Brigitte Fossey Movies
The daughter of a French schoolteacher, Brigitte Fossey made her auspicious film bow, before she reached the age of eight, in Rene Clement's Forbidden Games (1952). Fossey remained a successful child actress until she reached the age of 10, at which time she voluntarily retreated to private life. After studying dance, piano and philosophy, she worked as an interpreter/translator in Geneva, then returned to films in 1967. Her credits as an adult performer include Francois Truffaut's The Man Who Loved Women (1977) and Robert Altman's Quintet (1979). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
One of the first films to see the horrors of war through the eyes of children, Forbidden Games was a critical smash, winning prizes from the New York Film Critics, the British Academy, and the Venice Film Festival. Adapted by Francois Boyer, director Rene Clement, and two others from Boyer's novel, the story focuses on Paulette (Brigitte Fossey), a five-year-old refugee from Paris taken in by a peasant family after her parents are killed during a bombardment of a civilian convoy. Michel Dolle (Georges Pujouly), the family's 11-year-old son, becomes her best friend, and they create a cemetery in which Paulette's dog is interred, along with other animals and insects, some of whom the children kill themselves. The Dolle family is too busy feuding with the Gouards, their neighbors, to notice the absence of the children. Eventually, authorities locate Paulette and insist that she be placed in an orphanage for legal adoption. Unsentimental and yet heartbreaking, Forbidden Games demonstrates the strategies of children who witness war to deal with the constant presence of death. It's also a bitter condemnation of the selfishness of adults who could offer their charges more love and protection. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, (more)
- 1957
American in Paris star Gene Kelly returned to the City of Light as both star and director of The Happy Road. Kelly and Barbara Laage play single parents with one child each. Gene and Barbara don't know each other at the outset, but are drawn together when their kids run away from their Swiss boarding school. Kelly and Laage realize that the two children wouldn't be so unhappy with their lot if their parents would marry again. The parents, having fallen in love, oblige. The Happy Road tends to bludgeon its audience with whimsy at time; Gene Kelly, as always, is charming, and less affected than usual. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Kelly, Barbara Laage, (more)
- 1967
Technically, there are two wanderers in The Wanderer. Played by Jean Blaise and Alain Noury, both young men are in search of the women they love. The ladies-Brigitte Fossey and Juliette Villard-disappeared in the confusion following an abruptly called-off wedding. Fossey is rediscovered, but it will take some doing to retrieve Villard. A master blend of equal parts humor, romance and tragedy, The Wanderer was based on the novel by Alain Fournier. The film was originally released in France as Le Grand Meaulnes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Jean Blaise, (more)
Years after serving together in the French Foreign Legion, American soldier of fortune Franz Propp (Charles Bronson) and French doctor Dino Barron (Alain Delon) are unexpectedly reunited under the most extraordinary circumstances. Hoping to help a friend who has embezzled some bonds, Barron tries to break into a safe in the dead of night. Sneaking into an underground vault he is surprised to discover that his old pal Propp is also on the premises, likewise intending to crack the safe, albeit for his own benefit. After a few awkward moments, a friendship develops between the two as they try to get out from the locked vault. A Franco-Italian co-production, Adieu L'Ami was released in the U.S. as Farewell, Friend and Honor Among Thieves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Delon, Charles Bronson, (more)
- 1970
Written and directed by Susumo Hani, this French-Italian-Japanese documentary film chronicles the life of the director's 6-year-old daughter Mio (Mio Hani), a Japanese girl who moves with her family to Sardinia. This film tells the story of her adaptation to her new setting and the adaptation the local children make to her. It begins with her first day of school as she walks in wearing a large name-tag and speaking not one word of Italian. Her world and her new community are artfully depicted in this film as, gradually, she moves from being the butt of jokes to being accepted by her new schoolmates. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1971
This well-made period melodrama, set in late 19th-century France, highlights the worldly, flirtatious fashion of the day and the demands of genuine piety on the one hand and debauchery on the other. Aurore (Francoise Fabian) is a high-minded but flirtatious woman of society who charmingly refuses the attentions of one man, claiming she would have had to completely lost heart to marry such an old miser as he. She falls for completely debauched charmer Raphael (Maurice Ronet) and hopes at first to win him to a life of virtue. Unsuccessful in this and deeply obsessed with him, she then simply hopes to win him and, in the attempt, enters further and further into his depraved world. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- 1971
This is a highly symbolic French drama in which truth and fantasy seem to mingle. When Mathieu's (Sami Frey) wife (Brigitte Fossey) picks him up at the hospital and drops him off at an apartment, he is left alone while she returns home to their son. When she sees her husband again, he confesses to her that he loves another woman. Curiously, the woman is identical to his wife. The other woman comes to him, makes love, and leaves. She returns again and he shoots her only to find he has shot a mirror. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sami Frey, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1973
