Marcel Pérès Movies

One of Luis Buñuel's most episodic films, The Phantom of Liberty focuses on no one particular narrative. In the beginning, a man sells postcards of French tourist attractions, calling them "pornographic." A sniper in Montparnasse is hailed as a hero for killing passersby. A "missing" child helps the police fill out the report on her. A group of monks play poker, using religious medallions as chips, and in the most infamous sequence, a formally dressed social group gathers at toilets around a table, occasionally excusing themselves to go into little stalls in a private room to eat. ~ John Voorhees, All Movie Guide

Jean-Claude Roland and Lino Ventura play Nick and Laurent, a pair of not completely rehabilitated ex-convicts in Les Grandes Gueules. The twosome is hired by Hector (Bourvil), a well-meaning, unworldly sawmill owner. At first refusing to take their lumberjacking jobs seriously, the larcenous parolees gradually realize that a whole new life has been offered them by the ingenuous owner. A pleasant, leisurely comedy-drama, Les Grandes Gueules might have been more effective with a quarter hour or so whittled out of its 130-minute running time. The film's English-language title is Jailbirds' Vacation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The scene is the French Riviera. Based on eyewitness testimony, three identically dressed men are accused of kidnapping and murdering a child, but two of them can possibly be guilty. Is the innocent party Anthony Perkins, an American who has fled to France in the wake of a sex scandal? Is it Italian Renato Salvatori, whose bad reputation with women has preceded him? Or is it Jean-Claude Brialy, a French businessman whose sister uses her sexual wiles to clinch her brother's big business deals? We'll never know...because Two Are Guilty director Andre Cayatte, a longtime critic of the French justice system, contrives to have all three suspects killed by an out-of-control mob. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

French director Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeux Sans Visage) is an unsettling, sometimes poetic horror film. Pierre Brasseur plays a brilliant plastic surgeon, Prof. Genessier, who has vowed to restore the face of his daughter, Christiane (Edith Scob), who was mutilated in an automobile accident. With the help of his assistant (Alida Valli), he kidnaps young women, surgically removes their facial features, and attempts to graft their beauty onto his daughter's hideous countenance. This naturally has an adverse effect on the "donors," some of whom commit suicide rather than go through life faceless. Franju's haunting, muted handling of basic horror material is what lifts Eyes Without a Face out of the ordinary and into the realm of near-classic. When the film failed to draw crowds under its original title, however, the distributors decided to exploit it as a two-bit "scare" flick with the new title The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After several years in the Italian film industry, director Leonide Moguy returned to France for Les Enfants de L'Amour (The Children of Love). The film is set in a dormitory for teenaged mothers, both unwed and deserted. No one personal story is given precedent over any of the others, though the audience has the strongest empathy for gaminlike Anne-Marie (Etchika Choreau), abandoned child bride Liliane (Dominique Page), and hooker Dollie (Joelle Barnard). On the whole, the male characters in the film are less believable than the female, with Jean-Claude Pascal delivering a particularly pedantic performance as a doctor. Essentially a plea for birth control, Les Enfants de L'Amour reportedly ran into censorship problems in certain staunchly religious communities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The works of Guy de Maupassant have likely been adapted by more French filmmakers than those of any other author (with the possible exception of Georges Simenon). Max Ophuls harnesses three Maupassant short stories to suit his artistic purposes in Le Plaisir (House of Pleasure). In "The Mask," an aging lothario (Jean Galland) learns more about himself than he cares to when he dons a mask to cover his wrinkles. In "The House of Madame Tellier," the proprietress of a brothel (Madeline Renaud) closes up shop one day for an unusual (for her) personal mission. And in "The Model," both the title character (Simone Simon) and her artist-lover (Daniel Gelin) pay the price for her romantic impulsiveness. Each of the playlets in Le Plaisir explore conflicting sides of human nature -- a theme common to both the works of Maupassant and the films of Ophuls. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Per its title, Lovers of Verona is an updated adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The film was a joint project of those felicitous collaborators, screenwriter Jacques Prevert and director Andre Cayatte. The star-crossed lovers are portrayed by Serge Reggiani and Anouk Aimee, cast respectively as the poverty-stricken son of a glassblower and the daughter of a disgraced nobleman. While playing bit roles in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, Angelo (Reggiani) and Georgia (Aimee) are suddenly promoted to the leading parts. Predictably, hero and heroine begin acting out their characters in real life as well as on stage. Not so predictably, their romance is challenged not by modern-day counterparts to the Montagues and the Capulets, but by the lovers' own heightened sensitivities to their social differences. Following the worldwide success of Lovers of Verona (it was released in Italy in 1949, then internationally in 1951), director Andre Cayatte was given what one historian has described as "carte blanche" in the French film industry; put simply, the man could do no wrong. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

For his first French film in nearly a decade (he'd spent the war years in Hollywood), filmmaker Julien Duvivier chose to adapt Les Fiançailles de Monsieur Hire, a novel by Georges Simenon. Panique, as Duvivier's version was titled, is a twisted tale of murder, subterfuge and revenge from "Beyond." Middle-aged loner Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) falls for his neighbor Alice (Viviane Romance) only to be framed for the murder commited by Alice's lover Alfred (Paul Bernard). The ending suggests that the actual culprits are going to get their well-deserved comeuppance, though exoneration comes a shade too late for the luckless Monsieur Hire. The Simenon book was filmed again in 1989, as the excellent Monsieur Hire, directed by Patrice Leconte, a film as bleakly pessimistic as the original, more in keeping with the style and tone of the literary source. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally Goupi Mains Rogues, this was the first new French feature film to be shown in the US since the end of WW2-though "new" was a relative term, inasmuch as the film was completed in 1943. The scene is a remote, rustic inn, managed by a scruffy family of peasants known as the Goupis. Practicing their own special brand of larceny, the Goupis fancy themselves as Runyonesque rogues, going so far as to bestow colorful nicknames upon themselves. The official head of the band is "Red Hands", played by Fernand Ledoux, but even he is answerable to the Goupis' patriarch, a 106-year-old named "The Emperor" (Maurice Schulz). Nearly plotless, Goupi Mains Rogues offers an unforgettable cast of characters and an abundance of authentic Gallic atmosphere. Picked up for American distribution by MGM, the film inexplicably disappeared from view within a few months; director Jacques Becker later claimed that MGM destroyed all the prints so that the film wouldn't compete with the studio's American-made productions, though this hardly seems to be the case. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's classic of French poetic realism stars Jean Gabin in one of his most famous roles as Francois, a rough, barrel-chested loner who hides out in his apartment awaiting for the police to arrive. Francois has killed a man in a crime of passion, the slimy lothario Valentin (Jules Berry). As he listens in the darkness of his Normandy apartment to the police sirens closing in and getting louder, he recalls the two women that he loved -- Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty) -- and the evil Valentin, who stole both their hearts and forced Francois into this melancholy plight. The film was later re-made in Hollywood as The Long Night. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Adapted from a novel by Jacques Prevert, Port of Shadows (Quai des brumes) stars that eternal victim of society, Jean Gabin. Having deserted the French army, Gabin ducks into a back alley and meets the lovely Michelle Morgan. He becomes her champion by taking on her evil "protectors" (Michel Simon, Pierre Brasseur), but loses his last bid for freedom--and his life--in the process. Irredeemably gloomy, Port of Shadows was a primary influence in the "film noir" genre pursued by Hollywood in the 1940s. The film was the first of three collaborations between writer Jacques Prevert and director Marcel Carne, culminating in the incomparable Les Enfants du Paradis (1944). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Emile Zola, La Bete Humaine weaves a mesmerizing tale of a tragic triangle. Train engineer Jean Gabin lusts after Simone Simon, the wife of his co-worker Fernand Ledoux. When Ledoux is in danger of losing his job, Simon offers herself to her husband's boss. In jealous pique, Ledoux kills the man. Gabin is witness to this, so Simon promises to reward him sexually if he'll keep quiet. As this romance intensifies, Simon tries to finagle Gabin into killing Ledoux. Sick of the whole sordid affair, Gabin murders Simon and then kills himself. When Fritz Lang remade La Bete Humaine as Human Desire in 1953, he carefully copied several of the best visual selections made by Jean Renoir in the original film; what he was not permitted to copy was the story itself, which had to be heavily laundered to accommodate Hollywood's censorship limitations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Adapted from a novel by acclaimed mystery writer Sébastien Japrisot, this French/Italian nailbiter stars Marlène Jobert as Mélancolie "Mellie" Mau, a young woman stalked by on a rainy afternoon by a mysterious stranger. The man eventually breaks in on Mellie while her husband is gone and rapes her. She grabs a shotgun and kills her assailant, dumping the body into the ocean. When the body is recovered, American military officer Dobbs (Charles Bronson) accuses Mellie of the murder -- and of stealing the U.S. Army money that the rapist had been carrying with him -- and that's only the beginning. The plot piles one twist upon another, deliriously confounding the audience at every turn. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide