Jean-Claude Bercq
1929 - 2008
The Train
John Frankenheimer
Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield
As the Allied forces approach Paris in August 1944, German Colonel Von Waldheim is desperate to take all of France's greatest paintings to Germany. He manages to secure a train to transport the valuable art works even as the chaos of retreat descends upon them. The French resistance however wants to stop them from stealing their national treasures but have received orders from London that they are not to be destroyed. The station master, Labiche, is tasked with scheduling the train and making it all happen smoothly but he is also part of a dwindling group of resistance fighters tasked with preventing the theft. He and others stage an elaborate ruse to keep the train from ever leaving French territory.
The Train
L'Opium et le Bâton
Ahmed Rachedi
Marie-José Nat, Sid Ali Kouiret
An Algerian doctor decides to leave the troubles in Algiers and goes back to his hometown, a small village lost in the mountains. There, however, the situation is explosive as well, as the guerilla is active and the French military has to keep a close watch on the locals...
Opium and the Stick
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno
Serge Bromberg, Ruxandra Medrea
Romy Schneider, Henri-Georges Clouzot
In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot's production of L'Enfer came to a halt. Despite huge expectations, major studio backing and an unlimited budget, after three weeks the production collapsed. This documentary presents Inferno's incredible expressionistic original rushes, screen tests, and on-location footage, whilst also reconstructing Clouzot's original vision, and shedding light on the ill-fated endeavor through interviews, dramatizations of unfilmed scenes, and Clouzot's own notes.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno
Rapture
John Guillermin
Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Gozzi
Agnes, a lonely teenage girl, and her father befriend an escaped convict, named Joseph, who arrives at their farm in Brittany, France. When Joseph develops an attraction to Agnes, her father threatens to break up the union.
Rapture
Un Condé
Yves Boisset
Michel Bouquet, Françoise Fabian
A crackdown on drugs leads a burned out cop to take the law into his own hands and seek revenge against villainous drug dealers. Word comes down from above that the United States feels French authorities have been lax on their arrests of the dealers. A violent action feature finds the harried inspector battling his colleagues as much as the criminal element targeted for extermination.
The Cop
Le Mans
Lee H. Katzin
Steve McQueen, Siegfried Rauch
Filmed during the annual 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans, Michael Delaney is a Porsche driver haunted by the memory of an accident at the previous year's race in which a competing driver was killed. Delaney also finds himself increasingly infatuated with the man's widow.
Le Mans
L'Arme à gauche
Claude Sautet
Lino Ventura, Sylva Koscina
Jacques Cournot, a freelance skipper, is hired by Mr Hendrix in Santo Domingo, first of all to advise him regarding the acquisition of a sailing boat. After a thorough inspection of a prospective vessel, the "Dragoon", Cournot reports his positive appraisal to Mr Hendrix and initiates the negotiations with Mrs Osborne, the owner of the craft. Barely a couple of days later, Cournot finds himself in a bind as the police questions him about the exact kind of cruise he was supposed to organize for his principal. For the "Dragoon" is gone; Mr Hendrix has disappeared; Mrs Osborne is not aware of any deal; and the corpses of mysterious individuals, victims of a violent death, are found on the beaches of Santo Domingo.
The Dictator's Guns
Grandeur nature
Luis García Berlanga
Valentine Tessier, Michel Piccoli
When Michel gets the life-sized sex doll he ordered, shipped directly from Japan, he is only intrigued by it at first. Then the silent unresponsiveness of the thing begins to haunt him, and he finds himself reacting to it as if it were an equally unresponsive living woman. As time passes, more and more of his life is spent trying to satisfy or placate its relentless silence, and he goes somewhat mad. He dresses the doll and takes it with him wherever he goes. When his usually very tolerant wife discovers what is going on, her jealousy knows no bounds and she attempts to imitate this threatening love-object. The light-hearted quality of this addle-pated fantasy darkens quickly when various neighborhood men attempt to put the doll to its originally intended use.
Life Size
Lost Command
Mark Robson
Anthony Quinn, Alain Delon
After being freed from a Vietnamese war prison, French Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy is sent to help quell resistance forces in Algeria. With the help of the Capt. Esclavier, who has grown weary of war, and Capt. Boisfeuras, who lives for it, Raspeguy attempts to convert a rugged band of soldiers into a formidable fighting unit, with the promise of marrying a beautiful countess if he's made a general.
Lost Command
Du rififi à Paname
Denys de La Patellière
Jean Gabin, Gert Fröbe
In Paris, a gold smuggler is at war with other local gangsters who want piece of the action. Then the mob shows up and makes things worse. And an undercover US Treasury Department agent is trying to infiltrate the smuggling business.
The Upper Hand
Hit!
Sidney J. Furie
Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor
A federal agent whose daughter dies of a heroin overdose is determined to destroy the drug ring that supplied her. He recruits various people whose lives have been torn apart by the drug trade and trains them. Then they all leave for France to track down and destroy the ring.
Hit!
Décembre
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina
Michel Auclair, Sid Ali Kouiret
During the Algerian war of independence, one of the FLN's leaders was arrested by the army, which uses the most violent methods to make the prisoners talk. The use of torture poses a case of conscience to a French officer. A play between the field against the field, between the tortured and his torturer, behind a stifling closed door.
December
Le sexe à la barre
Georges Cachoux
Jean-Claude Bercq, André Chazel
Longtime friends Marc and Hubert are successful CEOs in their 50s married to beautiful women. When they begin to doubt their power of seduction, they send their wives on a trip together and start seducing other women, which leads to some sexual escapades. Rejuvenated, they join their wives, but their holiday is quickly disrupted by the intrusion of young sexy campers who bring a wind of erotic freedom and teach the older couples to reevaluate their lives.
Sex at the Bar
