Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress. With a career spanning five decades, Bergman is often regarded as one of the most influential screen figures in cinematic history. She won numerous accolades, including three Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, four Golden Globe Awards, BAFTA Award, and a Volpi Cup. She is one of only four actresses to have received at least three acting Academy Awards. In 1999, the American Film Institute recognised Bergman as the fourth greatest female screen legend of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid), a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's, an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. He was ranked by the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of critics in 2002 as the fourth greatest director of all time. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975 for his contribution to the motion picture industry. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur.
The Rules of the Game is a 1939 French satirical comedy-drama film directed by Jean Renoir. The ensemble cast includes Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Pierre Magnier and Renoir.
Jean-Alfred Villain-Marais, known professionally as Jean Marais, was a French actor, film director, theatre director, painter, sculptor, visual artist, writer and photographer. He performed in over 100 films and was the lover, muse and friend of acclaimed director Jean Cocteau. In 1996, he was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his contributions to French cinema.
Georges Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger, nicknamed Général Revanche, was a French general and politician. An enormously popular public figure during the second decade of the Third Republic, he won multiple elections. At the zenith of his popularity in January 1889, he was feared to be powerful enough to establish himself as dictator. His base of support was the working-class districts of Paris and other cities, plus rural traditionalist Catholics and royalists. He introduced an obsessive and almost pathological anti-German sentiment, known as revanchism, which demanded the complete destruction of Imperial Germany as vengeance for the defeat and fall of the Second French Empire during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), into French culture and accordingly laid the foundations for the outbreak of the First World War.
Belle de Jour is a 1967 surrealist erotic psychological drama film directed by Luis Buñuel, and starring Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel, and Michel Piccoli. Based on the 1928 novel Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel, the film is about a young woman who spends her midweek afternoons as a high-class prostitute, while her husband is at work.
Les Misérables is a 1995 French war film written, produced and directed by Claude Lelouch. Set in France during the first half of the 20th century, the film concerns a poor and illiterate man named Henri Fortin who is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic 1862 novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels to his own life. The film won the 1995 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Joan of Arc is a 1948 American hagiographic epic film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Ingrid Bergman as the eponymous French religious icon and war heroine. It was produced by Walter Wanger and is based on Maxwell Anderson's successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, which also starred Bergman, and was adapted for the screen by Anderson himself, in collaboration with Andrew Solt. It is the only film of an Anderson play for which the author wrote the film script. It is the last film Fleming directed before his death in 1949.
Melchor Gastón Ferrer was an American actor and filmmaker. He achieved prominence on Broadway before scoring notable film hits with Scaramouche, Lili, and Knights of the Round Table. He starred opposite his wife, actress Audrey Hepburn, in War and Peace and produced her film Wait Until Dark. He also acted extensively in European films and appeared in several cult hits, including The Antichrist (1974), The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975), The Black Corsair (1976) and Nightmare City (1980).
French Cancan is a 1955 French-Italian musical film written and directed by Jean Renoir and starring Jean Gabin, Francoise Arnoul, and María Félix. It marked Renoir's return to France and to French cinema after an exile that began in 1940.
Austerlitz is a 1960 French historical drama film directed by Abel Gance and starring Jean Marais, Rossano Brazzi, Martine Carol, Jack Palance, Claudia Cardinale, Vittorio De Sica, Orson Welles, Leslie Caron and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Pierre Mondy portrays Napoleon in this film about his victory at the Battle of Austerlitz. Leslie Caron plays the role of his mistress Élisabeth Le Michaud d'Arçon.
Murder on the Orient Express is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Sidney Lumet, produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, and based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie.
Jean-Claude Brialy was a French actor and film director.
Partie de campagne is a French featurette that was written and directed by Jean Renoir in 1936, but not edited and released until 1946. It is based on the short story "Une partie de campagne" (1881) by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father, the renowned painter Auguste Renoir. The film chronicles a love affair over a single summer afternoon in 1860 along the banks of the Seine.
Françoise Arnoul was a French actress who achieved popularity during the 1950s.
Paulette Dubost was a French actress who began her career at the age of 7 at the Paris Opera.
The Scandal is a 1934 French romantic drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Gaby Morlay, Henri Rollan, and Jean Galland. The film is based on a play written by Henry Bataille, which had previously been turned in a 1923 British silent film of the same title.
Élina Labourdette was a French actress. Her career consisted mostly of flirtatious coquette roles on stage and screen. She is best known for her performances in Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) and in Jacques Demy's Edward and Caroline (1951).
Girl's Apartment is a 1963 comedy film directed by Michel Deville and starring Mylène Demongeot, Sylva Koscina and Renate Ewert. It was a co-production between France, Italy and West Germany.
