Margo Lion Movies

A doctor gains a new perspective on her life and career when she faces a life-threatening illness in this drama. Francoise (Annie Girardot) is a French physician with a very busy schedule. While she's well respected by her patients and colleagues, she has precious little time to spend with her husband Gerard (Francois Perier), her pregnant teenage daughter Elisabeth (Isabelle Huppert), or her sullen son Julien (William Coryn). She somehow manages to find time for her lover Daniel (Jean-Pierre Cassel), but Francoise's life is already starting to fray at the edges when she receives the upsetting news that she has cancer. Francoise, however, learns to put on a brave face and faces her disease and its difficult treatment with optimism and a fierce resolve. Annie Giradot's performance in Docteur Francoise Gailland earned her a Cesar (the French Academy Award). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this French drama, Nina (Catherine Jourdan) is the much-loved daughter of a country family. In turn, she loves her anti-Semitic virago of an aunt, her gentle father, and especially her effeminate cousin, whom she has a crush on. During the Nazi occupation, she falls in love with a German officer, and the difficulties and compromises she goes through then help her to evolve into a fully grown woman. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This talkative and unevenly paced feature finds Fou (Jean Lefebvre) the inventor of a gas that makes the users fall in love. He is chased by his boss, the police, and spies, who seek to secure the secret recipe for their own selfish purposes. A shadowy American underworld figure tries to intimidate the inventor. A half-hearted attempt at comedy tries to go along with the double dealing and trickery of the thin plot of the film. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Released in 1963 in the U.S. under the title Julie the Redhead, this average yarn by director Claude Boissol begins with a first generation love story that is intentionally repeated in the second generation. When an artist falls in love with his model, he wants no more than to marry her and live happily ever after. Then his father calls him back to reality and forces him to join the family business, changing his life forever. He marries another woman, has a son, and dies leaving two-thirds of his fortune to his lost love. His son seeks out his father's old flame, only to discover that she has died and left a daughter behind. He then decides to romance the daughter so as to keep her inherited two-thirds of his father's fortune "all in the family." ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

L'Aiguille Rouge is a mountain-climbing melodrama, a genre more indigenous to the German cinema than to French films. Set in the French Alps, the film stars Michel Auclair and Michelle Philippe as Florian and Myra, young lovers fascinated with scaling the heights (in every sense of the phrase!) Their ardor reaches a fever pitch at a mountain resort, but tragedy looms on the horizon. Director E. E. Reinert stages many of the climbing sequences in the studio, using alpine mockups in the background. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Woman of Evil in this French melodrama is a lady named Louvaine (Helena Bossis). She's a pianist in a tiny café, where her erstwhile lovers, landowner Laurent (Charles Vanel) and surgeon Diego (Jean Chevrier), make nightly visits. The rising passions within the café are counterpointed by the rising flood waters in the surrounding region. When originally released in France, Woman of Evil ran considerably longer than its current 87-minute running time. It was pared down for American consumption to meet the then-prevailing censorial standards. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Absent from the screen since 1944's Kismet, the incomparable Marlene Dietrich returned in the French romantic melodrama Martin Roumagnac. La Dietrich is cast opposite Jean Gabin, here playing a small-town contractor with an eye for the ladies. He is entranced by Dietrich, a woman who's "been around" and who intends to remain in circulation even after trapping Gabin in her web. When Gabin figures out he's been had, the results are unexpectedly tragic. Martin Roumagnac was a second-choice project for Dietrich and Gabin, who'd originally been offered the leads in Marcel Carne's Les Portes de la Nuit, which frankly would have been a better vehicle for them. In America, Martin Roumagnac was released as The Room Upstairs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This comedy of manners, set within a Viennese community, centers upon an uneducated soccer player who ends up being tutored by an unemployed teacher. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A sedentary little German town is thrown into a tizzy when several trunks show up from Cairo, Egypt, all marked "O.F." This is followed by a telegram announcing that "O.F." is arriving soon and will expect accommodations. A newspaper reporter tells everyone that the mystery man is a millionaire. In preparation for his arrival, the town goes into a frenzy of construction, building a cinema, an opera house, a casino and several other moneymaking enterprises. It turns out that the reporter has no more idea of who "O.F." is than anyone else; he was simply tired of the village's backward attitude and wanted to improve its economy. Coda: An actress named Ola Fallon vents her anger upon discovering that her staff has inadvertently sent her luggage to the wrong town. A warmhearted German satire, Trunks of Mr. O.F. was fortunately completed just before the burgeoning Nazi movement declared such films as "inessential." The film served to introduce a young ingenue by the name of Hedi Keisler, who went on to Hollywood fame and fortune as Hedy Lamarr, and was also the third film of a wide-eyed stage comedian who was born Laszlo Lowenstein, but who billed himself as Peter Lorre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi