Portrait of an Assassin (1949)
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The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them.
Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris' suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who's been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal... A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.
Adapted from a story by William Irish, it's a noirish tale of a man who orders a mail-order bride but receives instead a con woman.
Two French journalists become embroiled in a criminal plot in New York City involving a disappeared United Nations diplomat.
A French hit man is hired by a crime family to end the life of a rival mobster, but things fall apart when the boss who hired him is killed.
A crook on the run hooks up with a criminal gang to commit a kidnapping. However, things don't go quite as planned.
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Hitman Jef Costello is a perfectionist who always carefully plans his murders and who never gets caught.
Two women: Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), a wealthy amateur photographer who prowls the docks in her early '60s Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder looking for handsome men, and Bella (Victoria Abril), a poor but beautiful woman who is probably a prostitute, share affections for a dock worker named Gerard (played by Gerard Depardieu). He is obsessed by the memory of his sister, who was raped and then committed suicide in a back alley, which he visits every night. No one knows who committed the rape, and he has sworn to avenge the crime, if he can only figure out who the perpetrator was.
Jenny Lamour (Delair) wants to succeed in the theatre. Her husband and accompanist is Maurice Martineau (Blier), a mild-mannered but jealous man. When he finds out that Jenny has been making eyes at Brignon, a lecherous old businessman, in order to further her career, he loses his temper and threatens Brignon with death. Despite this, Jenny goes to a secret rendezvous at Brignon's apartment, who is murdered the same evening. The criminal investigations are led by Inspector Antoine (Jouvet).
Charlie Kohler is a piano player in a bar. The waitress Lena is in love with him. One of Charlie's brother, Chico, a crook, takes refuge in the bar because he is chased by two gangsters, Momo and Ernest. We will discover that Charlie's real name is Edouard Saroyan, once a virtuose who gives up after his wife's suicide. Charlie now has to deal wih Chico, Ernest, Momo, Fido (his youngest brother who lives with him), and Lena...
A band of crooks led by ace safecracker Azad break into a mansion on the outskirts of Athens to steal a near-priceless collection of emeralds. The robbery is a success, but the crooks miss the cargo ship by which they had planned to leave the country. Whilst waiting for the next ship, Azad is pursued by Abel Zacharia, a crooked police chief who will stop at nothing to lay his hands on the stolen jewelsâ¦
In this French crime drama, two safe-crackers are breaking into a safe when they are caught in the act by a guard. One of the crooks kills the guard and flees leaving his partner behind. The abandoned accomplice is captured and convicted. One year passes before the convict is able to escape from prison and set out to exact his revenge.
Parisian police commissioner Coleman is not a happy man, but he does what he can to get through each day. He has recently started having an affair with Cathy, and that helps a little. Cathy is also Simon's girlfriend and Simon is Coleman's friend. Unfortunately, Simon is also the head of a gang of criminals. When Coleman's investigation of a drug-smuggling ring closes in, their rivalry comes to a head.
Making his directorial debut, Robert Hossein also assumes the leading role, playing an escaped convict. Hossein and his fellow escapees cross the path of Marina Vlady, with whom they all fall in love. Alas for our "heroes," Vlady intends to avenge the death of her sweetheart at the hands of Hossein and his confreres. Not only do these heels go to Hell, but they do so with a spectacular flourish. Les Salauds Vont en Enfer was adapted by Rene Wheeler from a play by Frederic Dard.
Tom Ripley is a talented mimic, moocher, forger and all-around criminal improviser; but there's more to Tom Ripley than even he can guess.
A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?
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The year is 1898. A beautiful woman named Marie (also known as Casque d'Or) has fallen in love with a carpenter named Manda. The problem is that Marie is the girlfriend of a hoodlum in the Leca gang. So in order to have the lovely Marie, Manda faces and defies the gang and kills Leca. Soon after however, Manda is sent to the gallows.
In this run-of-the-mill crime drama, Bernard Giraudeau is Daniel Chetman, someone who wants to leave the life of violence he knew in his neighborhood -- and cannot do so because his nemesis, a strutting street gangster now involved with organized crime, continues to terrorize the inhabitants of Chetman's turf. After much spilled blood, a parade of ugly underground types, and various sexual scenes, Chetman reduces the forces of evil to a reasonable level of opposition -- but who knows if the neighborhood will be different in the end...
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 American private-eye, arrives in Alphaville, a futuristic city on another planet which is ruled by an evil scientist named Von Braun, who has outlawed love and self-expression.
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse), becomes the target of a murder plot hatched by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife (Vera Clouzot) and the mistress he brazenly flaunts (Simone Signoret). The women, brought together by their mutual hatred for the man, pull off the crime but become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal ? What is her purpose?
On crowded Milan streets, two men execute a split-second payroll heist-in broad daylight-then begin a lightning-paced getaway, via every conveyance available. But after all, when a tough guy's returning to France (where he's been sentenced to death in absentia) after holing up in Italy for nearly a decade, he's got to have some startup money--particularly if he's going back with the wife and kids.
The charismatic, surly son of a wealthy industrialist, Clément (Jean-Louis Trintignant) leads a double life as a member of a right-wing extremist organization. When heâs ratted out after a failed assassination attempt on a prominent politician, Clément and his long-suffering wife Anne (the luminous German screen siren Romy Schneider) flee Paris to the idyllic country home of his childhood friend, pacifist print-maker Paul (Henri Serre). As affection blossoms between Paul and Anne, the emotional as well as political tensions soar and eventually explode.
An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.
Star-crossed lovers Thérèse (Simone Signoret) and Laurent (Raf Vallone) think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law (French stage and screen diva Sylvie, in a scene stealing performance), it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trips them up.
When his young son is killed in a hit and run accident, Charles Thenier resolves to hunt down and murder the killer. By chance, Thenier makes the acquaintance of an actress, Helène Lanson, who was in the car at the time of the accident. He then meets Helèneâs brother-in-law, Paul Decourt, a truly horrible individual.
Picked up by a beautiful motorist, jobless hitchhiker Pierre (Hossein) is subsequently romanced by the girl. Immediately thereafter, however, she dumps him, attempting to run him over as a final insult. Memorizing her license number, Pierre pursues the enigmatic motorist. Arriving at her home, Pierre is met by two young ladies (Marina Vlady and Odelle Versois), either one of whom might be the woman he's looking for.
When 11 young Parisian women mysteriously disappear, the police recruit Adrienne Charpentier, the friend of the latest victim, to investigate. The only thing which seems to link the disappearances is that each of the victims replied to a small ad in the newspapers. In answering a number of ads herself, Adrienne meets some suspicious individuals, but they all turn out to be innocent. Then she meets a cabaret performer, Robert Fleury, who instantly falls in love with her. Soon after marrying Fleury, she discovers damning evidence that inculpates him as the murderer of the missing women...
After a spending the night with his girlfriend Alice (Jeanne Moreau), trucker Jean (Jean Gabin) encounters a dead body on the road home. He reports the incident to the police who suspect that Jean was responsible for the death and his new truck is impounded. To make matters worse, the man's widow accuses Jean of having robbed her husband of a large amount of money that he was carrying. And then there's that gang of sinister crooks who also are harassing him. Jean is a victim of circumstance and forces beyond his control are closing in on him. But Alice gives him a measure of comfort and stability. With her as his emotional base, he manages to rouse his trucker friends to turn the tables against the gangsters who are pursuing him.
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