89% (2)  Casque d'Or  94 min,  Not Rated,  [Crime, Drama, Romance]  [Jacques Becker]  [18 Aug 1952]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 78%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 1 win & 1 nomination.
Actors:  Claude Dauphin, Raymond Bussières, Serge Reggiani, Simone Signoret
Writer:  Jacques Becker (scenario), Jacques Companéez (scenario), Jacques Becker (adaptation)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  French    Country:  France
Plot:  In an open-air dance hall, the members of Leca's gang are relaxing with their ladies. One of them, Marie, aka "Casque d'Or" (Golden Helmet) meets Manda, a carpenter. Her man Roland belongs to the jealous kind, and Leca himself has his eye on her. A story of love, death, friendship and jealousy during the Belle Epoque.
Rotten Tomatoes:   The Paris demimonde of 1900 is the setting for Casque d'Or. Georges Manda (Serge Reggiani), an honest woodworker, falls in love with Marie (Simone Signoret), the "moll" of minor crook Roland (William Sabatier). Gangster boss Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin) orders Georges and Roland to fight a duel to the death over the girl, as prescribed by the "code of the apache." Felix then pins the blame for Roland's death on Georges' boyhood chum, Raymond (Raymond Bussières), knowing that the woodworker will nobly accept the blame; this will leave Marie alone, which is what the lustful Felix has wanted all along. When Georges learns he's been set up as a dupe, he escapes from the police and kills Felix. Casque D'Or was based on the true-life Leca-Manda scandal, wherein an otherwise decent man was guillotined for shooting down a gangster boss in broad daylight. Since the scandal was common knowledge in France, the downbeat ending of this film was hardly unexpected but still extremely moving. Completed in 1951, Casque D'Or was a failure on its first release but then built up an excellent word-of-mouth reputation abroad. The film was released in the U.S. in 1956 as Golden Marie. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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88% (2)  La Ronde  93 min,  Not Rated,  [Drama, Romance]  [Max Ophüls]  [16 Mar 1954]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 77%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 100%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 3 wins & 1 nomination.
Actors:  Anton Walbrook, Serge Reggiani, Simone Signoret, Simone Simon
Writer:  Arthur Schnitzler (play), Jacques Natanson (adaptation), Max Ophüls (adaptation), Jacques Natanson (dialogue)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  French    Country:  France
Plot:  An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.
Rotten Tomatoes:   An exercise in style, La Ronde was one of the few films of the 1950s to contain overtly sexual themes. The story is a series of character vignettes, set in Vienna in the early 1900s and held together by a narrator (Anton Walbrook). As the title implies, both the story and the film's visual motifs are circular. Director Max Ophuls uses an old-fashioned merry-go-round to foreshadow the film's events, in which each segment introduces a new character, who has an affair with a character from the previous scene. The film demands that the audience pay attention to the structure, to the interplay among the characters, and to the opulent visual elements; and the effect is synergistic delight, in which the viewer is engaged both visually and intellectually. Because it was filmed in black-and-white, La Ronde does not have the garish look of some of Ophuls' other films, notably Lola Montès. La Ronde is among the few foreign language films to receive multiple Oscar nominations, for Black & White Art Direction and Best Adapted Screenplay. ~ Richard Gilliam, Rovi
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87% (2)  Le Doulos  108 min,  Not Rated,  [Crime, Thriller]  [Jean-Pierre Melville]  [02 Mar 1964]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 79%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 96%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 nomination.
Actors:  Jean Desailly, Jean-Paul Belmondo, René Lefèvre, Serge Reggiani
Writer:  Pierre Lesou (based on the novel by), Jean-Pierre Melville (adaptation)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  French    Country:  France, Italy
Plot:  Burglar Maurice Faugel has just finished his sentence. He murders Gilbert Vanovre, a receiver, and steals the loot of a break-in. He is also preparing a house-breaking, and his friend Silien brings him the needed equipment. But Silien is a police informer ... A movie whose "all characters are two-faced, all characters are false", according to director Jean-Pierre Melville.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Confusion and wrong assumptions are the cause of tragedy in this stylish gangster noir by director Jean-Pierre Melville. Maurice (Serge Reggiani) and Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) are friends going way back, and both have had a shady past. Silien wants to leave his illegal activities behind him -- but would he actually be in league with the police, as an informer? That is what Maurice suspects after he kills a fence who is responsible for the murder of one of his friends and then takes some jewels as an extra bonus. Doubts assail Maurice as well as others until it is finally decided that something has to be done about Silien.
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77% (1)  Everybody Go Home!  120 min,  [Comedy, Drama, War]  [Luigi Comencini]  [28 Oct 1960]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 77%,   External Reviews
Awards:  6 wins & 3 nominations.
Actors:  Alberto Sordi, Carla Gravina, Martin Balsam, Serge Reggiani
Writer:  Agenore Incrocci (story), Furio Scarpelli (story), Agenore Incrocci (dialogue), Furio Scarpelli (dialogue), Agenore Incrocci (screenplay), Furio Scarpelli (screenplay), Luigi Comencini (screenplay), Marcello Fondato (screenplay)
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Italian, German, English    Country:  Italy, France
Plot:  When Italy surrenders to the Allies, part of the Italian army is dispersed and soldiers begin to return to their homes.
Rotten Tomatoes:   An Italian Army Lieutenant longs to return home in this situation comedy of displacement. The Italian landscape is marked from the affects of heavy finding as the war-weary people wait for the 1943 armistice to take affect. The soldier's left at home long to go to Germany to fight the retreating Nazis. Confusion reigns among the Italians as to where their loyalties are as the agreement is soon to be enacted.
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74% (1)  The Beekeeper  122 min,  [Drama]  [Theodoros Angelopoulos]  [29 Apr 1987]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 74%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 nomination.
Actors:  Jenny Roussea, Marcello Mastroianni, Nadia Mourouzi, Serge Reggiani
Writer:  Theodoros Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra, Dimitris Nollas
External Links:  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  Greek, French    Country:  Greece, France
Plot:  Spiros retires as a schoolteacher, his daughter is married, and he starts his annual journey with his bees to get honey from different areas. In his truck he finds a young girl who has just been abandoned and has no roots. Spiros lets her follow for a day. Seeing her difficulty in getting further hitch-hiking, he takes her back. They will meet and part several times. Later she will say that Spiros is the only one who has ever been kind to her. But his emotions are so restrained that he cannot show anything until a volcanic eruption breaks through. He does not seek serious contact until the eruption makes him drive the car right through the glass wall of the café in which the girl is sitting. She immediately follows him. But after this criminal event they can no longer live at hotels. From the beginning she was willing to sleep with him. But when he finally kisses her, her justified reaction is to repeat "Not in this way!" A friend had a shut down cinema where they could sleep. Endlessly she goes around starch naked. Fully clothed he is smoking and completely ignores her. What finally happens is almost a rape. The girl leaves him afterwards. When he realises what he has lost, he overturns all beehives and the bees kill him.
Rotten Tomatoes:   In this compelling drama, Marcello Mastroianni gives a tour-de-force interpretation of a disillusioned middle-aged man, a bee keeper who inherited the passion for his vocation from his father. After weeping silently at the end of his daughter's wedding ceremony, Spyros (Mastroianni) leaves in his truck to check on his bee hives and in the process gets involved with a winsome young hitchhiker (Nadia Mourouzi). She makes some advances which he immediately rejects, yet it is clear that he is ambivalent about her. Next he pays his respects to the people who have meant something to him in his life: his ex-wife, an old friend, and his daughter. Each time he mysteriously truncates his visit, and the enigma of what lies unsaid deepens after he encounters the hitchhiker again. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
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71% (1)  Manon  100 min,  [Drama, Crime]  [Henri-Georges Clouzot]  [09 Mar 1949]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   External Reviews
Awards:  2 wins.
Actors:  Andrex, Cécile Aubry, Michel Auclair, Serge Reggiani
Writer:  Abbé Prévost (novel), Henri-Georges Clouzot (screenplay), Jean Ferry (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  French    Country:  France
Plot:  An adaptation of Abbe Prevost's classic French novel 'Manon Lescaut', updated to post-World War II France, in which a former French Resistance activist rescues Manon from villagers who want to lynch her for collaborating with the Nazis. They move to Paris, but their relationship quickly turns stormy after they get involved in profiteering, prostitution and murder...
Rotten Tomatoes:   Adapted from the novel by Abbe Antoine-Francois Prevost, Manon is a WW II-era love story about a village girl (Cecile Aubrey) and a fighter (Michel Auclair) traveling to Paris. After staying with the fighter's brother, who forces the girl into prostitution, the couple escape to Israel and attempt a dangerous desert crossing. The French film appears with English subtitles.
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