Claude Mann Movies

Noted French filmmaker Demy's wife Agnes Varda helmed this intensely personal tribute to her late husband. It is her third such tribute and is the only one to look deeply into Demy's vision as a director and his filmmaking techniques. To do so, she uses perfectly preserved film clips from each of the director's works and interviews with those who knew and loved him. Those interviewed include actress Catherine Deneuve, actress Anouk Aimee, actor Michel Piccoli, composer Michel Legrand, his own children and others, including female fans whose lives where influenced by his work. Also included are intimate home movies of him during a visit by Francois Truffaut and the late Jim Morrison. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Gabriele d'Annunzio, The Innocent (L'Innocente) is set amongst the aristocracy of 19th-century Italy. Wealthy Tullio (Giancarlo Giannini) thinks nothing of squiring his mistress (Jennifer O'Neill) in full view of his friends and the public. But when Giannini's cast-off wife (Laura Antonelli) begins an affair with a young novelist (based, it is said, on author d'Annunzio), it is too much for the philandering aristocrat. Outside of Erich von Stroheim, few directors were as masterful at combining lavishness with depravity as Luchino Visconti. The Innocent turned out to be Visconti's last film; he died in 1976, shortly before the picture's premiere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director André Téchiné brings his usual obsessions -- including a preoccupation with the fortunes of the bourgeoisie -- to this episodic drama, which serves as a thinly-veiled portrait of France's economic peaks and valleys from the 1930s through the 1970s. Jeanne Moreau stars as Berthe Pedret, a simple laundry woman who marries Hector (Michael Auclair), son of a wealthy, upper class, Spanish immigrant family that owns a successful farm machinery factory. Through a series of vignettes, Techine depicts the passage of years, during which the ambitious working class woman blooms through several bold moves, such as negotiating a workers' strike settlement and using her alliance with the war-time French Resistance movement to increase the enterprise's prestige. Eventually, Berthe comes to control the family's fortunes, but economic challenges in the 1950s force her to turn to an unlikely source for financial help: her obnoxious sister-in-law Regina (Marie-France Pisier). Regina, who ran off with a wealthy American after the war, may now be willing to aid Berthe in exchange for her freedom. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

One of the most notorious American judicial cases of the 20th century is paced and photographed like a spaghetti Western in the Italian Sacco and Vanzetti. There is no denying that Nicola Sacco (Riccardo Cucciolla) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Gian Maria Volontè) were anarchists. But it is highly doubtful that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty of murder. However, their trial took place at the height of the 1920s "Red Scare," so there was little opportunity for the two men to receive fair treatment. Despite worldwide protests from politicians, intellectuals, and "average Joes," Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927, after spending nearly seven years on death row. Like most TV and film accounts of this story, Sacco and Vanzetti is clearly sympathetic to the main characters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When an oily attorney dies at the hands of the mafia, a dedicated French detective investigates the man's murder. He soon uncovers a drug-smuggling operation and lets his sawed-off shotgun do the talking to the toughs in this Gallic gangster feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Arthur (Jean Richard) dreams of killing his harridan shrew of a wife to spend more time with his demanding mistress in this crime drama. His wife refuses to grant him a divorce, so Arthur puts his mind to murder. Arthur kills a woman who is sleeping in his bed, but it turns out to be the mistress who had earlier come to visit the wife. His spouse knocked out the mistress by hitting her and dumped the unconscious victim in the bed. Arthur and his wife hide the body, but he discovers that the mistress was poisoned before her visit to his wife. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Bay of the Angels (La Baie des anges) stars Jeanne Moreau as a middle-aged Parisian gambling addict who leaves her husband and children and heads for the roulette tables of Nice. There she meets young and handsome Claude Mann--a meeting which coincides with Moreau's first winning streak. She latches onto Mann in the belief that he's a good luck charm, and remains with him even when she starts losing heavily. Mann, emotionally drained, walks out of the relationship. The film ends with Mann entreating Moreau to return with him to the bourgeois existence that she'd escaped in the first scene. Bay of the Angels was directed by Jacques Demy, just before he achieved international fame with his musical films Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide