could forget the scene where Jessie Royce Landis disdainfully stubs out a cigarette in an expensive plate of eggs? Adapted by frequent Hitchcock collaborator John Michael Hayes from a novel by David Dodge To Catch a Thief won an Academy Award for cinematographer Robert Burks. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Of the dozens of film versions of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this 1953 film version is one of the few to remain faithful to the source. As always, the story begins when farm boy D'Artagnan (Georges Marschal) rides into Paris, intending to become a King's Musketeer. En route, he manages to offend Porthos (Gino Cervi), Athos (Jean Martinelli) and Aramis (Jacques Francois), challenging all three to a duel at the same time. The foursome eventually becomes fast friends, uniting against such common enemies as Cardinal Richelieu (Renaud Mary) and Milady DeWinter (Yvonne Sanson). The plot then segues into the efforts of the Musketeers to save the honor of Queen Anne. The film is stolen by Bourvil as D'Artagnan's slovenly lackey Placher. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This Maurice Tourneur production is based on the old theatrical warhorse The Two Orphans, previously (and more famously) filmed by D. W. Griffith as Orphans of the Storm. Rosaine Derain and Renne Saint-Cyr star as sister Louise and Henriette, cruelly separated early in the proceedings and kept apart by fate, villainy and deprivation until the very last scene. Kidnapped by gypsies, the blind Louise is forced to beg in the streets, while Henriette searches desperately for her missing sister. In the end, however, it is Louise who rescues Henriette from a horrible fate. Filmed in 1933, Les Deux Orphelins came to the U.S. in a crudely subtitled version the following year. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide