Arletty

Children of Paradise

In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.

The Dance

The Dance is a 1962 French comedy film directed by Norbert Carbonnaux and starring Jean-Pierre Cassel, Françoise Dorléac and Arletty. The film is based on the French comic strip 13 rue de l'Espoir.

Le vertige

General Mikailoff once killed a lieutenant he mistakenly believed to be his wife's lover. Subsequently, she meets Henri de Cassel, so different from her drunkard husband, becomes his mistress and agrees to flee with him. She is surprised by her husband who, dead drunk, shoots the young man's reflection in the mirror.

Love and Sex under Nazi Occupation

Love & Sex under Nazi Occupation questions the burning mystery of intimate heterosexual and homosexual relations in times of war... and shows how being close to death reinforces the yearning for passion, for pleasure, for transgression, for desire as a last burst of freedom, as an ultimate call to life. Nearly two hundred thousands children are thought to be born of the union of French women with German soldiers. Women weren't the Germans' only conquests; indeed, occupied Paris swarms with all kinds of homosexuals—from Genet to Cocteau—who treated with the occupier. The fate of those women who were shaved at the end of the war for fraternizing with Germans is the punishment of a France that lied down and slept with the enemy.

The Longest Day

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

Daybreak

After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.

Air of Paris

Victor Le Garrec, a former boxer, runs a gym in Paris while dreaming of finding an aspiring champion who will reach the goals he was never able to achieve.

The Devil's Envoys

At the end of the 15th century, a man and a woman, posing as traveling minstrels, are sent by the Devil to a castle to seduce its inhabitants.

Fric-Frac

An employee at a jewelry store falls in love with a woman who secretly plans to rob the store.

Extenuating Circumstances

Harsh Parisian judge Gaetan (known as Monsieur Maximum), chafing in the idleness of retirement, leaves for a seaside holiday. But Gabriel the chauffeur has his mind on his girl, not the car; Gaetan and wife Nathalie are stranded in the country, where they find shelter in a low class bistro patronized by cheerful jail birds. Once the ice is broken, they have a wonderful time, but as the judge tries to trick his new friends into reforming, inevitable exposure approaches...

A Dog That Pays Off

Josyane Plaisir, a rather idle singer, who is waiting for the man of her heart,handsome and rich if possible, accepts the offer of a dog handler. The clever man has worked out a scheme to snare rich men. The trick is simple: "Pantoufle", the little dog he lets for 5,000 francs a week, will run off, climb into a luxurious car with only one man inside and "retrieve" him to Josyane, since her address is stuck to the dog's collar. René, the first man who rings her door-bell, is single (or nearly so!), good-looking but ... broke.

Portrait of a Murderer

A circus daredevil is the next victim of a danger-seducing woman who tricks him into a potentially deadly stunt after he attempted to kill her.

Hôtel du Nord

A young couple's suicide pact goes awry, leaving the woman to face her survival with a new admirer while pining for her lost love.

The Pearls of the Crown

The story of the seven pearls of the English Crown, from Henry VIII to 1937 – three of them missing.

Mademoiselle Josette, ma femme

Josette needs to marry within a year to get her aunt's money.Her fiance,an Englishman, has gone away .After getting permission from her godfather to do a "white marriage," she realizes that she really loves the godfather instead.

Je te confie ma femme

A young man, having seduced his friend's mistress, undertakes to leave his wife to the latter for one night, when he is married. A few years later, the friend claims his due and the young man introduces him to his so-called wife.

The Voyage of Mr. Perrichon

Perrichon, a well-off self-satisfied bourgeois, goes on holiday with his wife and his pretty daughter Henriette. He is more or less willingly followed by two young men, Armand Desroches et Daniel Savary, who both have fallen in love with Henriette after meeting her at a ball. The Perrichons's vacation will be eventful with, among other misadventures, two accidents (one real, the other fake) and the threat of a duel.

