Jean Tissier Movies

Simone Signoret plays the title role in this dark melodrama from writer/director Pierre Granier-Deferre. The Widow Couderc is based on a novel by Georges Simenon. Here Signoret (who also starred in Le Chat, an earlier Granier-Deferre adaptation of a Simenon novel) plays a bitterly independent middle-aged widow; she is a farmer who takes in a handsome young drifter, Jean (Alain Delon), who turns out to be recently released from prison. Jean does odd jobs for the woman, who lives with her elderly father-in-law, Henri (Jean Tissier), who pretends to be deaf when it suits him, and surreptitiously has an intimate relationship with Couderc. It's Henri's house, and when Jean moves in, it gives the widow's resentful sister-in-law, Françoise (Monique Chaumette), the excuse she's looking for to get Henri to leave the house so she can sell it. The widow and Jean have a modest dream of using an incubator to raise chicks and make a decent living, but their plans are further complicated when Françoise's promiscuous teenaged daughter, Félicie (Ottavia Piccolo, who would go on to star opposite Delon again in 1974's Zorro) comes around with her infant son. Félicie clearly has eyes for Jean, and to the consternation of the widow, who holds his fate in her hands, Jean has trouble resisting the younger woman's charms. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

This slapstick comedy concerns a college professor who stages a one-man vendetta against television. A hare-brained inventor has produced an aerosol spray that when applied effectively renders television antennae useless. Armand (Bourvil) enlists the help of a gymnast who scales heights to apply the spray to the receivers of his students to keep them from being polluted by the senseless medium. Soon the stuffy network executives launch an all-out search for the perpetrator as television revenues plummet. The police are soon called in to solve the mystery as the professor and his crew slowly move towards their ultimate goal of spraying the Eiffel tower. Armand demands an audience with the President and uses his threat to cut off all television to insure the meeting will take place. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this French farce, a lazy member of a family of down-and-out aristocrats refuses to help the destitute family survive. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Director Jean-Pierre Mocky takes jabs at the arrogant attitudes of the social and corporate elite in this routine satire about four men vying for control of a company. After the president of a dairy cooperative accidentally drowns, rather ignominiously, a quartet of vice-presidents start to compete for the top position. The ones who are married are aided and abetted by their wives, and their main combative tactic is to downgrade their opponents in any way they can. Meanwhile, a local woman is in love with them and seems to be the only citizen around not corrupted or venal. During this farcical process, everyone gets sent up -- from the Boy Scouts to retired military men. Homosexuality, ditsy women, and balding men are also subject to satire. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this romantic comedy, voluptuous Parisian model Sophie (Brigitte Bardot) is angered when she learns that her boyfriend Phillipe, a photographer, has been playing around with Barbara, an American heiress. Alain, another man, who has secretly loved her for years, suggests she get even by making love to him. Sophie has a better idea, she will follow her Corsican family traditions and simply shoot him. Alain warns the photographer who takes his new girl and flees for the Alps with Sophie and Alain in hot pursuit. In the scenic mountains, Sophie and the 'other' woman meet. Together they decide the men are not worth the effort and begin to despise them. This film contains the once-controversial "nude" dance scene with Bardot (who actually wore a body stocking). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A generally destructive atmosphere settles over this New Wave drama about a trio of youths looking to debunk hypocrisy wherever they find it. One of the early films by Claude Chabrol, the tale looks at the relationship of Ronald (Jean-Claude Brialy), Ambroisine (Bernadette Lafont), and Arthur (Charles Belmont). Arthur and Ronald have their differences, but the three join up to knock the air out of the wind-bags of pomposity, puncture the veneer of the gallingly elitist art world, and do combat in other arenas where people are less than honest. But Ronald has not forgotten an early offense he suffered at Arthur's hands, and soon the relationships in the trio start to change. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this espionage adventure, rival agents compete to be the first to steal highly classified information. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Better known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, this opulent French production is the second talkie version of Victor Hugo's famous novel. Buried under mounds of latex, Anthony Quinn does his best as the deformed bellringer Quasimodo, though he comes off more as a punchdrunk ex-pug than a literal interpretation of Hugo's tragic protagonist. Somewhat more effective within the film's framework is Gina Lollobrigida as gypsy dancing girl Esmerelda, whose friendship with Quasimodo motivates the story. As in previous adaptations of the Hugo novel, the villain Frolio (Alain Cluny), originally a priest, is given a less-controversial station in life: in this case, he is an alchemist rather than a man of the cloth. Otherwise, Notre Dame de Paris is one of the more faithful renditions of the original novel, even unto retaining Hugo's unhappy ending. When first released in the U.S. by Allied Artists, the film was titled Hunchback of Paris, to avoid a copyright conflict with RKO's 1939 adaptation of Hunchback of Notre Dame. ~ 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