Roland Armontel Movies

French comic Louis De Funes stars as Henri, who has a very unfortunate accident while on his way to arrange some sort of shady deal on the Italian border. He has tried desperately not to let his better impulses get control of him; nonetheless, he has already picked up a hitchhiker (Olivier De Funes) and a married woman in distress (Geraldine Chaplin) when his car runs off the road, falls over a cliff, and lands in the crown of a tree. The efforts of this threesome to cope with the situation and get rescued constitute the body of this film. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Holmes and Watson are again after Moriarty but this time Scotland Yard for some reason does not even suspect that he's the one who wants to get the necklace stolen from Cleopatra's tomb. Doesn't really hold together like most of the Holmes/Watson movies and is a rather odd interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

Some songs are mixed into this uneven comedy by director Jean Boyer, a story about an off-the-wall waiter (Darry Cowl in a good performance) who has taken out a hefty life-insurance policy. Once this news gets into the wrong hands -- that is, the hands of those who might benefit from his demise -- there are several attempts on his life. Due to the inscrutable movement of Fate, all of these attempts fail miserably. But what happens to the would-be assassins is another story entirely. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Scandals of Clochemerie proved that Hollywood filmmakers had no monopoly so far as poking fun at the movie industry is concerned. This French effort is a glorious lampoon of the "typical" Gallic film, complete with broadly caricatured characters and deliberately exaggerated cliches. Adapted by Gabriel Chevalier from his own novel, the film revolves around the construction of a comfort station in the village of Clochemerie. This momentous undertaking has serious ramifications on the community, not least of which is the exposure of several family skeletons. The film ran into censorship trouble in the States, not just because of its erotic content and occasional religious satire, but also because, at base, the film is about an open-air toilet facility. Originally released in France in 1947 as Clochemerie, the film proved an enormous success during its initial run; as such, it was the last truly profitable venture from veteran filmmaker Pierre Chenal, once the darling of the Parisian critics. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Per its title, Lovers of Verona is an updated adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The film was a joint project of those felicitous collaborators, screenwriter Jacques Prevert and director Andre Cayatte. The star-crossed lovers are portrayed by Serge Reggiani and Anouk Aimee, cast respectively as the poverty-stricken son of a glassblower and the daughter of a disgraced nobleman. While playing bit roles in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, Angelo (Reggiani) and Georgia (Aimee) are suddenly promoted to the leading parts. Predictably, hero and heroine begin acting out their characters in real life as well as on stage. Not so predictably, their romance is challenged not by modern-day counterparts to the Montagues and the Capulets, but by the lovers' own heightened sensitivities to their social differences. Following the worldwide success of Lovers of Verona (it was released in Italy in 1949, then internationally in 1951), director Andre Cayatte was given what one historian has described as "carte blanche" in the French film industry; put simply, the man could do no wrong. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Originally released in France under the title Le Silence est D'Or, Man About Town is set in the Paris of the early 1900s. Maurice Chevalier plays a director of silent films (whose working conditions are recreated with remarkable accuracy), while Marcelle Derien is an actress whom Chevalier hopes to turn into a film star. She falls in love with her younger leading man (Francois Perier), and Chevalier, after putting up a gentle struggle, bows to the inevitability of young romance. The first postwar US/France coproduction, Man About Town won several international prizes. Unfortunately, its American version was hampered by a misguided translation device: Rather than dub the actors' voices or utilize subtitles, the American distributor chose to have Maurice Chevalier narrate the film in English and comment upon its action. The resultant effect took the audience "out" of the picture when it should have been involved with the plot, and this clumsy translation technique was never used again. The best moment in the Americanized Man About Town was Chevalier's opening musical number, directed not by Le Silence Est D'Or's Rene Clair but by RKO film editor Robert Pirosh--who also trimmed the film by 17 minutes for U.S. audiences. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi