"Actor: Michel"

• L'Argent | DVD | (23/05/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  'A small transgression provokes a vertiginous avalanche of Evil - until the moment the forces of Good arrive' - Robert Bresson Bresson's classic film adapted from a story by Tolstoy tells of the tragic train of events which ensue when two schoolboys pass a forged banknote in a photography shop. The note is passed to the unwitting Yvon a delivery driver who is arrested for possessing it. Despite being let off by the court Yvon loses his job and becomes trapped in a disastrous sp

• Death In A French Garden | DVD | (24/11/2003) from £8.43   |  Saving you £11.56 (137.13%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Michel Deville's sleek drama of eroticism and murder was released in 1985 in France to great acclaim. It has all the ingredients required for an intriguing thriller: sex dishonesty voyeurism murder and a stunning cast. A rich business man and his young wife Julia hire David to teach guitar to their teenage daughter Vivianne. Julia quickly seduces David and they begin a steamy affair which unbeknownst to them is being filmed by the next door neighbour whom David has befriended.

• 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

• The Last Mitterrand | DVD | (13/02/2006) from £5.98   |  Saving you £14.01 (234.28%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This film dramatizes the last years of a political leadership and a private life: that of Francois Mitterrand.

• Treasure Island | DVD | (01/09/2003) from £6.64   |  Saving you £-0.65 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of dastardly pirates swashbuckling heroes buried treasure and a young boy's courage during the adventure of a lifetime!

• The Count of Monte Cristo | DVD | (22/03/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Alexandre Dumas' celebrated book 'The Count Of Monte Cristo' follows the adventures of Edmond Dants (Gerard Depardieu) a 19th-century French version of James Bond a rich ruthless and suave purveyor of homemade justice. This French production is extravagant having the destinction of being the first filmed version of the newly restored unabridged version of Dumas' classic which runs about 800 pages. The movie was filmed all over Europe and doesn't leave out any detail from the celebrated novel.

• La Veuve De Saint-Pierre | DVD | (29/04/2002) from £4.99   |  Saving you £5.00 (100.20%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The "widow" referred to in the title of La Veuve de Saint-Pierre isn't a woman, but a mechanism--to be exact, the guillotine, (though the title does take on a second meaning in the tragic final moments of the film). We're on the island of Saint-Pierre, a tiny forgotten French colony off the coast of Newfoundland, midway through the 19th century. A senseless drunken murder is committed and the killer is condemned to death, but zut alors!, there's no guillotine on the island. So one must be requested from the slow, bureaucratic authorities in Paris and, once approved, laboriously shipped over. Meanwhile the killer, a simple-minded giant of a man, is placed in the custody of the Captain, whose beautiful wife starts taking an interest in the prisoner. Director Patrice Leconte has always had an acute feel for place and period--he directed the mordantly witty costume drama Ridicule--and La Veuve vividly captures the sense of remoteness and resentful isolation of this blizzard-swept community. The brooding landscape, all slate-blues and greys, is beautifully framed by Eduardo Serra's camera, and Leconte draws affecting performances from his central trio of actors: Daniel Auteuil, with his intriguingly lopsided face, as the Captain; Juliette Binoche, radiantly vulnerable as his wife; and, in an unexpected but remarkably successful bit of casting, Serbian film director Emir Kusturica as the condemned man. La Veuve de Saint-Pierre may be a touch over-solemn at times, and its message is hardly unexpected; but it's an intelligent, engrossing and richly atmospheric piece of filmmaking. --Philip Kemp

• The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq | DVD | (22/12/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  September 16th 2011. The TV news networks newspapers blogs websites and radio stations are all reporting on one story: star author Michel Houellebecq winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2010 has been abducted. Some members of the media go so far as to suggest that Al-Qaeda may be involved. For the next few days the news ripples through literary circles and members of the press feeding buzz and speculation. A brazen kidnapping? An identity crisis? A plan to escape abroad? A schizophrenic delirium? Michel will never provide the media with any rational explanation for what happened to him.

• The Harem | DVD | (15/05/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Harem is a sumptuously sensual darkly satiric drama starring screen siren and Academy Award nominee Carroll Baker as a seductive woman who deceitfully lures the three men she desires to her villa pushing them to their limits by toying with their sexual needs and male egos...

• Passe Ton Bac D'abord | DVD | (24/08/2009) from £11.49   |  Saving you £8.50 (73.98%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The world sometimes seems divided into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream and those who remember them as having been an infernal nightmarish hell. With all this in mind it might do to describe Passe Ton Bac D'Abord as Maurice Pialat's The Best Years Of Our Lives while bearing in mind all that such a description might suggest. It's an elastic unsparing portrait of teenage life in the suburbs of France from an era when the phrase sixteen candles still might have conjured the image of flames. A group of young actors including several local unknowns - Philippe Marlaud Bernard Tronczyk Patrick Lepczynski and Sabine Haudepin (once the little girl of Truffaut's Jules et Jim) among others - make up the cluster of friends adrift beneath the twilight of their school years. There's drama violence and pot-induced laughs - group holidays indiscriminate sex advances from teachers twenty-five years their seniors attempted moves to Paris and few prospects of passing the bac the final set of exams French students take before embarking into the world to... do what? Marking the last work of Pialat's turbulent cycle of films made in the 1970s Passe Ton Bac D'abord... is the brilliant spiritual sequel to the great filmmaker's feature-debut L'Enfance-nue - picked up again from a vantage ten years on from the lives of the earlier film's protagonists.

• The Witnesses | DVD | (25/02/2008) from £7.25   |  Saving you £12.74 (63.70%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This moving and powerful from the acclaimed director of 'Alice and Martin' and 'Strayed' follows the lives of a group of friends and lovers in 1980s France. Handsome young Manu (Johan Liberau) arrives in Paris where he shares a cheap hotel room with his sister (Julie Depardieu). He soon strikes up a platonic friendship with fifty something Adrien (Michel Blanc) who introduces Manu to his friends Sarah (Emmanuelle B''art) and her partner Mehdi (Sami Bouajila). Unexpectedly sparks fly between Manu and Mehdi and the two embark upon a secret and passionate affair that will ultimately change everybody's lives. Brilliantly evoking the period and featuring some exceptional performances Andr'' T''chin'''s remarkable film confirms his place as one of contemporary French cinema's finest directors.

• Atlantic City | DVD | (18/06/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  French New Wave director Louis Malle made two pieces of memorable Americana in mid-career, Atlantic City (1980) and Pretty Baby (1978). Atlantic City stars Burt Lancaster in one of his greatest screen performances: as an ageing crook now working the numbers racket from a seedy apartment in the casino town of Atlantic City. Susan Sarandon is a waitress whose brother is on the run from the mob, having stolen a cache of drugs. She and Lancaster form an odd but engaging couple and hatch a plot to beat the odds stacked against them. Atmospheric, bittersweet, with lots of character and some neat action: it all adds up to a pretty classy offering. On the DVD: Unfortunately, the picture and sound quality on the DVD are only average. The image is 14:9 ratio and has been taken from a print of variable quality in which some reels are barely adequate. There are no additional features. --Ed Buscombe

• Breathless | Blu Ray | (13/09/2010) from £29.68   |  Saving you £-4.69 (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Stylish and sexy Breathless [A Bout De Souffle] is the epitome of cinematic cool. A fast tale of a young man on the run in Paris at the end of the 50's Breathless shook up the film world upon its release and has made a lasting impression on cinema history. Starring Jean Paul Belmondo the film was produced by Godard from an original treatment by Fran''ois Truffaut in a production that united the four initiators of the 'nouvelle Vague' - Claude Chabrol acted as artistic director while acclaimed director Jean Pierre Melville appeared in front of camera.

