Madame X (1929)
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At the request of his old war time colleague Ailsa Brimley, George Smiley agrees to look into the murder of Stella Rode. Brimley had only just received a letter from her saying she feared for her life at her husband's hand. The husband, Stanley Rode teaches at Carne School, but Smiley is doubtful that he had anything to do with his wife's death. As Smiley investigates, he learns that Stella was a nosy busybody who loved to learn other's little secrets and then gossip about them - or possibly blackmail them. When a student is killed and Smiley unearths a secret, he has the evidence to name the killer.Based on John Le Carré's 1962 thriller (his first) in which George Smiley is brought out of spy retirement to solve a murder in a British public school. The setting is based on Le Carre"s own schooldays in Sherborne and his brief experience teaching at Eton.
Julien lives alone with his cat. He dreams of Marie, and a few minutes later, he sees her on the street and makes a date. He asks her to move in with him, and she does. Her boyfriend is dead, the rest of her past a mystery. Although they quickly seem to fall in love, she sometimes pulls away suddenly from Julien, is distant, and spends the night in a hotel. She also dreads something imminent and warns Julien that if he missteps, he will lose her and all memory of her. Julien responds by digging into her past: what explains her remodeling an upstairs garret room, her nightly dreams, her fears? What can Julien, now desperately in love, do when he learns why? Can either rescue the other?
Madame Rosa lives in a sixth-floor walkup in the Pigalle; she's a retired prostitute, Jewish and an Auschwitz survivor, a foster mom to children of other prostitutes. Momo is the oldest and her favorite, an Algerian lad whom she raises as a Muslim. He asks about his parents; she answers evasively. As she ages and takes fewer children, Momo must do more for her; as money is tight, he tries to earn pennies on the street with a puppet. He's a beautiful man-child, and Madame Rosa makes him promise never to sell himself or become a pimp. A film editor, Nadine, befriends him, and his father appears as well. Madame Rosa reaches her last days in fear of hospitals, and Momo must act.
Alice's boyfriend Frank is a Scotland Yard detective who seems more interested in police work than in her. When she agrees to go out with another man, he attacks her and she defends herself and kills him. When the body is discovered, Frank is assigned to the case. He quickly discovers that Alice is the killer, but so has someone else, and they are threatening blackmail.
A provincial doctor's wife's romantic illusions about life and social status lead her to betray her naive husband, take on lovers and run up ruinous debts.
Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook are two expatriate jazz musicians living in Paris where, unlike America at the time, Jazz musicians are celebrated and racism is a non-issue. When they meet and fall in love with two young American girls, Lillian and Connie, who are vacationing in France, Ram and Eddie must decide whether they should move back to America with them, or stay in Paris for the freedom it allows them. Ram, who wants to be a serious composer, finds Paris more exciting than America and is reluctant to give up his music for a relationship, and Eddie wants to stay for the city's more tolerant racial atmosphere.
A horrific triple child murder leads to an indictment and trial of three nonconformist boys based on questionable evidence.
After being struck and killed by lightning, a young man recounts the way he blackmailed his fellow classmates into contributing to his literary magazine.
The relationship between a demanding piano teacher and her student, an Indian prodigy.
Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett) devises a cunning plan to snare a ruthless blackmailer who's been causing misery throughout London. And this time, even his loyal sidekick Dr. Watson finds the Baker Street sleuth's campaign a little strange. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's characters, this film features a softened version of Holmes who -- zounds! -- falls in love.
Framed in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.
Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment. When Elise, his sister with three kids and no husband, moves in to his place to care for him, Pierre does not change his new habits. And instead of dan
A story inspired by the life of one of the most remarkable figures in Brazilian popular culture, João Francisco dos Santos (1900-1976). In turn, bandit, transvestite, street fighter, brothel cook, convict and father to seven adopted children, dos Santos--better known as Madame Satã--was also a notorious gay performer who pushed social boundaries in a volatile time.
Jerry Mulligan (Gene Kelly) is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam (Oscar Levant) is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel (Georges Guétary). A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts (Nina Foch) takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
An American diplomat and his fiancée venture into the sordid underworld of sex and pornography in Budapest, Hungary to find out who is blackmailing them with a porno video taken of them with a prostitute.
Sent to Paris to visit their grandfather, the twins fall in love with France, not to mention two French boys.
Catherine Hubscher, who washes the shirts of young Napoleon and other soldiers fighting the Revolution, falls in love with Sergeant Lefebvre. Circumstances bring Lefebvre a noble title and even more -- Napoleon decides to make him the local ruler over a large territorial fiefdom. But trouble brews when Madame Sans-Gene, now elevated to the nobility along with her man -- cannot keep her frank observations under control.
A young Parisian woman begins a sordid affair with a middle-aged American businessman whom lays out ground rules that their clandestine relationship will be based only on sex.
The story of Heidi Fleiss, known as "The Hollywood Madam", who was the daughter of a prominent Los Angeles doctor and eventually became a prostitute for a well-known Los Angeles madam. She took over her boss' operation and soon was raking in $300,000 a month by hiring only the most beautiful and highest-class hookers and catering to wealthy Hollywood types, European and American corporate executives and Arab sheiks. Her operation was broken up by Los Angeles police in 1993, and she eventually went to prison for income-tax evasion. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com
Based on a true story, this film recounts the story of Diane Zamora and David Graham, two high school sweethearts who swear to always be together, even as they enter separate military academies. But when David confesses he had an affair with a classmate, Diane has an ultimatum, leading the two into a murderous pact with severe repercussions.
A country girl Emma Rouault marries a recently bereaved doctor, Charles Bovary, but her love for him does not endure. Whilst Bovary is happy to remain an ordinary provincial doctor, Emma yearns for better things.
Hamako has just started working for her personal hero, Madame Yuki. Her romanticized view of the Madame is broken immediately, though, as she is introduced with a ever-growing list of the Madameâs personal problems.
Charles returns to Paris to reminisce about the life he led in Paris after it was liberated. He worked on "Stars and Stripes" when he met Marion and Helen. He would marry and be happy staying in Paris after his discharge and working for a news organization. He would try to write his great novel and that would come between Charlie, his wife and his daughter
Private Detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.
Based on the true story of two chambermaids (the Papin sisters) of 1930s France who murdered their employer and her daughter. Christine Papin (Sylvie Testud), and Léa Papin (Julie-Marie Parmentier) are sisters with an already troubled past. Madame Lancelin takes them into her home and employs the girls as maids. Christine sees in Madame Lancelin an ideal mother figure â in spite of her severity. But their wretched background â an indifferent mother and drunken abusive father â casts a shadow over the girls and over time their ill-fated situation darkens. The sisters withdraw into themselves and finish by committing the worst â killing Madame Lancelin and her daughter after six years of service, on the 2 February 1933 in Le Mans.
A closeted lawyer risks his career to bring a blackmailer to justice.
Updated adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' classic 18th Century tale of seduction, betrayal and revenge set in the modern 1960s world of Parisian high society. The beautiful Madame de Merteuil seeks vengeance against her ex-lover Gercourt when he becomes engaged to her young goddaughter, Cécile. Merteuil turns to her ex-lover/partner-in-crime, Valmont, famous for his reputation as a Don Juan, to seduce Cécile and emotionally destroy her. While on his mission, Valmont gets sidetracked when he goes to visit his aunt and falls for Madame Tourvel, a virtuous, married woman who knows of his womanizing ways, but that only makes the challenge more exciting to Valmont. Together, Madame de Merteuil and Valmont make a dangerous team and they will stop at nothing when it comes to matters of the heart.
Downstairs was a very personal project for John Gilbert - he conceived, co-wrote and starred as the leading cad in this black comedy of manners, with Virginia Bruce and Paul Lukas co-starring. A philandering chauffeur (Gilbert) creates havoc in an upper-class household, from the top floors to the bottom, thanks to his blackmail and seductions. But when he sets his sights on the chief butler's (Lukas) new bride (Bruce) he may have crossed a line even he can't charm his way out of.
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 purses scandalous sexual liaisons with absolute abandon. However, when her volatile lifestyle catches up to her, the lives of everyone around her are endangered.
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
Harry Mitchell is a successful Los Angeles manufacturer whose wife is running for city council. His life is turned upside down when three blackmailers confront him with a video tape of him with his young mistress and demand $100,000. Fearing that the story will hurt his wife's political campaign if he goes to the police, Harry pretends that he will pay the men, but does not follow through.
Frederick Manion, an Army lieutenant, is arrested for the murder of bartender Barney Quill. In his defense, he claims that Quill raped and beat up his wife Laura. Although Laura supports her husband's story, the police surgeon cannot find evidence of rape. Manion is defended by Paul Biegler, a humble small-town lawyer. During the course of interviews, Biegler discovers that Manion is violently possessive and jealous, and that his wife has a reputation for giving her favors to other men. Biegler realizes that the prosecution will try to make the court believe that Laura was the lover of the bartender and that Manion killed him and beat her up when he discovered them together. Manion pleads "not guilty" and Biegler, who knows that his case is weak, sets his assistants to try to find a witness who will save Manion.
Hattie (Susan Sarandon), a New Orleans hooker, meets a photographer named Bellocq (Keith Carradine) at her brothel one night and, after he photographs her, he befriends her 12-year-old daughter, Violet (Brooke Shields). When Violet is brought on as a working girl by her mother's madam and Hattie skips town to get married, Violet quickly loses her innocence and focuses on reuniting with Bellocq. But a life with Bellocq is compromised for Violet after her mother returns to town.
Los Angeles private-eye Philip Marlowe is trying to locate the brother of his new client, a woman named Orfamay Quest. The trail leads to two men who deny any knowledge of the brother's existence. Both are soon killed by an ice pick, so Marlowe deduces that there's much more to this than a simple missing-person case. Marlowe's path crosses that of a blackmailed movie star, Mavis Wald, and her friend, exotic dancer Delores. A mobster sends karate expert Winslow Wong to bust up Marlowe's office and warn him off the case, while Lieutenant French also cautions the detective to stay out of the police's way.
A mysterious woman, known as Madame M, kidnaps forty pre-teen girls and transports them to a remote island to train them as the most deadly assassins. CIA operative Jack Chen follows the case for 6 years with no leads, but when a series of assassinations begin to occur, Jack suspects that Madame M is back in business.
A group of "respectable" people are all partly responsible for the suicide of a servant girl. They are pounced upon by a wily blackmailer (Pierre Cressoy), who knows that these people will pay dearly rather than inform on themselves or others.
In France of the late 19th century, the wife of a wealthy general, the Countess Louise, sells the earrings her husband gave her on their wedding day to pay off debts; she claims to have lost them. Her husband quickly learns of the deceit, which is the beginning of many tragic misunderstandings, all involving the earrings, the general, the countess, & her new lover, the Italian Baron Donati.
Young Polish physics student Marie marries Doctor Pierre Curie, in whose lab she had worked for a while. On their honeymoon they decide to find out what caused the strange effect Prof. Becquerel has noticed with the uranium/thorium stones for her dissertation. After many experiments they find out that there must be more radioactive elements than uranium and thorium, and they try to isolate it. After years of experiments in a makeshift lab at the University, they are able to isolate a few grains of a new element, radium, from 7 tons of raw material, but at the height of their success, Pierre is killed in an traffic accident. Written by Stephan Eichenberg
A young country girl comes to town and works in a brothel in order to help her fiance get the money to start his own business. "Paprika" is the name given to her by the madam.
A young American studying in Paris in 1968 strikes up a friendship with a French brother and sister. Set against the background of the '68 Paris student riots.
Handsome dentist Herve Dandieu, temporarily separated from his new, delectable wife Virginie by a lovers' tiff, is picked up by sexy dance teacher Anita Flores...object blackmail. Sensing trouble, Virginie follows him to the dance school, only to find him circumstantially incriminated in murder. Soon, the school has a gorgeous new instructress, whose slightly scatterbrained attempts to clear her husband confuse both police and suspects...and bring potential danger.
At the age of 11, Li was plucked from a poor Chinese village by Madame Mao's cultural delegates and taken to Beijing to study ballet. In 1979, during a cultural exchange to Texas, he fell in love with an American woman. Two years later, he managed to defect and went on to perform as a principal dancer for the Houston Ballet and as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
A beautiful showgirl, name "the Canary" is a scheming nightclub singer. Blackmailing is her game and with that she ends up dead. But who killed "the Canary". All the suspects knew and were used by her and everyone had a motive to see her dead. The only witness to the crime has also been 'rubbed out'. Only one man, the keen, fascinating, debonair detective Philo Vance, would be able to figure out who is the killer. Written by Tony Fontana
A Hong Kong-set mystery centered on a detective who has been framed for a series of gruesome murders.
Irene Dunne stars as a musical hall entertainer who is impregnated by a wealthy young man (Phillips Holmes). They marry, but the husband kills himself. Under the pressure of father-in-law Lionel Atwill, Dunne gives up the baby. Two decades pass: Irene crosses her son' path again. He commits a murder, and she willingly takes the blame--never letting the boy know her true identity. Secret of Madame Blanche is a remake of an equally teary Norma Talmadge silent film; both pictures bore the heavy influence of Madame X.
Bruno, a sadistic criminal, wants clever con man Leo out of the way. Leo and his equally clever wife, Lily, are up to something. So too is Julius: he hires Leo to kill Gloria, Julius's wife. Leo does it, but then Julius shows up with the murder on tape, saying Gloria isn't his wife - it's blackmail. Leo's bookie, Troy, is also closing in, wanting to be paid. Bruno and Lily as well as Bruno and Julius have their own scams running, and Leo is their target. Maybe Leo can get Troy off his back, avoid Moose (Bruno's huge enforcer), send Gloria's corpse out of England, turn the tables on Bruno's murderous brother Caspar, and outfox Lily. Or is Lily his fox? It's a three-ring circus.
When two married business executives having an affair are blackmailed by a violent criminal, they are forced to turn the tables on him to save their families.
Stranded student Pete (Ron Eldard) gets a lift from racist trucker Zack and repays the favor by inviting him in for dinner with his roommates, Jude (Cameron Diaz), Luke (Courtney B. Vance), Marc (Jonathan Penner) and Paulie (Annabeth Gish). When Zack praises Hitler and pulls a knife at the table, the roommates kill him. Rationalizing their actions as a favor to humanity, they bury Zack in the yard and begin to invite other offensive types to a string of similarly murderous meals.
The title is Adolf Hitler's question to his chief of staff Alfred Jodl on the eve of the liberation of Paris (August 25): the military governor of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, had been ordered to destroy Paris rather than let it fall undamaged into the hands of the Allies, but von Choltitz disobeyed.The film follows historical events as U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, head of the Allied invasion, refuses to divert troops to liberate Paris. His hand is forced by the French military leader, Philippe Leclerc, and by a Resistance uprising in the city. Von Choltitz keeps details of the uprising from the German high command in an effort to save the city being destroyed in retaliation. The film follows his turmoil as a soldier and as the man who doesn't wish to be seen by history as the cause of a beautiful city's destruction.
A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters--an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire--to rescue him.
A young American girl and a young French boy meet in Paris and fall in love, with the assistance of an old man and his stories.
Marnie is a beautiful kleptomaniac who is in love with businessman Mark Rutland. Marnie who is a compulsive thief is being watched by her new boss Mark who suspects her of stealing from him and thus decides to blackmail her in the most unusual way. A psychological thriller from Alfred Hitchcock based on a novel of the same name by Winston Graham.
A psychotic child murderer stalks a city. Despite an exhaustive investigation fueled by public hysteria and outcry, the police have been unable to find him. The police crackdown makes it nearly impossible for the organized criminal underground to operate. The criminals decide that the only way to get the police off their backs is to catch the murderer themselves.
Former OSS officer Alan Holiday, now living in London, is visited on New Year's Eve by Catherine Carrel who says she is a close friend of Jules Lemoine who served with Holiday during the war. Lemoine urgently requests that Holiday go to Paris on a secret mission. Lemoine visits and wants Alan to deliver a reel of tape which he gives him, and keeps a fake reel himself to deceive enemy agents. Lemoine is killed and the fake tape stolen. Holiday, poses as an assistant to photographer Louis Vernay, and they take three models along to further the ruse.
A frustrated, unemployed teacher joins forces with a scammer and his girlfriend in a blackmailing scheme.
Wanted For Murder tells the haunting tale of a serial killer who falls in love with an intended victim.
Mickey Gordon is a basketball referee who travels to France to bury his father. Ellen Andrews is an American living in Paris who works for the airline he flies on. They meet and fall in love, but their relationship goes through many difficult patches. The story is told in flashback by their friends at a restaurant waiting for them to arrive.
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