Jean Delannoy Movies

The wealthy old lady (Françoise Rosay) in this French comic crime caper is largely unaware of the machinations of her servants and relatives to arrange to be the beneficiaries of her will. She is completely in the dark about their many unsuccessful efforts to bring her life to a premature conclusion. Her nurse (Anny Duperey) has ambitions along these lines and is in love with the woman's disinherited nephew (Bruno Pradal). She seems a better sort than the chauffeur (Philippe Clay) and some of the old lady's other relatives, who would stop at nothing. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Originally titled Le Soleil des Voyous, Action Man teams two veteran international film stars: France's Jean Gabin and America's Robert Stack. Gabin plays an ex-criminal, now reformed and ensconsed in a respectable executive job. Stack plays an unreconstituted crook who wants to inveigle Gabin into one last caper. The crime goes off like clockwork, but drug dealers who want a piece of the action kidnap Gabin's wife Suzanne Flon and hold her for ransom. Stack ends up sacrificing his own life to save those of Gabin and Flon. Based on a novel by J. M. Flynn Action Man is the sort of bread-and-butter fare that director Jean Delannoy, famed for his earlier spiritual classics La Symphonie Pastorale (1946), Le Jeux Sons Faits (1947) and Diary of a Country Priest (1950), dealt with in his twilight years. In certain gamier markets, Action Man was released as Leather and Nylon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Leopold (Paul Meurisse) is an attorney who gets involved with underworld thugs trying to hijack a truck containing a shipment of gold in this uneven crime comedy. He decides to kidnap everyone involved, especially when he falls for the felonious female Agnes (Genevieve Page). Leopold gets off easy when Agnes turns out to be an undercover cop. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

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

Upper-crust intrigue, murder, and passions are mixed together in this routine, slow-paced murder mystery by Jean Delannoy. A wily photographer has been murdered, and there are several suspects. The victim was a blackmailer, and his target was a wealthy family headed by the rich and ruthless J.K. (George Sanders), now married to a woman of opulent means. It turns out that the blackmailer was the lover of J.K.'s former wife Madeleine (Annie Girardot in one of her early starring roles), and J.K. himself seems not to have forgotten Madeleine in spite of their divorce. Naturally, he is one of the primary suspects in the case. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Love and the Frenchwoman (La Francaise et L'Amour) concentrates on the nature of love by illustrating seven separate aspects of the emotion. In "Childhood," 9-year old Pierre-Jean Vaillard suffers a traumatic experience when he takes his parents' "cabbage patch" theory of conception too literally. In "Adolescence," a little girl (Annie Sinigalla) constructs an elaborate fantasy world on the occasion of her first kiss. "Virginity" is a study in frustration, as betrothed couple Valerie Lagrange and Pierre Michel agonizingly await their wedding-night consummation of their ardor. "Marriage" finds a union ending almost before it begins as a pair of newlyweds (Marie-Jose Nat and Claude Rich) bicker all the way to their honeymoon rendezvous. "Adultery" allows husband Paul Meurisse the opportunity to calmly provide an object lesson to his wife's lover Jean-Paul Belmondo. In "Divorce", a couple (Annie Girardot and Francois Pierer) find that it's impossible to have a "civilized" breakup. And in "A Woman Alone," bigamist Robert Lamoreaux meets his Waterloo in the forms of Martine Carol and Sylvia Montfort. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jean Gabin once again stars as that other famous French detective Inspector Maigret in this murder mystery that is less a mystery than it is a psychological exercise. When the apparently slow but actually clear-headed Maigret returns to the small town where he grew up, he is called upon to help out a Countess (Valentine Tessier) who is threatened by someone unidentified. As Maigret reminisces and goes back over his past, including his romantic interest in the Countess, she ends up murdered and he has a new case on his hands. Rather than go the way of lab tests and photos of the crime scene, Maigret starts to analyze the underlying emotional currents in the townspeople themselves. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The French-made Inspector Maigret offers one of the best-ever Maigrets in the form of veteran tough guy Jean Gabin, who played the character three times throughout the 1950s. In Maigret Sets a Trap, the inspector tackles the case of a psychopathic serial killer. The female victims have all been stripped and stabbed but none of the women was raped. Putting two and two together, Maigret determines that the killer was motivated by rage and frustration rather than sex. Maigret Sets a Trap avoids sensationalism in favor of slow-building suspense. Originally released in the U.S. as Inspector Maigret, the movie was retitled Woman-Bait. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though nearly as lavish as the 1938 MGM film of the same name, the 1955 French historical epic Marie Antoinette is not nearly as coherent or entertaining. Michele Morgan stars as the Austrian princess who becomes the last Queen of France in waning years of the 18th century. Jacques Morel costars as King Louis XVIII, Antoinette's slow-witted, ineffectual husband, while Richard Todd is the dashing European ambassador who briefly brings romance into the heroine's life. The episodic screenplay seldom sticks to the point long enough to detail the reasons behind the fall of the French aristocracy and the ultimate execution of the royal family. In addition, Michele Morgan is a bit too frosty and distant to warrant audience sympathy. Marie Antoinette was filmed simulatenously in French- and English-language versions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This film is comprised of three vignettes focusing upon women and war. The first episode, set in WW II, chronicles the sad journey of an American woman who goes to Italy to bring her husband's body home. In Italy she makes a heart-wrenching discovery: he had been living with an Italian family and had impregnated their daughter and sees the child. The second story chronicles the abandonment of Joan of Arc, by her king and her soldiers. The third episode is a humorous adaptation of "Lysistrata," the Greek play where Athenian wives refused to sleep with their husbands until they stopped making war. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The French/Italian Obsession was based on a novel by American suspense writer William Irish (aka Cornell Woolrich). Michelle Morgan and Raf Vallone are carnival performers, touring the provinces with a successful trapeze act. Though Morgan knows that Vallone is on the lam from a murder charge, she marries him anyway. When Vallone is sidelined by an injury, he is replaced by handsome young aerialist Jean Gaven, an unsuspecting friend of the man Vallone killed. Gaven is himself bumped off before long, prompting the disillusioned Morgan to turn over Vallone to the authorities. As it turns out, we're in Postman Always Rings Twice territory: Vallone didn't kill Gaven, but by the time the guilty party confesses, the police have confirmed that Vallone was responsible for the earlier murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide