Anouk Aimée Movies
Born into a theatrical family, Anouk Aimee was trained in acting and dancing at the Bauer-Therond school. In films from the age of 14, Ms. Aimee (usually billed merely as Anouk) was elevated to international stardom in 1949's Lovers of Verona, specifically written for her by Jacques Prevert. Possessed of an aloof, haunting beauty, Anouk has given her best performances under the knowing direction of such European masters as Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) and Jacques Demy (Lola, The Model Shop). She has also worked extensively in English language films; she did her bit for the Resistance in Anatole Litvak's The Journey (1959), essayed the title role in George Cukor's Justine (1969), and portrayed the worldly-wise Simone Lowenthal in Robert Altman's Ready to Wear (1994). Her most famous screen assignment, and the one that earned her an Academy Award nomination, was the role of Anne Gauthier in Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (1966). Looking every bit as alluring as she had in '66, Anouk Aimee reprised this role in 1986's A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1984
Through a series of convoluted turns, like a tornado going through Kansas, director Claude Lelouch has managed to keep a vacuum at the center of his film. A corporate executive (Michel Piccoli and a young actress (Evelyne Bouix) suddenly disappear and reappear and disappear, almost as fast as blinking Christmas tree lights. Since neither can remember what is going on, it is likely that they are suffering from the classic "I was kidnapped by an extraterrestrial" syndrome. And in fact, that may be the case because it seems that some ETs wanted to speak through these two people to tell earthlings to quit gearing up their nuclear arsenals. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an acting teacher and Charles Aznavour plays a restaurant owner in this complex story -- yet both stars cannot carry the film on their own merits. For many viewers the labyrinth that wends its way to the final credits is a bit difficult to follow, and at the center of the labyrinth is a woefully inadequate ending. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlotte Rampling, Michel Piccoli, (more)
- 1983
Falling a little short of either comedy or drama or whatever the intent may have been, this bland film directed by first-timer Luciano Tovoli is about an Italian general (Marcel Mastroianni) sent to Albania along with an army chaplain (Michel Piccoli) to bring back the remains of 3,000 compatriot soldiers. The Italian general runs into a German counterpart (Gerard Klein) with a similar mission, but even among the three of them, it is an impossible task to sort out 3,000 skeletons and 3,000 dog tags and come up with any kind of order -- not a situation that lends itself to hilarity, no matter what one's perspective might be. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, (more)
- 1982
In making this film about a director who is presently working on an autobiographical movie, real-life director Elie Chouraqui has played on a Jewish cultural theme (the "reel" director is Jewish) and the intermixing of 1960s movie-making techniques. In the film, director David is in his 30s and his autobiography brings in details about his growth to adulthood -- his early life along the seacoast in Normandy, his parents, his education, and in the present, his sister and her husband, and a few of his own lovers. Visions of the past enhance the events of the moment, such as in the scene of David's mother's death. In the end, viewers may be able to answer the question posed by the title -- "What makes David run?" ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Francis Huster, Charles Aznavour, (more)
- 1981
- PG
After his son disappears, an Italian cheese manufacturer is threatened by political terrorists who will supposedly kill the son if he does not pay a large ransom. Unsure if they really have his son and if the son is still alive, he has to decide if he should or should not sell his business to afford the sum. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ugo Tognazzi, Anouk Aimée, (more)
- 1979
The old Guy De Maupassant story The Devil would seem to be the springboard for the Italian-made Leap Into the Void. Michel Piccoli plays an Italian jurist whose sister Anouk Aimee is a bit "light in the belfry". Piccoli entreats Michele Placido to convince the awkward Aimee to kill herself. The results are unexpected, and fascinating. As with most of his work, director Marco Bellocchio uses the seemingly petty problems of his bourgeois characters as a mirror of what is going on in society at large. Leap Into the Void was originally released as Salto nel Vuoto; both Michel Piccoli and Anouk Aimee won Best Acting awards at the 1980 Cannes Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michel Piccoli, Anouk Aimée, (more)
- 1978
This sentimental drama is the story of the relationship between a lovely mother and her 20-year-old son who never really knew her. When he learns that she is dying of leukemia, he tries to get to know her. By the end of the film, the two have reconciled and she dies feeling at peace. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anouk Aimée, Richard Berry, (more)
- 1976
Imprisoned as an accessory to murder, Catherine (Catherine Deneuve) gives birth to a son she conceived in prison. Eighteen years later, her sentence served, she is reunited with the boy, Simon (Jean-Jacques Briot), who has remained in an orphanage the entire time. She is accompanied by toothsome prison buddy Sarah (Anouk Aimée), and gradually these people whose lives have been frozen in time "thaw" and get on with the business of living. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Catherine Deneuve, Anouk Aimée, (more)
- 1969
- R
