Michel Bouquet Movies
Putting his plans for a medical career in abeyance to work as a baker and bank clerk, Paris-born Michel Bouquet began taking acting lessons during the war years. Firmly established as a stage performer, Bouquet made his first film, Monsieur Vincent, in 1947. Years of slugging away in secondary film roles paid off when, in the early 1960s, Bouquet was "rediscovered" by such New Wave filmmakers as Francois Truffault. Claude Chabrol. Michel Bouquet has become a favorite purveyor of complex character roles in Truffault's The Bride Wore Black (1967) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969), and in Chabrol's La Femme Infidele (1969), Just Before Nightfall (1971) and Cop Au Vin (1985) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This Francois Truffaut thriller is based ona novel by William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich), whose books had been adapted by Alfred Hitchcock on many previous occasions. Jeanne Moreau stars as a woman whose fiancé is nastily murdered by five men. Utilizing a series of disguises, the cool-customer Moreau tracks down all five culprits, sexually enslaves them, and then engineers their deaths. The ominous musical score was written by Bernard Herrmann, another frequent Hitchcock collaborator. The Bride Wore Black was initially released in France as La Mariee etait en Noir. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeanne Moreau, Claude Rich, (more)
Stéphane Audran plays the title character, Hélène Desvallées, the bored wife of insurance executive Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet). Charles suspects Hélène of playing the field, so he has a private detective locate his wife's lover, author Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet). Confronting Victor, Charles tries to adopt an air of indifference, but the conversation ends with the husband bludgeoning the author to death and then calmly disposing of the evidence. When Hélène is questioned about Victor's murder, she discovers on her own that her husband is guilty. Instead of turning him in, Hélène is so thrilled that Charles cares so deeply about her that she is more in love with him than ever before. The Unfaithful Wife was directed by Claude Chabrol, the then real-life husband of leading lady Stéphane Audran. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, (more)
- 1967
Lamiel (Anna Karina) is a poor orphan girl who climbs her way to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. A doctor (Michel Bouquet) lives vicariously through Anna as he oversees the progress of his female protégé. Lamiel finds love with a young thief who steals into her bedroom after her marriage to a penniless count (Jean-Clause Brialy), and the two experience a romantic rendezvous of forbidden love after Lamiel goes from being a poor peasant woman to living a life of comparative luxury. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, (more)
In this complex spy-thriller, the US radar installations in Greece are suddenly jammed and a NATO security agent is killed. The prime suspect is his own wife, who is innocent. She investigates on her own to prove it and ends up entangled in an espionage conspiracy. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maurice Ronet, Jean Seberg, (more)
- 1965
Tigre (Roger Hanin) is a French undercover agent sent to stop ex-Nazis in their attempt to take over Latin America. He is captured and flogged by henchmen for the group who assist in political revolutions with men and money. Marilyn Monroe-clone Margaret Lee co-stars in this routine spy thriller with plenty of violent fights and comic-book style action. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Roger Hanin, Roger Dumas, (more)
- 1965
When a French secret agent is set the task of securing a shipment of sunken gold somewhere off Martinique, he finds that he first must outwit a band of rebels who are also after it. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- 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)
- 1959
Feeling hamstrung and confined by Hollywood, writer/director Robert Siodmak returned to Europe to make most of his latter-day films. Produced in France, Magnificent Sinner stars Curt Jurgens as Czar Alexander II, with Romy Schneider as schoolgirl Katja. The Czar takes Katja as his mistress, elevating her to princess status. The romance leads to court intrigue, and is instrumental in Alexander's ultimate assassination. Magnificent Sinner was originally released as Katia; it was a remake of a 1938 French film of the same name, which starred Danielle Darieaux. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Romy Schneider, Curd Jürgens, (more)
Night and Fog represents the peak of director Alain Resnais' activities as a short-subject filmmaker. Framed as a documentary, the film is an unsettling view of life inside the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. As he would in his later features (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad et. al.) Resnais toys with chronology, with memory becoming present reality and vice versa at several critical junctures. Jean Cayrol, later responsible for the script of Resnais' Muriel (1962), wrote the narration for Night and Fog. The film was originally released in France as Nuit et Brouillard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1952
The short stories of Guy de Maupassant enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1950s, thanks in great part to the Max Ophuls production Le Plaisir. In Trois Femmes, three De Maupassant stories are dramatized, each conveying the central theme of women falling in love. In the first, a black female carnival entertainer causes an uproar when she falls in love with a white soldier. In the second, a young bride is pressured into having a baby to collect a huge inheritance. And in the final episode, a pregnant girl is "adopted" and protected by a small circle of friends. In standard De Maupassant fashion, each of the three stories in Trois Femmes is capped by a surprise twist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jacques Duby, René Lefèvre, (more)
- 1949
In the traditions of Jean Renoir and Jean Cocteau, Pattes Blanches is a heady mixture of stark realism and fairytale artifice. The title translates to "white spats", said spats being worn constantly by the wealthy, eccentric Fernand Ledoux. Already an object of derision from the villagers, Ledoux is in danger of physical assault when he begins making advances towards the girl friend of the town's saloon keeper. The lady in question is played by Suzy Delair, a vibrant actress who (as proven in this film) should not be judged by her lackluster performance in Laurel and Hardy's Utopia (1951). Pattes Blanches is a freeflowing adaptation of a play by Jean Anouilh. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fernand Ledoux, Suzy Delair, (more)
Pierre Fresnay stars as St. Vincent De Paul in this reverent but realistic French biopic. The film traces "Monsieur Vincent's" progress from his days of forced servitude in Algiers to his entry into the priesthood, culminating with his Herculean efforts on behalf of the ill and destitute in early 17th-century France. Featured in the huge cast are Aime Clairimond as Cardinal de Richelieu and Germaine Dermoz as Queen Anne of Austria. Made under the most trying of conditions over a two-year period, Monsieur Vincent remains the chef d'ouevre of director Maurice Cloche. The film won France's Grand Prix award in 1947, and the following year was honored with Hollywood's "best foreign picture" Oscar. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pierre Fresnay, Lise Delamare, (more)
