The Bride Wore Black

Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.

For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.

A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.

Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure.

Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

Danielle, a vibrant young woman, was forced into servitude after the death of her father when she was a young girl. Danielle's stepmother, Rodmilla, is a heartless woman who forces Danielle to do the cooking and cleaning, while she tries to marry off the eldest of her two daughters to the prince. But Danielle's life takes a wonderful turn when, under the guise of a visiting royal, she meets the charming Prince Henry.

Marie has had a tough childhood ever since her mother Elisa committed suicide. She has spent most of her life in an orphanage and now makes a living as a small time criminal in Paris. Now she wants to unravel her past and find her father whom she blames for her mother's death.

A P.I. is obsessed with a cute woman, who seduces and kills rich men around W. Europe.

Michel is a young technician in the fledgling TV industry and is due for military service in two months at the time of the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are inseparable best friends, and aspiring actresses, who hang around outside the TV studio. Michel invites them in to watch, flirts with them both, and dates them separately and together. When Michel goes on a holiday to Corsica, just before he is drafted, the girls follow.

When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner, Rambal-Cochet, as his new toy. Needing money and unwilling to quit his job, Francois agrees to this ridiculous assignment. Gradually befriending the spoiled boy, he induces him to play at making a newspaper, unveiling publicly the tyrannical way of life of the father. The powerful emotional climax we experience with the child astonishes both men.

On March 21, 1905, the hemicycle of the Palais-Bourbon resounded with the first session of a crucial and animated parliamentary debate, which was to last nearly ten months and occupy 48 sessions in the Chamber of Deputies. They have to study the bill of separation of the Churches and the State. This law, which founded laicity in France, was adopted on December 9, 1905.

Inspector Lavardin is called to a provincial village to investigate a murder – only to find that one of his ex-lovers is the victim’s widow.

Paris 1960. DeGaulle determines to end a bitter war in Algeria by granting its independence. Millions oppose him, including a group of DeGaulle's disenchanted Arm Officers. In a desperate attempt to save the colony for France, they plan a daring jailbreak of their imprisoned leader. A network of snitches inform a tenacious detective leading to an explosive three-way cat-and-mouse game among the rebels, the Gaullist politicos and the police.

Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina.

Port of Marseille, France, recently liberated from the German yoke. Caught as stowaways aboard a ship, Manon, a young woman who was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Robert, a freedom fighter who saved her from reprisals, tell the captain about the many challenges they have had to face in order to survive.

Biarritz, 1933. Charm and talent assist small-time swindler Serge Alexandre, alias Stavisky, to bribe his way into the centre of French politics. But when his great scam involving millions is exposed, he brings the government to the verge of collapse and the country to the brink of civil war.

For three days at the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro, amorous cross-fertilizations are intertwined with petty tricks against the backdrop of the famous carnival festivities. Three (sympathetic) accomplices are beaten to a punch in the hotel vault; three charming stewardesses are looking for entertainment, but their three Carioca host, musicians Tom Jobim, Luiz Bonfá, and João Gilberto, are married; a man, separated from his wife, wants to catch her in the act of adultery.

A well-known business lawyer is shot dead in the courthouse. A commissioner of the Criminal Brigade is in charge of the investigation and is helped by a journalist.

With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.

A self-assured businessman murders his employer, husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.

Prince Myshkin is a good man, yet his goodness borders on naivety—or even idiocy. After spending his youth in a Swiss sanatorium being treated for epilepsy and autism, he returns to Russia to enter social circles riddled with hypocrisy and greed. One emerges from the experience dazed, as if waking from a troubled dream.

Near the end of World War II, General Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he's unable to maintain control of the city. After much contemplation, Choltitz ignores orders, enraging the Germans and giving hope to various resistance factions that the city will be liberated. Choltitz, alongside Swedish diplomat Raoul Nordling, helps a leader organise his forces.

At fifty, René Maugras has lost everything. This wealthy press boss fell into a coma and was rushed to hospital. He has since emerged from his worrying state of health but remains unable to move and communicate. He must also begin rehabilitation, which turns out to be particularly humiliating. Fortunately for him there is Blanche, his nurse, who surrounds him with affection. Blanche takes her case to heart.

Paris, France, during the First World War. While thousands of soldiers die every day on the battlefields, Henri Landru, a seemingly respectable furniture dealer, married and father of four children, relentlessly feeds his own sinister factory of death.

In 1880's Italy, young Paulina must join a monastery to escape a doomed relationship with a married count. However, neither she, nor the count can just move on and all elements for a tragedy are there.

In Troyes, Thomas, the son of a bourgeois family, is in the final stages of his adolescence. He's almost an adult when he discovers that his mother has a lover. At the same time, he realizes that his father is turning a blind eye, and that the estranged couple are only together for show. Thomas rebels, but has to hide his dismay and satisfy his great need for tenderness at the same time.

A thief known as Simon the Swiss faces up and downs in his criminal profession.

A married man who killed the wife of his best friend during a tryst feels compelled to turn himself in.

A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth, but a tenacious magistrate is determined not to let them get away with it.

At Bertrand Morane's burial there are many of the women that the 40-year-old engineer loved. In flashback Bertrand's life and love affairs are told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel.

A story of the caring friendship formed between a crusty, old anti-Semite and an eight-year-old Jewish boy who goes to live with him during World War II.

History's favorite Gauls assist Queen Cleopatra when she wagers that the Egyptian people can build a palace for Julius Caesar in just three months.

A self-conscious and self-referential adventure into the (pretend) lives of legendary actors in Paris.

Frédérique's mother has died recently leaving her the family stud farm. She's never met her father, doesn't even know his name. But she finds it on the back of an old photo. She sets off for Paris. She stays with her gay dancer pal Marc. Marc and friends decide to go to their favourite gay bar... but it's men only. So Frédérique becomes Frédéric, an effeminate gay boy... Frédérique follows her father. Pierre Arroux is an art curator - and gay. She introduces herself to him, but as Frédéric. So while Frédéric is quite an awkward young man and an embarrassment to his father, