Danielle Godet Movies

Hanging by a thin thread of a story line, Joy is a softcore, erotic narrative of a woman (Claudia Udy) by the same name who falls in love with an older man (she has been looking for her missing father all her life), and then travels around Paris with him and his other female companion, experiencing a broad range of sexual encounters. The acting is minimal, along with the plot and clothing. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

An uneven, occasionally unconvincing wartime drama by director Jean Dewewer, this story is set at the very end of World War II when the American forces are about to enter a small French town. Some German soldiers have captured a group of resistance fighters and are keeping them prisoners in the local church. Knowing full well that the Americans will arrive any day, the Germans begin to consider their imminent surrender, accepting the inevitable. In the meantime, various Frenchmen decide they should liberate their compatriots imprisoned in the church -- and everything goes wrong. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this costume adventure set in France during the Reign of Terror, a mysterious man known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues noblemen from the guillotine and leads them to safety across the English Channel. Chauvelin (Cyril Cusack) is determined to unmask the Pimpernel and bring him to justice. When evidence begins to suggest that the hero is actually foppish Sir Percey Blakeney (David Niven), Chauvelin blackmails Percey's wife, Marguerite (Margaret Leighton), into cooperating on the threat that he'll expose the criminal activities of her brother Armand (Edmund Audran). However, Marguerite doesn't much care for her husband, hardly believes he could be the heroic Pimpernel, and is startled when she finds out that he truly is the masked vigilante. The Elusive Pimpernel was originally shot in color as a musical, but the musical numbers were cut before the film was released, and the picture's American distributor chose to make only black-and-white prints (though the current home-video release is in color). ~ Mark Deming, 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