Jules Dassin's 1954 film 'Rififi' was an instant success. Based on the novel of the same title 'Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes' by Auguste le Breton the film's use of hard-boiled slang and the gangster garb of trench coats top hats and a cigarette dangling from one corner of the mouth went on to become the emblems of Humphrey Bogart-style noir classics. Jean Servais is Tony le Stephanois a master thief with a battered face and a tubercular cough souvenirs of a recent stint in the pe
Audrey Tautou searches for her lost love in this emotional WW1 drama from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Jean-Pierre Melville's masterpiece about the French resistance went unreleased in the United States for thirty-seven years before its triumphant debut release in 2006. Atmospheric and gripping Army Of Shadows is Melville's most personal film featuring Lino Ventura Paul Meurisse Jean-Pierre Cassel and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their own brand of honor in their fight against evil.
Inspired by a true incident during World War II in 'The Train' Burt Lancaster plays a French Resistance fighter doggedly attempting to stop a train used by the Nazis (led by Paul Scofield as Colonel Von Waldheim) to steal precious French art treasures in the summer of 1944. Featuring spectacular action sequences expertly directed by John Frankenheimer 'The Train' is a truly thrilling war film. The Oscar-nominated screenplay by Franklin Coen and Frank Davis superbly recreates the te
Audrey Tautou searches for her lost love in this emotional WW1 drama from Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Starting with one of the greatest films about childhood, from anywhere, ever (Anthony Quinn, The Independent), which kicked off the French New Wave, François Truffaut delivers an indisputable landmark of cinema history five films, four features and one short, which follow the life of one charming, compelling and unforgettable character. Before anyone else, Truffaut allowed audiences to dip into one character's life progressively over 20 years, witnessing him growing up from a child struggling with school and the law to an adult, struggling with love and divorce. A very special and unique collection, The Adventures of Antoine Doinel will invoke joy, humour, nostalgia and happiness time and time again as your investment in Antoine and his story progressively proliferates with each gloriously captured scene.
Truffaut's first feature-length film met with great approval from his critics. A somwhat autobiographical story of Truffaut's own childhood The 400 Blows tells the story of Antoine Doinel a 14-year-old schoolboy. Antoine is not a good student and always seems to be in trouble at school. At home he is disregarded by his parents who have better things to do. He starts to play truant and spends a lot of his time in cinemas. But he soon finds that his parents will not tolerate this behaviour.
October 1942. The German occupation of France and the fate of a group of Resistance workers in Marseille.
In celebration of the film's 60th anniversary, BREATHLESS has been stunningly restored in 4K. Based on a story by François Truffaut and photographed by New Wave legend Raoul Coutard, Jean-Luc Godard's jazzy riff on Film Noir features iconic performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo as an on-the-run criminal modelling himself on Bogart, and Jean Seberg as his NY Herald Tribune-hawking American student girlfriend, who ultimately betrays him. With a pace that's non-stop, BREATHLESS reinvented the grammar of movies and almost instantly changed the course of international filmmaking. Celebrate where it all began with Belmondo and Seberg - young, effortlessly stylish and in love in Paris - in one of the coolest films ever made. A brand new 4K restoration in celebration of the film's 60th Anniversary Extras: NEW Still not Breathless, NEW Trailer, Room 12, Hotel de Suede, Introduction with Jefferson Hack, Film Presentation by Colin MacCabe, Tempo - Godard Episode
Co-written by a young Federico Fellini and directed by Alberto Lattuada, this award-winning film from the earlier years of Italian Neo-realist cinema stars John Kitzmiller as a black G.I. who vows to escape both the chaos of post-War Italy and an enforced return to a racially segregated U.S. after falling in love with an impoverished local girl. While its groundbreaking theme of inter-racial love made Without Pity one of the most significant and daring films of the immediate post-War period, it was banned in the United States and, as such, has never received wider recognition for its frank, sensitive handling of a subject that for many years was still controversial. A film that helped launch Fellini's career yet little seen throughout the decades since its initial release, Without Pity (Senza Pieta) is featured here in a brand-new transfer from the best remaining film elements.
Jean-Pierre Melville (1917 - 1974) is one of the most revered French film directors of all time. Born in Paris he was to become a member of the French Resistance in the Second World War an experience which he drew on as a film director creating underworlds of secrecy and deception. The reluctant godfather of the French New Wave Melville''s highly individual style was influenced by the ideas of existentialism and surrealism but arguably his greatest debt was to the American film noirs of 1930s and '40s Hollywood the traditions of which he wove with inimitable style into his quintessentially French films seeing him hailed by many as the father of the French gangster movie. This set contains six of his finest films from his early bittersweet masterpiece Bob Le Flambeur to his final film Un Flic his wonderfully fatalistic study of loss and deception; a fitting epitaph to one of contemporary cinema''s most exceptional careers. Titles Comprise: Army of Shadows (1969): Regarded as one of the best films ever made about wartime France. Members of the French resistance fight for freedom in the face of constant danger. Extras: Ginette Vincendeau Commentary / Le Journal de la Resistance - a 33 minute documentary / Melville short film Le Doulos (1962): An unforgettable story of trust betrayal and honour. A criminal just free from jail goes in search of revenge. Extras: Selected Scene Commentary / Ginette Vincendeau Introduction / Interview with Assistant Director Volker Schlondorff / Original Trailer Leon Morin Pretre (1961): Unforgettable drama set in occupied France. A beautiful but disillusioned woman becomes friends with a priest but her feelings for him soon deepen dangerously. Extras: Selected Scene Commentary / Ginette Vincendeau Introduction / Interview with Assistant Director Volker Schl''ndorff / Original Trailer Le Cercle Rouge (1970): A suave jewel thief teams up with a fugitive and a reckless ex-cop to carry out an elaborate heist. Extras: Ginette Vincendeau Commentary and Introduction / Interview with Assistant Director Bernard Stora / Original Trailer Bob Le Flambeur (1956): An early foray into the gangster genre Melville's self-confessed 'love letter to Paris' follows the world-weary eponymous hero Bob a down on his luck gambler embarking on his final crime. Extras: Introduction by Melville expert Ginette Vincendeau. Un Flic (1972): A Parisian police commissioner and the leader of a gang of criminals in love with the same woman clash when a daring bank robbery takes place.
The Death Of Mario Ricci (La mort de Mario Ricci)
An ingenious and poignant experience, Francois Truffaut's fascinating The Wild Child is based on a real-life 18th-century behavioural scientist's efforts to turn a feral boy into a civilised specimen. In a piece of resonant casting that immediately turns this story into an echo of the creative process, Truffaut himself plays Dr Itard, a specialist in the teaching of the deaf. Itard takes in a young lad (Jean-Pierre Cargol) found to have been living like an animal in the woods all his life. In the spirit of social experiment, Itard uses rewards and punishments to retool the boy's very existence into something that will impress the world. Beautifully photographed in black and white and making evocative use of such charmingly antiquated filmmaking methods as the iris shot, The Wild Child has a semi-documentary form that barely veils Truffaut's confessional slant. What does it mean to turn the raw material of life into a monument to one's own experience and bias? The question has all sorts of intriguing reverberations when one considers that Truffaut's own wild childhood was rescued by love of the cinema and that a degree of verisimilitude factors into his films starring Jean-Pierre Leaud--the troubled lad who grew up in Truffaut's work from The 400 Blows onward. (The Wild Child is dedicated to Leaud.) --Tom Keogh
Guilt-ridden after recklessly crashing his car and leaving his daughter severely disfigured celebrated plastic surgeon Dr Gennesier becomes obsessed with restoring her beauty by transplanting a new face onto her mutilated features. Aided by his devoted assistant Louisa young woman are lured back to his home to become unwitting 'donors' in his horrific procedures. Although too much for many critics of the day to stomach Franju's masterpiece is now considered to be one of the greatest most influential and disturbing horror films ever made.
Available for the first time on DVD!!! A man remembers an idyllic summer in 1958 spent on the shores of Lake Geneva in avoiding participation in the Algerian conflict during which he encountered the beguiling Yvonne and her friend Dr. Meinthe. On their first encounter he was drawn to her and they seemed destined to be together however the sun filled days of social gatherings and passionate assignations would be all too fleeting. Patrice Leconte's erotic masterpiece is available f
Francois Truffaut's filmic alter ego Antoine Doinel (first seen in 'Les Quatre Cents Coups') is once again the subject in this fourth of a series of five films. Antoine experiences the early years of marriage and faces fatherhood and adultery with a beautiful Japanese girl.
Stolen Kisses reunites François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud to catch up with Truffaut's cinematic alter ego, Antoine Doinel, the troubled adolescent of The 400 Blows. Stolen Kisses opens with the now-grown Doinel sprung from military prison with a dishonourable discharge, drawn directly from Truffaut's own history of delinquency, but the parallels end there. Lovesick Doinel woos the perky but unresponsive object of his affections, Christine (Claude Jade) while he engages in a series of professions--hotel night-watchman, private investigator, TV repairman--with mixed success and comic entanglements. But when he falls in love with the elegant wife of his client (Delphine Seyrig at her most beautiful and charming), Christine realises she misses Antoine's persistence and clumsy passes, so she embarks on a seductive plan of her own. Truffaut's comic confection is full of deadpan gags and screwball chaos, a world away from the heavy seriousness of The 400 Blows, and Léaud is endearingly naive as the determined Doinel, forging ahead with more pluck and passion than aptitude. It may be Truffaut's most sweetly romantic film, a knowing man's embrace of eager innocence and storybook sentiment. Doinel returned two years later in Bed and Board. --Sean Axmaker
The last instalment of the Antoine Doinel story Love On The Run sees Antoine and his wife Christine in the final stages of their divorce after five years together. When he by chance meets up with his first love Collette they reminisce on his past relationships including his infidelities and Antoine realises that he wants to share his life with his new love Sabine.
A Jean-Pierre Jeunet double-bill featuring Amelie and his latest effort A Very Long Engagement. A Very Long Engagement (2004): Never let go... From the director of 'Amelie' comes this very different love story. Set in France near the end of World War I it tells the story of a young woman's relentless moving and sometimes comic search for her fiance who has disappeared. Featuring another fantastic performance from Audrey Tautou this film has an amazing cast full o
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