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The Story of a Cheat

Life story of a charming scoundrel, with little dialogue other than the star/director's witty narration. As a boy, only he survives a family tragedy when he's deprived of supper (poisonous mushrooms!) for stealing...concluding that dishonesty pays. Through years of dabbling in crime and amusing adventures, two women appear and reappear in his life, a dazzling blonde jewel thief and a stunning brunette gambler. Finally, he meets the mysterious Charbonnier who had saved his life in World War I, leading to the surprising next phase in his career...

The Story of a Cheat

7.5 1936
Behind the Facade

In the elevator of two large Parisian buildings, a telegraph operator discovers the body of an elderly woman, Madame Mathieu, the owner of both buildings. Boucheron, the local superintendent, is dispatched to investigate, along with his rival, Inspector Lambert of the "Sûreté". To solve the enigma, they scour staircases and corridors, visiting every floor of both buildings, courtyard and facade. Their gruff rivalry allows them to complement each other in discovering who committed the crime among a gallery of characters, humble or rich, who all have something to be ashamed of... A rare, fast-paced, picturesque comedy set against the backdrop of a police mystery.

Behind the Facade

7.7 1939
Two Sisters Who Are Not Sisters

Based on Gertrude Stein’s eponymously named screenplay, written in 1929 as European fascism was building momentum. Beatrice Gibson’s adaptation, set almost a century later in contemporary Paris, deploys Stein’s script as a talismanic guide through a contemporary moment of comparable social and political unrest. An original soundtrack, written especially for the film by British composer Laurence Crane, responds to the repetition, duplication and duality at play in Stein’s script. Both a fictional thriller and an act of collective representation, Deux Soeurs proposes empathy and friendship as means to reckon with an increasingly turbulent present.

Two Sisters Who Are Not Sisters

NR 2019
La parole est au témoin

Mustapha, a cab driver in Paris, charges a customer in a hurry, without realizing that he is in a hurry to escape his pursuers after robbing a jewelry store. The next day, reading the newspapers, Mustapha becomes aware of the role he has played in this affair, and would gladly assist the police if a fortuitous incident didn't make him fear the criminals' vengeance. It's a cruel dilemma in which he is both suspected by some and threatened by others. Weak but honest, he manages to get out of this predicament at the risk of his life!

La parole est au témoin

10.0 1963
The Joy of Singing

A banker has died. He trafficked in nuclear material, so French intelligence assign two agents to find his list of contacts, which are on a flash drive: Muriel - the boss, acerbic, willing to sleep with any man, wondering if she should have a child - and Philippe, younger, boyish, meticulous, bothered by Muriel's frank sexual interest. They watch Constance, the banker's widow: a naïve, friendly, open, trusting. She's taking opera lessons, so the French spies join the class, which Muriel enjoys. It seems that other spies are after the same USB, and some of them sing as well. Singing, spying, and sex lead to duets of all kinds as well as to an eventual showdown.

The Joy of Singing

3.4 2008
The Girl Can't Stop

A shipbuilder is ruined. All he has left is a mortgaged house, a mortgaged yacht and a mortgaged wife. Precisely, there is a young vivacious, banker in his spare time, a little sadistic on the edges, ready to take the mortgage in question. Helped by his damned soul, a Turk, brother of his mistress, the builder throws his wife in the arms of the viveur. Which falls madly in love with Thassoula. The Turk kills Giorgian's uncle. Held by blackmail, he realizes that, decidedly, he has gone too far. Too late.

The Girl Can't Stop

4.3 1965
On Sunday Afternoon

A voice, warm and heartbreaking, that of Brisseau himself, coils over black and white images. The tone was set very quickly: "To wake up is to be born again in the world of despair." 'On Sunday afternoon' is a film all at once clinical and theoretical on melancholy in the strong sense of the famous "black bile" of the Greeks whose author seems to want to make a complete turn, from his tragic dimension to his psychological dimension, even ending his film with a long quote from Freud's 'Mourning and Melancholia'.

On Sunday Afternoon

3.2 1967
Alain Kan, The Accursed Son of Rock

Alain Kan is a legendary figure in French rock—and in rock music in general. His mysterious disappearance one day in April 1990 in Paris, at the age of 45, left a lasting impression. Alain Kan’s story is that of a little boy who wanted to become a star. To live in the spotlight. From his first single in 1963, at the age of 19, to his last album in the mid-1980s, his artistic journey led him through every kind of creation, every excess, every passion, and every twist of fate. He was, in turn, a heartthrob for teenage girls, then a David Bowie lookalike, and finally France’s first punk.

Alain Kan, The Accursed Son of Rock

NR 2007