Life Is a Bed of Roses

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.

Two actors play eighteen different roles in a story that asks the question: would my life have been different if I had lit a cigarette?

The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.

At a weekend gathering, a man tells a woman that they had spent time there together a year prior. But, the woman has no recollection whatsoever and is convinced that he is simply fabricating the encounter. The more he speaks about their activities the previous year however, the more compelling he becomes. The question remains however – did they meet previously or not?

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.

A documentary about the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It presents the building, with its processes of cataloguing and preserving all sorts of printed material, as both a monument of cultural memory and as a monstrous, alien being.

Business executive Odile seeks a new, larger apartment. Her younger sister Camille, having completed her doctoral thesis in history, is a Paris tour guide. Simon is a regular on Camille's tours as he's attracted to her. However, Camille has fallen for Marc, and they begin an affair. Nicolas is also looking for an apartment, since he hopes to eventually have his family join him in Paris.

Professor Henri Laborit uses three people's stories to discuss behaviourist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety: René is a technical manager at a textile factory and must face the anxiety caused by corporate downsizing; Janine is a self-educated actress/stylist who learns that the wife of her lover is dying and must decide to let them reunite; and Jean is a controversial career-climbing writer/politician at a crossroads in life.

In the seacoast town of Boulogne, antique furniture saleswoman Hélène lives with her stepson, Bernard, who's back from military duty in Algiers. An old lover of Hélène's comes to visit, Alphonse, with his niece Françoise; he too is back from Algiers, where he ran a café. Bernard speaks of his fiancée, Muriel, whom Hélène has not met. The past is obscured by guilt, misperceptions, and missed possibilities. Appearances deceive, things change. As Hélène and Alphonse try to sort out a renewal, everyone seems off-kilter just enough to hint that all cannot end well.

In 1920s Paris, violinists and lifelong friends Pierre Belcroix and Marcel Blanc are happy with their lives, although Marcel has become famous and Pierre has not. Pierre is married to Romaine, a stylish young flapper. However, Marcel meets and falls in love with her, which Marcel little suspects.

At the end of the 15th century, a man and a woman, posing as traveling minstrels, are sent by the Devil to a castle to seduce its inhabitants.

Elisabeth and Simon have been deeply in love for two months when Simon momentarily dies, but returns to life. Despite declining further medical tests, the couple are forced to grapple with the possibility of his death. Eventually, they tell their close friends Jérôme and Judith Martignac about the event. The Martignacs are both clerics, and Judith has just been giving a funeral service for a villager who committed suicide, though Jérôme would have nothing to do with suicide...

On the eve of his 78th birthday, ailing, alcoholic writer Clive Langham spends a painful and sleepless night mentally composing and recomposing scenes for a novel in which characters based on his own family are shaped by his fantasies and memories, alongside his caustic commentary on their behaviour.

Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.

The film narrates a utopian abandonment, consensual and festive of the market economy and high productivity. The population decides on a number of resolutions beginning with "We stop everything" and the second "After a total downtime will be revived-reluctantly-that the services and products including lack will prove intolerable. Probably: water to drink, electricity for reading at night, the TSF to say "This is not the end of the world, this is an 01, and now a page of Celestial Mechanics". The implementation of these resolutions is the first day of a new era, Year 01. The Year 01 is emblematic of the challenge of the 1970s and covers such diverse topics as ecology, negation of authority, free love, communal living, rejection of private property and labor.