Louis Jourdan Movies
Born Louis Gendre or Gendice, he was educated in France, England, and Turkey. He trained as an actor with Rene Simon at the Ecole Dramatique. He debuted onscreen in 1939, going on to play cultivated, polished, dashing lead roles in a number of French romantic comedies and dramas. After his father was arrested by the Gestapo, Louis and his two brothers joined the French underground; his film career came to a halt when he refused to act in Nazi propaganda films. In 1948 David O. Selznick invited him to Hollywood to appear in The Paradine Case (1948); he remained in the U.S. and went on to star in a number of Hollywood films. After 1953 he appeared in international productions. His career was hampered by the limitations of the roles he was offered, most of which featured him as an old-fashioned Continental lover. ~ All Movie Guide- 1953
Director Hugo Fregonese and writer George Oppenheimer do the unthinkable: they manage to transform Giovanni Boccaccio's bawdy -- and downright raunchy -- medieval tales of martial discontent and infidelity into harmless white-bread treacle. Louis Jourdan plays Boccaccio in a framing story set in a villa in the Florentine hills. With a widowed woman and her sex-starved female wards hungrily hunched over listening to his every word, Boccaccio spins three tales of illicit romance involving a trio of medieval husbands and wives. All three tales feature Jourdan as the romantic male lead and Joan Fontaine -- spruced up in a collection of bright costumes -- as the misunderstood and mistreated women of the tales. The first story concerns the bored housewife, of a middle-aged husband, who willingly jumps into the arms of a roustabout. The second tale tells the story of a husband who is highly suspicious of his wife's fidelity and the wife's circumspect way of proving her virtue to her husband. The third story is an ineffectual lark about a wife who fools her indifferent husband into demonstrating his proper marital role. Boccaccio had to wait for Pier Pasolini in order to get the spirit of his Decameron right. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, (more)
- 1952
The Happy Time was adapted from the long-running Broadway play by Samuel Taylor, which in turn was based on the novel by Robert Fontaine. Set in Quebec during the early part of the 20th century, the film concentrates on the activities of a large French-Canadian family headed by Charles Boyer. Most of the humor arises from "coming of age" complications and sexual awakenings, especially when worldly prodigal son Louis Jourdan returns to the fold and exercises his influence on impressionable young Bobby Driscoll. Not permitted to include the racier portions of the play, director Richard Fleischer compensated by adopting a frenetic, farcelike pace, which works about half the time. Happy Time was later musicalized on Broadway in the 1960s, with Robert Goulet in the Louis Jourdan part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Boyer, Louis Jourdan, (more)
- 1951
Richard Walton Tully's war-horse theatrical drama Bird of Paradise was filmed twice in Hollywood. This second version stars Louis Jourdan as French sailor of fortune Andre Lawrence, who joins his Polynesian friend, Tenga (Jeff Chandler), on a visit to the South Seas. Once he's arrived in the tropical paradise, Andre falls in love with Chandler's nubile sister, Kalua (Debra Paget). Alas, their romance brings only disaster to all concerned. To appease the gods and prevent a volcanic eruption that will destroy her home and people, the girl offers herself up as a sacrifice. This Technicolor remake of Bird of Paradise prevented the TV release of the superior 1932 version, which starred Joel McCrea and Dolores Del Rio; only when the 1932 film lapsed into public domain was it afforded TV exposure. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Louis Jourdan, Debra Paget, (more)
- 1951
Jean Peters is at her feisty best in Anne of the Indies. Harboring a grudge against all men (and not without reason), Anne becomes "Captain Providence," one of the most notorious pirate leaders of the Spanish Main. Anne is pursued by French captain Pierre la Rochelle (Louis Jourdan), who intends to bring her to justice. To this end, La Rochelle makes romantic overtures to Anne, but she gloms onto his scheme and abducts the captain and his wife Molly (Debra Paget). After leaving her victims to die on a desert island, Anne relents and rescues them. She later fully redeems herself (at great personal cost) during a battle with her fiercest rival, Blackbeard (Thomas Gomez). Few actresses could have pulled off the contrarily-written title character in Anne of the Indies with as much determination and conviction as Jean Peters; surprisingly, the actress was reportedly never comfortable before the cameras, often insisting that she'd rather be a schoolteacher! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean Peters, Louis Jourdan, (more)
MGM circumvented the censorship that would otherwise have prevented a film version of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary by adding a prologue and epilogue that assured any and all bluenoses that the story was strictly a work of fiction. James Mason appears as Flaubert, defending his inflammatory novel before a French jury. Thus, the tragedy of Emma Bovary (Jennifer Jones) is offered as a product of Flaubert's imagination, rather than a real-life story. The body of the film concerns Emma's attempt to escape the boredom of her bourgeois existence by marrying a wealthy doctor (Van Heflin). She finds life with the physician even more tiresome than her previous experiences, thus begins taking a series of wealthy lovers-all of whom prove to be two-dimensional cads. Unable to tolerate a lifetime of dead-end affairs, Emma eventually commits suicide. The best sequence-indeed, one of the finest set pieces ever directed by Vincente Minnelli-is the "Emma Bovary Waltz" sequence, a dazzling experience in dizzying camera movements. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Jones, James Mason, (more)
