Sans merveille

A youngish sales employee of a computer firm is blackmailed into helping a group of mysterious Bulgarian industrialists who have come to his office. A government contract is being sought for a businessman who is in danger of bankruptcy.

Mixing real locations with a Louis XIV stage setting, director Michel Mitrani interprets the story first told in Moliere's play of the same name, written for the stage. A slightly supercilious country gentleman, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (Michel Galabru) has arrived in Paris to marry Julie (Fanny Cottencon) the woman promised him, but he does not know that Julie is in love with a handsome young man and has no interest in marrying the grand Monsieur, at all. She and her lover ask the cunningly clever Sbrigani (Roger Coggio) for help, and he concocts a wild array of characters with claims on the easily gulled Pourceaugnac's attention, including arrogant doctors and women with supposed liens on his matrimonial intentions -- actually no more valid than the ostensible creditors out to collect imaginary debts from the unwary gentlemen. The dialogue and situations are as funny as when Moliere first wrote them, but Mitrani's version may be a bit long and slow for some tastes.

Tongue-in-cheek look at the French Riviera, especially in summer when it overflows with tourists. Reviews its history and famous visitors; displays its faux-exotic buildings, its crowded beaches, its trees and monuments; and, pokes fun at the colors women wear and the vagaries of fashion. The film celebrates the use of "Eden" as a place name, suggesting that paradise comes to the coast after all are gone, perhaps only on a remote island beach.

The married couple Pierre and Eva live in a conventional middle-class environment, but Pierre increasingly feels alienated from people and things.

A 1963 TV film directed by Michel Mitrani.

When a young auto salesman is forced to give up a vacation with his wife in order to drive a big American car to its new owner who lives in Cannes, he makes the best of things. First, he gets and old friend to ride along with him. Then, the two of them are joined by another pair of men who want to ride south.

A young couple of burglars, waiting for trial, marry in jail. Annick writes down her observations of the women's ward. When she hears that her lover must serve a twice as long prison sentence, she plans their escape.

In Paris, in 1942, on a Thursday, the Parisian police herded together some 13,000 Jews for deportation to German territory. In this story, Paul (Christian Rist) is a teenager who tries to prevent this from happening. At first he attempts to save two elderly Jews, but they are resigned to their fate and comply with the order to assemble. For a short while, he is able to keep Jeanne (Christine Pascal) from joining them, but, after a long and strenuous day, she finally escapes from him he is too tired to chase after her.

A 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of film director Max Ophuls’s collaborators

An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Julien Gracq. Four soldiers await a possible German attack on a fortified house in the forest of the Ardennes.

The absurd argument of an old couple in their apartment which is being destroyed by the bombardments of war.

A group of comedians who travel from village to village witness the old traditions of rural Spain.