Beast at Bay

The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.

Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Five young men dream of success as they drift lazily through life in a small Italian village. Fausto, the group's leader, is a womanizer; Riccardo craves fame; Alberto is a hopeless dreamer; Moraldo fantasizes about life in the city; and Leopoldo is an aspiring playwright. As Fausto chases a string of women, to the horror of his pregnant wife, the other four blunder their way from one uneventful experience to the next.

Having lost his memory due to serving in World War I, Gaston has spent the past 15 years in a psychiatric hospital. Due to his large disability pension fund, several families claim him as their missing son. Gaston is introduced to the Renaud family by the Duchess Dupont-Dufort and her lawyer. The Renaud family attempt to revive Gaston's memory with stories of his past, but he is apalled by some of the things he hears and dislikes the man he is supposed to be.

When Paul, an officer, discovers Denise, a young orphan escaped from her orphanage, he takes advantage of his naivete to seduce her before changing her mind and sending her to live with her mother while sailing.

In order to pay the rent, a young ballet dancer living in Paris accepts a job in an upmarket strip club. She soon devises a unique act that captivates audiences and catapults her to stardom.

The film follows the life of Napoleon from his early life in Corsica to his death at Saint Helena. The film is notable for its use of location shooting for numerous scenes, especially at the French estates of Malmaison and Fontainebleau, the Palace of Versailles, and sites of Napoleonic battles including Austerlitz and Waterloo.

A compilation of segments covers the seven deadly sins of greed, wrath, envy, pride, lust, sloth, and gluttony.

Two convicts attempt to escape from prison in a violent tale of deception, survival, and moral ambiguity.

Handsome dentist Herve Dandieu, temporarily separated from his delectable new wife Virginie by a lovers' tiff, is picked up by sexy dance teacher Anita Flores. Sensing trouble, Virginie follows him, only to find him circumstantially incriminated in murder. Soon, the dance school has a gorgeous new instructress, whose slightly scatterbrained attempts to clear her husband's name confuse both police and suspects...and bringing potential danger.

Historical film directed and written by Sacha Guitry follows the the history of Paris from its founding through the significant events in the city's history.

Hopes and love and ambitions and friendship in a group of young jazz-loving Parisians.

Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.

A ballet producer returns to his native town and schemes to avenge himself on the family who tried to murder him 20 years before.

The end of an affair from the woman's point of view.

In pre-World Ward I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre LeBlanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant. Pierre has a flair for designing clothes, and he and his bride live in a blissful paradise, until the war breaks out and he becomes a soldier. Janine dies in childbirth and, no longer desiring to live, Pierre volunteers for a dangerous patrol behind German lines. While recuperating in the hospital from a wound he received on the mission, Pierre spends his time drawing sketches of dresses. He becomes rich and famous after the war. Years later, after devoting himself to his daughter, Pierre seeks a marriage with a girl no older than his daughter. A conflict develops and to ensure his daughter's happiness, Pierre sacrifices his own plans.

Attila, the leader of the barbarian Huns and called by the Romans "The Scourge of God", sweeps onto the Italian peninsula, defeating all of the armies of Rome, until he and his men reach the gates of the city itself.

The Provence, somewhere in the 1950's. Paul Verdier, traveling salesman, leaves his home and his quarrelsome wife for his weekly round. On the train he meets a young woman, Marie, who looks a little lost. No wonder. Marie is pregnant but lacks the customary husband. She's returning to her village but is not exactly looking forward to the confrontation with her parents and the villagers, all pretty conservative people. After getting to know Paul a little better (for which there is ample time during the trip by train and bus) Marie decides to ask Paul to act as her husband, just to allay the suspicions of her family. After some hesitating Paul accepts, charmed by the girl and unaware of the complications such is bound to cause to his own life.

Irène is the unhappy wife of a wealthy publisher, Jacques Voisin-Larive, who cares about her no more than a beautiful piece of furniture. Her meeting with Étienne, a young cabinetmaker with whom she falls in love, turns her dismal existence upside down. Not wanting to reveal her condition to her lover, she pretends to be a modest maid, employed by the Voisin-Larive. At the end of a weekend spent with her lover, Irène discovers that she is pregnant. The fragile balance of their existence is suddenly broken. Taking the initiative, she reveals her affair to Jacques and tells him about her desire to divorce. But her husband has no intention of giving her back her freedom...

Catherine Racan, a young journalist who always puts her career over her love life, is brought in by the police for questioning. They are looking for a doctor who illegally performs abortions and now they are interrogating all of his previous clients.