- 1948
Another interesting effort from independent Enterprise Productions, No Minor Vices stars recent French import Louis Jourdan. Into the staid, conservative lives of pediatrician Perry Ashwell (Dana Andrews) and his wife April (Lilli Palmer) comes the flamboyantly eccentric Greenwich Village artist Otavio Quaglini (Jourdan). Insisting upon sketching the hidden "inner selves" of the Ashwells, Quaglini causes nothing but disharmony and dissension between Perry and April. Conversely, the artist's visit has a positive effect on Ashwell's lovelorn assistants Miss Darlington (Jane Wyatt) and Dr. Sturdivant (Norman Lloyd). No Minor Vices doesn't always work, but it's fun to watch Louis Jourdan plug his way through a role that Burgess Meredith or Hans Conried could have played blindfolded. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Andrews, Lilli Palmer, (more)
Perhaps the finest American film from the famed European director Max Ophüls, the film stars Joan Fontaine as a young woman who falls in love with a concert pianist. Set in Vienna in 1900, the story is told in a complex flashback structure as the pianist, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), comes upon a letter written to him by Lisa Berndl (Fontaine), a girl who has been in love with him for years. Stefan is in the process of fleeing Vienna on the eve of fighting a duel. As he prepares himself for the nocturnal journey, the letter arrives. It begins, "By the time you read this letter, I may be dead." As Stefan sits back in his study to read this letter, it turns out to be a confession of unrequited love from Lisa. The story flashes backs to when Lisa was 14 years old and Stefan was her neighbor. After following Stefan with a girlish obsession, the romance gets much more serious, and they have a brief encounter. Stefan promises to come back to her after a concert tour, but he never does. Meanwhile, Lisa marries another man when she discovers that she is pregnant with Stefan's child. When she runs into Stefan years later, he doesn't remember her and tries to seduce her. After Stefan reads the letter, he wants to rush to her side, but now poor Lisa is dying from typhus. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, (more)
- 1947
Based on a novel by Robert Hichens, The Paradine Case concerns Anna Paradine (Alida Valli), on trial for the murder of her wealthy husband. British barrister Anthony Keane (played by the aggressively American Gregory Peck) takes on the case-and in the process, falls in love with Anna, despite being married himself. Despite his client's protests, Keane summons Anna's lover, unkempt stableman Andre Latour (Louis Jourdan), hoping to prove in court that Latour was the killer. Only after a series of stunning upsets does Keane realize that, for the first time in his career, he has allowed his heart to rule his head. In a typically perverse Hitchcockian development, the film's most unpleasant character, an autocratic, vindictive judge played by Charles Laughton, is one of the few who can see through Anna's facade. Hitchcock had wanted Greta Garbo to play Anna Paradine, and indeed a screen test was filmed, but Garbo ultimately declined. At the time of filming, Hitchcock was enamored with uninterrupted, 10-minute takes (later used to the extreme in Rope); thus, the Old Bailey courtroom set where much of the action takes place was designed to accommodate multiple cameras and elaborately conceived crane movements. Such techniques were cumbersome in 1947, and as a result the over-illuminated set ended up costing $70,000, jacking up the film's overall budget to a whopping $3 million (quite a pretty penny in those days). The film was a box-office disappointment, spelling the end of the always-rocky association between Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gregory Peck, Ann Todd, (more)
- 1942
La Vie de Bohème is adapted from Henri Murger's libretto for Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème with the Puccini music relegated to the background. Louis Jourdan plays Rudolphe, the "starving artist" who falls in love with the beautiful but sickly Mimi (Maria Denis). As the tragic Rudolphe-Mimi romance plays itself out to its inevitable conclusion, director Marcel L'Herbier occasionally shifts focus to such supporting characters as painters Marcel (André Roussin), Schaunard (Alfred Adam), the philosophical Colline (Louis Salou), and the fun-loving Phemie (Suzy Delair). Some newly added scenes flesh out the character of Musette (Gisèle Pascal), tracing her progress from wealth to penury and wealth again. Perhaps the most famous filmization of this story is the 1926 La Bohème, starring Lillian Gish and John Gilbert. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maria Denis, Louis Jourdan, (more)
- 1941
In this romantic comedy, a lonely orphan answers a singles ad in a paper and then slips out of the orphanage to meet the man whose letters she has come to love. However, the college professor she meets has actually been ghost writing for the real lonely heart. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danielle Darrieux, Fernand Ledoux, (more)
