Gerard Klein Movies

The life and times of Augustus Caesar are brought to the screen in this made-for-television historical epic. After assisting Julius Caesar in a string of military campaigns, Augustus is adopted by the Roman leader, and when Brutus and Cassius kill Julius, Augustus joins forces with Marc Antony to rid them and their associates of the Roman leadership. As Augustus becomes Rome's new and uncontested leader, he falls for the beautiful Livia and is forced to turn against Marc Antony on the field of battle. While Rome enjoys a period of wealth and progress, Livia becomes politically ambitious and Augustus finds he has become the center of an assassination plot. Augustus stars Peter O'Toole and Charlotte Rampling, who respectively portray the mature Augustus and Livia. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

French director Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) is an unsettling, sometimes poetic horror film. Pierre Brasseur plays a brilliant plastic surgeon, Prof. Genessier, who has vowed to restore the face of his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), who was mutilated in an automobile accident. With the help of his assistant (Alida Valli), he kidnaps young women, surgically removes their facial features, and attempts to graft their beauty onto his daughter's hideous countenance. This naturally has an adverse effect on the "donors," some of whom commit suicide rather than go through life faceless. Franju's haunting, muted handling of basic horror material is what lifts Eyes Without a Face out of the ordinary and into the realm of near-classic. When the film failed to draw crowds under its original title, however, the distributors decided to exploit it as a two-bit "scare" flick with the new title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Following the disastrous Pirates (1986), director Roman Polanski got back on creative track with this finely-wrought thriller that, while failing to impress at the box office, was nevertheless his most critically well-received film of the decade. Harrison Ford stars as Richard Walker, an American doctor who has come to Paris, where he's scheduled to deliver a paper to a medical conference. Richard has brought along his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley), because Paris was the site of their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Sondra picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport, which leads to her kidnapping and an ever-more complicated quest that takes Richard into the seedy and dangerous underworld of European drug smuggling and terrorist arms sales. Along the way, he is rebuffed by skeptical officials at the American Embassy and meets Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), a sexy courier who agrees to help him in exchange for the money she's owed for trafficking in narcotics. Playing cleverly on American fears about Europe's Byzantine politics and "decadent" society, Frantic received, from many observers, perhaps the greatest compliment possible for a thriller, comparison to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Based on Erskine Caldwell's novel, Le Batard could also refer to this French film born from an American novel, with the American South transformed into the south of France. An unemotive Gerard Klein is Patrice, the Paris automobile mechanic who travels to Marseille to identify the body of his loose-living and long-lost mother, who has been found murdered. After proceeding to kill off her barroom boss, he meanders around the south of France looking for sexual relationships. He comes across a teenage musician and is attracted enough to her obvious appeal to establish a more permanent liaison, taking her with him to Paris to set up housekeeping -- for she is pregnant. Soon she is driven to the limits of depression and boredom caring for their home and a new baby, and he has reached his limits of confinement and responsibility -- so he takes off again. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Marie (Marlene Jobert) is a pretty female physician who attracts the strong romantic interest of two brothers during World War I in this uninspired drama by Gérard Vergez. The brothers meet her when she is on duty in Turkey -- one brother is stationed there and the other becomes her ambulance driver. Since Marie has just lost her husband in combat, she is not at first open to another relationship but finally begins an affair with the older brother. Jealousy rears its ugly head, and the younger and older brother start to compete for her favors. She is eventually separated from the two brothers after the oldest -- imprisoned for supposed sympathy with the Russians -- is sprung from jail. Marie is later imprisoned herself, and it will be a long time before she is able to find out the fate of those she knew during the days of combat, including the two brothers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A boy, blaming himself for his parent's break-up, devises a scheme to bring them back together in this entertaining French film. Antoine is angry because he can't have a leather jacket so he steals one from a boutique. He couldn't have one because his parents couldn't afford it. His father is a teacher and makes a modest salary. His mother, to help out, takes a job as a telephone operator for an advertising agency. She quickly advances within the company and is soon out earning her husband, who resents it, has an affair, and leaves the house. Antoine, to ease his self-blame and restore harmony, begins hatching his elaborate plan. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This melodramatic, clichéd story loosely based on a true, 1983 racially-motivated murder, starts with three men arrested for disorderly conduct at a dance. After they are released, they take a train trip, vent their continuing anger on a young Arab, and kill the man by forcing him out of a window on the speeding train. Their crime is witnessed by Isabelle (Christine Pascal) and reported to the police, enabling commissioner Couturier (Roger Hanin) to find the killers. The major problem now is to prevent a race riot when right-wing extremists falsely accuse some Arabs of reprehensible actions and the townspeople gather to demonstrate at the prison. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide