Daniel Boulanger Movies

Marie (Marlene Jobert) is a pretty female physician who attracts the strong romantic interest of two brothers during World War I in this uninspired drama by Gérard Vergez. The brothers meet her when she is on duty in Turkey -- one brother is stationed there and the other becomes her ambulance driver. Since Marie has just lost her husband in combat, she is not at first open to another relationship but finally begins an affair with the older brother. Jealousy rears its ugly head, and the younger and older brother start to compete for her favors. She is eventually separated from the two brothers after the oldest -- imprisoned for supposed sympathy with the Russians -- is sprung from jail. Marie is later imprisoned herself, and it will be a long time before she is able to find out the fate of those she knew during the days of combat, including the two brothers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An inventor and a small-time industrialist, Guillaume (Louis De Funes) has come up with something which will take advantage of air pollution and manages to confuse a delegation of Japanese into placing an order for 3,000 of the things. Just a few obstacles stand in the way of his delivering on the order. For one thing, he has no factory in which to make them. He decides to dedicate all the extra space in his house to building them, though perhaps he should have told his wife (Annie Girardot) first, because she seems to have been made unhappy by these developments. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

After many years of managing a trucking concern for his lover Dominique (Marie Dubois), Savin (Yves Montand) is planning to leave her for the girl who is bearing his child. Hysterical, Dominique threatens suicide then goes to a meeting between Savin and the girl and tries everything she can think of to get them to break up, from bribery to abuse. Frustrated by her failure to budge the two, she climbs onto a parapet overlooking a cliff, and falls to her death. Though they did not have a hand in her fall, Savin insists that they lie about the encounter. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A tough but honest cop must clear his name after a corrupt colleague implicates him in a murder in this French thriller. Ferrot (Yves Montand) is a hard-as-nails police detective who is attracted to a beautiful woman named Sylvia (Stefania Sandrelli). Sylvia, however, is having an affair with Ganay (Francois Perier), who happens to be Ferrot's superior on the force; Ganay happens to be married to Therese (Simone Signoret), who is handicapped. Sylvia is found murdered, and Ferrot is assigned to investigate; Ferrot is convinced that Ganay killed Sylvia because she wanted to end their relationship, but to his dismay, Ferrot discovers that the killer has placed a number of false clues that point the blame toward Ferrot. Police Python 357's brisk cutting earned editor Marie-Josephe Yoyotte a Cesar Award (the French Oscar). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In 1950s France, an old peasant patriarch was tried for the murder of a family of British campers. At the time, the case was a cause célèbre all over France. This movie made the old case famous all over again. At the time of his capture, Dominici (Jean Gabin) was adamant that he committed the crime. During the trial, however, he retracted his confession and gave evidence that pointed to his two sons and another person. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Imagine, for a moment, that a town in the American Old West was founded by and for French people, and that two of the sexiest women in modern times were rivals for control of that town. In Les Petroleuses, Frenchy (Brigitte Bardot) and Maria (Claudia Cardinale) are at war over an oil lease. Maria and her gang of train-robbing brothers got a poor haul on their last robbery. The only thing they found was one measly case with a geological map indicating that a nearby farm was a likely oil-drilling site. It's too bad for Maria that Frenchy has the deed to the farm. While the two of them feud over this and other issues, the bumbling local sheriff is desperately trying to learn French, so that he can woo one of these extraordinary dames. This film sounds as though it was intended as a comedy, but it was made as a perfectly straightforward, serious Western. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

In the fourth installment of François Truffaut's Antoine Doniel series, this romantic comedy shows how Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud) went from being a mischievous boy to an adorably charming young man of 26. Domicile Conjugal begins with Antoine settling down with Christine (Claude Jade), his girlfriend from the previous film, Baisers volés. He finds himself accepted and loved by his wife and her family, so the young couple move in to an apartment building together. They live in a lively neighborhood of interesting characters, such as the old man who never leaves and the opera singer who fights with his wife. Antoine finds work as a florist painting roses, while Christine makes a living by teaching violin lessons. After he gets involved in an accidental fire at the florist's, he gets a new job with an American corporation where he steers radio-controlled boats around a pond all day. A big change occurs when Christine becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby boy, while Antoine grows increasingly distant. Eventually, he becomes infatuated with a Japanese girl, Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer), resulting in some shifts in lifestyle. The fifth and final Antoine Doniel film L'Amour en fuite was released in 1979, picking up the story with Antoine after he reaches his thirties. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

An eccentric family in need of money turns their crumbling chateau into a hotel in order to renovate the old place. Repairs are made to the aging structure, but they only have one guest and too many empty rooms. The young granddaughter, with the help of her mechanic boyfriend, manages to make sure all the cars that stop at his garage are in need of overnight repairs. The hotel business soon improves as tourists are stranded and forced to seek lodging at the chateau. Cesar (Yves Montand) leads a trio of bank robbers to the hotel. Posing as aristocratic nobles, the crooks hide out in the splendor of the old house, charming the ladies and winning at poker games to pass the time. The mother of the family offers herself as a lure to draw more guests, who often take advantage of her adulterous yearnings. The hotel business does very well as the family saves their ancestral home after a dubious start in this romantic comedy. ~ Dan Pavlides, 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

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

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

Arthur Lempereur (Jean-Paul Belmondo of Breathless) is a globe-hopping millionaire, engaged to Alice (Valérie Lagrange), a beautiful young woman. As the film opens, Arthur has cut the break line on his fine automobile and proceeds to drive it off a cliff. This, we learn, is his ninth suicide attempt in the past week. Arthur is bored with his easy life. Even learning from his accountant, Biscotton (Darry Cowl), that he's ruined doesn't perk him up. On a cruise to Hong Kong, his friend Mr. Goh (Valéry Inkijinoff) comes up with a solution to Arthur's woes: "Adversity carries the chance for happiness," he explains to the despondent young man. Goh convinces Arthur to take out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy, with Goh and Alice as the beneficiaries. The policy will expire in one month. Goh then tells Arthur that his life is in danger. He may be killed at any moment. Arthur soon realizes that he's being followed. He's not so eager to be murdered. Arthur and his valet, Leon (Jean Rochefort of The Hairdresser's Husband), frantically search for Goh to ask him to call off the hit. At one point, Arthur ducks into a nightclub to dodge his pursuers, and instantly falls for Alexandrine (Ursula Andress), the stripper on-stage. Alexandrine is fascinated by the ways men try to manipulate women and assumes that Arthur's story about hired killers is a bizarre ruse. All the more determined to survive the month, the bumbling Arthur engages in a fierce battle for his life. Up to His Ears is both a loose adaptation of a Jules Verne story (Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine) and a hyped-up return to the form of director Philippe de Broca's previous action comedy, That Man from Rio, which also starred Belmondo. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide