Annie Girardot Movies
More handsome than beautiful, versatile Annie Girardot was the most popular female star in France during the 1970s. Girardot typically played strong-willed, independent, hard-working, and often lonely women, imbuing her characters with an earthiness and reality that endeared her with women undergoing similar daily struggles. It is small wonder, then, that Girardot became one of the symbols of the early-'70s feminist movement in France -- though in personal life Girardot was not terribly involved with feminists.Girardot made her professional debut with the distinguished Comedie-Francaise theater troupe in 1954 after she graduated with honors from the Conservatoire de Paris. She remained with the troupe through 1957, occasionally taking time off to perform on radio, television, and in Parisian nightclubs. She made an inauspicious film debut in Trieze a Table in 1955. In early roles, Girardot was typically cast as doomed women of dubious origins in dark films, but she didn't make much impact until she played Nadia, a prostitute whom meets a tragic end in Luchino Visconti's Rocco et Ses Freres (Rocco and His Brothers) (1960). During filming she became romantically linked with co-star Renato Salvatori, who played the character who stabbed her character 13 times. They married, but divorced many years later.
Through the early '60s, Girardot played leads in a few Italian pictures directed by either Visconti or Marco Ferreri. Girardot also played leads in numerous run-of-the-mill French films. After 15 years, Girardot finally became a star when she was cast as the tragic teacher Danielle in Andre Cayatte's Mourir d'Aimer (Death of Love) (1970), the fact-based tale of a middle-aged teacher whose affair with a much younger student made her the object of bourgeoisie ridicule and harassment and led her to suicide. Though she appeared in many dramas during the '60s and '70s, Girardot never forgot her Comedie Francaise experiences and proved herself an adept comedienne in such films as La Vielle Fille (1971), Cause Toujours Tu M'Interesses (1979), and Tendre Poulet (1977). Through the '70s, she worked with some of her country's best directors, but by the '80s, her career was in sharp decline and her film appearances became sporadic. However, in 1995, Girardot had a major comeback playing a peasant wife in Claude Lelouch's Les Misérables. The role won her a Cesar (the French Oscar) for Best Actress. Upon accepting the award, a joyous and tearful Girardot expressed her happiness that she had not been forgotten. She also offered her heartfelt thanks to her many film industry colleagues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1968
The harsh life of a troubled young man provides the basis of this grim French tragedy that begins when the fellow stops into a shop to buy a pack of the title cigarettes. There he meets a pretty shop girl with whom he falls in love and eventually marries. It was a foolish choice, for the two cannot get along and constantly fight. Things get worse when the husband resumes his criminal activities and gets caught. The two are about to divorce when the woman gets pregnant. The time comes for their baby to be born and while sitting in the waiting room, the husband reflects upon his past activities, which are revealed via flashback. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1968
A group of French anarchists are moved to violence when their leader Raymond (Jacques Brel) is captured. They take up with the notorious gangster Bonnot (Bruno Cremer) and the gang steals a car to use in a bank robbery. The non-violent anarchists soon turn to killing and murder the guards before escaping to Belgium. They hide out in a whorehouse until a conniving madame blows the whistle on them. The group splits up, but the anarchists soon realize they are helpless without the ringleader Bonnot. The local police chief arrests one of the gang, and the authorities soon close in on the rest of the gang. By now police have enlisted the help of the army to insure that none of the criminals will escape in this mobster movie set in the early days of the 20th century. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Brel, Bruno Cremer, (more)
- 1967
French director Claude Lelouch followed up his hit A Man and a Woman with this tale of a love triangle set against the background of late 1960s political unrest. A French television reporter, Robert Colomb (Yves Montand), on assignment in Kenya, has an affair with a young fashion model, Candice (Candice Bergen). He returns to Paris and tries to reinvigorate his marriage to Catherine (Annie Girardot) by going on a second honeymoon. But Candice follows him to Paris and they resume their affair. Many more romantic entanglements follow. The movie was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yves Montand, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1967
Yuri Aliabiev (Yuri Vasilyev) is a newspaper reporter who has been working in the letter-to-the-editor department for three years. He jumps at the chance to travel to a small town in the Ural region to substantiate the letters from a vitriolic female letter-writer named Anikina (Nadezhda Fedosova). Yuri learns that Anikina is full of hot air. He meets Djura (Galina Polskikh), a pretty and opinionated country girl who is the object of Anikina's scorn, and Yuri falls in love with Djura, but she spurns his amorous advances. Later, he is assigned to Geneva and Paris, where he is befriended by the Yank writer Barton (Anatoli Krishanski). Barton educates Yuri in the finer points of capitalism before he is transferred back to Moscow. He goes back to the small town to find Djura and finds she has been ostracized by the community because of her association with him. French singer (Mireille Mathieu) and actress (Annie Girardot) make appearances in the scenes in Paris. This socially conscious drama was seen by over 27 million people in the Soviet Union alone. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yuri Vasilyev, Galina Polskikh, (more)
- 1966
In this romance, a middle-aged playboy finds himself running his father's fur business after his father's death. He continues to allow his papa's mistress to run the business. The playboy's fiancee gets pregnant and he refuses to marry her. She dumps him in favor of his best friend. Soon the selfish man finds himself deserted by all his friends. He winds up involved with his father's patiently waiting lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1966
This Dino De Laurentiis production from 1965 is actually an anthology of five different directors' work, each telling their own stories about witches. The five stories are "The Witch Burned Alive," "Civic Sense," "The Earth As Seen From The Moon," "The Girl From Sicily," and "A Night Like Any Other." Silvia Mangano appears in all five, with Clint Eastwood starring in the last featured vignette. Like many gang-directed projects, this film is also plagued by a lack of continuity and by the pretentiousness of the individual directors. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Silvana Mangano, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1965
Kay (Annie Girardot) and Francois (Maurice Ronet) are two people from France who meet and fall in love in New York in this melancholy romantic drama. She is a former countess, while he is an actor. Both of them must reconcile with their past while they decide to trust their feelings and possibly enter into a relationship. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maurice Ronet, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1965
Following up 1964's Academy Award nominated L'Homme de Rio, French filmmaker Philippe de Broca wrote and directed this big-screen adaptation of André Couteaux's novel Un monsieur de compagnie. Jean-Pierre Cassel stars as Antoine, a young man who holds the philosophy "Laziness is the mother of all virtue" close to his heart and spends many dreamy days fishing with his wealthy grandfather. But when he has a prophetic dream that the old man will die impoverished, Antoine is motivated to change his life and try to earn his own money. Also starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Pierre Marielle, Un monsieur de compagnie was released in the United States in 1966 under the title Male Companion. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Pierre Cassel, Jean-Claude Brialy, (more)
- 1965
La Guerre Secrete is divided into four separate vignettes, each scene representing a day in the life of international espionage agents. Stories involve a secret agent (Vittorio Gassman) who goes undercover as a kidnapper, an attempt to impede a Russian attack on two submarines, and an undercover agent confronting a traitor in the Berlin offices of the CIA. Linking the stories is Robert Ryan as a US Intelligence chief. Terence Young directed the English-language sequences, while Christian-Jacques and Carlo Lizzani handled the French and Italian sequences, respectively. German director Werner Klinger's name does not appear on the US credits of The Dirty Game, inasmuch as his scenes were cut from all American prints. Dirty Game sank without a trace on its initial release, only to pop up on television, intermittently, throughout the '70s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bourvil, Robert Ryan, (more)
- 1964
In this romantic drama, a middle-aged gambler tells a casino croupier her life story. The story is told in flashback and chronicles the woman's romantic exploits with men. Though she was involved with many men, only one really touched her heart. He was a bartender who was tragically shot and killed during an attempted robbery. She later marries and has a daughter. Unfortunately she alienates herself from her daughter when she has an affair with her daughter's fiance. Her remorse is short lived. The film jumps back to the present with the woman leaving the casino on the arm of a handsome millionaire. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marie Bell, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1963
The "vice and virtue" of the title of this wartime drama directed by Roger Vadim are exemplified in the personae of two very attractive women: Juliette (Annie Girardot) and Justine (Catherine Deneuve). Juliette is a collaborator and Justine supports the resistance movement, yet when her husband is arrested on her wedding day, she goes to Juliette to ask for help. That simple plan is nixed by a series of unfortunate circumstances that send Justine to a brothel for German soldiers and make Juliette the mistress of a brutal Nazi officer. The symbolism in this tale harks back to two stories by the Marquis de Sade, one titled "Juliette" and the other, "Justine." Vadim seems to have been caught between creating symbolic characters versus creating believable women since as the story unfolds, Juliette is not exactly vice incarnate, nor is Justine a model of pristine virtue. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Annie Girardot, Robert Hossein, (more)
- 1963
Like The Elephant Man, The Ape Woman (original Italian title: La Donna Scimmia) is based on the real-life exploitation of a deformed human being. Ugo Tognazzi stars as a charming ne'er-do-well who happens upon young Annie Girardot, who outside of the fact that she is covered with hair from head to foot is a normal woman with normal desires and dreams. Tognazzi inveigles her into the European carnival sideshow circuit as "The Ape Woman", securing her cooperation by making love to her. She dies in childbirth; though overcome by grief, Tognazzi has not lost his cheapjack showman's touch, and he mummifies the bodies of both mother and daughter and continues to tour with them! The Ape Woman was inspired by the true story of 19th century Mexican "freak" Julia Pastrana, whose career was also covered in brief fashion by a half-hour episode of TV's Alfred Hitchcock Presents. While the original Italian version of The Ape Woman retains the cynical, faithful-to-the-facts denouement, the French version substitutes a happy ending in which the woman and her baby survive. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ugo Tognazzi, Annie Girardot, (more)
- 1963
The Organizer (I Compagni) takes a gritty, near-documentary approach to its subject matter: the exploitation of Italian laborers in the 19th century. Shorn of all his studio-imposed glamour, Marcello Mastrioanni plays a Genoan political refugee visiting a friend in Turin. Appalled by the horrible working conditions in the town's textile mill, Mastrioanni stays on to organize the workers in a strike. Though he is nearly killed several times, Mastrioanni survives to set an example for the workers, who rally together into a powerful union. The fact that Marcello Mastrioanni was bearded and bespectacled in the manner of a Bolshevist radical was enough for The Organizer to be condemned by certain extreme anti-Communist elements in Hollywood--to no avail, since the film was nominated for an American Oscar, and even given a commendation by the ultraconservative National Board of Review. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Renato Salvatori, (more)
- 1962
In this melodrama, a prominent Parisian businessman's wife finds her life incredibly boring until she has an affair with a greasy garage mechanic who is only after her money. Her husband is suspicious of his wife, but he doesn't know the lover's identity; he suspects he brother and business partner. Trouble ensues when the malicious mechanic tampers with the car he assumes the husband will drive and inadvertently kills the brother instead. The guilt-ridden wife then confesses her infidelity, the husband forgives her, and the wicked lover is arrested. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1962
Gentle Art of Murder is comprised of a trio of short crime tales: "The Spider's Web," "The Fenyrou Case" and "The Mask." An international all-star cast appears in these filmed playlets, wherein each perfect murder turns out to be less than perfect. The stories are linked by "bookend" scenes in which an aspiring wife murderer goes to a movie house and watches the three cautionary tales unreel. Nearly three hours long, Gentle Art of Murder holds both the audience--and the would-be killer--in thrall. The film's original title was Crime Does Not Pay, though it bears no relation to the MGM short-subjects series of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edwige Feuillère, Pierre Brasseur, (more)
- 1962
Various genres -- social satire, comedy, and romance -- come together in this routine tale by Denis de la Patellière about a family and greed. The well-heeled family gets its fortune from the canning of fish, and all its members are thrown into disarray when a long-lost brother comes back home. They would rather he stay lost, and now to get even with them, the terminally ill prodigal son deeds over his share of the company to his illegitimate son, Emile (Lino Ventura). Emile is a little rough around the edges and lives on a boat with a dubious-looking girlfriend -- just the type the family despises. At the same time, no one in the family considers whether or not Emile feels the same about them. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Annie Girardot, Lino Ventura, (more)
- 1962
