Cecile Paoli Movies

Based on novels by Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe details the exploits of Richard Sharpe, a British soldier who fights Napoleon on the battlefield and his devious wife on the home front. Sean Bean plays Sharpe, while Abigail Cruttenden portrays Jane. The personal and the political all come to a boil in "Sharpe's Waterloo," the final episode of the series. Sharpe must face Napoleon's army at Waterloo while confronting the man who has cuckolded him, Lord Rossendale. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Director Peter Sehr offers here another version of the origins of Kaspar Hauser, one of the most enigmatic characters in German history. According to this film, the title character is the real son of Duke Karl of Baden. Karl's brother Ludwig wants the throne for himself so he secretly orders a dying baby to be exchanged for the newborn heir. The real baby heir is promptly sent with a nurse to the countryside, but then is kidnapped by the Bavarians who are antagonistic to Baden. After Ludwig becomes a ruler of Baden, the young boy is kept in a cellar by the Bavarians, and then in 1828, after 12 years of confinement, he is brought to a square in Nuremberg in the early morning and left there alone. Unable to talk or walk, the young man is given the name Kaspar Hauser and is brought to the home of the kind professor Daumer, who teaches him to talk and introduces him to a civilized life. However, while the tension between the two rival countries increases, Ludwig of Baden sends his spies to seek out and eliminate the missing heir. Unlike Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, which treated the leading character as a mysterious man of the universe, this is a rather straightforward tale of political intrigue, where Kaspar is merely a pawn in someone else's wicked game, and the film barely rises above the level of a beautifully crafted costume drama. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

A lusty executive for a high-tech company tries to juggle his life between two disparate wives and his mistress. He is also in the Army Reserves and it is while serving his annual two weeks that he gets into big trouble. Actually, he is not actually serving; instead, he convinced his buddy to pretend to be him and go in his stead. The problems begin when the stand-in is arrested for being a spy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A clever adaptation of Moliere's play Les Fourberies de Scapin, this cinematic re-creation was directed by Roger Coggio who also plays the lead, Scapin -- a tramp who thrives on mischief. In this version, however, Coggio interprets Scapin's antics as clever put-ons, meant to help him obtain his objectives. The story starts out as a stage performance which Coggio then transforms into cinema, as though transforming the story from the "fiction" of play-acting to the "verite" of cinematic realism. That is a neat 20th-century trick that Scapin himself may have appreciated. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide