Marta

Charlie Pattison, a wealthy American, lands at Athens airport, where he has just received an emergency phone call from his friend Maurice. The two men met in prison camps and have vowed to track down a certain Nazi doctor, Hermann Geiss, a connoisseur of masterpieces who is guilty of criminal experiments on prisoners. But Maurice doesn't show up. As soon as he arrives, Charlie investigates his friend's disappearance. He ends up meeting a painting dealer, Cardin, whose client Geiss is said to have been.

Paris, 1925. Bénédict Masson, bookbinder and poet, is secretly in love with his neighbor, Christine. Christine works at the strange Coulteray mansion where the marquise accuses her husband of being a vampire. But Bénédict has other preoccupations: six of his apprentices have disappeared without a trace.

The pragmatic, reserved and refined Maigret investigates murders in his singular unhurried manner and inevitably discovers the truth.

Young conductor Roberto Lombardini has never known his father who is actually a former musician, a failed piano player who has sunk into alcoholism.

This drama about the Carmelite order of nuns is set during the French Revolution. A young woman seeks refuge with the Carmelites because she is terrified of dying during the upheaval. The longer she associates with the nuns the more she is transformed by their faith and devotion. 

In 1822, Toussaint Rouveyre, a former captain in Napoleon's army, returned to his village in the Ardèche after the defeat at Waterloo and a seven-year stay in America. There, he reunited with his family, persecuted by the Restoration regime. In order for his father to give him his share of the inheritance in advance of his permanent move to America, he needs the consent of his younger brother Antoine, a carpenter who is on the Compagnons' Tour de France. When Toussaint learns that his brother, a member of the Compagnons du Devoir (Devoirants) association, has been killed by a companion from the rival association, the Compagnons du Devoir de Liberté (Gavots), he is determined to find the murderer, a certain Tourangeau Sans-Quartier, and avenge his brother. To find this man, he joins the Compagnons du Devoir de Liberté incognito.

A Dutch slave captain, on a voyage to Cuba, faces a revolt fomented by a newly captured African slave, Tamango. The slaves capture the captain's mistress, forcing a showdown.

In a settlement in the northern mining country. The Marles, Bréhard and Gohelle families wake up and prepare for a new day at work. The young engineer Larzac, newly appointed to the mine, will soon oppose the authoritarian and conservative methods of his superior Dubard. Georges Gohelle would like to marry Marie Bréhard, but housing difficulties thwart their plans. Brezza, a Polish immigrant, who must return to his country, would like to hate his marriage to Louise Gohelle. Roger, Marie's little brother, has just turned 14. He does not want to go down to the mine as his elders have always done. He will however have to resign himself to it. Marles evokes for him the social struggles of 1906. Roger is injured during a landslide. In front of his family and his friend Marles, who had come to the hospital, he announced his decision to continue his profession. Larzac, invited to the Marles, reveals that he refused a quiet position at the Charbonnages de Paris. He too stays.

In 1852, the famine on a desolate Britanny's island named Blaz-Mor, off the coast of Finistère. Some residents exalted hold responsible the young Moira, equivalent to a witch. The old Marnez, "head" of the island, is trying to restore calm and opposes Yann Le Heart, the fiancé of his daughter Louise Kermelen, who wants causing a shipwreck to save the island from famine.

In June 1940, during the Dunkirk evacuation of Allied troops to England, French sergeant Julien Maillat and his men debate whether to evacuate to Britain or stay and fight the German troops that are closing-in from all directions.

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.

Originally titled Nous Sommes Tout des Assassins, We Are All Murderers was directed by Andre Cayette, a former lawyer who detested France's execution system. Charles Spaak's screenplay makes no attempt to launder the four principal characters (Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, Antoinine Balpetre, Julien Verdeir): never mind the motivations, these are all hardened murderers. Still, the film condemns the sadistic ritual through which these four men are brought to the guillotine. In France, the policy is to never tell the condemned man when the execution will occur--and then to show up without warning and drag the victim kicking and screaming to his doom, without any opportunity to make peace with himself or his Maker. By the end of this harrowing film, the audience feels as dehumanized as the four "protagonists." We Are All Murderers was roundly roasted by the French law enforcement establishment, but it won a special jury prize at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.

On Christmas night, an ex-convict meets a beautiful, married Italian woman who has a lot of things to hide.

The title of this French "reality" drama, which translates to Before the Deluge, is a play on Louis XVI's famous prognostication, "Apres moi, le deluge." Set in 1950, the film concentrates on five Parisian adolescents. Certain that the next war will herald the apocalypse, the youngster make plans to run off to a desert island and set up a new society. This, however, will require money, which is why the boys decide to pull off a "necessary" robbery. Idealism collapses in the face of cold reality, as the five youths suffer from the consequences of their actions. Avant le Deluge was one of a group of films cowritten by director Andre Cayatte and Charles Spaak which endeavored to explore the touchy social issues of the day: others in the Cayatte-Spaak canon include the euthanasia-themed Justice est Faite and the capital-punishment tract Nous sommes tous des assassins.

A true story shot in a German Impressionistic style. In France during the Nazi occupation, Dr. Petiot (Michel Serrault) offered to help Jews escape the Nazis. They would come to his house, and he would kindly give them lethal "vaccinations" for their anticipated travel to Argentina. Then he would steal everything the brought with them (in addition to their up-front payment to him) and burn their bodies in his home-made crematorium.

This telefilm in black and white is diffused on the first French chain the November 6th 1965. It undoubtedly remains the most known adaptation of the Dom Juan of Molière.