Michèle Morgan Movies

Children who want to use an old hotel room for a clubhouse stumble across evidence of a sunken Nazi treasure in this watered-down adventure. Michele Morgan and Paul Hubschmidt co-star and provide the more memorable performances in this tepid thriller. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Between his successful film appearances with Vittorio Gassman in Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso (1962) and Il Successo (1965), Jean-Louis Trintignant appeared in this little-known romance. He plays Georges, a young worker who, while waiting for a train, meets an attractive woman (Michele Morgan) in the station. Though she is married, the two quickly become involved in a love affair. Before it goes on for long, however, she fears it is getting out of hand and may call off their relationship to save her marriage. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

A widow (Michele Morgan) in a small town begins to realize that her late husband was hated by nearly everybody. She begins to receive blackmail letters that threaten to further humiliate her if she does not pay up. She enlists the help of Franz (Robert Hossein), a man who was once fired by her late husband, to track down the source of the letters. She becomes unhinged and eventually tries to kill the man who is helping her in this dark crime drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This black comedy is based on the dastardly deeds of French serial killer Henri-Desire Landru, who wined, dined, scammed, and dismembered over 10 women during WW I. He obtained his victims by placing ads in the Personals section of the paper. He then chose wealthy dowagers in their fifties. First he would woo them to his villa. Then he would con them into forking over their fortunes. Finally he would kill them, chop them up, and immolate the pieces. He is finally captured after he is recognized by the sister of one of the victims. Landru swears that he is not a psychotic killer, that he only did it so he could continue to support his family in the bourgeoisie style that they were accustomed to. During his trial, Landru refused to plead for himself one way or the other; he showed no remorse at all. He was guillotined on February 25, 1922. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Pierre Brasseur stars in this undistinguished drama about a pianist who is traumatized by an accident. He is so much affected, in fact, that the talent that fueled his career is killed off. Desperate to find a way to make money anyway, he starts to put together a plan to defraud an insurance company. At first, his wife (Michele Morgan) goes along with this scheme but then she meets a writer (Gabriele Ferzetti) and her head and heart get distracted, with serious consequences for her husband. This was among the last feature-length films directed by Philippe Agostini. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Henri Verneuil directs a star-studded cast in this slight satire about love and life in the big city. Claudia Cardenale, in her first French film, appears as Albertine, a sexy divorced woman from the countryside who goes to Paris and becomes involved with the fashionable elite. Lino Ventura is Andre, a doctor to the rich and famous who falls in love with Albertine. She becomes his mistress and though he wants to marry her, he has a rival in Didier (Jean-Claude Brialy), a writer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This is a routine, somewhat melodramatic wartime tale set in Occupied France and featuring Michele Morgan as Juliette, a woman with two children who is forced to flee the occupied zone for the French free zone after her partisan husband is captured by the Germans. Juliette cannot manage this escape with her family on her own and so Fortunat (Bourvil) agrees to escort her across the checkpoints, posing as her husband. That is not an easy bluff because he is a simple peasant while she is from the upper echelons of the social hierarchy. Matters become complicated when they cross paths with a deported Jewish family, and even more complicated when Fortunat and Juliette start to fall in love. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This is a remake of the award-winning 1932 classic Grand Hotel with Michele Morgan in the role of Grusinskaya (originally portrayed by Greta Garbo). Based on a book by Vicki Baum, all of the action takes place in the course of one day in a luxury hotel in Berlin. Grusinkaya is a ballerina staying at the hotel, other guests include Baron von Gaigern (O.W. Fischer) a sophisticated thief, Otto Klingelein (Heinz Ruehmann) a dying man, Preysing (Gert Froebe) a businessman, and a stenographer (Sonja Ziemann). Events intertwine the lives of these strangers, bringing them together for some dramatic moments but not quite as effectively as in the 1932 film which boasted the Barrymores (John and Lionel), as well as Wallace Beery and Joan Crawford in its cast -- a hard combination to beat in any era. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Swinging like a pendulum between comedy and drama, this tale by director Henri Decoin concerns a lady lawyer with a tendency to hit the bottle. She takes on a difficult case considering her own weakness -- she is to defend a young man who has killed his alcoholic father. Challenged to the limit, in the end it is love that sees her through the hurdles. Well-acted and sophisticated, the story still does not run much below the surface of each protagonist. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

With Mirror Has Two Faces (Miroir a Deux Faces), French director Andre Cayatte takes a respite from his usual broadsides against the iniquities of the French judicial system. Michele Morgan stars as a plain, middle-aged woman, miserably unhappy with her go-nowhere existence. She submits to plastic surgery, and as the years are cosmetically removed she vows to alter her life. The first major change is in her relationship with her self-involved schoolmaster husband (Bourvil). Where once he'd taken Morgan for granted, the husband now reacts with lunatic jealousy whenever anyone comes near her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There's a curious, unsettling "feel" to MGM's The Vintage, perhaps because of its curiously selected cast. Mel Ferrer and John Kerr play a couple of Italian brothers, Giancarlo and Ernesto Barandero, who escape to France after Ernesto kills a man. Attaining jobs in a vineyard run by Louis Morel (played by the decidedly non-Gallic Leif Erickson), the Barandero brothers fall in love with two local lasses: Leonne (Michele Morgan), Monel's young wife, and Lucienne (top-billed Pier Angeli), Leonne's kid sister. Emotions simmer into a boil before the predictably violent climax. The Vintage was adapted from an Ursula Kier novel by Michael Blankfort, a blacklistee compelled to work in Europe during the late 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer/director Sacha Guitry's contribution to the 1956 film season was the free-flowing historical pageant Si Paris Nous Etait Conte (If Paris Were Told to Us). Guitry himself appears as the ghost of King Louis XI, who relates the story of Paris to a group of fascinated modern-day students. As usual, Guitry manages to "humanize" history by depicting the great men and women of France in amusing warts-and-all fashion. Symbolizing the indomitable spirit of Paris is Robert Lamoureaux as Latude, a prisoner of the Bastille who repeatedly tries to escape, and just as repeatedly is captured and thrown back in jail. A note of pathos is provided by Jacques de Feraudy as the dying Voltaire. Though Sacha Guitry suffered a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair throughout much of the filming of Si Paris Nous Etait Conte, he still had two more films left in him before his death in 1957--just 10 days after Bastille Day. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide