Bernard Lajarrige Movies

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

Au P'tit Zouave is an old-fashioned yarn, given some credence by the sincere performances of the leading actors. The title refers to a seedy café, where the less-than-elite meet to eat, drink and palaver. Most of the characters are the sort of clichés one might find in a dive of this nature, but at least they look and talk like "real people" rather than play-actors. Everyone in "Au P'tit Zouave" is profoundly affected by the arrival of sinister stranger Deny (Francois Perrier). At 104 minutes, the film might have been twice as effective at half the length. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Massacre en Dentelles (Massacre in Lace) concerns a devil-may-care reporter named George (Raymond Rouleau). Sent to Venice to get the goods on a gang of counterfeiters, George would much rather enjoy the city's many creature comforts. He finally gets down to work when he discovers a corpse, the first of many to dot the Venetian landscape in this airy little thriller. Theresa (Anne Vernon) is but one of the many ladies who melt like butter when Our Hero saunters into view--but is she to be trusted? At 105 minutes, Massacre en Dentelles is a smidgen too long for its own good. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A Simple Case of Money (originally released in 1950 as Millionaires d'un Jour) is set in motion when a greenhorn reporter (Bernard Lajarrige) carelessly prints the wrong winning number in the French national lottery. As the reporter and his boss (Leon Bellieres) defend themselves in court, they are confronted with several people whose lives were profoundly affected by the error. Gradually, these "victims" come to realize that they are far better off as losers than they ever would have been as winners. This is especially true of estranged husband and wife Pierre (Jean Brochard) and Helene Berger (Gaby Morlay), whose tattered marriage is patched together by the experience. Simple Case of Money is most effective as a character study, and least effective as a satire of provincial manners and mores. Coming off best in the large cast is Pierre Laquey as a lovably antisocial centenarian. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The French/Italian Four Bags Full stars Jean Gabin as an aging artist, ever on the prowl for excitement. The time is World War II, and the place is occupied France. Timorous cab driver Gabin finagles Bourvil into transporting four suitcases full of precious pork through Paris, under the noses of the Nazi officials. While the film is not technically a comedy, there are several nervously amusing moments as the mismatched Gabin and Bourvil wend their way across the City of Light. Adapted from a novel by Marcel Ayme, Four Bags Full was originally released as La Traversee de Paris. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Best known for his La Cage aux Folles, director Edouard Molinaro has a lesser film here in this occasionally erotic story about a summer romance. A young artist is traveling to the home of a glamorous friend for the summer season when he picks up an attractive woman at a bar. He decides to bring her along, which turns out to be too hasty a decision. While partying away the summer, the son of the hostess dallies with the artist's young woman and she vacillates in her feelings between the two men. The atmosphere and the woman's ambivalence add up to tragedy in the end. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Danielle Darrieux stars in this Belgian chiller as a songstress whose obsessively jealous husband suddenly dies. Feeling free for the first time in years, Darrieux inaugurates a romance with Michel Auclair. But even now she is the victim of her husband's omnipresence; evidently returning from the grave, the dead man haunts both Darrieux and her new lover. If you've seen Diabolique, you may catch on to a few of this film's many plot twists. Oddly, Murder at 45 R.P.M (produced in 1960, released in the US five years later) is frequently absent from the published resumes of both Danielle Darrieux and Michel Auclair. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This 105-minute religious drama is based on the life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the woman who at the age of fourteen -- in February and March of 1858, had a total of eighteen visions of the Virgin Mary. Bernadette (played by Daniele Ajoret) was told to go to a specific grotto. She left with 300,000 people joining her in this pilgrimage and when at the grotto, the Virgin Mary appeared to tell her to dig by a large rock. She did as instructed, and a spring gushed forth that is still visited today by those seeking to be healed -- at Lourdes. Soubirous goes on to a life of contemplation but is plagued by sickness and succumbs at the age of thirty-five, a saintly legend in her own time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Holmes and Watson are again after Moriarty but this time Scotland Yard for some reason does not even suspect that he's the one who wants to get the necklace stolen from Cleopatra's tomb. Doesn't really hold together like most of the Holmes/Watson movies and is a rather odd interpretation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster in the tense spy thriller The Train. Lancaster plays Labiche, a French railway inspector. Allied forces are threatening to liberate Paris, so Col. Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is ordered to move the priceless works of art from the Jeu de Paume Museum to the fatherland. The head of the museum (Suzanne Flon) attempts to convince Labiche that he should sabotage the train on which they are transporting the art. Labiche is more focused on destroying a trainload of German weapons. After his friend is killed trying to stop the train with the art, and after a consciousness-raising conversation with a hotel owner (Jeanne Moreau), Labiche resolves to save the antiquities. Lancaster and Frankenheimer had worked together previously on both Birdman of Alcatraz and Seven Days in May. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

This romantic tragedy concerns the Archduke Rudolf (Omar Sharif) and his mistress, the Baroness Maria Vetsera (Catherine Deneuve), and their untimely demise at Mayerling, the sight of the Austrian royal family's hunting lodge. Rudolf verbally spars with his father Emperor Franz-Josef (James Mason) about wanting to implement progressive policies for his country. Ava Gardner plays his mother Empress Elizabeth. Rudolf also contends with the fallout from a loveless marriage with Princess Stephanie (Andrea Parisy). Respectful of the centuries-old Hapsburg family rule over Austria, Rudolf soon feels he is a man born at the wrong time in a country that will not realize the need for social reform. The Prince of Wales (James Robertson-Justice), later to become Britain's King Edward VII, provides the only comic relief with his dialogue. The deaths remain a mystery, but director Terence Young suggests the two lovers made a suicide pact when they decided they could not live in a world without love where the prospects for peace were dubious at best. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi