Leslie Claire Margaret Caron is a French and American actress and dancer. She is the recipient of a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards.
The Gambler is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. Set in a hotel and casino in a German city, the theme of gambling reflects Dostoevsky's own experience of addiction to roulette. Dostoevsky completed the novel in 1866 under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts.
Gérard Philipe was a prominent French actor who appeared in 32 films between 1944 and 1959. He came to prominence during the later period of the poetic realism movement of French Cinema in the late 1940s. His best known credits include Such a Pretty Little Beach (1949), Beauty and the Devil (1950), Fan Fan the Tulip (1953), Montparnasse 19 (1958) and Les liaisons dangereuses (1959).
Jeanne Moreau was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Moreau began playing small roles in films in 1949, later achieving prominence with a starring role in Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows (1958). She was most prolific during the 1960s, winning the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress for Seven Days... Seven Nights (1960) and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress for Viva Maria! (1965), with additional prominent roles in La Notte (1961), Jules et Jim (1962), and Le journal d'une femme de chambre (1964).
Jacques Demy was a French director, screenwriter and lyricist. He appeared at the height of the French New Wave alongside contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrated for their visual style, which drew upon diverse sources such as classic Hollywood musicals, the plein-air realism of his French New Wave colleagues, fairy tales, jazz, Japanese manga, and the opera. His films contain overlapping continuity, lush musical scores and motifs like teenage love, labor rights, chance encounters, incest, and the intersection between dreams and reality. He was married to Agnès Varda, another prominent director of the French New Wave. Demy is best known for the two musicals he directed in the mid-1960s: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
Bob le flambeur is a 1956 French heist gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Roger Duchesne as Bob. It is often considered both a film noir and a precursor to the French New Wave, the latter because of its use of handheld camera and a single jump cut.
Going Places is a 1974 French comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Bertrand Blier, and based on his own novel. Its original title is Les Valseuses, which translates into English as "the waltzers", a vulgar French slang term for "the testicles". It stars Miou-Miou, Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere.
Diary of a Chambermaid is a 1964 drama film directed by Spanish-born filmmaker Luis Buñuel and starring Jeanne Moreau as a Parisian chambermaid who uses her body and wiles to navigate the perversion, corruption, and violence she encounters at the provincial estate where she goes to work. Though highly satirical and reflective of his typical anti-bourgeois sentiments, it is one of Buñuel's more realistic films, and generally avoids the outlandish surrealist imagery and far-fetched plot twists found in many of his other works. The film was the first screenwriting collaboration between Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière, who extensively reworked the 1900 novel of the same name by Octave Mirbeau. Buñuel and Carrière would go on to collaborate on Belle de Jour (1967), The Milky Way (1969), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Phantom of Liberty (1974) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).
Les Sept péchés capitaux is a 1962 French film composed of seven different segments, one for each of the seven deadly sins, each being by different directors and featuring different casts. At the time it served as a showcase for rising directors and stars, many of whom achieved later fame.
The Adolescent is a French drama film directed by Jeanne Moreau in 1978, released January 1979. It was entered into the 29th Berlin International Film Festival. Set deep in the French countryside just before the start of World War II, it shows the idyllic life of a remote village in the mountainous Auvergne where a family from Paris has come to holiday with relatives. The family get-together marks a coming-of-age for daughter Marie, the adolescent of the title.
Model Shop is a 1969 romantic drama film written, directed and produced by Jacques Demy, starring Anouk Aimée, Gary Lockwood and Alexandra Hay, and featuring a guest appearance by Spirit who recorded the accompanying soundtrack. Demy made Model Shop, which was his first English-language film, following the international success of his film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Aimée reprises the title role from Demy's 1961 French-language film Lola.
Jean-Pierre Mocky, pseudonym of Jean-Paul Adam Mokiejewski, was a French film director, actor, screenwriter and producer.
Francis Huster is a French stage, film and television actor, director and scriptwriter.
Les Innocents is a 1987 French drama film directed by André Téchiné and starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Simon de La Brosse and Abdel Kechiche. The plot follows a girl who, whilst looking for her runaway brother, encounters a number of people who influence her life. The film was partially inspired by a William Faulkner novel. Téchiné uses several French-Arab relationships to mirror the tensions between France and its former colonies.
French Provincial is a 1975 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Jeanne Moreau, Michel Auclair and Marie-France Pisier. The film presents an overview of French life and politics though the changes within one family in southwestern France from the 1930s through the 1970s.
The Oldest Profession is a 1967 internationally co-produced comedy film. It features contributions from six different film directors, each one doing a segment on prostitution through the ages.
Parking is a French fantasy and musical film from 1985. It was directed and written by Jacques Demy, starring Francis Huster, Laurent Malet, and Jean Marais.
Three Seats for the 26th is a 1988 French romantic musical film, written and directed by Jacques Demy to music by Michel Legrand. Set in Marseille, it shows the singer and actor Yves Montand returning to the city where he grew up and looking up old friends, including his first love Mylène, who had been a prostitute and is now the wife of a jailed baron. The purpose of his visit is to rehearse a stage musical based on his life, where he falls in love with the female lead named Marion, the daughter Mylène had after they parted. It was Demy's last picture.
The Wages of Sin is a 1956 French drama film directed by Denys de La Patellière and starring Danielle Darrieux, Jean-Claude Pascal and Jeanne Moreau. A film noir, it was adapted from the 1949 novel Emily Will Know by the American crime writer Nancy Rutledge It was shot at the Photosonor Studios in Paris. The film's sets were designed by the art director Paul-Louis Boutié.
The Baie des Anges is a bay of the Mediterranean Sea, in Alpes-Maritimes, France, extending between the communes of Antibes to the west and Nice to the east. It is bordered by five municipalities: Antibes, Villeneuve-Loubet, Cagnes-sur-Mer, Saint-Laurent-du-Var, and Nice. In Nice, the Baie des Anges is bordered by four major landmarks: Nice Côte d’Azur airport, the Promenade des Anglais, Lympia port, and Mont Boron.
