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3 films by Louis Malle. (ca. 611 min.). Directed by Louis Malle. "Few directors have portrayed the agonies and epiphanies of growsing up as poetically---and controversially---as Louis Malle. Laced with autobiographical details, Murmur of the heart, Lacombe, Lucien, and Au revoir les enfants tell stories of youth, set against the tumult of World War II and postwar France. Tragic, amusing, and poignant, these three films are more than just coming-of-age stories. They are the director's ongong response to a world gone wrong."--container. DVD 2019 - 2022 37°2 le matin = Betty Blue. (ca. 185 min.). Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix Betty and Zorg are not your average French lovers. Together, they make life a magical fantasy in which absolutely anything can happen--until their dreams collide with reality. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 994 L'age d'or = The golden age. (63 min.). Directed by Luis Buñuel. Using a melange of strange and unrelated images, this surrealistic film about two lovers who mock convention is a statement by Buñuel on the nature of the bourgeoisie, the Church and the police. Banned in France within two weeks of its release. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2792 L'amour, l'apres-midi = Chloe in the afternoon. (98 min.). Directed by Eric Rohmer. A successful young executive, living in the suburbs with his new, pregnant wife, finds himself more attracted to the other women he meets in the city. He spends tantalizing afternoons with his temperamental opposite, a bohemian drifter named Chloe, flirting with temptation until the fateful day Chloe confesses that despite her many affairs, he's the only man she loves. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2426 L'Annee derniere a Marienbad = Last year at Marienbad. (90 min.). Directed by Alain Resnais. Introduces Resnais' unconventional editing techniques. In a vast old-fashioned hotel, the idle rich indulge in chic games. Accompanied by man who may be her husband or lover, a woman meets a stranger who claims they had an affair the year before, "perhaps at Marienbad," but she claims no memory of him. He persists in filling her mind with images that gradually become real, or seem to become real. Time, locales and clothing continually change as her heart struggles to choose between an unremembered past, an impossible present and an unknown future. DVD 135 L'argent de poche = Small change. (105 min.). Directed by François Truffaut. A poetic comedy about a group of children as they experience life from early childhood to adolescence. Truffaut explores the range of emotions from humour and fantasy to the serious side of life in this exploration of feelings. DVD 1683 Ascenseur pour l'échafaud = Elevator to the gallows. (87 min.). Directed by Louis Malle. Malle's feature film debut. Love and fear produce death and deceit in this murder drama in which two lovers (Maurice Ronet as Julien Tavernier and Jeanne Moreau as Florence Carala) conspire to kill her husband and make it look like suicide. Tavernier's getaway car is stolen and when the thieves commit their own murders, Tavernier is charged with them. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1929 L'Atalante. International cinema. (87 min.). Directed by Jean Vigo. When Juliette marries Jean, she comes to live with him aboard the barge "L'Atalante", where they travel along the Seine River. The bride, becomes bored and leaves the ship for Paris where she starts flirting with other men. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 601 Au revoir les enfants = Goodbye, children. (103 min.). Directed by Louis Malle. Based on the director's life, this film chronicles Malle's experiences during the German occupation of France in World War II. Julien is 12 years old, and the smartest boy in his class at boarding school when a new student appears. The two form a friendship even though Julien senses that there is something different about his new friend. DVD 2021 Le ballon rouge = The red balloon. (DVD videodiscs). (34 min.). Directed by Albert Lamorisse. Pascal, a French boy, befriends a red balloon that follows him everywhere. A touching allegory of the magic powers of love and friendship. Newly restored. Pascal is a young French boy who discovers a stray balloon on the streets of Paris that seems to have a mind of its own and begins to follow Pascal everywhere. The two beome inseparable, yet the world's harsh realities finally interfere. A touching allegory of the magic powers of love and friendship. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4202 Bande à part = Band of outsiders. (95 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Two bumbling burglars plan a robbery with a young woman they just met. Problems begin immediately when they both fall for the girl and the plan goes haywire. The jewel-heist plot is merely a jumping off point for Godard's fast paced mix of fantasy and spoof of Hollywood crime films. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1340 Beauty and the beast. (DVD videodiscs). (93 min.). Directed by Jean Cocteau. A fable about a kindly beast and the self-sacrificing beauty whose love releases him from a terrible magic spell. DVD 201 Bob le flambeur = Bob the gambler. (97 min.). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Bob, a rakish small time gambler, is a "prince" of the Pigalle, hub of Paris's seedy nightlife. He finds out that the Deauville Casino expects to pull in 800 million francs on a certain date and decides to rob it. At the same time he wants to protect Anne, a teen who has come from the country and seems about to become a prostitute. On the night of the heist Bob plays the casino tables until the appointed time. DVD 425 Le bonheur = Happiness. (85 min.). Directed by Agnes Varda. Varda's first color film in which she illustrates how the search for personal happiness can lead to gratification or destruction. A young carpenter is happy with his wife and family, happier still when he finds a mistress, whom he marries when his wife is found drowned. DVD 4154 Les bonnes femmes = The good girls. (93 min.). Directed by Claude Chabrol. Blend of eroticism, Hitchcockian suspense and cinematic daring-do that characterizes the French new wave. Set in Paris in the early sixties, film concerns four women who work in an appliance store while looking for love and fulfillment. While their lecherous and petty boss savors every opportunity to deliver a dressing down, the girls find emotional escape by flirting with delivery men, visiting nightclubs and gossiping about the enigmatic motorcyclist who hangs about, following Jacqueline (Joano). For the vulnerable, timid Jacqueline, his dogged persistence can only signify the true love in which she fervently believes. But when she finally decides to speak to the mysterious strange, her dreams of romantic bliss are marred by nagging suspicions. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 115 Le boucher = The butcher. (90 min.). Directed by Claude Chabrol. In a provincial French town, a sophisticated schoolmistress avoids attachments but strikes up a congenial friendship with the charmingly passionate local butcher, a veteran of Indochina. As a serial killer spreads terror throughout the countryside, the effort of these two people to come back from their emotional islands to some kind of mutual understanding and reality builds from oblique tenderness and humor to shattering tragedy. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4778 Boudu sauvé des eaux = Boudu saved from drowning. (87 min.). Directed by Jean Renoir. A Parisian bookseller saves a tramp, Boudu, from suicide in the Seine and, feeling responsible for him, lets him live in his home. Boudu totally disregards proprieties, seduces the wife and maid, and generally plagues the household. Upon accidentally falling into the river again, he rediscovers his liberty and returns to his wanderings. Remade as: Down and out in Beverly Hills. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1381 A bout de souffle = Breathless. (90 min). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. A Paris crook falls in love with an American. One of the first films of the French new wave. A cult favorite. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 456 Les carabiniers = Soldiers. (80 min). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard "Centers on two peasants who join the King’s army. Seduced by the promise of riches, the two leave their wives and embark into the war sending postcards home that detail their conquests. Upon their return, they learn that a peace treaty has been signed and in turn, are betrayed by the king for their overzealousness."--Container. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4927 Chocolat. (106 min.). Directed by Lasse Hallstrom. A young woman returns to Cameroon to trace her past. Soon the sights, sounds and smells sweep her back to her childhood and memories of the people who populated her youth. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1072 Cléo de 5 à 7 = Cleo from 5 to 7. (90 min.). Directed by Agnes Varda. Varda captures the look and feel of Paris as she covers 2 hours in the life of Cleo, a pop singer, who is waiting for the results of medical tests for cancer - which she believes she has. She spends the time consulting a fortune teller, visiting friends, rehearsing a song, spending money and crying. DVD 4151 La collectionneuse = The collector. (88 min.). Directed by Eric Rohmer. A witty and erotic look at the theme of resisting sexual temptations. Two older men spend their holidays in a house near St. Tropez with a beautiful young girl who collects men the way some people collect art. Both men try to resist being added to her collection, however, soon fall victim to her charm. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2424 Le corbeau. (91 min.). Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. A mysterious writer of poison pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau, plagues a French provincial town, unwittingly exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community's calm surface. Brilliantly captures the spirit of paranoid pettiness and self-loathing turning an ccupied French town into a twentieth-century Salem style witch-hunt. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1335 Day for night. (116 min.). Directed by Francis Truffaut. Francis Truffaut's "homage to moviemaking," details the loves and lunacy of the closely-knit family of strangers that comprises an on-location film, cast and crew. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 549 Delicatessen. (95 min.). Directed by Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Set several years after a nuclear war has wiped out most of humanity, people only care about finding food. But the residents of an old tenement get fresh meat from the butcher on the main floor, whose stocks coincide with the arrival & departure of new tenants. A sweet-natured ex-clown takes the job as a butcher's assistant and gets a room in the building. He becomes a catalyst in the lives of the cleaver-wielding butcher (who deals in "prime cuts" of human flesh), his myopic daughter, a woman with a flair for suicide, toymakers who create little boxes that go "moo," and other unusual tenants. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2121 Le dîner de cons = The dinner game. (81 min.). Directedd by Francis Veber. Pierre and his snobbish friends have a standing date for dinner. Every week, they compete to see who can bring the biggest idiot to the party. Pierre is sure he's found a winner in the unsuspecting François, a ministry accountant whose hobby is making matchstick models of famous monuments. But when circumstances trap Pierre in his apartment with François, the tables are turned and everyone gets their just desserts. DVD 87 Diva. (123 min.). Directed by Jean-Jaques Beineix. Cynthia Hawkins is an operatic superstar whose refusal to make a recording frustrates her adoring public. Jules, a young mail courier, is an impassioned fan of Cynthia and he smuggles a tape recorder into a performance and tapes her singing. At the same time, a prostitute hides a tape in Jules' delivery bag that details the career of a French mobster who is involved in illegal drugs and an international sex ring. Dizzying chases and bizarre plot twists follow, as Jules, aided by his two eccentric friends, Gorodish and his Vietnamese mistress, Alba, is pursued through Paris by hired killers out to get the tape. DVD 134, La double vie de Veronique = The double life of Veronique. (96 min.). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Veronika, a young singer, lives in Poland while Veronique, a music teacher and aspiring singer, lives in Paris. Born on the same day they share the same appearance and talents and also the same sense that somewhere there exists another person with whom her life is intertwined. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2936 Du rififi chez les hommes Rififi. (118 min.). Directed by Jules Dassin. A story of a successful jewel robbery in which the four thieves betray each other. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1219 Elena and her men = Elena et les hommes. (95 min.). Directed by Jean Renoir. Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze de Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir's romantic comedy stars Ingrid Bergman as a Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1276 L'emploi du temps = Time out. (128 min.). Directed by Laurent Cantet. The movie tells the story of Vincent, a middle-class family man recently fired from his drab, middle-management job. Unable to tell his family about his firing, Vincent spends his workdays driving around the French countryside - "business trips" he tells his wife - keeping intact the reassuring routine of going to work and coming home to his wife and kids. As his family grows suspicious of his evasive behavior, Vincent is forced to spin a new tale, pretending to get a job working for the U.N. In a bid to keep the money coming in, he recruits old friends to invest in an imaginary emerging-markets investment scheme. Vincent also falls in with Jean-Michel, a black market dealer whose ignominious past serves as an ominous warning for Vincent's present course. Despite his efforts to maintain an undisturbed surface, Vincent's wife begins to suspect something amiss. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3824 Les enfants du paradis = Children of paradise. (190 min.). Directed by Marcel Carne. Story of theatrical society in 19th century Paris and the love between the mime Debureau and the beautiful courtesan Garance who is also loved by an aristocrat, a criminal, and an actor. DVD 375 Entre nous = Between us. (112 min.). Directed by Diane Kurys. Madeline and Gena meet some years after World War II. Both are married to husbands ill-suited to them. The two women, trapped in a middle-class rut, find they can offer each other something that their husbands cannot provide. They form a bond of friendship which lasts many years and takes many turns. The multilayered story probes the desperation lying just beneath even the most exquisite facades. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1404 Menilmontant. (40 min.). Directed by Dimitri Kirsanoff. Film takes its title from the working class district of Paris where its drama occurs. Portrays seduction, jealousy and prostitution as it uses montage to tell the story of the trials and tribulations of two orphaned girls living on the streets of Paris. DVD 1339 Farinelli, il Castrato. (110 min.). Directed by Gerard Corbiau. The true story of a world famous castrato in the 18th century is told. With charisma, talent, drive and success, Farinelli had everything: money, talent, fame, women, and the voice of an angel. He becomes obsessed with earning the respect of his brother's rival, the composer Handel. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 341 Le feu follet = The fire within. (104 min.). Directed by Louis Malle. Describes the last 48 hours in the life of a alcoholic dissolute playboy headed towards suicide. Evokes images of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe, but presents a picture of dissolution and suicide devoid of self-pity. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4776 Flandres = Flanders. (91 min.). Directed by Bruno Dumont. André is forced to leave his secret love, Barbe, to serve as a soldier. On his last night of freedom, he witnesses Barbe and another local sleeping together in a parking lot. A twist of fate forces the two men to fight side by side. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3829 Forbidden games = Jeux interdits. (87 min.). Directed by Rene Clement. Film that blends realism, ghoulish humor, and heartbreaking drama as it dramatizes the destruction of innocence by the war. A five-year old girl, orphaned by the war, takes refuge in a French peasant's home. The son abets her preoccupation with death by killing animals and burying them ceremoniously beside the grave of her dog. The adults, confused by the shattering effects of war, are unable to deal with her psychological needs. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1649 Le gai savoir = Joy of learning. (96 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Emile and Patricia stumble across each other in an abandoned TV studio. They meet for 7 nights to carry out a 3-year plan to create a new cinema. The plan results in a parade of sounds and images, while Emile, Patricia, and Godard (as the narrator) comment on the film which is being created, taken apart, and assembled in front of the viewer. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4445 Le genou de Claire = Claire's knee. (106 min.). Directed by Eric Rohmer. Satire about sexual temptations. On vacation without his fiancee, a diplomat is introduced to two young girls. He flirts with one, while harboring a secret, peculiar obsession for her stunning teenage sister. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2425 Les glaneurs et la glaneuse. (82 min.). Directed by Agnes Varda. "Varda's most recent effort-- the first filmed with a digital videocamera-- focuses on gleaners, those who gather the spoils left after a harvest, as well as those who mine the trash. Some completely exist on the leavings; others turn them into art, exercise their ethics, or simply have fun. The director likens gleaning to her own profession-that of collecting images, stories, fragments of sound, light, and color."--www.imdb.com. DVD 417 Le gone du Châaba. (105 min.). Directed by Christophe Ruggia. Set in 1956 France in a city slum outside of Lyons, a poor Algerian father wants his son to be the best in school, although the boy is not very gifted. DVD 2127 Goto, l'ãile d'amour = Goto, island of love. (90 min.). Directed by Walerian Borowczyk. A surreal fairy tale that takes place on the island of Goto, where a prisoner saved from execution desires the ruler's wife and his throne. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3141 La grande illusion = Grand illusion. (111 min.). Directed by Jean Renior. Classic French film that is considered a brilliant expose of the senselessness of war even as it highlights the brotherhood of men in wartime no matter what their race or class. Two French Air Corps officers, Fresnay (an aristocrat) and Marechal (a mechanic), are shot down and captured during World War I. Imprisoned in a fortress commanded by the aristocratic Van Rauffenstein, they must deal not only with the enemy but with class conflicts as well. In spite of their different backgrounds, they are finally drawn together in an escape attempt. DVD 213 La haine = Hate. (95 min.). Directed by Matheiu Kassovitz. Said is an Arab, Hubert is black, and Vinz is a Jew, all of them young, unemployed and living in a dreary, troubled Paris suburb, largely inhabited by poor immigrant families. Each of them needs to vent the anger they feel about the police brutality that landed another friend in the hospital. The film focuses on one day in the lives of these three hoodlum friends and the result is a brutal, harrowing study of the cyclical nature of violence. DVD 1639 Diabolique. (107 min.). Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. The tyrannical headmaster at the DeLasalle School for boys drives his wife and mistress into a strange alliance. Fed up with his brutality, they conspire to murder him and deposit his corpse in the school swimming pool. When the pool is drained several days later, they find that the body has disappeared. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4673 Hiroshima mon amour. (88 min.). Directed by Alain Resnais. Presents the love story of a French anti-war actress and a Japanese architect. Their relationship brings back memories of her love for a German soldier during the occupation of France in 1944. The scars of this earlier relationship for her, and of the atomic blast for him, create an aura in which their love must fail. Movie theme broadly concerns the need to remember the past, i.e. Hiroshima, yet live in the present. DVD 1337 The holes = Les gaspards. (90 min.). Directed by Pierre Tchernia. What would you do if your daughter, two policemen, a bus load of American tourists and some of the world's most famous landmarks were "swallowed" up by the city of Paris? A bookshop owner finds himself going "underground" in the sewers of Paris to find his daughter. There he finds a group of misfits who have chosen to live beyond the reach of the everyday world. DVD 2234 Indochine. (ca. 156 min.). Directed by Regis Wargnier. Eliane, a rubber plantation owner in French Indochina, hides her torrid love affairs from upper-class society. But when her adopted Indochinese daughter innocently falls in love with Eliane's secret lover, the scandal may destroy their family. Set during the Communist uprising. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2104 Irma Vep. (96 min.). Directed by Olivier Assayas. Satiric look at the movie industry. Aging director Henri Vidal has decided to film a remake of the legendary silent serial, Les vampires, in hopes of making a comeback. Vidal chooses Cheung to play Irma Vep, the leader of a band of jewel thieves. Arriving in Paris unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself stuck in the middle of a stressful situation when the production begins to fall apart and Vidal suffers a nervous breakdown. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 12 Jean de Florette. (122 min.). Directed by Claude Berri. Set in the 1920s, film is a look at the dark side of human nature - jealousy, hatred, greed and revenge. Jean Cadoret is a naive and innocent hunchback who lives in the city and works as an accountant until he inherits a farm from his mother and foolishly hopes to become a gentleman farmer. But even before he arrives, his powerful neighbor is plotting to steal his land. The ending is heartbreak and tragedy for Jean who is no match for his wily neighbor. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4490 La Jetée. (30 min.). Directed by Chris Marker. In a ruined France after WW III, a man's vivid memory of a childhood experience enables him to travel back and forth in time. As a grown man he dreams that he meets and falls in love with the girl he had seen as a child on the jetty's end at Orly Airport. He chooses to remain in the past and is killed by those who hold power in the future. DVD 19 Journal d'un curé de campagne = Diary of a country priest. (115 min.). Directed by Robert Bresson. Recounts the story of a devout and withdrawn young priest's assignment to his first rural parish. Disliked and misunderstood by his parishioner, his only support comes from a neighboring vicar who recognizes his near-sainthood. Stricken by cancer, he dies a lonely death. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1116 Jules et Jim = Jules and Jim. (104 min.). Directed by Francois Truffaut. The friendship of Jules, who is German, and Jim, who is French, and their twenty year love for the same woman. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2657, DVD 2657 Lacombe Lucien. (135 min.). Directed by Louis Malle. Set in France in June 1944, the film tells of the misfortunes of a young man who avoids involvement in the Resistance only to find himself involved with the French auxiliary (fascist) police. DVD 2020 Lola. (90 min.). Directed by Jaques Demy. Drama about a woman who must choose among three men. Restoration was done in 2000 by Ciné-Tamaris. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4316 Lola Montes. (110 min.). Directed by Max Ophuls. Depicts, through flashbacks, the life of a famous courtesan, recounted as part of a lavish circus act. The ringmaster introduces and displays Lola Montés who recalls her romances with Franz Liszt, a student, and Ludwig, King of Bavaria, before she was reduced by scandal, poverty and ill 
 fortune to her present life as a circus performer. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 167 The lover. (115 min.). Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. A poor French teenager engaged in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover through a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters. But though the lovers are able to transcend their differences in age, race and class, theirs is a future that French colonial Vietnamese society will never allow. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2123 Ma nuit chez Maud = My night at Maud's. (111 min.). Directed by Eric Rohmer. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays an engineer seeking the perfect mate. Just when he thinks he has found her in church, he finds himself accidentally spending the night sharing the bed of a seductive divorcee, Maud. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2423 Madame de-. (105 min.) Directed by Max Ophüls. In 19th century Paris tragic misunderstandings arise as a pair of diamond earrings travel from hand to hand. In order to pay gambling debts Comtesse Louise de (Darrieux) sells her diamond earrings to a jeweler but tells her husband General Andre De (Boyer) she has lost them. The loss causes a stir and the jeweler tells the truth to the General who buys them back as a gift for his mistress Lola (Di Leo). Lola in her turn sells them and they are bought by an Italian baron (De Sica) who comes to Paris, meets the Comtesse and. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4738 A man escaped = Un condamné à mort s'est échappé, ou. Directed by Robert Bresson. In 1943, Lt. Fontaine is captured by the Gestapo and is imprisoned in Fort Montluc. He carefully plans his escape but puts it off until sentenced to death. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1120 La Marseillaise. (132 min.). Directed by Jean Renoir. Renoir's epic account of the events leading to the fall of the French monarchy and the start of the French Revolution. Film covers the period immediately preceding the revolution in 1790 up to the battle of Valmy. Done in documentary style, the film, which features a cast of thousands, focuses on members of a volunteer battalion from Marseilles who march to Paris and join the storming of the Bastille. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4442 Masculin feminin. (105 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Dramatizes the ferment of the 1960's, exploring the reactions of youth to violence, political protest, suicide, birth control and other issues prevalent during the Vietnam era. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1802 Mauvais sang = The night is young. Directed by Directed by Leos Carax. A fictional AIDS-like plague called STBO is infecting adolescents, and the only known serum is locked away at the top of a skyscraper. DVD 435 Le mépris. (104 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Asked to write a screenplay for an American producer, a young French dramatist and his wife visit the producer’s villa in Capri. There the wife and producer engage in an affair, and she decides to leave her husband. However, something quite unexpected happens. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 537 Métisse = Café au lait. (94 min.). Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. A tale of love's triumphant power to bring people together. Lola, a West Indian beauty, confronts her two lovers (Jamal, the son of well-to-do African diplomats and Felix, an impoverished Jewish messenger) with her impending motherhood, then flatly refuses to reveal which of the two men is the father. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 5012 Le million. (81 min.). Directed by René Clair. A musical comedy about a pair of young lovers who lose a lottery ticket worth a million francs and chase it frantically across Paris. Considered one of the very first musical films. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 394 Mon oncle = My uncle. (110 min.). Directed by Directed by Jacques Tati. A comedy in which the vague and clumsy M. Hulot, in contrast to his more wealthy sister and brother-in-law, is constantly at odds with the modern world. In order to change M. Hulot's way of life, M. Arpel gives him a job in his plastics factory. The whole plan falls comically apart, and M. Hulot is transferred to one of the company's provincial offices. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3749 Monsieur Hire. (88 min.). Directed by Directed by Patrice Leconte. When a beautiful woman discovers she's being spied on by a cold, repressed neighbor (who is suspected in the murder of a teenage girl), she becomes the aggressor in an erotically charged relationship that leads to a deadly game of cat-and-mouse. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4819 Morte a Venezia = Death in Venice. (131 min.). Directed by Directed by Jacques Tati. Film tells the story of a man obsessed by ideal beauty. Gustav Aschenbach (Bogarde) is a distinguished man, a world-famous composer and conductor who embodies all the civilized virtues of the European culture he represents. Yet on a solitary rest holiday in Venice, he spies a beautiful young boy - and abandons himself to a secret passion that carries him to his doom as the city is gripped by a cholera epidemic. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4955 Mouchette. (90 min.). Directed by Robert Bresson. A 14-year-old friendless schoolgirl, Mouchette, lives with her alcoholic bootlegger father and bed-ridden dying mother in an isolated rural community. One day she witnesses a fight between Arsene, the village poacher, and Mathieu, a policeman. When she tries to console Arsene, he misinterprets her actions and rapes her. Her mother's death and other tragedies increase her isolation and she kills herself. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2719 Mr. Hulot's holiday = Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot. (86 min.). Directed by Jacques Tati. Tati pays homage to the great classic silent comedies with a hilarious blend of colorful characters, sparse dialogue, sight gags, and an innovative sound track. Film consists of a series of humorous impressions and incidents at a seaside Brittany resort. Mr. Hulot, Tati's "everyman," arrives at the resort to spend his holiday in a family run hotel. Gags and situations are woven together as the camera follows Hulot's comic comings and goings as well as those of other "residents" of the hotel. Principally visual humor. DVD 1004 Muriel, ou, Le temps d'un retour. (112 min.). Directed by Alain Resnais. A lonely woman is trying to sort her memories and present desires for the resumption of a long past love. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3071 Nana. (ca. 130 min.). Directed by Jean Renoir. A poverty-stricken Parisian girl rises to prominence as a high-priced whore. Nana is content with her lifestyle until she becomes the mistress of government-official. Her genuine love for results in disgrace and disaster for them both. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4441 A nous la liberté. (83 min.). Directed by René Clair. A satire on factory life centering on the activities of a couple of ex-prisoners, one of whom, an ambitious crook, becomes the boss of a large factory while the other, a sentimental old tramp, becomes a worker there. Eventually both discover that happiness and peace of mind cannot be bought with money and revert to their former life as vagabonds. This film inspired Charlie Chaplin's Modern times. DVD 978 Nuit et brouillard = Night and fog. (32 min.). Directed by Alain Resnais. Award winning documentary using actual black and white film footage shot inside Hitler's concentration camps. Intercuts film footage from World War II with present day scenes of various concentration camps to describe the horror and the atrocities of the German concentration camps during World War II. DVD 948 Orphée = Orpheus. (95 min.). Directed by Jean Cocteau. A modern version of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice which deals with narcissism, a Romantic obsession with death, and the portrayal of the poet as one torn between the "real" world and that of the spirit and imagination. Death falls in love with Orpheus and Eurydice must sacrifice herself in order to save him. