Martine Carol Movies

This drama centers upon a female thief and her robber band as they try to hide out from the cops on a deserted island. Their only shelter is an abandoned mansion. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This somewhat verbose, standard comic thriller involves one sharp gangster nicknamed Le Dabe (Jean Gabin) pitted against three others as they work on a counterfeiting operation. Le Dabe has just been cooling his heels in the hot tropics and has now resurfaced in France where he hooks up with the counterfeiting trio. Together, they print out millions in fake Dutch guilders, but along the way, the three friends scheme to double-cross Le Dabe as soon as their operation is completed. They obviously underestimate the man. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

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, Rovi

In this drama, set in Barcelona, a former spy desperately searches the Spanish city for his friend who was attacked by gangsters seeking to pick his brain about gold. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A familiar plot and a lovable, sexual, somewhat ditsy female are at the core of this frothy comedy-crime drama found in various incarnations in movies of this type. This is a lesser sequel to the more successful Nathalie. The Nathalie of the title is a lithesome, big-hearted model played by Martine Carol (wife of French director Christian-Jacque, who ceded her position to Brigitte Bardot as France's top sex-symbol). Nathalie inadvertently gets involved with a group of spies out to steal the secret of an atomic engine. The usual inept Inspector (Felix Marten) is on the case, but in the end Nathalie manages to outwit the Inspector in thwarting the spies, not that difficult a task, apparently. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This film is a 1959 WWII drama that focuses on members of a German bomb squad. The fatalistic soldiers pool part of their paychecks into a fund that the last surviving member of the squad will get to keep. One by one, the men meet their deaths until only two remain: Karl Wirtz (Jeff Chandler) and Eric Koertner (Jack Palance). The two men vie for the affections of Margot Hofer (Martine Carol), which adds to the growing tension between them. In the film's climax, Wirtz and Koertner are summoned to dismantle a huge bomb, which adds tension to an already stressful situation between the two of them. Director Robert Aldrich pays meticulous attention to the details of bomb deactivation. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Two well-known actors (Martine Carol and Vittorio De Sica) star in this standard melodrama by Alberto Cavalcanti about two people out for adventure and money in Venice. As they pursue the goals they think they want, they discover a blossoming of romantic love. Next, they have to choose between continuing their life on the edge, or a less-financially comfortable life safely together. Their decision, in the end, seems like a foregone conclusion. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In one of her few English-speaking appearances, French leading lady Martine Carol plays Tracy, the daughter of a political prisoner. Tracy hires soldier-of-fortune Carson (Van Johnson) to smuggle her into Albania by way of Greece. Once behind the Iron Curtain, Tracy and Carson enlist the aid of a group of freedom-loving Albanian outlaws, led by Trifon (Herbert Lom). The final third of the film details the desperate escape attempt involving Tracy, her father and Carson. Filmed in Spain and released in the U.S. by Van Johnson's home studio of MGM, Action of the Tiger was based on a novel by James Wellard. Watch for Sean Connery in a barroom-brawl sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Les Carnets du Major Thompson was the final film effort of producer-director-writer Preston Sturges. Once a Hollywood wunderkind of the 1940s, Sturges had fallen on hard times in the 1950s, and was forced to finance and film his last picture in France. Jack Buchanan plays the title character, a crusty, middle-aged British widow who falls in love with, then marries, alluring Frenchwoman Martine (Martine Carol). The scandal of near-international dimensions erupts, culminating in a comic contretemps over whether Major and Mrs. Thompson's child will be brought up as a proper Englishman or a "swinging" Frenchman. Sturges struggles manfully to recapture the satiric spirit of his earlier classics (The Palm Beach Story, Miracle of Morgan's Creek et. al.), but it is clear that he has lost his touch. Les Carnets du Major Thompson is better known by its American title, The French They are a Funny Race. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Razzle-dazzle showman Michael Todd hocked everything he had to make this spectacular presentation of Jules Verne's 1872 novel Around the World in 80 Days, the second film to be lensed in the wide-screen Todd-AO production. Nearly as fascinating as the finished product are the many in-production anecdotes concerning Todd's efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of local authorities in order to cadge the film's round-the-world location shots--not to mention the wheeling and dealing to convince over forty top celebrities to appear in cameo roles. David Niven heads the huge cast as ultra-precise, supremely punctual Phileas Fogg, who places a 20,000-pound wager with several fellow members of London Reform Club, insisting that he can go around the world in eighty days (this, remember, is 1872). Together with his resourceful valet Passepartout (Cantinflas), Fogg sets out on his world-girdling journey from Paris via balloon. Meanwhile, suspicion grows that Fogg has stolen his 20,000 pounds from Bank of England. Diligent Inspector Fix (Robert Newton) is sent out by the bank's president (Robert Morley) to bring Fogg to justice. Hopscotching around the globe, Fogg pauses in Spain, where Passepartout engages in a comic bullfight (a specialty of Cantinflas). In India, Fogg and Passepartout rescue young widow Princess Aouda (Shirley MacLaine, in her third film) from being forced into committing suicide so that she may join her late husband. The threesome visit Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco, and the Wild West. Only hours short of winning his wager, Fogg is arrested by the diligent Inspector Fixx. Though exonerated of the bank robbery charges, he has lost everything--except the love of the winsome Aouda. But salvation is at hand when Passepartout discovers that, by crossing the International Date Line, there's still time to reach the Reform Club. Will they make it? See for yourself. Among the film's 46 guest stars, the most memorable include Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Jose Greco, Frank Sinatra, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton, Buster Keaton, John Mills, and Beatrice Lillie. All were paid in barter--Ronald Colman did his brief bit for a new car. Newscaster Edward R. Murrow provides opening narration, and there's a tantalizing clip from Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902). Offering a little something for everyone, Around the World in 80 Days is nothing less than an extravaganza, and it won 5 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Cinematography. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Max Ophuls' final film (and his only movie in color) is a cinematic tour-de-force masquerading as a biography, in this case a dazzling fictionalized life of the notorious 19th century dancer, actress, and courtesan. A still beautiful, but weary and disillusioned (and, as we later discover, ailing) Lola Montes (Martine Carol) is first seen as the featured attraction at a seedy American circus, appearing at the center of a series of various tableaux depicting the scandalous events for which she is known. With a strangely sincere yet sinister and manipulative ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) providing color commentary, some of it very ironic on two or more levels, the movie flows between these staged recreations in the circus and the events as recalled by the subject. In a series of dissolves, the film takes us through her girlhood with her mother, interrupted when her mother's lover (Ivan Desni) becomes attached to the daughter; her unhappy marriage and its aftermath; romances with composer Franz Liszt (Will Quadflieg), abduction by a Russian general (in the arms of Cossacks, no less); her affairs across the landscape of Europe with men great and notable; her thwarted aspirations as a dancer; and her romance with King Ludwig I (Anton Walbrook) of Bavaria, which led to her being made Countess of Landsfeld, and, later, to his abdication. The gracefulness of Ophuls' cyclical narrative, and the transitions between the recalled elegance of the locales, and the people with whom her romances and affairs took place, and the seediness of the circus -- where she is also compelled, in the course of performing, to perform as an aerialist -- were lost on viewers in 1955. And for many years the movie only existed in a version re-cut without the director's approval, in which the story was presented in linear fashion. It was only in the 1960's, long after Ophuls' death, that efforts were made to restore the original structure, and in 2008 the movie's original Technicolor luster was restored to its full depth and richness. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

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, Rovi