La Fille de Madame Angot

Under the Directory, Clairette is in love with the chansonnier Ange Pitou, while the hairdresser Pomponnet is destined for her as a husband. But Ange Pitou is flighty and lets herself be seduced by Mademoiselle Lange who wanted to know the author of seditious couplets.

Lovers and Thieves

Claude, son of a ruined family, pretends to be a dangerous trickster in order to get credit from the guys in the middle. He is in charge of retrieving compromising letters from a woman whose lover fears blackmail. But before arriving there, Claude fortunately meets love.

Le Mari rêvé

A shy young composer gets a job as musical director, under a false name, at a music publisher. The editor has two charming daughters, one falls in love with the composer, and the other with the musical director, two people who are only one man... Complications, misunderstandings and a happy ending.

Aloha, the Song of the Islands

During the London-Melbourne race, two aviators, one male (Guy,) the other female (Betty), are forced to land on a lost island in Polynesia. They learn to survive in difficult conditions and fall in love. Back in civilization, their union does not prove obvious. Pierre is already married to Ginette, a movie actress, and Betty is engaged to her cousin Edouard. Moreover, Lord Stanton, her rich father, will not hear of a marriage with Guy. Will love ultimately triumph in spite of everything?

Sunday Encounter

Jean Brevent still did not understand the departure of his wife, Danielle Darieux. It's been five years, but he still can't forget her. In spite of a work of writer originator in a newspaper, in which it tried to be invested completely, time did not make its work. One day, by chance, he meets her in the bus...

Désiré

Sacha Guitry exchanges his usual top hat for a uniform in Désiré, playing a cavalier valet embroiled in an awkward flirtation with his new employer (played by the actor-director's real-life wife, Jacqueline Delubac), who is involved with a stuffy politician. A carefree class farce filled with memorable supporting characters, Désiré blurs the distinction between upstairs and downstairs.

Madame and Her Redskins

After the exodus, a woman with a tidy life decides to take in the abandoned children; she meets a singer who knows how to make her see life with more poetry.

Hitch-Hike

Agathe, 18, dreams of change. Gone are her vacations on the rainy beaches of Belgium! She decides to hitchhike down to the South of France, where she'll have many happy and less happy encounters. On the way to Paris, men of various ages offer to shorten her wait by the roadside. Some try to take advantage of her, while another, in a fit of madness, tries to stab her. Despite these assaults, Agathe continues her journey, heading for Valence and then Aix-en-Provence.

Law of Men

After a planned robbery on an armoured car the investigating police officer encounters a female journalist who specialises in criminology, and who he suspects may have had a role in the heist.

Maxime

Story of an aging dandy who is the factotum and arranger of female conquests for a brusque young millionaire.

Thunder Over Paris

An international crook hunted by the police comes to Paris to save his daughter from the clutches of a blackmailer friend of a cabaret singer with eccentric outfits.

Mother Love

Gilbert Quercy, 18, tried to commit suicide after a heartache. At the hospital, three women try to cheer him up : the three former wives of his father, an archaeologist and an egyptologist, whom Gilbert called his "mothers". These women show a lot of willingness, but soon will become intrusive.

No Exit

The scene is a tawdry hotel room in Limbo, where several damned souls are gathered. At first, the group fails to comprehend where they are or why they're there. When the horrible truth dawns upon them, they carp and snipe at one another, blaming everyone but themselves for their dismal fate.

Gigolo

Back from the war, Marceau Le Guern remembers. Educated in an orphanage run by Dominican brothers, he fell into misery when he left it. His only asset was his good looks, which did not escape the attention of Madame Alice, a shady woman who persuaded him to pose for pornographic photos meant for lonely aging women. Marceau also served as a gigolo before the war and captivity put an end to this juicy business. Now he wants to start a new life, all the more as ha has found love in the person of a pure young lady named Dominique. But Madame Alice won't hear of it...

Adventure in Paris

Michel Levasseur is a joyous reveler who does not care about the next day. So much so that one day a bailiff bursts into his Paris apartment and seizes his furniture on behalf of Raymond Sauvaget, his landlord, a rich food industrialist. But far from resenting Sauvaget's act of hostility, Michel ... becomes his friend. Now Raymond, although prosperous, does not know how to handle women. That is why he asks Michel, a regular Casanova, to give him lessons in seduction.

Flesh and the Woman

In this romance, a jilted lawyer joins the French Foreign Legion to help him forget his faithless love. While in the desert he espies a village beauty who is the exact double of his true-love.

Explosive Vacation!

Arlette thinks she has made a wonderful gift to her daughter Sylvie, who has just married François Morel, a young journalist. And, to tell the truth, not everybody receives a posh little bar like the Royal Montmartre as a gift. The trouble is that Monsieur Jo, the former owner of the joint is also the boss of a gang of drug traffickers. And that he has managed to persuade the pair of naive lovebirds to drop a painting to a friend on their way to their honeymoon place. Now the picture is stuffed with drugs! The honeymoon trip promises to be eventful...

Paris la belle

A look at Paris in 1928 in black and white and then color sequences filmed in the same places in 1959.

The Stowaway

A group of adventurers compete with one another to find the missing heir Rene Marechal, thought to be near Tahiti.

The Lover of Borneo

Lucien Mazerand, a bookseller from Châteauroux, goes to Paris to spend a few days in the French capital. At the music-hall, he discovers Stella Losange, a singer who literally enthralls him. Determined to seduce her, he is aware that a mere bookseller from the provinces stands no chance. So he resorts to a stratagem: posing for a globe-trotter who has gone through millions of adventures. The scheme works but the lady wants more : why doesn't he take her along with him so that she can share his dangerous life?

The Bureaucrats

A comedy about the petty bureaucrats who need special leather props under their posteriors because of the long hours they spend sitting at their desks.

Love, Madame

Madame Célerier is determined to marry off her son François to a rich and haughty woman but François has other plans.

The Trip to Biarritz

Guillaume Dodut is a stationmaster in rural France at a station where trains no longer stop. His dream has always been to holiday in the famous resort town of Biarritz. Meanwhile, he gets involved in the romantic life of his son who is studying to be an engineer in London.

Boléro

As her neighbor Rémi Courmont has told her off for making his ears bleed with Ravel's Bolero, a music piece she plays at full volume all the time, Anne-Marie decides to get even with him. She sets up a hoax with the complicity of her friend Catherine, who agrees to post as Remi's mistress to embarrass him. Just then, Niquette, Rémi's real lover, resurfaces.

Pension Mimosas

Mr. and Mrs. Noblet run a boarding house on the French Riviera. One day, they are led by circumstances to welcome a little boy Pierre, whose father is in jail, into their home. Which makes Louise Noblet all the happier as she can't have children herself. But, after a while, Pierre's father is released from prison and reclaims his son... Time passes and Pierre, now a young adult, lives in Paris more or less on the wrong side of the law. He has a mistress, Nelly, who does not say no to other men's money... Louise, who still loves Pierre as her own son, wants only one thing - to help him get by.

Arletty, Lady Paname

A biography of the French actress Arletty.

The Woman I Loved the Most

Claude is a young man whose girlfriend has just broken up with him. Feeling unable to overcome the pain, Claude has no other idea than to end his life. Back home, he finds five middle-aged or elderly men sitting at the dinner table but he refuses to join the guests and goes upstairs to his bedroom. The worst is prevented thanks to a servant who has caught sight of Claude's revolver. Claude 's uncle joins his nephew and manages to persuade him not to take action. He takes him downstairs to the dining room where each in turn, the five guests start telling their own story. For it happens that they too once had their heart broken and that they too once wanted to die for love.

Let's Make a Dream

A husband who has just cheated on his wife returns home in the early morning, puzzled. He finds there, without knowing it, the lover of his wife, to whom he confesses his infidelity.

The Birth of Children of Paradise

Documentary about the making of Marcel Carne's 1945 film Children of Paradise (France), interviewing the director, the actors and production designer, as well as other French directors.

Madame Sans-Gêne

Deals with the ordeals of a crude washerwoman in the chic court of Napoleon the First. Based on the play of the same name.

The Little Thing

Now that their parents are ruined, Jacques Eyssette and his younger brother Daniel, are driven to fend for themselves. Jacques becomes the secretary of a marquis who exploits him by making him work so hard that his health gets damaged. Daniel, on his part, is hired as a supervisor and Latin teacher in a school in the province. It soon happens that he is in a bad situation too as, after being subjected to repeated harassment, he ends up being fired. Daniel then decides to join Jacques in Paris, hoping to embark on a literary career. Unfortunately, Irma Borel, an actress, sets her sight on him and drags him into a life of vice.

My Priest Among the Poor

Abbé Pellegrin, parish priest of Sableuse, sells an ancient Christ to an unknown man, M. de Saint Preux. Summoned to the bishop's palace, he learns that he has been the victim of a swindler. The Christ, exchanged for a "mouthful of bread", is a valuable antique. Not wanting to compromise his wartime comrade La Goupille, who had introduced him to Saint Preux, Pellegrin proposed to his bishop that he himself carry out the search for the Christ. For the occasion, he swapped his cassock for a "civilian" outfit and landed in Paris. He recovers the treasure in the midst of a series of adventures and misadventures involving Cousinet, the former squire of Sableuse. He takes in the tenants Cousinet has just evicted from his hotel.

The Father of the Girl

Françoise Marinier, a strong-willed young woman, won't accept a husband being forced on her. She left her family and moved to Paris, where she found work as a secretary for a fashionable artist, Edith Mars. The understanding Edith Mars encourages Françoise's budding love affair with an embassy attaché. Edith is the mistress of the Minister of Justice, and the Marinier parents arrive believing it's their daughter they're interviewing. While Mme Marinier puts up with it, her husband is scandalized. Gr ce to Edith, all confusion cleared up, the father is promoted to magistrate and Françoise marries.

Mirages

A star of Les Folies Bergères has to choose between her career and her love for an engineer.

Et ta sœur…

Bastien du Boccage is a repeat offender: hasn't he been sent to jail no fewer than six times? But he is no ordinary criminal mind you. As a matter of fact he is a newspaper editor and should have no problems with justice. The trouble is that he has a sister, Lucrèce, who is agony aunt in his newspaper and who tends not to mince her words. To make matters worse, Francine, his daughter, has fallen in love with Bruno, a penniless student and Lucrèce is prepared to do anything to prevent her marriage..

Mais n'te promène donc pas toute nue

A deputy with higher political aspirations is annoyed that, as visitors come to see him, his wife insists on staying in her nightie because it is such a hot day.

Abduct Me

René Dargelle is asked by a friend to receive a young woman in his place. She is soon to marry a Hindu prince, a man who is certainly attractive, but who cheats on her shamelessly and whom she dreams of making jealous. When Dargelle, out of pure fantasy, asks her to tell right and left that he seduced her, she sees the perfect opportunity to infuriate her noble lover.

Destination Rome

After WWII, a young man without perspective arrives in Rome. Living in a loft, he gradually discovers the city becoming a tour guide.

The Tomboy

The eponymous garçonne or flapper is Monique Lerbier, an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man she does not love which her parents have forced on her. She then falls into all sorts of carnal temptations and artificial pleasures previously unknown to her. These include her being seduced into a lesbian love affair by a chanteuse.

Nylon Blues: A History of the Nylon Stocking

Events of strange and serious nature mark the invention and the manufacture of the nylon stockings. For example inhuman exploitation of workers in artificial silk factories. The US army was a substantial promoter of the nylons.

Notre Dame de la Croisette

A woman goes to Cannes and, lost in its chaos and unable to obtain tickets, ends up watching it on television from her hotel room.

The Sweetness of Loving

A young provincial engineer sends romantic stories he has written to a cousin in Paris, who claims them as his own work.The writer comes to the city and for a while gets even with his relative by having a fling with the man's wife.