• LE BEAU SERGE | DVD | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Grard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy star in the first of their collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol. The director's masterful feature debut - ironic, funny, unsparing - is a revelation: another of that rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of the Chabrol touch. In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year before Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows, the dandyish Franois (Brialy, of Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, Rohmer's Claire's Knee, and countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema) takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent, where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a tragic slide ensues. From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema - frequently with great commercial success. It is with great pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol's enormous body of work, on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time. Special Features: Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio New and improved English subtitles Original theatrical trailer A 56-minute documentary about the making of the film L'Avarice [Avarice], Chabrol's 1962 short film A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more

• LE BEAU SERGE | Blu Ray | (08/04/2013) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Grard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy star in the first of their collaborations with the great Claude Chabrol. The director's masterful feature debut - ironic, funny, unsparing - is a revelation: another of that rare breed of film where the dusty formula might be used in full sincerity: Le Beau Serge marks the beginning of the Chabrol touch. In this first feature film of the French New Wave, one year before Truffaut's The Four Hundred Blows, the dandyish Franois (Brialy, of Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, Rohmer's Claire's Knee, and countless other cornerstones of 20th-century French cinema) takes a holiday from the city to his home village of Sardent, where he reconnects with his old chum Serge (Blain), now a besotted and hopeless alcoholic, and sly duplicitous carnal Marie (Bernadette Lafont). A grave triangle forms, and a tragic slide ensues. From Le Beau Serge onward up to his final film Bellamy in 2009, the revered Chabrol would come to leave a significant and lasting impression upon the French cinema - frequently with great commercial success. It is with great pride that we present Le Beau Serge, the kickstart of the Nouvelle Vague and of Chabrol's enormous body of work, on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK for the first time. Special Features: Gorgeous new Gaumont restoration of the film in its original aspect ratio, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray New and improved English subtitles Original theatrical trailer A 56-minute documentary about the making of the film L'Avarice [Avarice], Chabrol's 1962 short film A lengthy booklet with a new and exclusive essay by critic Emmanuel Burdeau; excerpts of interviews and writing by Chabrol; and more

• We Have A Pope | DVD | (02/04/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  This Italian comedy from director Nanni Moretti opened the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. Disaster strikes the Vatican when Cardinal Melville, the newly elected Pope, suffers a panic attack just before addressing the people of Rome and is unable to face his public. Desperate times call for desperate measures, as a brilliant (but atheist) psychoanalyst is brought in to help the Pope confront his fears. With stunning imagery and an outstanding lead performance from Michel Piccoli, We Have a Pope puts a hilarious spin on the inner workings of this notoriously secretive order.

• A Love To Hide | DVD | (13/04/2009) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-5.01 (-33.40%)   |  RRP £14.99

  After witnessing the death of her parents at the hands of the Nazis a young Jewish girl tries to survive by taking shelter from an old friend. The gestapo soon track her down and she is forced to flee once more to the support of a childhood vacation friend who passes her off as an employee of the family business. However the girls presence soon gets her protectors into trouble themselves.

• Aaltra | DVD | (23/04/2007) from £11.05   |  Saving you £3.94 (35.66%)   |  RRP £14.99

  Two neighbours live opposite each other on a country road somewhere in Northern France. They hate each other and life for them is nothing but a daily painful confrontation. One day in the course of a violent dispute an agricultural trailer knocks them over and sends them both to hospital. They are both released in wheelchairs paralysed from the waist down. Giving up on the idea of suicide they each decide to embark on a personal journey. However before they know it they both end up on the same platform waiting for the same train. Neighbours once again for better or worse. An unpredictable odyssey then starts taking them all the way to Finland where they intend to obtain financial compensation from the manufacturers of the agricultural machinery for their accident...

• Danger Diabolik | DVD | (13/08/2007) from £13.48   |  Saving you £-3.49 (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  The suave psychedelic-era thief called Diabolik (John Philip Law) can't get enough of life's good - or glittery - things. Not when there are currency shipments to steal from under the noses of snooty government officials and priceless jewels to lift from the boudoirs of the superrich. The elusive scoundrel finds plenty of ways to live up to his name in this tongue-in-cheek live-action caper inspired by Europe's popular Diabolik comics. He clambers up walls zaps a press conference w

• Bon Voyage | DVD | (10/01/2005) from £6.98   |  Saving you £13.01 (186.39%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Vivianne Denvers is a well-known film actress who has many male admirers. At the premiere of her latest picture she is pursued by Beaufort a rather large government official. To get away from him she attaches herself to an unsuitable older man who takes her home. After an argument she slaps him only to find that he has dropped dead! Terrified she calls on a former boyfriend to help her move the body...