Justine (Anouk Aimee) is a Jewish prostitute living in Egypt who manages to sleep her way to the top. Marrying a financial minister, Justine works her way up from her beginnings as a hooker, but continues to use her sexual allure as a tool to win her and her husband's ends. Along the way, she helps the Jews fight for their own homeland against the British and Arabs. The story is told from the perspective of the English nobleman Darley (Michael York), who first meets the temptress in 1938. The Jews in Egypt are continually pressured by the Moslem majority, who also persecute local Coptic Christians. Justine helps both Christians and Jews in Alexandria receive fair treatment despite religious and racial prejudice. Dirk Bogarde and Anna Karina also star in this story tinged with adultery, incest, homosexuality and religious and nationalistic fervor. This story is based on the novel Justine, one of four which comprise the Alexandria Quartet, by British diplomat and novelist Lawrence Durrell. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anouk Aimée, Dirk Bogarde, (more)
George (Gary Lockwood) is a disillusioned 26-year-old who has just quit his stifling job. He lives in Los Angeles with an aspiring young actress named Gloria (Alexandra Hay), who is none too pleased with his recent unemployment. Hanging over his head is the constant threat of repossession of his car and the virtual certainty that he will be drafted into the army. He sees a beautiful woman in a big car and follows her to her home in the Hollywood hills. A rock-star friend loans him money for a car and he follows the mystery woman to a photography shop. Lola (Anouk Aimée) is an older French model who poses for photographs to pay the bills. After he takes pictures of her, he begins to fall in love with the woman. Gloria discovers the pictures and throws George out of the house. He returns to the model and the two have conversation over drinks before ending up in bed together. Lola wishes to return home to be with her young son and is reluctant to get involved in a relationship. George's relationship with Gloria ends when she leaves him over her failure to understand his motivations. He resigns himself to the fact he will be drafted and probably end up dead in a Vietnam rice paddy in this story of a young man in search of the greater meaning of life. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anouk Aimée, Gary Lockwood, (more)
- 1969
Sidney Lumet directed this romantic melodrama involving deceit and marital secrets. The film takes place in Rome where lawyer Federico Fendi (Omar Sharif) falls in love with his colleague Renzo's (Fausto Tozzi) fiancee Carla (Anouk Aimee). Renzo warns Federico that Carla is actually a high-priced call girl, but Federico refuses to believe it. Instead, Carla and Federico marry. After the wedding however, Federico notices that Carla has been making curious disappearances from her domestic home. Recalling Renzo's warning, Federico begins the secretly follow her to find out the truth. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Omar Sharif, Anouk Aimée, (more)
- 1968
Mathias (Yves Montand) is a Flemish professor who takes a vacation when the university students go on strike. He decides he will visit his mistress Anne (Anouk Aimee) to get away from the social and political upheaval. He finds that Anne has embraced the social causes despite an illness that could lead to her death. In a surrealistic scene, the two argue before Mathias boards a train. He meets Anne there, but the two are unable to communicate and she eventually vanishes. Mathias and two other strangers wander into a foggy rural area where they encounter revelers who dance and speak a strange language. It seems the train has wrecked and his girlfriend is dead, but the dreamlike expressionisms that flash forward and backward play tricks with the time and sequence of events. Soon Mathias and Anne are off to London, but the time period is unclear in this symbolic but unevenly scripted feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yves Montand, Anouk Aimée, (more)
The ultimate "date" movie of the mid-1960s, director Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme) stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in the title roles. The twosome meet at the boarding school where their children are enrolled. Aimee, an actress, misses her train home, and Trintignant, a professional race car driver, offers her a ride. It is the first of several friendly encounters which eventually blossom into love. Both want to commit to each other, but neither can shake the Past. The now-famous climactic scene in a train station was not scripted at the time of shooting, thus Aimee was unaware that director Lelouch had decided upon a tearful reunion between her and Trintignant. This explains the look of utter surprise on the actress' face. Much has been written about the possible motivation behind Lelouch's decision to film some scenes in color, others in black-and-white. None of the more ardent auterists truly want to hear the director's explanation: he'd run short of money halfway through production, and black-and-white film stock was infinitely cheaper. The winner of two Oscars (one for Best Foreign Film), A Man and A Woman also scored on the "top ten" with its memorable theme music by Francis Lai. A sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later appeared....twenty years later. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant, (more)
- 1966
Caught in an unhappy marriage, Piera Fabbri (Giovanna Ralli) leaves her physicist husband Andrea (Paul Guers) and runs off with her lesbian lover, Luisa (Anouk Aimee). However, Piera soon discovers that her new-found relationship may not be the answer to her problems. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giovanna Ralli, Anouk Aimée, (more)
- 1966
In this slow-moving, sentimental drama, Vittorio (Enrico M. Salerno) is a 40-year-old journalist who reaches a mid-life crisis. His wife nags him constantly for ignoring her and their child. After his mistress dumps him, Vittorio returns to the town where he spent his childhood to reflect on the state of his life. Flashbacks are used to tell of Vittorio's relationship with his parents as a child and the effects World War II had on his development. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Enrico Maria Salerno, Jacqueline Sassard, (more)
- 1966
In this Italian bedroom farce, a humble village peasant has managed to remain a bachelor despite the fact that he has fathered numerous illegitimate children. The trouble begins when he finds himself entangled in a fight over water rights. Though others attempt to blame him, the clever fellow manages to come out clean and solve the conflict by fathering two more children. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ugo Tognazzi, Giovanna Ralli, (more)
- 1965
"White Voices" is a vernacular term referring to Italian Castrati of the 18th century Vatican Choir. The Castrati were male children who were castrated so that they could retain their beautiful soprano singing voices into maturity. Paolo Ferrari plays a Roman youth who isn't keen on being gelded and bribes his way out of it. Even so, he trains with the choir and becomes an habitue of the houses of the rich and famous, using his supposed lack of male essentials to his advantage--especially in bed. Ferrari comes a-cropper when he impregnates a girl and is forced to go under the knife to establish an alibi! It is very, very hard to write about White Voices without making a wisecrack, so we'll cut this short (oops!). The film, a French/Italian coproduction, was originally released in France as Le Sex Des Anges and in Italy as I Castrati. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paolo Ferrari, Sandra Milo, (more)
- 1965
An ambitious Italian financier (Vittorio Gassman) will stop at nothing to further his economic expansion. He forsakes old friends, relatives and his wife as he compromises his integrity in the pursuit for more money. He becomes a shameless bootlicker for a wealthy man who can help his financial gains. The ambitious money-grabber gets what he wants in the way of money, but sabotages everything else in his greed, leaving him a rich but lonely recluse in this ironic drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- 1963
The French-made Of Flesh and Blood plays like "Dostoyevsky Meets Roger Corman." Robert Hossein finances his participation in a card game by stealing parts from a jeep. He cheats at cards, and has his hands broken as a consequence. Understandably unnerved by all this, Hossein murders an old woman. THEN...he becomes involved with passerby Renato Salvatori, who is fresh from an affair with Anouk Aimee. Three gold stars to anyone who can figure out the significance of all this. Maybe Of Flesh and Blood made more sense in its original French-language version Les Grands Chemins. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Hossein, Anouk Aimée, (more)
Fresh off of the international success of La Dolce Vita, master director Federico Fellini moved into the realm of self-reflexive autobiography with what is widely believed to be his finest and most personal work. Marcello Mastroianni delivers a brilliant performance as Fellini's alter ego Guido Anselmi, a film director overwhelmed by the large-scale production he has undertaken. He finds himself harangued by producers, his wife, and his mistress while he struggles to find the inspiration to finish his film. The stress plunges Guido into an interior world where fantasy and memory impinge on reality. Fellini jumbles narrative logic by freely cutting from flashbacks to dream sequences to the present until it becomes impossible to pry them apart, creating both a psychological portrait of Guido's interior world and the surrealistic, circus-like exterior world that came to be known as "Felliniesque." 8 1/2 won an Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, as well as the grand prize at the Moscow Film Festival, and was one of the most influential and commercially successful European art movies of the 1960s, inspiring such later films as Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), and even Lucio Fulci's Italian splatter film Un Gatto nel Cervello (1990). ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, (more)
- 1962
This 153-minute Biblical epic about salt and sin is directed by Robert Aldrich and has enough dynamic interactions between its chief protagonists to sustain interest in-between climactic scenes. Stewart Granger is Lot, the Hebrew leader who takes his people to camp in the Valley of Jordan only to find that they are caught between the Helamites on the one hand, and the wicked Queen Bera (Anouk Aimee) on the other. She rules over the twin cesspools of Sodom and Gomorrah and is beleaguered by a crafty brother who wants the scepter she now wields. The Queen makes a pact with Lot that he can stay with the Hebrews in the valley as long as he defends it -- she wants to use him and the Hebrews as a first line of defense against the Helamites. To seal the pact, she gives Lot her best slave Ildith (Pier Angeli) to be his wife. Adventures and excitement prevails as Lot and the Hebrews brave one challenge after the other -- until Lot realizes that his people are being corrupted by the environment of Sodom and Gomorrah and eventually receives a Divine vision and knows he has to lead the Hebrews away from here. Special effects are impressive and take much of the impact away from the fate of Ildith, as she turns one last time to look back at the crumbling cities. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stewart Granger, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, (more)
