Pierre Chenal

In 1940s Chicago, a young black man takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family, which takes a turn for the worse when he accidentally kills the teenage daughter of the couple and then tries to cover it up.

The story focuses on a street in the Parisian banlieue where Italian and French workers live. Their neighborhood will soon be demolished and a mysterious character hides himself in this street.

A little town erupts in turmoil about the construction of a public urinal. The army is sent in to restore order, but the military add to the confusion by getting involved with the local women.

A journalist takes command of a ship after the crew mutiny against the brutal captain. It was an adaptation of the novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London.

At the core of this enormously bleak melodrama, there is a beautiful, passionate woman (Florence Marly, Chenal's wife) who capriciously oscillates between two men (Chiola, De Paula), even though she knows her fate is fatally linked to one of them.

Melun, on 1959. On the return to an auction, a young and attractive widow, Elisabeth Vernon, finds at her home(with her) a wounded escapee of prison. The fugitive, Daniel Morane, is a handsome boy and justifies himself crimes(murders) of which we accuse it. The young woman is allowed convince, seduce, feels sorry, and agrees to help him(it). But during their escape(mare), the doubt seizes her …

Michel Piccoli plays a police inspector whose best friend is murdered on the orders of gang boss Charles Vanel. The inspector knows full well that Vanel is too crafty and well-connected to ever stand trial for his crime, so he carefully lays a subtle trap for his adversary. Unfortunately, both Piccoli and Vanel are thwarted by a pair of scheming females.

Town trollop Safia, much against her better judgment, falls in love with Matteo, a beggar and mystic in the native quarter of Sirocco. She flees to France, first as the mistress and then wife of a wealthy archaeologist, and bears him Matteo's child, whom he believes to be his own. Complications arise years later when Matteo finds Safia, and a ring of blackmailers uncover her past and exposes her to her husband.

Isabell runs a nursing home for wealthy women who are trying to detox from their various obsessions. Her lover, Serge Belaiev, a petty gangster, has pulled off a big hit but his partners have denounced him to the police in order to appropriate his share of the loot. Isabelle takes him in and hides him in an attic of this strange house. In love with Isabelle, Philippe Lansac, the owner of the place, decides to close the castle...

Frank, a hobo, ends up in a garage-truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Nick Marino, its older, kind and naive owner, is married to Cora, a sexy and mercenary woman half his age. Frank, although not a fan of hard work, accepts Nick's offer to work for him. Of course, it is not for Nick's sake that the young man becomes his attendant, but for the love of Cora under whose spell he has fallen at once. It does not take long before Cora, who despises her husband, asks her lover to help her get rid of him. Frank is reluctant at first but ...

The arbitrariness of an evil father leads his children to patricide.

A young lady whose husband has been seeing someone else decides to make him jealous by flirting with the unlikely prospect of a fat man.Is it worth that guy's trouble to try to lose some weight, or is he kidding himself?

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.

Grinders, rag-men, China menders, mattress carders are among those small trades of yesteryear that have disappeared from our sight and fallen into oblivion. But way back in 1931 they were far from extinct and still populated and livened up the streets from dawn till dusk. The tenderness of Pierre Chenal look at them is only accentuated by the nostalgia experienced by today's viewer.

Regarding Le Corbusier: the man and his architecture

Lionel Fribourg, a great composer (at least that's what he thinks) has a problem with his noisy environment: he can't complete his unfinished symphony. Of course there is a market for unfinished symphonies but, for all he knows, only one became famous. So he had better find a way to finish it. At long last, he comes across Agnès, a divorced woman who agrees to let him her quiet home. Lionel, full of hope, resumes work...

After filming the construction site of the Berlitz Palace (2nd), Pierre Chenal shows us in contrast other contemporary architectural achievements which, using the same technical processes, do not sacrifice the structure of iron and concrete for decoration. A documentary to the glory of the modern designs of Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier.

On the night of his marriage, a young bourgeois man runs over a cyclist. He believes he is dead and hides the body. However, a mysterious character will later appear in his life.

Alain is the only son of a wealthy bourgeois couple. He takes violin lessons in Ménilmontant, where he is spotted by Fleur, a poor girl: she is going to kidnap him and demand a ransom from the young man's parents, money which will be used to pay for a good lawyer for her brother accused of killing a policeman.

The Director of an international banknote printing institute, mutilated by the face of the Great War, Frank Davres, falls in love with a young woman, Jeanne, admirably beautiful, but blind. He marries her. For her, he ruins himself and comes to issue counterfeit banknotes. The young woman does everything to make people forget her infirmity. One day, following an operation, she recovers her sight and notices the physical and moral ugliness of her husband. She hides her cure until the day when Frank, taken by the police, kills one of his accomplices and commits suicide. Jeanne leaves to join a friend with whom she was performing in a circus.

Paris, 1937. Winckler kills his enemy Gordon, a Chicago mobster, from the stage of a Parisian music hall, where he performs telepathy. He pays another artist, Helene, so that she tells the police they've spent the night together, which doesn't fool Callas, the police officer who investigates the murder. He hires one of his fellow officers in order to seduce Helene.

Rasputin was a lusty steppes peasant, a god revealed, a cunning patriot, all that, or a mystifier? An intriguing biography.