Pierre Brasseur Movies

This film details a pretty girl's rise (with its attendant hazards) from obscurity to fame as she becomes a top model. Macedoine is played by Michele Mercier, popular for her appearances in the Angelique films. Her boss is Pierre Brasseur, and the strong supporting cast includes Bernard Fresson as the boyfriend. This is a French language film, with no dubbing or subtitles. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In this modernized adaptation of the much-filmed Alexandre Dumas story, The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes was sent to prison on a trumped-up charge of betraying the revolution, but he managed to escape to South American and earn a fortune. Now he his back in France and is attempting to bring some sort of justice to those who betrayed him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This unusual comic tragedy is filmed both in color and black-and-white and concerns the residents of the mythical island of Goto. Goto III (Pierre Brasseur) is the pompous dictator who allows children to witness public execution and has criminals fight it out in a theater to resolve their differences. Everyone is assigned a menial position, leading to full employment but aimless pursuits and no chance of social advancement. A man scheduled to fight on stage runs to the dictator's wife and begs for mercy. The man is given a job in the stable but ends up killing the local flycatcher. He tells the dictator that his wife is having an affair with a lieutenant. The informer is given a gun and ordered to kill the lieutenant, but he shoots the dictator instead and assumes power. After the new dictator professes his love for the unfaithful woman, she jumps onto the stage rather than subject herself to his amorous advances in this bizarre story of social isolation and compliance. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This talkative and unevenly paced feature finds Fou (Jean Lefebvre) the inventor of a gas that makes the users fall in love. He is chased by his boss, the police, and spies, who seek to secure the secret recipe for their own selfish purposes. A shadowy American underworld figure tries to intimidate the inventor. A half-hearted attempt at comedy tries to go along with the double dealing and trickery of the thin plot of the film. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

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

The French/Italian/British King of Hearts (Le Roi de Coeur) takes place during World War I, but it might as well have been the Vietnamese conflict so far as its youthful "core" audience was concerned. Overacting outrageously, Adolfo Celi plays British colonel Alexander MacBibenbrook, who orders mild-mannered Scotsman Pvt. Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) to undertake a life-or-death mission in a tiny French village. While evacuating the town, the Germans have left behind a time bomb that will explode at midnight; Plumpick must defuse that bomb. Upon his arrival in town, Plumpick discovers that it is far from deserted. A group of inmates from the local insane asylum, left behind during the evacuation, have claimed the village for their own. Knocked unconscious, Plumpick awakens to learn that he has been crowned "King of Hearts" by the gentle lunatics. None of the inmates pay any heed to Plumpick's warnings about impending doom, and when he attempts to lead them out of town, they are terrified at the prospect and scurry back to the "safety" of the village. Plumpick is finally able to render the bomb useless, whereupon the grateful inmates decide to stage a three-year celebration. When Plumpick tries to leave, he is kidnapped by the loonies at the behest of beautiful inmate Coquelicot (Geneviève Bujold), who has fallen in love with him. Bound and gagged, Plumpick watches helplessly as the Germans and the British troops kill each other off in comic-opera fashion. Finally set free, Plumpick weighs the horrible insanity of war against the more benign brand of lunacy represented by the inmates. The final image -- of a nude Plumpick carrying a birdcage, knocking on the doors of the asylum, and demanding that he be "accepted" -- was reproduced for the print ads of King of Hearts, effectively giving away the ending. An essential "date" film of the 1970s, King of Hearts was often released to campus movie houses in tandem with a pair of cult-favorite short subjects, the animated Bambi Meets Godzilla and Lenny Bruce's Thank You Masked Man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It is only with some reluctance that big-time hood Alphonse (Lino Ventura) allows himself to be persuaded that a major painting-theft planned by some formerly small-time gangsters is a good idea. He gives the idea his backing and support and winds up holding the bag for the crime as the others escape. On emerging from prison, he wreaks havoc on his betrayers, until a pretty girl stops him in his tracks. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Jo (Eddie Constantine) is a gangster who is down on his luck. His cronies avoid him like the plague because his presence brings them misfortune as well. Jo gets in plenty of fights as he tries to press his luck in the right direction. The role is a departure for American actor Constantine, who usually plays a phlegmatic, hard-drinking detective with suave assurance. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide