"Actor: Alain"

• 3 Classic Wartime Dramas - A Town Like Alice / Carve Her Name With Pride / This Happy Breed | DVD | (20/10/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  A Town Like Alice - Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch star in this moving story about a party of women compelled to trek through the Malayan jungle during World War II as no Japanese office will take responsibility for their care. Based on Nevil Shute's best selling novel the film tells how the women come to terms with their hardships and how they are befriended by a tough Australian prisoner of war who dreams of returning to his home town of Alice Springs... Carve Her Name With Pride - The moving and dramatic story of Violette Szabo (McKenna) a courageous WW2 secret agent who was captured in northern France... Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring true life story of Violette Szabo. During World War II Violette (Virgina McKenna) volunteers to parachute into France as a secret agent to aid a Resistance group. Her mission successful she joins the Resistance where she stays until captured by the Germans. Tortured by the Gestapo for information she refuses to betray her comrades... Directed by Lewis Gilbert Carve Her Name With Pride is a moving tale about the endurance of the human spirit in even the most adverse circumstances. This Happy Breed - 'This Happy Breed' is a splendidly acted classic portraying how an ordinary British family lived between the wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the suburbs. The inhabitants of 17 Sycamore Road are ordinary people with their irritable in-laws their just-plain-folks camaraderie and their unshakeable belief that no matter how hard the times are Mother England is forged of good stock and common sense will somehow prevail. This is a wonderful adaptation of Noel Coward's play written by Anthony Havelock-Allan and directed by David Lean who brought us the critically acclaimed classic 'Brief Encounter'.

• The Sicilian Clan | DVD | (18/06/2007) from £4.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (50.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The murders in Paris! The robbery in Rome! The double-cross in New York! Two criminals join forces to steal millions of pounds worth of jewellery which are to be shown to the public in Venice. The heist is to take place on an aircraft.

• Scorpio | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £15.23   |  Saving you £-2.24 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Though not quite a classic, director Michael Winner's Scorpio is still an underrated espionage thriller that was well attuned to the political cynicism of its time. Burt Lancaster plays Cross, a CIA operative who dates back to the agency's earliest days as the OSS. Scorpio (Alain Delon) is a protégé of Cross, and one of Cross's best friends in a netherworld where everyone's allegiances, personal and political, are in question. Higher-ups within the intelligence agency decide that Cross knows too much and is better off eliminated; at first, Scorpio refuses the job until the CIA frames him on a phoney narcotics bust and coerces him into the assignment. The two men play a game of global cat-and-mouse as Cross consorts with his Russian counterparts--fellow ageing dinosaurs in a young man's game. Cross's links with the Russians go back to the days of the Spanish Civil War and the time when Cross was given the ironic label of "premature anti-Fascist" by the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The incredibly convoluted plot is rife with double-crosses and reverse double-crosses, in an environment in which nothing is quite as it seems and no one is to be trusted. Winner infuses enough energy and excitement into the film's many action segments to make Scorpio worthy of comparison to John Frankenheimer's best political thrillers. The director also throws in several curveballs, such as the zither music during a meeting in a Vienna café (shades of The Third Man) and the preposterous device of disguising Lancaster as an African-American priest. The best line must be "I want Cross, and I want him burned!" --Jerry Renshaw

• L'Eclisse | Blu Ray | (28/09/2015) from £11.99   |  Saving you £11.00 (91.74%)   |  RRP £22.99

  L’Eclisse was the final film in Antonioni’s informal trilogy on contemporary malaise (following L’Avventura and La Notte), a series of films that redefined the concept of narrative cinema. Filmed in sumptuous black and white, and full of scenes of lush, strange beauty, it tells the story of Vittoria (the beautiful Monica Vitti - Red Desert - Antonioni’s partner at the time), a young woman who leaves her older lover (Francisco Rabal – Viridiana), then drifts into a relationship with a confident, ambitious young stockbroker (Alain Delon – Le Cercle Rouge). But this base narrative is the starting point for much, much more, including an analysis of the city as a place of estrangement and alienation and an implicit critique of colonialism. Using the architecture of Rome - old and new - as a backdrop for this doomed affair, Antonioni achieves the apotheosis of his style in this return to the theme that preoccupied him the most: the difficulty of forming true connections amidst the meaninglessness of the modern world. The final shot remains one of the greatest endings in cinema.

