Lucienne Legrand Movies

The disarming comedy A Little Romance features Diane Lane as a 13-year-old American, living in Paris with her businessman stepfather (Arthur Hill) and her promiscuous mother (Sally Kellerman). Mom is currently enamored with pretentious-filmmaker David Dukes, and it is on the set of Dukes' latest picture that Lane meets another 13-year-old, insatiable French film buff Thelonious Bernard. A likeable street-smart petty thief and gambler, Bernard is instantly attracted to Lane. With the help of roguish old Laurence Olivier, Lane and Bernard arrange a romantic rendezvous under the Bridge of Sighs in Venice. Naturally, when the kids disappear it's a cause for international concern, but all ends as it should. Some of the best moments in A Little Romance belong to Broderick Crawford, unselfconsciously playing "himself" at a movie party. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The title character in The French Woman is essayed by Francoise Fabian. Officially, Fabian is Madame Claude, the owner of a Parisian modelling agency. It is an open secret, however, that her operation actually traffics in expensive call girls. Director Just Jaeckin treats the material with the same erotic aplomb he brought to his earlier Emmanuelle films. The French Woman is liberally based on the memoirs of one Madame Claude. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This film by French director Alain Resnais (Last Year in Marienbad) is loosely based on a true story from the 1930s about financier, con-man and swindler Stavisky who was arrested in 1934 for selling phony stock but was never brought to trial. While in jail, he continued to engage in doubtful monetary transactions. As the rumors that he was being protected by high-ranking members of the government of the French Third Republic were undoubtedly true, the scandal had a profoundly unsettling effect on the French nation, already suffering from poor government handling of the Depression, and this incident nearly brought down both the government and the Republic. Stavisky's death in prison (an apparent suicide) triggered widespread unrest and rioting. In the movie, when Stavisky (Jean-Paul Belmondo) goes to jail as a young con-man, his embarrassed father commits suicide. Ruining countless lives in his stellar career as a big-money swindler, including that of his nobleman friend Raoul (Charles Boyer), Stavisky is shown to be a pawn in a still bigger swindle, one which will destroy the Left and open the way to fascism. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This French spy thriller makes a number of surprising variations on familiar themes. Tibere (Lino Ventura) is a Soviet nuclear scientist who comes to London with a platoon of his colleagues for a conference. When he is injured in an auto accident, he gets separated from them. The accident was a set-up by British MI5 (secret service). It turns out that he is a Frenchman who was kidnapped by the Soviets many years before. The British insist on his returning to the West to helping the British and French spy agencies. They don't look after him any too well, however, and he ends up being chased by everybody under the sun, including the KGB. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Milord L'Arsouville is set in the watershed year of 1848. The title character, played by Jean-Claude Pascal, is a parasitical nobleman who slowly but surely develops a social consciousness. By the time of the European Revolution of '48, L'Arsouville is a tireless fighter on behalf of citizens' rights. Even so, our hero finds time to romance several fetching damsels, all attractively garbed in low-cut period gowns. Director Andre Haguet spends so much time on the personal details of his subject's life that he is never able to bring to the film the epic sweep and grandeur it deserves. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

L'Arpete was based on the long-running Mirande-Quinson stage farce of the same name. Seamstress Jacqueline (the "l'arpete" of the title) and artist Jules are "progressive" young Parisians who decide to live together without benefit of clergy. Meanwhile, to attract the business of a wealthy American, Jacqueline's couturier boss passes the heroine off as a member of the aristocracy. It turns out that the American customer is really Jules' widowed father. Assuming that his sweetheart has been playing around with his own dad, Jules runs out on her, but he simply can't stay away from the lovely Jacqueline -- who by film's end is the "breadwinner" of the family, having opened a successful dress shop of her own.
~ Hal Erickson, Rovi