"Actor: Michel Simon"

• LA POISON | Blu Ray | (25/02/2013) from £18.88   |  Saving you £1.11 (5.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: New HD restoration of the film, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• Loves Kitchen | DVD | (11/07/2011) from £12.56   |  Saving you £6.42 (67.08%)   |  RRP £15.99

  British romantic comedy starring Dougray Scott and Claire Forlani. Rob Haley (Scott) is an up-and-coming London chef and restaurateur who is devastated when he loses his wife in a tragic accident. His friend TV chef Gordon Ramsay (appearing as himself) persuades him to reinvent his life by taking on a dilapidated country pub and transforming it into a gourmet restaurant. There he is visited by beautiful American food critic Kate Templeton (Claire Forlani) - but are either of them ready to find an appetite for love?

• Diary Of The Dead (2 Disc) | DVD | (30/06/2008) from £9.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (130.13%)   |  RRP £22.99

  From the legendary director of Dawn Of The Dead, George A. Romero comes a new take on his terrifying world of the undead.

• M:I-3 | DVD | (17/10/2011) from £7.05   |  Saving you £5.94 (84.26%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Tom Cruise returns as Special Agent Ethan Hunt, who faces the mission of his life.

• Merci pour le Chocolat | DVD | (19/11/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Claude Chabrol's nervy and nasty little 2001 thriller Merci Pour le Chocolat is based on Charlotte Armstrong's novel The Chocolate Cobweb. In Chabrol's hands it becomes a vehicle of considerable power for the unsettling, disturbed qualities of actress Isabelle Huppert, who has been one of his most important muses over the years (their other collaborations include La Cérémonie and Rien ne va Plus). Huppert plays Mika, the owner of a Swiss chocolate factory, now married to a world-class concert pianist (Jacques Dutronc) and with a stepson who is obsessive about making the family's drinking chocolate every day. As the clues unravel, it soon becomes clear that Mika is damaged goods. When Dutronc acquires a piano student (Anna Mougalis) in curious circumstances, Mika is forced to escalate her secret agenda. Huppert is fascinating throughout and the film is sinewy and, for the most part, rather clever, evoking shades of Hitchcock and Clouzot. Liszt's Les Funérailles is the ominous leitmotif, worked on by Dutronc and his protégé, and the Lausanne setting creates an other-worldliness which seems almost sterile. Only at the end does the picture dwindle into an almost Strindbergian inertia as Mika's motivation seems to evaporate in a rather unsatisfactory way. Until then it is spellbinding. --Piers Ford

• LA POISON | DVD | (25/02/2013) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• The Tango Lesson | DVD | (25/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Sally Potter's self-reflective film stars Potter (an actress and the director of Orlando), more or less as herself, learning to tango from master-dancer Pablo Veron and considering making a film called The Tango Lesson. The film that we happen to be watching, however, is concerned largely with the delicious conflict between the politics of tango--the need for one partner, typically the woman, to yield to the other--and the expectations of the film-maker to do things on her own terms. Can Potter simultaneously surrender and control for the duration of this circular project? The question is made more complicated by Veron's desire to be in one of Potter's films--in other words, to follow her lead. Potter may not be Veron's equal on the dance floor, but that isn't the point of this interesting movie and its provocative, internal debate. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

• Lasko - Death Train | DVD | (28/01/2008) from £21.02   |  Saving you £-8.03 (-61.80%)   |  RRP £12.99

  While onboard a train making a pilgrimmage to Lourdes a former soldier and the other passengers are taken hostage by a gang of criminals after the theft of a highly contagious virus. The only person that can save the pilgrims is the former soldier Lasko who has vowed to never fight again after a traumatic experience in Kosovo and becoming a monk.

• Boudu Saved From Drowning - Blu-ray | Blu Ray | (04/04/2011) from £18.88   |  Saving you £1.11 (5.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  A Parisian bookseller Lestingois fishes Boudu a vagrant out of the river Seine. He befriends the tramp and puts him up at home where Boudu causes nothing but trouble. However events take a different turn when Boudu wins the lottery... Starring Michel Simon and Charles Granval renowned director Jean Renoir's 1932 classic farce Boudu Saved From Drowning (Boudu sauv des eaux) has been beautifully restored in high definition and features a previously missing scene which was by chance conserved in the original negative.

• Drunken Master 3 | DVD | (25/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Sum Yu is a young princess betrothed to the dictator Yuan Shih-Kai. Unfortunately Sum Yu is being detained by Sun Yat-Sen's republican loyalists and Yuan Shih-Kai sends Governor Li (Liu) to bring her to him. Meanwhile Wong Fei-Hung is enlisted to take the princess to a safe hiding place and learns the art of drunken boxing which he uses to defend the princess from the Governor and his cadre of troops...

• Boudu Saved From Drowning - DVD | DVD | (04/04/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  A Parisian bookseller Lestingois fishes Boudu a vagrant out of the river Seine. He befriends the tramp and puts him up at home where Boudu causes nothing but trouble. However events take a different turn when Boudu wins the lottery... Starring Michel Simon and Charles Granval renowned director Jean Renoir's 1932 classic farce Boudu Saved From Drowning /i> (Boudu sauv des eaux) has been beautifully restored in high definition and features a previously missing scene which was by chance conserved in the original negative.

• Quai Des Brumes | DVD | (30/04/2007) from £13.50   |  Saving you £4.49 (25.00%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Based on the novel by Pierre Mac Orlan the inimitable team of director Marcel Carne and writer Jacques Prevert deliver a quintessential example of poetic realism one of the classics of the golden age of French cinema. Down a foggy desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean (Jean Gabin) an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate however has a different plan for him when acts of both revenge and kindness turn him into front-page news. Also starring the blue-eyed phenomenon Michele Morgan in her first major role and the menacing Michel Simon Port Of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes) starkly portrays an underworld of lonely souls wrestling with their own destinies.

• Drole De Drame | DVD | (16/01/2012) from £4.75   |  Saving you £15.24 (320.84%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Dr. Molyneux, the elderly botanist who loves nothing more than his mimosa plants, also secretly authors crime novels under the pen name Felix Chapel -- but only because his wife insists they need the money. As it turns out, Molyneux gets the stories from his adopted daughter Eva, who in turn gets them from the milkman, who's madly in love with her. Everything would be fine if it wasn't for Chapel's relative, the Bishop of Bedford, who is crusading against Chapel's dangerous novels. The Bishop is not quite wrong because a man known as the Butcher Killer blames Chapel for his own crimes. When the bishop invites himself for dinner at Molyneux's house, hilarity ensues.

• Port of Shadows | DVD | (02/04/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  On a foggy highway a lonely soldier hitches a ride and ends up in a lonely bar on the outskirts of town. The soldier (Jean Gabin) a deserter on the run meets sad runaway Nelly (Michele Morgan) and falls in love. He becomes entwined in the troubles of her life notably the lascivious guardian (Michel Simon) who lusts after Nelly and attempts to blackmail Jean and a cocky hot-headed gangster (Pierre Brasseur) who tries to scare Jean off.

• Wallis And Edward | DVD | (09/01/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  When Wallis Simpson meets Edward Prince of Wales he is charmed by her flirtatious and straight-talking manner and begs her to divorce her husband Ernest. George V dies and Edward becomes King but he has no desire to give up Wallis for a life of Royal duty. As a constitutional crisis grips the nation Edward and the British Government lock horns. The Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin insists that Wallis cannot become Queen. Despite Wallis's pleas for him to remain King Edward feels forced to choose between his royal destiny and the woman he loves...

• L'Atalante & The Films Of Jean Vigo | Blu Ray | (22/10/2019) from £18.49   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  L'Atalante (1934) This intoxicatingly inventive masterpiece is one of the world's great films. A simple and engaging plot is transformed into a kaleidoscope of dazzling digressions and offbeat characterizations complete with tour-de-force scenes that still seem fresh and startling. À propos de Nice (1930) What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Cote d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants. Taris (1931) An Inventive short portrait of a swimming champion. Zero de Conduite (1933) A radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless film-makers.