• Lost Command | DVD | (10/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Anthony Quinn gives one of his best performances as Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Raspeguy a hard-headed officer determined to become a hero at any cost in this dramatic war saga. With strong technical merit and outstanding performances throughout 'Lost Command' vividly illustrates man's inhumanity to man for the sake of personal glory...

• Story Of O | DVD | (30/10/2000) from £14.39   |  Saving you £3.60 (25.02%)   |  RRP £17.99

  This film is based on the hugely successful S&M novel that has been read by millions of people worldwide. The author Pauline Reage tells the story of a beautiful young woman known only as 'O' who is taken by her boyfriend Rene to a chateau just outside Paris. There 'O' is trained in bondage and sexual perversion. 'O' is deeply in love with Rene and in order to prove her love she allows herself to be subjected to all kinds of degradation and abuse. Finally, Rene discharges a personal debt by transferring possession of 'O' to his stepbrother Sir Stephen. In the film which produced in 1975, Just Jaeckin the director explores the cruel world in which 'O' finds herself. A world of sado-masochism and kinky and bizarre sexual practices. The film was refused certification when it was originally submitted, has now been passed uncut by the BBFC.Also available in a Box Set together with the novel.

• Red Sun (Cult Classics) | DVD | (09/09/2024) from £9.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Student Services | DVD | (08/07/2013) from £39.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Despite holding a part-time job, college freshman Laura (the stunning Deborah Francois of The Page Turner) is unable to make ends meet. Having run out of options and desperate for cash, she answers an Internet ad: Joe, 57, seeks female student for tender moments. One hundred Euros an hour. Just this once, she promises herself. Three days later, Laura is in a hotel room with Joe, and the downward spiral begins. By her second customer, however, Laura already wants to stop. Will she be able to? According to one student association, there are 40,000 young women in France who work as occasional prostitutes, including the anonymous author of the notorious memoir on which this film is based. From uncompromising writer-director Emmanuelle Bercot (Clement), Student Services is as compelling as it is shocking.

• The Science Of Sleep | DVD | (28/06/2013) from £3.38   |  Saving you £13.37 (825.31%)   |  RRP £14.99

  A man held captive by the people in his dreams tries to wake himself up and take control of his own imaginings.

• The Louis Malle Collection | Blu Ray | (16/10/2017) from £54.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Includes the following classics: Lift to the Scaffold Les amants Zazie dans le Metro Le Feu Follet Le souffle au coeur Lacombe, Lucien Black Moon My Dinner with Andre Au Revoir les Enfants Milou en Mai

• Category 8 | DVD | (13/11/2017) from £6.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Christ Stopped At Eboli | DVD | (15/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  An intellectual painter turned doctor Carlo Levi is exiled to a remote region of Southern Italy near Eboli a place were according to local myth Christ would venture no further than in his journey south. Over time Levi begins to integrate with the local community...

• Drum | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Set in 1860 in New Orleans this is the story of Drum the son of a plantation owner's beautiful wife and her black slave. Based on the novel by Kyole Onstott.

• Millionenraub in San Francisco / Preisgekrönter Gangsterfilm mit Starbesetzung (Pidax Film-Klassiker) | DVD | (06/05/2022) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• Emmanuelle | DVD | (23/04/2007) from £8.99   |  Saving you £7.00 (77.86%)   |  RRP £15.99

