André Thorent
1922 - 2015
Le Samouraï
Jean-Pierre Melville
Alain Delon, François Périer
After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.
Le Samouraï
Sachs' Disease
Michel Deville
Albert Dupontel, Valérie Dréville
Dr. Bruno Sachs, the only medical practitioner in a small French town, seems on the surface to be compassionate and dedicated. However, in private he is not happy in his work and does not like most of his patients. Here he meets Pauline Kasser, a young woman, and they are attracted to each other...
Sachs' Disease
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
Bertrand Blier
Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere
Solange is depressed: she's stopped smiling, she eats little, she says less. She has fainting fits. Her husband Raoul seeks to save her by enlisting Stephane, a stranger, to be her lover. Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange. She knits. She does housework. Everyone, including their neighbor a vegetable vendor, agrees that she needs a child, yet she fails to get pregnant by either lover. The three take a job running a kids' summer camp where they meet Christian, the precocious 13-year-old son of the local factory manager. It is Christian who restores Solange to laughter
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs
Madame Bovary
Claude Chabrol
Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer
Bored with the limited and tedious nature of provincial life in 19th-century France, the fierce and sensual Emma Bovary finds herself in calamitous debt and pursues scandalous sexual liaisons with absolute abandon. However, when her volatile lifestyle catches up to her, the lives of everyone around her are endangered.
Madame Bovary
La Métamorphose des cloportes
Pierre Granier-Deferre
Lino Ventura, Charles Aznavour
Three little criminals get a tip for a great coup with lots of money in it. Unfortunately they lack the starting funds to buy the required welding torch. So they persuade their successful colleague Alphonse to join their team. But the well thought-out coup fails, and Alphonse is the only one of them who ends up in jail for several years. When he's released, he's out for revenge.
Cloportes
Paradis pour tous
Alain Jessua
Patrick Dewaere, Jacques Dutronc
Doctor Valois has invented the "flashage", a cure for depressed people. After having tested it on monkeys, he tries with a first human patient, Alain Durieux. This is great success, everybody's happy except may be Alain's wife, Jeanne, who's worrying about the changes in Alain's personality. Other patients use the treatment with similar successes, and Valois's happy about it. But the monkeys are changing: non-cured ones are made mad by the over-stability and stereotyped behaviour of the cured ones. So are the humans. When Valois realises he can't stop the process, he decides to "flash" himself.
Paradise for All
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
Sois belle et tais-toi
Marc Allégret
Henri Vidal, Mylène Demongeot
A beautiful 18-year-old orphan escapes from a reformatory and hooks up with a gang of jewel smugglers, and decides on a life of crime. However, she falls for and marries a policeman, putting a crimp in her criminal career.
Be Beautiful But Shut Up
Cauchemar
Noël Simsolo
Béatrice Bruno, Pierre Clémenti
A troubled young woman who lives alone in a rundown house meanders around and one day reveals a hidden talent when she goes into a bar, plays magnificently at the piano, and leaves as mysteriously as she came. Meanwhile, an unidentified man is on her trail and eventually tracks her down to the bar she had visited. As the dragnet around her closes in, it becomes apparent that the young woman's stepmother is behind the effort to locate her. But questions over why she is hiding out and what she is hiding from begin to take on more importance as the history of the young woman starts to surface.
Nightmare