An Italian daredevil turns Grand Prix driver and works his way up to Le Mans with his ballerina lover.

After a banker is driven to suicide by his wife's reckless spending, an innocent cashier is wrongly implicated in a crime.

In Marseille, a customs inspector falls in love with a young woman involved in dubious traffic.

An 18th century poet travels through time in search of divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he has a series of enigmatic encounters with symbolic phantoms with whom he muses about the nature of art and his own career. Ultimately, the poet strives to achieve his rebirth as a celestial being.

The film consists of seven roughly 15 minute episodes, each showing what will happen if one or more of the Ten Commandments will be broken: Jérome Chambard is warned that he will lose his job if he continues to swear; Françoise Beaufort enamored of a stripper calls on her only to find her married to a janitor who doesn't know what kind of dancing his wife performs; Denis, a Jesuit novice, leaves the order to avenge his sister's suicide, which was provoked by Garigny, who seduced her into prostitution and drug addiction; Philip buys a necklace for Micheline though he is bored with her; a young man find out that his real mother is not Madeleine, but actress Clarisse Ardant; Didier Marin, cashier of a bank, was fired by his boss; the Devil appears as a serpent for Jérome Chambard and the bishop are eating.

A publicity-minded French mayor reunites quintuplets and their earthy father, all six played by Fernandel.

This movie is a Marcel Aymé adaptation and it deals with the not-so-glorious side of the Occupation: black market, war profiteers, cracking open bottles of Champagne while most of the Parisians are almost starving.

A beautiful 18-year-old orphan escapes from a reformatory and hooks up with a gang of jewel smugglers, and decides on a life of crime. However, she falls for and marries a policeman, putting a crimp in her criminal career.

Brigitte, the beautiful daughter of the French premier, falls for one of her father's aides, the womanising Michel, and attempts to get him to settle down with her. However, as Michel can't curb his flirtations with other women, Brigitte makes a play to seduce the married Prince Charles, resulting in a battle of wills between the gorgeous girl of privilege and her beau.

Having fortuitously discovered a photograph in which Marthe embraces someone unknown, Étienne Dorsay becomes jealous and imagines various stratagems to identify the lover. In the meantime, he and his friends acquire a weekend house for a very low price.

Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.

Heralded racing driver Pierre Chaillot has never noticed the pretty young flight attendant who dotes on him adoringly. But when his fiancée's infidelity drives him to the brink of suicide, Pierre's guardian angel takes the form of this stewardess to urge him to choose life. Though the angel confesses her divinity, Pierre is skeptical of the existence of angels. But, despite their difference, the two bond during her brief sojourn in human form.

Four-episode Franco-Italian omnibus film. Four men from different national and cultural background take refuge in a cabin after being sidetracked by bad weather on their way to conference.

A provincial ingenue leaves her mother’s tobacco shop with dreams of a life in the Parisian theater, only to become entangled in relationships with a lecherous aristocrat, his starry-eyed nephew, and an old ham actor.

To teach a lesson to his young wife who dreams of the famous "voiceless singer", a husband enters a radio station and manages to make people appreciate his voice.

The wife of gunsmith Gaston Sarazin cheats on him with his salesman. The husband, informed, wants revenge. The culprits try to divert suspicion on the dashing Stanislas. The husband forces the straw lover to live with him. Stanislas then brings the spouses together and makes the business of the gunsmith prosper.

Strange things are happening in the small town of Breuil-le-Château. Provisions from the black market are stolen regularly and wealthy young men, including the squire's son, start vanishing... Ransom demands are sent but with an illegible signature. The investigation is trusted to Ducreux, the local police brigadier. He is assisted by Carlier, a film director in search of locations for his next movie, who has been mistaken for a police inspector from Paris. The two men will have more than their share of surprises.

A bossy count has trouble marrying off any of his six sons. When one of them, Adam, finally makes wedding arrangements, something happens to his bride to be: she develops amnesia after an accident.

In Paris, three models are murdered, being one of them the mistress of the fashion designer Dominique Airelle. It is the young inspector who is in charge of the affair.

Marguerite secretly loves a novelist whose face no one knows. The jealous husband sets up a scheme by asking an actor friend to play the novelist and behave in an execrable way in order to disgust his wife. But things never turn out the way you think they will.

When she married her snobbish lawyer husband a woman hid her family's modest background from him. Her father, who is in fact a plumber dresses up as a duchess in order to fool him.