Lillian Diana Gish was an American actress. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was dubbed the "First Lady of the Screen" by Vanity Fair in 1927 and is credited with pioneering fundamental film performance techniques. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gish as the 17th-greatest female movie star of Classic Hollywood cinema.
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideas that led to the development of the auteur theory.
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).
The Accursed Kings is a series of seven historical novels by French author Maurice Druon about the French monarchy in the 14th century. Published between 1955 and 1977, the series has been adapted as a miniseries twice for television in France.
Poetic realism was a film movement in France of the 1930s. More a tendency than a movement, poetic realism is not strongly unified like Soviet montage or French Impressionism but were individuals who created this lyrical style. Its leading filmmakers were Pierre Chenal, Jean Vigo, Julien Duvivier, Marcel Carné, and, perhaps the movement's most significant director, Jean Renoir. Renoir made a wide variety of films some influenced by the leftist Popular Front group and even a lyrical short feature film. Frequent stars of these films were Jean Gabin, Michel Simon, Simone Signoret, and Michèle Morgan.
Jules and Jim is a 1962 French New Wave romantic drama film directed, produced and co-written by François Truffaut. Set before, during, and after World War I, it follows a tragic love triangle involving French bohemian Jim, his shy Austrian friend Jules, and Jules' girlfriend and later wife Catherine.
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.
Le Beau Serge is a 1958 French film directed by Claude Chabrol. It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared with Chabrol's subsequent film Les Cousins, which also stars Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy.
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).
The Lovers is a 1958 French drama film directed by Louis Malle which stars Jeanne Moreau, Alain Cuny, and Jean-Marc Bory. Based on the posthumously-published 1876 short story "Point de Lendemain" by Dominique Vivant (1747–1825), the film concerns a woman involved in adultery who rediscovers human love. The Lovers was Malle's second feature film, made when he was 25 years old. The film was a box-office hit in France when released theatrically, gaining 2,594,160 admissions in France alone. The film was highly controversial when released in the United States for its depiction of allegedly obscene material. At the 1958 Venice Film Festival, the film won the Grand Jury Prize and was nominated for the Golden Lion.
Maurice Ronet was a French film actor, director, and writer.
The Fire Within is a 1963 drama film written and directed by Louis Malle. It is based on the 1931 novel Will O' the Wisp by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, which was inspired by the life of poet Jacques Rigaut. The film stars Maurice Ronet and features Léna Skerla, Jean-Paul Moulinot, Bernard Tiphaine, Bernard Noël, Jeanne Moreau, Jacques Sereys, and Alexandra Stewart in supporting roles. The score consists of music composed by Erik Satie and performed by pianist Claude Helffer.
Mademoiselle is a 1966 psychological thriller film directed by Tony Richardson. Jeanne Moreau plays the title character, a seemingly-respectable schoolteacher in a small French village, who is actually an undetected sociopath.
Francis Huster is a French stage, film and television actor, director and scriptwriter.
Robert Hakim and Raymond Hakim were Egyptian-born brothers who usually worked in collaboration as film producers in France and other European countries. Their brother André Hakim was also a film producer.
Jean Aurenche was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy and Claude Autant-Lara. He is often associated with the screenwriter Pierre Bost, with whom he had a fertile partnership from 1940 to 1975.
The Trout is a 1982 French drama film directed by Joseph Losey based on the novel by Roger Vailland and starring Isabelle Huppert. This was the last film that Losey directed to be released in his lifetime, as he died two years after its release.
Lumière is a French drama film written and directed by Jeanne Moreau. The semi-autobiographical film is about the friendship between four actresses. It is credited as being one of the first films to focus on female friendship.
Three Days to Live is a 1957 French crime film directed by Gilles Grangier and starring Daniel Gélin, Jeanne Moreau and Lino Ventura. It was shot at the Saint-Maurice Studios in Paris and on location in Le Havre and Rouen. The film's sets were designed by the art director Roger Briaucourt. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in August 1957.