Filmed in Spain, this TV movie stars Stuart Whitman as a painter who drops out of sight for seven years. Upon resurfacing, he discovers that his name has been affixed to high-priced forgeries. What's more, a crooked art dealer is capitalizing on Whitman's supposed death. While mulling through all these plot developments, Whitman falls in love with Brigitte Fossey, whose previous lover is the duplicitous dealer who is benefitting from reports of the artist's demise. Originally titled A Spanish Portrait, this film was shot in 1970, then lay unseen on the shelf for nearly three years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stuart Whitman, Bernard Lee, (more)
Director Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses features Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere as a pair of sociopaths wending their way across France. Though Depardieu is the more dominant of the two, both men are equally culpable in their disregard for common decency. They are particularly rough on women, even the like-minded Miou-Miou, whom they both love in their own way. Jeanne Moreau has a brief bit as an ex-convict who sleeps with both Depardieu and Dewaere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gérard Depardieu, Miou-Miou, (more)
- 1974
This film explores the experiences of some of the members of an anti-Nazi resistance group in France composed mostly of Polish immigrants, known as "La Brigade." Many of them also fought for the leftist cause during the Spanish Civil War, and for them the resistance is simply a continuation of their prior activities. After the war, some of them continue to have a "resistance" mind-set. One of the stories concerns a love relationship between a Polish boy and a French girl who are thrown together because of their war efforts. After the war, they get together and reminisce. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Jean Valmont, (more)
- 1975
The members of a singles' dinner club meet once a week to talk about their difficulties and help one another out with their lives, with romance, and whatever seems appropriate. In this movie, their dinners are featured, and vignettes of the participants' lives put their encounters into a larger perspective. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rufus, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1976
While doing his job as a delivery driver, Paul (Claude Faraldo) stumbles into a violent domestic argument. Just as the well-to-do couple (Brigitte Fossey and Gilles Segal) are coming to blows, he intervenes to prevent the violence from going further. The two turn to him to judge the merit of their disagreements and invite him to dinner. What follows becomes a small adventure in understanding for everyone. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Gilles Segal, (more)
- 1976
Bolstered by the buoyant performance by Jacques Dutronc as a car-mechanic turned pro-thief, this French film follows the exploits of Jacques (Dutronc) and his Jewish co-conspirator Simon (Jacques Villeret) as their robberies, beginning well before the Second World War, take on a political coloration under the occupation. Tempted into thievery when their auto-repair business handles a car which can outrun police vehicles, they are constantly pursued by the hard-working policeman Blanchot (Bruno Cremer). During the occupation, the duo lend their skills to the resistance, and the policeman briefly becomes their ally, only to resume his pursuit of these charming criminals after the war. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Dutronc, Marlène Jobert, (more)
- 1976
Two middle-aged victims of the war of the sexes, Paul and Albert (Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort) run away from their families at the same time. They indulge themselves by eating what they want to, when and where it pleases them. Trouble finds them in the form of their abandoned wives, and the film moves very much into the realm of symbolic and sexual fantasy from this point onward. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Marielle, Jean Rochefort, (more)
- 1977
Brigett Fossey stars as a repressed young nurse who hopes that moving from the city to the country will open up new vistas in her life (thereby reversing the usual country-to-city route of most movie heroines!) She meets and falls in love with bachelor Jacques Serre, likewise a free spirit. Though Fossey and Serre are attracted to one another, both value their freedom too much to make a firm commitment. As they draw closer, the twosome compare their own lifestyles with those of the colorful country folk all around them. The original French title of this easy-going romantic drama is Le Pays Bleu. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Jacques Serre, (more)
- 1977
Nicola (Lou Castel) bears the psychological scars of unbearable guilt. As a boy, he was given the job of looking after his mentally unstable mother and protecting her from herself. One day, he and his sister went instead into a large closet and enacted a childishly intensive "I dare you" bonding ritual, marking one another with the blade of their father's sword cane. While he was occupied in this manner, the boy's mother hung herself and died. Now an adult, he still has an unhealthily strong fixation on his sister. This is so obvious that a girlfriend of his sister's, with whom he has an affair, breaks it off, complaining that she is not interested in being a stand-in for the sister. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brigitte Fossey, Lou Castel, (more)
When he suddenly dies and is buried, the late Bertrand Morane (Charles Denner), an aeronautical engineer from Montpelier, receives funeral visitation from hundreds of women. Little wonder: in life, Morane simply couldn't keep his mind off of women -- one glance at a well-turned ankle and he was lost. Astonishingly, women felt the same way about him. Though more than one paramour held it against Bertrand when his eyes wandered, he never considered his promiscuousness a shortcoming -- which led him into amorous relationships with such colorful characters as a married sociopath (with a taste for lovemaking in risky places), a shapely blonde babysitter, an introspective book editor, and dozens of others. Ironically, Morane's success with women hardly represented a gift, for a deep, abiding loneliness lingered within him, resulting from his utter inability to love one woman. Bertrand (who eventually decided to write and publish his autobiography, "The Man Who Loved Women," as a form of self-analysis), could never quite pinpoint the source of his lack of romantic faithfulness, until a fateful and utterly unexpected chance encounter with someone from his past. Read by many as a thinly disguised film à clef for writer/director François Truffaut, The Man Who Loved Women mixes sharp, witty comedy with scenes of gentle poignancy; Truffaut uses the tale to make some deep and tremendously profound comments about love, sex, fidelity, and the underlying differences between men and women. The picture was thinly remade in 1983 by Blake Edwards, with Burt Reynolds as the irresistible hero and Julie Andrews as his therapist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1978
