"Actor: Catherine Rouvel"

• Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence - Double Play (Blu-ray + DVD) | Blu Ray | (12/09/2011) from £31.03   |  Saving you £8.96 (28.88%)   |  RRP £39.99

  Director actor and screenwriter Jean Renoir is one of the most original filmmakers in the history of French cinema. A true pioneer Renoir always sought to push the boundaries of cinema. He made neo-realist films ten years before Rossellini and experimented with cinma vrit twenty years before Godard. His films have influenced generations of subsequent film makers - including Franois Truffaut Luchino Visconti and Satyajit Ray. Considered one of the first auteurs he is a cinematic master whose unique poetic style combined a vibrant humanism with a passion for beauty and nature. With his trademark use of deep-focus and a moving camera Renoir's work is rich with energy exuberance and the joy of life. This collection brings together an overview of Renoir's work spanning over 25 years including his anti-war masterpiece La Grand Illusion which is often voted one of the greatest films ever made. Funny moving true and still as fresh now as when they were made Jean Renoirs films are essential viewing. La Grande Illusion (1937): During the First World War two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German POW camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are sent to a seemingly impenetrable fortress which seems impossible to escape from. Le Dejeuner Sur Herbe (1959): Etienne Alexis a candidate for president of the new Europe is a scientist promoting artificial insemination for social betterment and therapy to eliminate passion. Le Caporal Epingle (1957): An upper-class corporal from Paris is captured by the Germans when they invade France in 1940. La Marseillaise (1938): A news-reel like movie about early part of the Frensh Revolution shown from the eyes of individual people. Le Testament Du Docteur Cordelier (1959): A lawyer Joly (Teddy Bilis) is disturbed when his friend the eminent psychiatrist and researcher Dr Cordelier (Jean-Louis Barrault) makes out a Will leaving everything to a mysterious stranger Opale. La Bete Humaine (1938): Severine and her husband Roubaud kill their former employer in a train. Engineer Jacques watches them but doesn't tell the police because he's in love with Severine. But in an epileptic attack he kills her...

• The Jacques Rivette Collection | DVD | (24/08/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £29.99

  Three classics form Jacques Rivette. Secret Defense is a gripping and fascinating dark Hitchcock style thriller about a scientist who is murdered by a family friend. In Vasavoir the theatre world is the setting. The characters all quick-witted well-read and cultured types revolve around each other in a delightful potpourri of theatre romance and theft. Histoire de Marie et Julien is a fascinating film and rather more interesting for its unusual stylistic approach to genre filmmaking dealing with death re-birth time and memory and is regarded as one of Rivette's long-lost phantom films.

• Jean Renoir Collection | DVD | (04/06/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £44.99

  La Grande Illusion (1937): During WWI three French officers are captured. Captain De Boeldieu is an aristocrat while Lieutenant Marechal was a mechanic in civilian life. They meet other prisoners from various backgrounds as Rosenthal son of wealthy Jewish bankers. They are separated from Rosenthal before managing to escape. A few months later they meet again in a fortress commanded by the aristocrat Van Rauffenstein. De Boeldieu strikes up a friendship with him but Marechal and Rosenthal still want to escape... One of the very first prison escape movies La Grande Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Le Crime De Monsieur Lange (1936): A man and a woman arrive in a cafe-hotel near the belgian frontier. The customers recognize the man from the police's description. His name is Amedee Lange he murdered Batala in Paris. His lady friend Valentine tells the whole story : Lange was an employee in Batala's little printing works. Batala was a real bastard swindling every one seducing female workers of Valentine's laundry... One day he fled to avoid facing his creditors and the workers set up a cooperative to go on working. But the plot is less important that the description of the atmosphere just before the Popular Front. La Bete Humaine (1940): Severine and her husband Roubaud kill their former employer in a train. Engineer Jacques watches them but doesn't tell the police because he's in love with Severine. But in an epileptic attack he kills her... Boudu Saved From Drowing (1932): Michel Simon stars as Boudu a vagabond who attempts suicide by throwing himself into the Seine grieving over the loss of his dog. But Eduaord Lestingois (Charles Granval) a humane bookseller rescues him and takes him into his home hoping to reform the shaggy bum. Shortly thereafter anarchy reigns as the household is turned upside down by the antics of this large three-year-old. Spitting in first editions using silken sheets to polish his shoes sleeping in the hallway and similar breaches of etiquette do little to endear Boudu to Lestingois. However once Boudu has had a bath and shave in order to please the maid Mrs. Lestingois (Marcelle Hainia) becomes surprisingly responsive to his overtures. The maid (Severine Lerczinska) who is Lestingois's mistress also seems to feel the tramp's mysterious charm. Granval an exemplary bourgeois now has more than one reason to envy the man he saved from drowning.

• Va Savoir | DVD | (24/06/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  In matters of the heart it's anyone's guess. Va Savoir is an elegant and utterly charming comedy about the romantic misadventures of Camille and Ugo - a theater director and his leading lady - whose already complicated relationship becomes exponentially more difficult when they become entangled in the lives of four other people. As funny as it is touching as smart as it is silly Va Savoir is an endearing and delightful comedy of the heart and soul.