Christian Duvallex Movies
- 1968
Vanessa Redgrave stars in this film biography of the free-spirited modern interpretive dancer Isadora Duncan. Trained in classical dance, Duncan shattered the traditional conformities in her art and her personal life. The film begins at the end of her life as she recalls the past while dictating her memoirs to her male secretary. Her uninhibited sexuality and insistence on personal freedom and expression shocked more conservative and narrow-minded patrons and audiences. She brought in elements of classic Greek dance during the height of the jazz age and had children in and out of wedlock. Married to sewing-machine heir Paris Singer (Jason Robards) and the Russian poet Sergei Essenin (Ivan Tchenko), her life was a rollercoaster ride of success and tragic failures. Two of her children drowned when her chauffeur left the car unattended and the vehicle plunged into a river. Duncan lived by her own rules, often shunned by the very people who had so passionately embraced her pioneering efforts in dance, women's liberation and free thinking. Redgrave was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vanessa Redgrave, John Fraser, (more)
Richard Quine directs George Axelrod's acerbic script (adapted from Julien Duvivier's La Fête à Henriette) in this romantic comedy that reunites William Holden and Audrey Hepburn for the first time since 1954's Sabrina. Holden plays Richard Benson, a Hollywood screenwriter being pressured by movie producer Alexander Meyerheimer (Noël Coward) to finish his script entitled "The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower." Meyerheimer gives Richard a two-day ultimatum to complete his work, unaware that Richard has yet to even start on the script. In an effort to get moving on his project, Richard hires a live-in secretary, Gabrielle Simpson (Audrey Hepburn), to help him. Soon enough, the two fall in love and spend the time enacting various scenes from the unwritten screenplay as the time slips away and Richard's deadline looms. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Holden, Audrey Hepburn, (more)
- 1960
The issue of a marriage dying of sexual boredom is raised in this routine drama, one of the earlier films by Polish-French director Jean-Pierre Mocky. Pierre (Jean Kosta) has perhaps been married too long. He has lost interest in the intimate, personal side of his relationship with his wife yet he wants to follow the dictates of socially acceptable behavior. The result is that he stays married and faithful. In the meantime, his wife Annette (Juliette Meyniel) tries to reawaken the flames of romantic love but the fire fizzles because all ardor seems definitively dead. Ironically, it is Annette in the end, who solves the problem. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliette Mayniel, Francis Blanche, (more)