When a school crashes down around the children inside for no apparent reason, architect Phillip Braun (Helmut Griem) is quickly apprehended and tried for having condoned inferior design and construction of the building. He is sentenced to prison. After he has already served his sentence, his lawyer (who in the meantime has become the lover of Phillip's wife) discovers that the real blame for the incident may lie elsewhere. However, overwhelmed by his passions, Phillip is easy prey for the villain. This psychological crime thriller was based on The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helmut Griem, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1978
In this complex political thriller, a police inspector operating out of Geneva discovers that the death of a Swiss journalist in Italy has more to do with Swiss international banking and high finance than is entirely comfortable. Indeed, as his investigation proceeds, he encounters car bombs and murders galore and challenges the prevailing system, briefly. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Sorel, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1979
The relationships between men and women are examined in this drama. The story begins as two young women set out to find their own identities independent of men. One begins directing a video production unit for sociological research while the other becomes a successful garage mechanic. As she heads her garage, she finds she has little time for her husband and child. Both women discover a communication gap amongst the people they work with, leading the sociologist to become disillusioned. Meanwhile the mechanic finds a void in her life that is only filled by her family. Without them she is miserable. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Geraldine Chaplin, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1979
Four men are tortured in a South American prison. Two of them survive, are released, and are sent into exile in France. However, their new freedom does not mean that their former captors aren't keeping an eye on them. When one of them publishes a book, all sorts of problems ensue. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- José M. Sacristán, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1979
- R
Perhaps the least seen but most talked about film of Robert Altman's career, Quintet is a somber science fiction tale that takes place after a nuclear holocaust has thrown the world into another Ice Age. A man named Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) are wandering the desolate, frozen landscape and attempting to find Essex's brother, Francha (Tom Hill). They finally locate him in a frozen city, occupied by a number of apocalyptic survivors who who pass their time playing a mysterious game called "Quintet." No one is able to explain just how it is played, but Grigor (Fernando Rey) appears to act as the referee, and the stakes of the game are unusually high - losing means being thrown out into the snow and devoured by Rottweilers. Francha is soon killed, not as a casualty of Quintet per se, but for playing an assassination game on the side to relieve his own ennui. As 'collateral damage,', Vivia and the rest of Francha's family are soon extinguished as well. Essex is not happy with the way they've been rubbed out, but as he attempts to seek revenge, he is only drawn deeper into the lethal competition of Quintet. While this picture received negative reviews on its initial release, in retrospect it is worth noting that the photography (by Jean Boffety) and production design (by Leon Ericksen) are beautiful and striking, and that the film boasts one of Altman's strongest international casts, including Vittorio Gassman, Nina Van Pallandt, and Bibi Andersson, as befits its European-art-movie ambiance; the influence of the equally opaque, allegorical, game-playing Last Year at Marienbad (1961) is especially strong. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, (more)
- 1980
This is a quiet drama about the struggles of a former drug addict and dealer, Bruno Calgagni (Patrick Dewaere), as he is released from prison in the U.S. and arrives back home in France. His unhappy father blames this disgraceful prison stint for the death of Bruno's mother. No one wants to hire an ex-con, and a romantic liaison with another, very delicately balanced former addict only adds to the burden Bruno is carrying. Mauvais Fils skillfully limns Bruno's daily fight to keep his head above water. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Dewaere, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1981
Therese, Catherine, and Alain (Carole Laure, Brigitte Fossey, and Bernard Giraudeau) are three friends who undergo several personal trials and tribulations over an eight-year period in which all three try to hang on to their original visions of who they are and what they want out of life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carole Laure, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
- 1981
- R
La Boum stars Sophie Marceau as a 13-year-old French girl, coping with domestic problems. Her parents, played by Claude Brasseur and Brigitte Fossey, are on the verge of a marital breakup. This is coupled by a traumatic move to Paris, and Marceau's problems in adjusting to her new surroundings and schoolmates. Though nothing new, La Boum is disarmingly diverting, a real audience pleaser (as proven by its huge international box-office take). Even as the film was making the American rounds, a sequel, La Boum 2, was in the editing stages. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Claude Brasseur, Brigitte Fossey, (more)
