In occupied Paris, an actress wed to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
Pierrot escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run.
An avant-garde political satire that takes place in a mythical country in South America. The dictator has been replaced by a look-alike revolutionary, and the dictator's wife has been replaced by a robot.
The story is set in the present day. László Sziráki, a womanizer and chemistry professor, is searching for the secret of making gold, but one component is missing. He wants fame and a solution to his financial problems. When he meets Esthena, an eccentric philosopher who wants to lose her virginity, he succeeds in turning plastic into gold. But he, a shrewish and shrewd man, does not recognise the exceptional nature of this encounter and pushes her away. Sophika, the wise grandmother of Syracuse, also meets Esthena: she sees her as a kindred spirit and assigns her to her grandson. But in the meantime, Mr. Maci, Esthéna's bumfordian and buffalo-loving gladiator knight, who will do anything for the girl, begins to pursue the alchemist out of jealousy. Will Syracuse find the answer to the alchemist's question? And is making gold even important?
The relationship of István Kozár and his wife has reached the point where neither is prepared to hear even a single word from the other. The woman travels to the countryside because she needs a little time by herself. The next morning the police inform the man that his wife has died. István, who has fantasized on more than one occasion about strangling the woman, soon finds himself being investigated by detectives who expect a confession from him.
While shooting a film, the director becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker that has been laid off by a boss who did not like her union activities.
A tribute to Orson Welles. When Kovacs meets Agi, he does not know what awaits him: cinema, alcohol and love do not mix well when you are a Hungarian director parachuted into Hollywood...
Feeling suffocated by a possessive boyfriend, work and suburban life, a young woman starts spending the weekends in her Paris apartment in order to reclaim some of her lost freedom.
A medical intern finds himself drawn into a world of international intrigue after discovering a shrunken human head in his luggage.
Paula Nelson goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, but finds him dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, she meets Typhus, whom she ends up knocking out. His corpse is later found in the apartment of David Goodis, a writer. Paula is arrested and interrogated. From then on, she encounters many gangsters.
The wife of an extremely jealous merchant is held hostage by a bank robber.
When middle-aged Kata realises that her life will only be complete if she has a baby of her own, her longstanding-but-married boyfriend Joska refuses to comply. But by developing an unlikely friendship with the angst-ridden teenage orphan Anna, who is also involved in a controversial relationship, Kata discovers aspects of herself, and her role as a woman, that have gone unexamined throughout her entire, lonely life.
Áron is a happy child in his family. But at some point things take a different turn, and his mother starts to lose her health rapidly. As this happens, the man in charge decides what's best for Áron without consulting the young boy's opinion, and the boy finds himself thrown out of his warm home into an orphanage in the woods. He's utterly displeased by what's happening, without knowing he has yet to face much worse...
An outer suburb of Paris, 1972. Gilles and Christine, both sixteen, are classmates and lovers who have become frustrated with the aloofness of their families and the general monotony of their lives. When the pair are caught shoplifting, Christine's father ships her off to a home for emotionally disturbed children, temporarily putting space between her and Gilles. Luckily for them, though, she escapes and the couple contemplate running away together.
You're a provincial kid in Paris and suddenly you're the center of attention: Movie stars, famous directors and sexy women are doting on you because they all think you're the son of their long-dead legendary friend. You never knew your dad, but the facts of this famous guy's life suggest that he might have fathered you. Your mom tells you nothing. All the fuss makes you uncomfortable at first but soon you find it's rather fun to be the son of the famous Gascogne. And in the midst of it all you fall in love. It is, after all, springtime in Paris.
A young man becomes enraged when his mother remarries his wealthy uncle after his father dies.
Two Hungarian documentary makers, having heard nothing about their countryman Mickey Hargitay for almost 15 years, embark on a quest for the former body-builder/B-movie star. They cross America and find Mickey, living quietly in Southern California, running his businesses and raising his children, who have names like Mariska (ring a bell?) and Zoltan, speak Hungarian, and look like Jane Mansfield (of course).
A French diplomat is surveilled by a secret service to find a weakness for political control, his private life becoming 'File No. 51'.
Despite his lack of political convictions, photojournalist Bruno Forestier is roped into a paramilitary group waging a shadow war in Geneva against the Algerian independence movement.
When Peter, Margaux's American writer husband, leaves Paris in a funk and heads home, she finds herself the single parent of two near teens. She also gets a new assignment at work: to find, sign, and promote new rock singers. She discovers a duo, Jeremy and Michel, and jump-starts their music careers. Jeremy is attracted to the older Margaux, asserts himself with her, befriends her children, and neglects Michel and their music. The kids go to New York to be with their father Peter, freeing Margaux to respond to Jeremy. Does that relationship have any future? And what of the musical duo?
A company wants to make a play about Mont Valerien resistant fighters who were shot by the Nazis and the French collaborators.
An unexpected phone call from a certain Kirsch sets off a crisis between Catherine and Raphaël that will affect all those around them, be they close friends or casual acquaintances.
This is a dark story of a caring movie maker who struggles to make it and also struggles with his demons and obsessions.
At a reception, the guests amuse themselves with cruel games.
A troupe of actors rehearse a play. In the play-within-the-film, an ambitious son and his distant father fight for control of an armaments firm and are pushed to eventual destruction by dangerous outside forces and traitorous aides.
Alex gets a well-paid job from his friend Zsolt: he must smuggle drugs from Germany. Alex wants to run away with the money to France, but suffering a car crash he loses his eyesight. One night, calling from a phone box in the street, he makes the acquaintance of a Hungarian woman living in a seaside town in Germany,
After the 1848/49 War of Independence in the Transdanubian region. János Hegyesi, a late veteran of the War of Independence, is given the task by the chief bailiff Mérei to round up the gangs of outlaws who are rioting in Somogy County.
Georges Nail lives in a new suburb. He's married, loves his wife, son and dog. Paul Hammer is good looking, rich and intelligent. But he is torn by his severe judgment of the world and a desire to be part of it. One day, their paths meet. Nail sees this meeting as an opportunity to create a new friendship. On his side, Hammer sees it as a new reason for living : to crucify the perfect image of the happy western man and his incarnation in the person of Georges Nail. A nail is the perfect victim for a hammer.
After the suicide of his actress-mother, a young man announces his identity to his father, who happens to be the man who directed his mother's last film.
An aimless young woman is sent home from school with nothing to do. Drifting through the streets of Paris, she comes across a variety of people.
A famous French filmmaker is hired by a major Hollywood producer to make a documentary on the state of post-Cold War Russia. The filmmaker, though, subverts the project by stubbornly remaining in France and casting himself as the title character of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot," offering up a series of typically Godardian musings on art, politics, the nature of images and the future of cinema.
When he loses his position as a powerful government minister, Vincent is dropped by his pretty mistress and must begin life anew, without the privileges of power. As he gradually becomes acquainted with milieus which he d either forgotten or never known and a host of sometimes eccentric, often remarkable everyday people, Vincent really begins to start living again.
Laci and the divorced Klári decide to commit suicide, since neither's parents give them shelter, they have no place to sleep, no decent job and no future. Béla, who lives on stealing cars, joins them. He has a gun. Based on a true story.
This film, set at the beginning of the 17th century, is the first East-European "Eastern". Bocskai István orders the free Heyducks to shepherd a huge herd of cattle through the country torn to three parts, to the Dalmatian coast, where he can get weapons in exchange, for fighting the Austrians.
1943. French POWs escape through Hungary towards the Balkan. Jacques and Gérard are caught and taken to an internment camp at Lake Balaton. Jacques meets Klári here, who was abandoned by her military officer husband for her Jewish origin. Both want to have a short affair, but love unfolds between them.
Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.
Poetic movie about 3 generations of women.
The story of a woman that remained distracted for a long time from her life, from the passions that made her feel alive. The importance of true love is compared with the material value of diamonds. Only one truly lasts forever. She's got to find the thing that values most for her, the thing that gives psychical stability and real happiness again to her life.
Alain Cluny is Balthazar, a bumbling middle-aged intellectual who spouts off from time to time about leftist causes, usually to his current girlfriend. Then Edwarda (Bernadette Lafont), who is active in the political underground, comes into his life. From that point on, he begins to act on his beliefs. Edwarda's underground political action group stages a little drama to test Balthazar's commitment and reliability, putting him through an interrogation by what appear to him to be French secret police. Having passed this test, he is given a real assignment. This film is a comedy with elements of satire, and it explores the humor to be found in left-wing pretentiousness of all kinds. - Rovi
A former hero of the French anti-Nazi resistance is approached by old comrades to lead a financially struggling liberal newspaper. Initially reluctant, she takes on the challenge, mortgaging her house to keep it afloat. As conservative forces intensify their opposition, she is eventually forced to sell the paper, seeing it as a personal failure.
A porcelain table service and a painting from the 19th century pass from hand to hand and deteriorate over time, sealing the fate of different characters who cross paths in Paris.
A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams, revolution, cannibalism and murder as French bourgeois society starts to collapse under the weight of its own consumer preoccupations.
A librarian, a gangster's ex-lover and a woman who has recovered from a coma spend an eye-opening summer in Paris.
David, 50 years old, returns to Rome for an appointment made 20 years earlier. The passion that bound him to the Countess Clara Orsini had ended with a flight to the other side of the world. The woman he finds on the day of the appointment is not the one he loved, but another, his double, his own daughter who bears the same name of Clara. Intimate ties are formed between them as they wander through Rome.
The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.
Patricia Leacock, reporter for an american television, is in Morocco on the trail of a counterfeiter-philanthropist. Based on a real story which Chaplin had already thought to adapt into a film.
Stephen, living in a troubled family, breaks into a grocery store and wreaks vandalism. He is sent to a reform school. Later he works in a cleaning brigade and accidentally meets József Draskóczi, who denounced him. Draskóczi lives in an unloving, troubled atmosphere with his barren daughter and cynical son-in-law, ascetic about his youthful communist beliefs. He feels responsible for Istvan's fate, offering him a human voice and love. Despite his daughter's hysterical jealousy, he sends Istvan to school and then, through his previous connections, provides him with an apartment...
Five swindle stories, taking place in five international cities: Tokyo, Japan ("Fumiko's Five Benefactors" by Hiromichi Horikawa); Amsterdam, The Netherlands ("A River of Diamonds" by Roman Polanski); Naples, Italy ("The Road Map" by Ugo Gregoretti); Paris, France ("The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower" by Claude Chabrol); and Marrakesh, Morocco ("The Confidence Man" by Jean-Luc Godard). Godard's segment was not included in the original French cinema release, and Polanski's segment was not included on the 2016 home disc release.
A drifter navigates the fringes of Parisian society. The protagonist, a solitary man seeking direction, becomes entangled with a group of outsiders—misfits, lovers, and wanderers—who live on the city's margins. As he moves through this world, he connects with a woman whose struggles mirror his. Their relationship is fragile, shaped by fleeting moments of intimacy and the harsh realities of their surroundings. The film captures their attempts to escape their circumstances, but fate and the weight of their pasts make change elusive.
Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”
An English hermit has somehow been brought to France in the period following the French Revolution, and prior to the Napoleonic Era, a period (1795-1799) known as "The Directory." He eventually comes down out of his tree into a chateau owned by an Italian nobleman and his wife. Before long, the hermit has washed and bathed and become quite presentable, even charming. However, his appearance in their midst is like a sentence of death for many of those who associate with him.
In the mist of the Algerian events, a man finds a fugitive happiness beside a local woman.
A young man returns to the family home to face a childhood trauma: his brother's suicide, but nobody in the family is willing to help him.
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
Hungarian-born Laszlo Szabo returned to his native country to play the part of Dibusz in this comedy. When the residents of a large old house learn that it is to be torn down and that they will be relocated elsewhere, an intense game gets underway. As is usual in such instances, the residents will be given new apartments commensurate in size with their old ones. Dibusz sees this as an opportunity to temporarily enlarge his "assigned" space in the condemned building. He wants to be reassigned to an apartment which is larger than his current bathless one-room space. He and a neighbor cooperate to break down the walls that separate their spaces from that of an old woman who just died after a brief tussle. Still not satisfied, he tries to marry one of two spinster women who live together but is rejected. In the course of the film, he has intense encounters of one sort or another with anyone who might be of help to him in his quest.
Leo just broke up with his wife, and the handsome architect wants to enjoy his sadness at this event in solitude. Unfortunately for him, his young girlfriend, an unperceptive sprite, is too much in love with him to let him out of her sight. He is on his way to a resort in the south of France, and despite his persistent, obvious and repeated attempts to get her to leave him alone, she sticks to him like glue.
A playwright offers two actress friends the chance to appear in his new, unfinished play, which consists of only one female part.
Just as the disheveled and alcoholic filmmaker Ismaël embarks on a difficult new film project, his life is sent into a tailspin. His wife Carlotta, presumed dead for 20 years, come crashing back into his life creating chaos in his work and his current romantic relationship with the starry-eyed astronomer Sylvia.
Fanfan leaves his friend Charles and thinks he can be accommodated by his friend, Joss. However, at the same time, Joss abandons the marital home. Fanfan and Joss have only to knock on the door of Manu, Fanfan's sister, who gathers them until Mytch, Manu's companion, throws everyone out. The three young women find themselves in the street and continue their run, while their lovers gang up to track them down. The mini-war of the sexes will flare up.
A young woman travels to Japan to write a novel.
This somber drama chronicles the writings of Paltiel Kossover (Michel Jonasz), a Rumanian Jew who was incarcerated in a Stalinist prison. Zupanev (Erland Josephson) is a sympathetic court registrar who smuggles the documents and later presents them to the poet's son Grisha (Vincent David).
In this French crime caper film, a young misfit who has grown tired of his job as a bank teller deliberately gets fired. When some underworld characters ask him to share the layout of the bank so that they can more effectively rob it, he does. He also joins in the robbery. But when members of the gang start shooting at one another, it becomes clear that he is definitely in over his head.
Roland des Roncesvalles is a legendary knight from the age of chivalry in France. In the 11th-century epic La Chanson de Roland, he is depicted as a key figure in halting the advance of the Arabs into France. In this story, the 10th-century legend is staged by a group of 12th-century pilgrims using the 11th-century poem. Their acting is interrupted by a violent peasant uprising, which kills many of the pilgrims. However, one of the survivors, is converted to the peasant cause and later speaks out in favor of more just treatment for the downtrodden.
Barely out of prison, where she spent five long years, a pretty prostitute sows disorder in the life of a hitherto peaceful couple.
Juli is a 17-year-old student who takes a summer job in a local chemical factory. She is befriended by Piri, a girl with an unsavory reputation who has worked there before. The two friends are ogled by male workers who have overactive libidos and imaginations. Juli spurns the advances of a deluded Romeo while Piri continues to work and endure open hostility from the older female workers while her slothful parents sink deeper into alcoholism.
A woman accused of murder escapes an asylum and her psychiatrist tries to find her.
"Desire Caught by the Tail" - Described as surrealistic, absurd, and weird. The narrative is nonlinear and the meaning nearly impossible to decipher, the work has been praised despite, and sometimes for, its lack of message.
A Jewish girl in 19th century London dreams of becoming a stage actress.
Two old women who happen to be pickpockets stole money from Simon, the taxi driver. The police are unable to find the thieves, so Simon decides to find them himself.
Imre Horváth and his friends gather to celebrate his wife's birthday. They are confused because of the changes in the country's politics and want Horváth to be much more active politically, but he is more concerned about his affair with his best friend's daughter.
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
The mistress of the wealthy Henri Marcoux is murdered and the family accuses the milkman of committing the crime. But Marcoux's daughter's fiancé suspects that she may have been murdered by someone else.
Lina and Mariana run from an orphanage in Porto towards the south, in search of Lina's father. It is in a difficult and chauvinistic world that they end up finding Alberto who lives with Júlia on a hill somewhere in the Alentejo. Without informing that Maria is their daughter, they try little by little to know why she abandoned her. When they know the reasons, they both plan revenge ... and execute it.
Tsar Alexandre II meets a young student, Katia. He understands that he loves her and try to send her away but they end up seeing each other again and becomes his mistress. With the help of Katia, Alexandre prepares a liberal constitution, but these reforms make him hostile to the more privileged subjects without satirising the revolutionaries against the regime.
Reel 29 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.
Making of Jean Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)
Set during a turbulent era of disquiet, fear, persecution and terror, which permeates every corner of post-WWI Hungarian society. In 1919, after just a few months of communist rule the Hungarian Republic of Councils falls victim to a nationalist counter-revolution. Admiral Horthy, leader of the nationalist far right movement, becomes the self-proclaimed regent of Hungary, and assumes power as the legal Head of State. Soldiers of the short-lived Hungarian Red Army are now on the run from relentless secret policemen and patrol units of the nationalist Royal Gendarme. If caught, ex-Red Army soldiers are executed without mercy or proper trial. István Cserzi, a former soldier of the Red Army has fled to the Great Hungarian Plains and has taken refuge on a farm, which is run by two sympathetic women.
Victoire wakes up one morning to find the body of her partner, Felix, lying on the floor of her bedroom. Without being able to reconstruct the course of the last few hours, but convinced that she was not completely to blame, she decides to flee. Wherever she is, all bridges are cut, a certain Louis-Philippe, however, curiously always knows how to find her and keeps her informed of the outcome of the "affair". But Louis-Philippe does not tell everything. What is he hiding? Who is who? Who is lying, fabricating, denying, who is the other's denier? And what really happened?
A young woman leaves a state orphanage to find her mother in this interesting examination of how the overt repression of women in the older pattern of village life has been replaced by the more subtle exploitation inherent in the apparently freer existence of young girls in the contemporary city.
Edit, who became the wife of a politician out of a simple peasant girl, suddenly becomes a widow as a result of an accident. She never loved her husband. She lives a wealthy and lonely life amidst false friends, facing one of the last alternatives of her life, i.e. having to face her past in the hope of an independent new beginning.
1972. Gilles and Christine are a young couple who is struggling with family difficulties and growing up. Christine convinces Gilles to run away together to a hypothetical community of artists living in the south of France, in Lozère. This TV movie is the basis of Olivier Assayas' feature "L'Eau froide".
Leaud portrays a Parisian publisher of romance novels who hits on the gimmick of having his live-in girlfriend (carrot-top cutie Helene Lapiower) pose as author Rosine de Beaumont for book jacket and autograph signings. She's an immediate hit but rebels against being exploited, and throws Leaud out of their apartment. Complications occur when she meets a nerd (Rufus) claiming to be the book's author, leading to discovery of the real author (Thierry Fortineau), a bookseller who"s so happy to be in print at last that he's not to miffed at the deception. Climax shot at Charles de Gaulle Airport neatly weaves plot threads together for a blissfully happy ending.
This affectionate little drama captures the last summer before graduation, when these assorted film students and drama students must leave the protected world of college and venture out into the chaotic currents of everyday life. Each student has his own style and character - often chosen for maximum dramatic impact. For instance, Paul is permanently gloomy, and mopes around, invariably wearing a long coat. The others make fun of him, because he is so serious. Charly loyally helps a male friend of hers rid himself of the insistent attentions of a former girlfriend. Caroline is the romantic one of the bunch, and her adventures along those lines keep her fully occupied. Several of them insist that they will not compromise the purity of their cinematic and theatrical aspirations for mere monetary comfort, but when Luc and Nanou find that Nanou is pregnant, they reconsider their absolutist stance.
Croatian anarchists collaborate with Hungarians to make a bid for the life of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.