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 218 Les parapluies de Cherbourg = The umbrellas of Cherbourg. (ca. 91 min.). Directed by Jacques Demy. Story of two starcrossed lovers. Two lovers, separated by the Algerian war, meet again after she has remarried. A cinematic triumph unique in its presentation -- all of the dialogue is sung. The haunting music and beautiful photography combine to make this an outstanding dramatic romance. DVD 302 La passion de Jeanne d'Arc = The passion of Jeanne D'Arc. (114 min.). Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. A story of the trial and execution of the famous medieval French patriot and martyr based on actual court records, but compressed into a single day. The film is notable for its extensive use of close-ups, expressionistic camera angles and historically accurate sets and costumes. DVD 23, HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 23 Pepe le Moko. (90 min.). Directed by Julien Duvivier. Pepe le Moko (Gabin) is a famous criminal mastermind who seeks safety from the French police by hiding in the Casbah section of Algiers. He falls in love with Gaby, a Parisian tourist (Balin), and police inspector Silmaine (Gridoux) uses her to lure Pepe into the open. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2390 Pickpocket. (75 min.). Directed by Robert Bresson. Story of a petty thief who, after an unsuccessful theft, tries to justify his exhilaration to a police inspector. Events in his life stir his conscience but when he meets a master pickpocket who trains him, he reverts to crime. Presents an analysis of a criminal's compulsions and conscience, showing the agitation and transformation of a soul, in the manner of Dostoevsky. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1805 Pierrot le fou. (110 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Leaving his rich wife and their child behind, a man runs off on a wild adventure with the beautiful babysitter Marianne who is fleeing gangsters. As they become entangled with murder and the gangsters, mysterious events destroy their happiness and lead to an explosive finale. Part love story, part gangster thriller, this film (shot on location in the south of France) combines romance, adventure, and violence with allusions to art, literature and cinema to create a colorful French version of "Bonnie and Clyde." DVD 118 The pillow book. (126 min.). Directed by Peter Greenaway. Nagiko flees an unhappy marriage in Japan to work as a model in Hong Kong. She holds childhood memories of the annual ritual of her calligrapher father painting traditional birthday greetings on her face. This love of calligraphy is carried into her personal life as she finds a lover with whom she can carry on her erotic ritual. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 667 Le plaisir = House of pleasure. (94 min.). Directed by Max Ophüls. Based on three short stories by De Maupassant that explore the theme that pleasure has nothing to do with happiness. All are linked by the English language narration of Peter Ustinov. The first story, "The mask," focuses on an aging rake who dances in a mask in order to hide his wrinkles. The second story, "The model," concerns a model who throws herself from a window to express her love for a painter. The third story, "The house of Madame Tellier," has Madame Tellier closing the brothel to allow everyone to celebrate her niece's first communion. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4737 Playtime. (120 min.). Directed by Jacques Tati. Third in the Monsieur Hulot trilogy, film is a depiction of modern life that features sight and sound gags and little dialogue as a sea of steel and glass threatens to swallow all humanity. Film follows Mr. Hulot on his way to a business appointment that he will never keep as he is continually derailed by misleading signs and high-tech gadgets. Hulot's path crosses with tourists searching for Paris and a restaurant that collapses from the weight of its own technology. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3072 La Pointe-Courte. (80 min.). Directed by Agnès Varda. "The great Agnes Varda's film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complicated relationship between a married couple and a documentary-like look at the daily struggles of the locals, Varda's discursive, gorgeously filmed debut was radical enough to later be considered one of the progenitors of the coming French new wave."--Container. DVD 4153 Prénom Carmen = First name Carmen. (85 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The Carmen story of passion, jealousy and betrayal reworked into a comic strip version in modern day France. Carmen belongs to a gang of terrorists who are plotting a kidnapping. Her lover, Joseph, a young security guard whom she seduces during a bank hold-up, becomes unwittingly involved. The gang plan to use the making of a film by Carmen's director uncle as a cover for a kidnapping. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 119 Le Quai des brumes = Port of shadows. (89 min.). Directed by Marcel Carné. Considered a classic of pre-war French cinema. After committing a murder, an army deserter flees to Le Havre where he meets and falls in love with a young girl. Their dreams and plans of escape from the fog-bound port are ultimately foiled by the girl's churlish guardian. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 986 Les quatre cents coups = The 400 blows. (97 min.). Directed by François Truffaut. A tale of a lonely Parisian youth, buffeted by school and family problems who takes refuge in daydreams.Thirteen-year-old Antoine Doinet lives in a cramped apartment with his mother and stepfather, neglected by them and unlucky at school. Living an intense imaginative life of his own, he gets into trouble and is committed to reform school from which he escapes and runs towards the sea, which he has never seen. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 45 La règle du jeu = The rules of the game. (107 min.). Directed by Jean Renoir. A satire on the decadence of the pre-World War II French aristocracy. Renoir paints a picture of a social world where pleasure is the prize, where intrigue, guile and the lack of honesty are part of the "rules" of a dying class. Unpopular on its first release at the eve of World War II, the film was withdrawn and suppressed until the late 50's when a complete print was found and restored. DVD 963 Retour de Martin Guerre = The return of Martin Guerre. (111 min.). Directed by Daniel Vigne. Set in 16th century France, the action is based on an actual case that took place in a small peasant village. Martin Guerre, a young husband, marches off to the Hundred Years' War and disappears. His wife believes she is a widow. Nine years later he returns to resume his marriage and life. He is denounced as an impostor (this Martin Guerre is a much nicer person than the man who went to war) and a trial is demanded. Not until the very last minutes of a tension-filled courtroom sequence is the situation resolved. DVD 68 Ridicule. (103 min.). Directed by Patrice Leconte. In a desperate quest to save his hometown, a young man quickly learns that a sharp wit is the key to open any door in the Versailles court of Louis XVI. But his mission is complicated when he finds himself locked in a dangerous triangle with two very seductive ladies: a sophisticated older woman who can help him - and a young beauty with nothing to offer but love. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2157 Rififi. (110 min.). Directed by Jules Dassin.Thriller about a major jewel robbery in a famous Paris store and the bloody gang war that follows when two rival gangs fight it out with guns and razors. Noted for a meticulously detailed, long episode of the robbery during which not a word is spoken. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1219 La ronde = The roundabout. (97 min.). Directed by Max Ophüls. Set in Vienna in 1900, this is a fast paced and witty look at the indiscretions of love - if love were a bitterly comic merry-go-round. Anton Walbrook is the narrator as one love affair between a soldier and a young prostitute starts a chain reaction that ends when he meets her again after various other affairs. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4736 Rue Cases-Nègres = Sugar Cane Alley. (107 min.). Directed by Euzhan Palcy. A poor sugar cane plantation worker in Mart'in'inque makes many sacrifices to ensure a better life, through education, for her eleven-year-old orphaned grandson. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4893 Le salaire de la peur = The wages of fear. (140 min.). Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. A drama of courage, cowardice and failure that begins in a sweaty, desolate South American mining town full of impoverished expatriates desperate to escape home. The manager of an oilfield offers huge sums of money to anyone brave enough to drive two truckloads of nitro-glycerin 300 miles to put out a blazing oil well fire. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4380 Le samourai. (ca. 95 min.). Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. A steely-eyed and enigmatic hitman carries out a murder contract on a Parisian nightclub boss after prearranging an intricate alibi with a devoted girlfriend. The police arrest him on suspicion but cannot break his alibi. Meanwhile it seems his employers are double-crossing him and he is unsure of his girlfriend's motives. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1579 Sans toit ni loi Vagabond. (105 min.). Directed by Agnès Varda. Film by French new wave writer-director, Agnes Varda, tells the story (via flashbacks) of Mona, an aimless drifter, as she wanders through the wintry French countryside. Encountering violence, hunger, fear and cold, she is still able to touch the lives of the people she meets with her own ideas of freedom. DVD 4152 Secret defense. (166 min.). Directed by Jacques Rivette. "When a brilliant scientist discovers that her father did not die accidentally, but was murdered by a family friend, she swears vengeance. However, she soon finds herself deeply embroiled in a mystery of lust and intrigue. And when she discovers the truth about her father, it threatens to shake her very foundations in this fascinating thriller by groundbreaking French director Jacques Rivette." --from container. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 530 Seul contre tous = I stand alone. (93 min.). Directed by Gaspar Noé. Psychological drama about the futility and hopelessness faced by a French butcher who was the central character in Noé's 1991 film Carne. After being released from prison he leaves his mute daughter in a Paris institution and moves to Lille with his new mistress. Things do not work out, and he is forced to face the humiliation of job hunting in Paris. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1123 Stupeur et tremblements = Fear and trembling. (107 min.). Directed by Alain Corneau. A dream job rapidly becomes a nightmare for Amelie, a Japanese-born Belgian woman, who suffers a series of increasingly humiliating demotions after she lands a job as an interpreter at a large Japanese corporation. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2077 A summer's tale = Contes des quatre saisons. (133 min.). Directed by Eric Rohmer. A graduate student takes a vacation and while waiting for his girlfriend, he becomes attracted to two other women. For the next three weeks, he must decide which woman he wants. Gaspard is a young man who claims nothing ever happens in life. While waiting in a seaside resort for Lena, the classmate with whom he believes he is in love, he meets and is attracted to Margot, then Solène. When Lena shows up, Gaspard finds himself confused and faced with a difficult choice. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 246 Tartuffe. (120 min.). Directed by F.W. Murnau. Tartuffe, Moliere's master of unctuous evil, insinuates himself into a wealthy Parisian household in this indictment of religious hypocrisy. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4648 That obscure object of desire = Cet obscur objet du désir. (126 min.). Directed by Luis Buñuel. Middle-aged man falls in love with a much younger woman in this satire of sexual obsession. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1376 Tirez sur le pianiste = Shoot the piano player. (84 min.). Directed by François Truffaut. French New Wave classic - existential essay on the capriciousness of fate in the tale of a timid pianist who has given up his career as a concert pianist (a career which had destroyed his marriage) and now plays in a seedy Parisian bar. The waitress is in love with him, his brother is being chased by gangsters and the ensuing events cause him once again to be responsible for the destruction of his life. DVD 57 Trois couleurs, blanc = Three colors, white. (ca. 92 min.). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski The second part in a trilogy of films (Trois couleurs = Three colors) by director Krzysztof Kieslowski, White presents the mysterious tale of a man whose life disintegrates when his beautiful wife of six months deserts him. Forced to begin anew, he rebuilds his life, only to plan a dangerous scheme of vengeance against her. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2138 Trois couleurs, rouge = Three colors, red. (99 min.). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. The final installment in the director's trilogy named after the colors of the French flag, Red is the story of a beautiful young woman and her meeting with an unusual stranger--a meeting that leads her down a path of intrigue and secrecy. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2139 Trois couleurs = Three colors, Blue. (98 min.). Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Devastated by the unexpected death of her husband and child, a young woman retreats from the world around her, but is soon drawn into a web of lies and passion as the secret life of her husband unravels. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2137 The umbrellas of Cherbourg. (91 min.). Directed by Jacques Demy. A tender, bittersweet love story, sung throughout in French. DVD 302 Un chant d'amour = Song of love. (123 min.). Directed by Jean Genet. Male prisoners and a prison guard expressing self love and love for each other. Male homosexual expression is shown together with masturbation, sadism, and fantasy. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4527 Un chien andalou = The Andalusian dog. (ca. 60 min.). Directed by Luis Buñuel. A surrealistic film composed of bizarre and grotesque scenes. Based upon the theories of surrealist artist André Breton, this film was meant to have a dreamlike irrationality. Entrácte is a dada-surreal film produced during the avant- garde film movement of the 1920's. Inanimate objects start to have a will of their own: a hearse drawn by a camel takes off on a chase in a typical scene from this film. A propos de Nice is an early silent documentary, shot in the "candid camera" manner. Vigo examines the French resort city of Nice while mixing experimental technique with social and poetic vision. DVD 1083, HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 1083 Un dimanche à la campagne. (94 min.). Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. In the years just prior to WWI, Monsieur Ladmiral, an aging impressionist painter, spends his usual Sunday afternoon visit with his family ruminating over life's small pleasures and inevitable disappointments until his daughter Irene arrives. Irene, a whirlwind of activity for whom life itself is an art, has a magical reviving effect on her father and the world suddenly takes on the beautiful hues and feelings of an Impressionist masterpiece. DVD 120 Une Femme est une femme = A woman is a woman. (84 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. When the beautiful Angéla wants to have a baby and her lover refuses to participate, she looks to recruit his best friend. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 67 The vampires = Les vampires. (401 min.). Directed by Louis Feuillade. Les Vampires are a secret society of criminals led by Irma Vep who use kidnapping, poisonous gas, heavy artillery, sexual domination and murder to gain power over the elite of Paris. They are opposed by the fearless reporter Phillippe Guerande who seeks to unmask their leaders. DVD 414 La vie de Jésus = Life of Jesus. (96 min.). Directed by Bruno Dumont. Twenty-year-old Freddy and his friends are chronically unemployed with little schooling and spend their time racing their motorbikes around town and through the northern French countryside. They are bored and filled with resentment, which they often take out on local Arab immigrants. When Kader, an Arab teenager, pursues Freddy's girlfriend Marie, Freddy and his friends set out to punish him. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 3827 La vie et rien d'autre = Life and nothing but. (135 min.). Directed by Bertrand Tavernier. Two women search for the men they love in the aftermath of World War I in France. They encounter an imperious army officer, Major Dellaplane (Noiret), a man obsessed with accounting for France's war casualties. The army wants to forget the mass of missing men and has ordered Dellaplane to find one certifiably French unknown soldier to honor with burial under the Arc de Triomphe. In the course of his mission, Dellaplane learns the fate of the women's loved ones and a shocking secret that may determine the fate of the women themselves. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 2075 Vie revée des angels = Dreamlife of angels. (ca. 113 min.). Directed by Erick Zonca. Optimistic hobo Isa, with her life in her backpack, has a gritty existence on the road, going from one town to another through northern France, working factory jobs and selling cards. After she loses a garment-factory job, her coworker Marie lets Isa share space in her Lille living quarters, an apartment belonging to a hospitalized mother and daughter. Isa goes through two tempestuous relationships, while becoming fascinated with the girl who lived in the apartment but now lies in a coma at the hospital. DVD 205 Viva la muerte = Long live death. (87 min.). Directed by Fernando Arrabal. Fando is a young boy whose father has been arrested for treason during the Spanish civil war. He struggles with his father's arrest, and in a shocking moment discovers a letter in which his mother admits to betraying his father. His mother convinces him that his father committed suicide in prison, but Fando doubts this and attempts to discover his father's true fate. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 4280 Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux = My life to live: a film in twelve episodes. (85 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Tells the story of Nana (Karina), a young mother who leaves her family behind to pursue an acting career, but instead slips into a life of prostitution on the streets of Paris. DVD 116 Weekend. (105 min.). Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. A middle class couple on a weekend trip get caught up in an armed liberation struggle. A sarcastic portrait of France in 1967. DVD 1746 The young girls of Rochefort. (125 min.). Directed by Jacques Demy. "In the picturesque seaside village of Rochefort, Delphine teaches dance while her twin Solange composes and gives piano lessons. As the girls dream of success and romance in the far-off big city, they don't realize that true love may be just around the corner!"--Container. HOME USE COLLECTION DVD 309 Page Created by Media Services Back to Top |
