Alexandre Astruc
1923 - 2016Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic.
His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen" and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writers use their pens.
In 1994 he was awarded the René Clair Award for his whole body of film work.
Sartre par lui-même
Alexandre Astruc
Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir
Michel Contat is Emeritus Director of Research at the CNRS, ITEM/CNRS/ENS and a specialist of Jean-Paul Sartre whose novels and theater he has edited in the Pléiade edition and about whom he has written several books. With Alexander Astruc, he made the film Sartre par lui-même (1976) and, with Antoine Burnier, co-wrote the script of Claude Garretta’s TV film Sartre, L’Age des passions (2006). As a journalist, Contat contributed literary columns for Le Monde since 1978, and as an amateur musician, he was the jazz columnist for the magazine Télérama. His most recent books are Pour Sartre (2006) and André Gorz; vers la société libérée (2009).
Sartre by Himself
Albert Savarus
Alexandre Astruc
Niels Arestrup, Dominique Sanda
Adaptation of the Balzac story as told by Rosalie, a young girl in love with the idea of her extraordinary neighbor, Albert Savarus, and the lengths she goes to ensure their marriage, even after she learns he is in deeply in love to another woman.
Albert Savarus
François Truffaut: Portraits volés
Michel Pascal, Serge Toubaina
François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Twenty-six people - including two daughters, an ex-wife, his last lover, actors, fellow directors and writers, a neighbor, and boyhood friends - talk about François Truffaut. They discuss his attitudes toward wealth, his early writings about cinema, the undercurrent of violence in his films and his personality, the way he used and altered events in his life when making films, his search for a father (both artistic and biological), his relationship with his mother, the scenes in his films that cause a squirm of embarrassment, and his ultimate mysticism. Clips from a dozen of his films are included.
François Truffaut: Stolen Portraits
Le rideau cramoisi
Alexandre Astruc
Anouk Aimée, Jean-Claude Pascal
A twenty year old Anouk Aimée stars as Albertine, the daughter of a bourgeois couple who house a young officer during the Napoleonic wars. Newly promoted, the officer (Jean-Claude Pascal) is quartered by a dull bourgeois couple who treat him with a cold politeness bordering on indifference.
The Crimson Curtain
Shadows of Adultery
Alexandre Astruc
Annie Girardot, Daniel Gélin
Anna, twenty-seven, married to building contractor Eric, refuses to live in his wake. Craving independence, she can exist through the art gallery she runs, but isn’t this occupation a mere wholesome distraction? When she meets Bruno and becomes his lover she thinks she will find fulfillment only to realize that she is just another plaything in a man’s hands.
Shadows of Adultery
Une Vie
Alexandre Astruc
Maria Schell, Christian Marquand
Normandy, second half of the nineteenth century. Jeanne Dandieu lives in a manor house with her parents and their servant Rosalie. She gets to know Julien, a handsome man, whom she soon marries. Her happiness is short-lived as she finds out that not only has Julien married her for her money but he cheats on her as well, with Rosalie to crown it all.
End of Desire
La chute de la maison Usher
Alexandre Astruc
Fanny Ardant, Mathieu Carrière
After a long journey, Alain arrives at the Usher mansion to visit his old friend, Roderick Usher. Upon arriving, however, he discovers that Roderick and his sister, Madeline, have been afflicted with a mysterious malady: Roderick's senses have become painfully acute, while Madeline has become nearly catatonic.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Les mauvaises rencontres
Alexandre Astruc
Jean-Claude Pascal, Anouk Aimée
Catherine Racan, a young journalist who always puts her career over her love life, is brought in by the police for questioning. They are looking for a doctor who illegally performs abortions and now they are interrogating all of his previous clients.
Bad Liaisons
La longue marche
Alexandre Astruc
Maurice Ronet, Jean-Louis Trintignant
In June 1944, a young doctor, Chevalier, under the threat of guns, is forced to treat a wounded man in a camp of resistance fighters (maquisards). He recognizes the man, minister of the Third Republic, called Morel by his companions. Carnot, the chief of the maquisards, is suspicious of a doctor who expressly disapproves of the resistance and wants to have him shot as soon as he has treated Morel. Philippe, who is second in command, intervenes in favor of the Chevalier. Meanwhile, peasants denounce the maquisards to the Nazis and the camp is surrounded by the Germans. The camp is saved thanks to Philippe who takes command of the group. He decides to leave the shelter and they begin the long march through the Cévennes to rally maquisard Napoleon in the Vercors...
Long March
Éducation sentimentale
Alexandre Astruc
Jean-Claude Brialy, Marie-José Nat
Frédéric, a shy small-town man, falls in love with Anne, a middle class woman married to Didier, who cheats on her with top model Barbara. Catherine, a very determined woman, is secretly in love with Frédéric and in order to keep him away from Anne, pushes him into Barbara's arms.
Sentimental Education
Amour de poche
Pierre Kast
Jean Marais, Jean-Claude Brialy
A professor experimenting in suspended animation accidentally shrinks his dog and later, his female lab assistant, when she drinks the liquid by accident and shrinks to 3 inches tall. The professor keeps her in his pocket until he can find an antidote. Sometimes she's naked, too.
A Girl in a Pocket
Flammes sur l'Adriatique
Alexandre Astruc
Gérard Barray, Claudine Auger
The film tells the story of the Yugoslav destroyer Zagreb which fights against Germany in 1941, and how some of the crew members try to organise a mutiny to keep fighting when the commander is ordered to surrender.
Adriatic Sea of Fire