Director Franco Rossi takes a few pot-shots at Italian politics in this drama about an interlude in Los Angeles. The politically ambitious Vittorio (Enrico Maria Salerno) is a sleazy lawyer who is stranded in L.A. for awhile when he does not make his plane connections to Mexico City. He finds a few countrymen who live in the city, and they bring him along as they make the rounds of friends and parties. He meets the attractive Gabriella (Annie Girardot), and for awhile it looks like something may develop out of their casual acquaintance. But Vittorio is too willing to advance himself at any cost, and Gabriella is in an awkward transition between an Italian and American culture. She is different enough to take note of Vittorio's unsavory traits and pause before making any rash decisions. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Enrico Maria Salerno, Renato Salvatori, (more)
- 1961
Upper-crust intrigue, murder, and passions are mixed together in this routine, slow-paced murder mystery by Jean Delannoy. A wily photographer has been murdered, and there are several suspects. The victim was a blackmailer, and his target was a wealthy family headed by the rich and ruthless J.K. (George Sanders), now married to a woman of opulent means. It turns out that the blackmailer was the lover of J.K.'s former wife Madeleine (Annie Girardot in one of her early starring roles), and J.K. himself seems not to have forgotten Madeleine in spite of their divorce. Naturally, he is one of the primary suspects in the case. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Annie Girardot, Odile Versois, (more)
Love and the Frenchwoman (La Francaise et L'Amour) concentrates on the nature of love by illustrating seven separate aspects of the emotion. In "Childhood," 9-year old Pierre-Jean Vaillard suffers a traumatic experience when he takes his parents' "cabbage patch" theory of conception too literally. In "Adolescence," a little girl (Annie Sinigalla) constructs an elaborate fantasy world on the occasion of her first kiss. "Virginity" is a study in frustration, as betrothed couple Valerie Lagrange and Pierre Michel agonizingly await their wedding-night consummation of their ardor. "Marriage" finds a union ending almost before it begins as a pair of newlyweds (Marie-Jose Nat and Claude Rich) bicker all the way to their honeymoon rendezvous. "Adultery" allows husband Paul Meurisse the opportunity to calmly provide an object lesson to his wife's lover Jean-Paul Belmondo. In "Divorce", a couple (Annie Girardot and Francois Pierer) find that it's impossible to have a "civilized" breakup. And in "A Woman Alone," bigamist Robert Lamoreaux meets his Waterloo in the forms of Martine Carol and Sylvia Montfort. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Darry Cowl, Sophie Desmarets, (more)
Luchino Visconti's operatic masterpiece tells the story of the Parondis, a poor family from a village in southern Italy who come to Milan seeking a better life. Following the death of her husband, proud Rosaria (Katina Paxinou) picks up stakes and moves to the city with four of her sons: Simone (Renato Salvatori), Rocco (Alain Delon), Ciro (Max Cartier), and Luca (Rocco Vidolazzi). Awaiting them in Milan is her oldest son, Vincenzo (Spiros Focas), who himself is preoccupied with his impending nuptials to the beautiful Ginetta (Claudia Cardinale). Divided into chapters focused loosely on each brother, the movie chronicles the Parondis' struggle to get by, as the brothers take odd jobs and the family endures life in a cramped tenement. Much of the movie's second half deals largely with Simone and Rocco. The loutish Simone eventually finds success as a boxer, and the family soon moves to a better neighborhood. Meanwhile, Rocco gets drafted by the military, and becomes a successful boxer himself upon his return. Complications arise when Nadia (Annie Girardot), a prostitute, enters their lives. Simone falls in love with Nadia first; however, Rocco eventually becomes the object of her affection. Simone's obsession with Nadia and his rapidly deteriorating behavior ultimately threaten to bring the family to ruin, even as the saintly Rocco tries to save his brother. At the peak of Rocco's success, Simone commits a crime that cruelly dashes Rocco's hopes of keeping the family together. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, (more)
- 1960
Director Alexandre Astruc is known for his abstract, avant-garde works such as this interesting film about a woman longing for independence. Anna (Annie Girardon) is married to Eric (Daniel Gelin) who has old-fashioned ideas about a woman never working (outside the home, that is). But Eric is also magnanimous enough to "give" Anna the freedom to run her own gallery. His ambivalence remains unresolved, contributing to Anna's sense of loneliness. Her plight, in turn, leads her into a love affair with Bruno (Christian Marquand), a man much more romantic than her husband. But as she becomes more committed to her art gallery, the men in her life -- legitimate and otherwise -- start to fade for several reasons. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Annie Girardot, Daniel Gélin, (more)