  When Emmanuelle was released in 1974 it caused uproar in France. President Pompidou tried to ban it, effectively catapulting it into the year's "must see" category of films and into history as the point at which soft-core pornography dallied with the mainstream and conceived a new kind of arty erotic cinema with equal appeal to both sexes. As a result it acquired the patina of a classic of its kind and spawned a whole series of sequels. Based on Emmanuelle Arsan's erotic novel and dubbed "the longest caress in French cinema", it tells the slight tale of a young expatriate woman in Thailand, encouraged by her husband--and practically everyone she meets--to explore her sexuality through free love and the pursuit of fantasy. It also launched the career of Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel in the iconic title role. Never mind that the original character was Eurasian. Kristel's European good looks and lissom figure earned her a unique kind of big screen immortality. It's dreamily filmed by director Just Jaeckin and director of photography Richard Suzuki, with lots of simulated, soft-focus sex, much of it between Emmanuelle and her female conquests. Only an unpleasant rape scene in which she is the prize in a Thai boxing match, acknowledges that sexual fantasy has its dark side. The picture survives as a period piece from a more innocent time: the men, with their dated moustaches and tight pants, lack only medallions, and there's some deathless dialogue: "You like it [masturbation], don't you?" "Well yes, but I haven't had breakfast..." Even so, parts of Emmanuelle, made in the pre-AIDS era, have an almost quaint charm. True, the languorous escapades of the jetsetters are juxtaposed with rough images of the Thai sex trade, revealing among other things exciting new ways to smoke a cigarette. But Kristel's insouciance is often hypnotic. On the DVD: Presented in 16:9 widescreen format, this release effectively replicates the original cinema viewing experience, down to the dreadful dubbed dialogue. Whichever language you watch it in, the actors' lips move in a world of their own and the Dolby Digital soundtrack only emphasises the muffled quality. Only Pierre Bachelet's "plinky-plonky" theme comes across with any clarity. Extras are limited to the original theatrical trailer.--Piers Ford

• Silent Night | DVD | (03/11/2014) from £7.09   |  Saving you £-0.10 (N/A%)   |  RRP £6.99

  Based on a wartime true story. Linda Hamilton stars as Elizabeth, a German woman spending Christmas with her young son in the Ardennes. However, her plans are interrupted by 3 escaped American POWs seeking sanctuary. When the Germans chasing them also turn up, all parties are forced to spend the night together and discover that they have more in common than they thought.

• Hamlet - Ambroise Thomas | DVD | (06/09/2004) from £16.69   |  Saving you £1.30 (7.79%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Staged at the Gran Teatro Del Liceu in Barcelona October 2003 this opera - written by Ambroise Thomas - is performed by the Symphony Orchestra And Chorus of the Gran Teatro Del Liceu; conducted by Bertrand De Billy.

• Un Flic | DVD | (25/06/2007) from £8.99   |  Saving you £9.00 (100.11%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The French Crime Classic From The True Master Of The Genre Coleman (Alain Delon) is a burned-out detective who has seen too much pain. His friend Simon (Richard Crenna) is a brilliant thief who fears no law. Between them is the beautiful woman (Catherine Deneuve) they both love. But when Simon plans the ultimate heist of a train full of mob money the two men find themselves hurtling towards a final showdown of fate friendship and betrayal. From the stunning opening bank robbery sequence through its powerful performances Un Flic is the work of a true master. This is the final film by the legendary Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai Bob Le Flambeur) renowned as the creator of the modern gangster movie and credited as a major influence on such directors as John Woo and Quentin Tarantino.

• I Do | DVD | (25/02/2008) from £9.60   |  Saving you £8.39 (87.40%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Luis is a happy-go-lucky bachelor whose life is about to get turned upside down by the his mother and five sisters who insist that he take a wife and settle down.

• Le Cercle Rouge | DVD | (02/03/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Master thief Corey is fresh out of prison. But instead of toeing the line of law-abiding freedom he finds his steps leading back to the shadowy world of crime crossing paths with a notorious escapee and an alcoholic ex-cop. As the unlikely trio plots a heist against impossible odds their trail is pursued by a relentless inspector and fate begins to seal their destinies. Taking its title from Buddhist Iore Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Cercle Rouge combines honorable anti-heroes coolly atmospheric cinematography and breathtaking set pieces to create a masterpiece of crime cinema.