Lucien Nat Movies
- 1964
Jean Delannoy's This Special Friendship (Les Amities partculieres) is set in a boy's boarding school of the early 1930s. Two of the students, Francis Lacombrade and Francois Leccia, become close friends. Lacombrade has definite ideas concerning homosexuality: he's dead set against it, and is willing to blow the whistle on anyone whom he suspects to be "different." When Lacombrade himself comes out of the closet, as it were, the loyal Leccia arranges for the private meetings between Lacombrade and his vis-a-vis Didier Haudepin. Michel Bouquet, a young priest assigned to teach at the school, begins to suspect that something "unnatural" is going on, whereupon Leccia defensively spreads the rumor that Bouquet is himself fooling around with some of the students. Dismissed from the school, Bouquet has a heart-to-heart with Lacombrade about being too judgmental. Torn about by indecision and conflicting emotions, Lacombrade chooses the most drastic means of solving his own sexual ambiguity. Based on a novel by Les Amities Particulaires, This Special Friendship was considered controversial enough in 1964 to be held from American release for nearly three years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Didier Haudepin, Francis Lacombrade, (more)
- 1962
Emmanelle Riva won a Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Festival for her portrayal of a tortured wife in this 1963 French-language adaptation of the novel by Francois Mauriac. Director Georges Franju remains faithful to the book. Riva plays the title character, who feels suffocated in her marriage to the upper-class twit Bernard Desqueyroux (Philippe Noiret). Theirs is a bland marriage in an isolated country mansion surrounded by servants. Therese tries to poison her husband with arsenic, but the dose isn't fatal. She is arrested, but Bernard refuses to press charges, instead bringing her home to a prison of his own devising. He locks her in a bedroom and allows her only cigarettes and wine. Much later, he frees her for a party, and their friends are shocked at her deterioration. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emmanuelle Riva, Philippe Noiret, (more)
- 1962
The friendship between two rival soldiers provides the basis of this comedy. The tale is set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The soldiers meet while swimming in the same place. They become friends. When they get out of the water, they accidentally trade uniforms. Together they go to a farmhouse. There they meet an old farmer and his pretty granddaughter. They engage in friendly rivalry for the girl, go for another swim and get their proper uniforms back. They then bid each other adieu and return to their troops. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1954
Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles M'Etait Conte (If Versailles Were Told to Me) is best known by its American title Royal Affairs in Versailles. In addtion to writing and directed the film, Guitry reserves for himself the plum role of Louis XIV. Concentrating on the palace of Versailles over a period of 300 years, the storyline concentrates on the various amorous and political intrigues of three French kings. The plot manages to wend its way through the French revolution, coming to a halt in "the present". The star-studded supporting cast includes Jean Marais as Louis XV, Claudette Colbert as Mme. Montespan, Micheline Presle as Mme. Pompadour, and, best of all, Orson Welles as a gouty Ben Franklin. Most currently available prints of Si Versailles M'Etait Conte are severely edited, and fail to do justice to the rich Eastmancolor hues of the original version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sacha Guitry, Michel Auclair, (more)
- 1952
Originally titled Nous Sommes Tout des Assassins, We Are All Murderers was directed by Andre Cayette, a former lawyer who detested France's execution system. Charles Spaak's screenplay makes no attempt to launder the four principal characters (Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, Antoinine Balpetre, Julien Verdeir): never mind the motivations, these are all hardened murderers. Still, the film condemns the sadistic ritual through which these four men are brought to the guillotine. In France, the policy is to never tell the condemned man when the execution will occur--and then to show up without warning and drag the victim kicking and screaming to his doom, without any opportunity to make peace with himself or his Maker. By the end of this harrowing film, the audience feels as dehumanized as the four "protagonists." We are All Murderers was roundly roasted by the French law enforcement establishment, but it won a special jury prize at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, (more)
- 1946
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, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlene Dietrich, Jean Gabin, (more)
Heart of a Nation was filmed in 1940, just after the Nazi occupation of Paris. The film traces the fortunes of the Froment family of Montmartre, from the Franco-Prussian war of 1871 to World War II. Comedy and tragedy are deftly blended throughout; Raimu's visit to the Moulin Rouge is as hilarious as Michele Morgan's loss of an arm during World War I is heartbreaking. When the Nazis became privy to the existence of Heart of a Nation, they ordered its director (Julien Duvivier) arrested and the negative destroyed. Both director and negative managed to escape to the U.S., where a dubbed version of Heart of a Nation was finally made available in 1943. Intriguingly enough, the man responsible for the salvation of the film was a German officer who happened to be a fan of Duvivier's work. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michèle Morgan, Suzy Prim, (more)
- 1941
Six friends who have won a large sum of money decide to split their fortune and reunite in five years to share all the money they will have earned in the meantime. When the time comes, one of them gets killed on his way back to France. Another gets shot and his body disappears. Police inspector Wens (Pierre Fresnay) has to solve the case before all six succumb to the mysterious killer. Scripted by Henri-Georges Clouzot from the novel by Stanislas Andre Steeman, this mystery suffers from Georges Lacombe's routine direction. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michele Alfa, Pierre Fresnay, (more)
- 1939
The same year that the great European actor Harry Baur played mad Czar Paul I in Le Patriote, he also played another celebrated Russian looney in Rasputin (original title: La Tragedie Imperiale). Unlike most interpretations of the infamous peasant-monk, Baur's Rasputin is a multifaceted character, as much saint as sinner. He is shown to be sincere in his belief that his self-styled magic powers are best utilized in the service of Czar Nicholas and the Royal Family. Alas, Rasputin is also prone to a multitude of human frailties, notably the temptation to allow absolute power to corrupt him absolutely. Whatever one might think of the life of Rasputin, one cannot deny that he left that life in a grostequely spectacular fashion, which Baur and director Marcel L'Herbier recreate in all its vividly gory splendor. Rasputin was based on a novel by Alfred Neumann. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harry Baur, Marcelle Chantal, (more)
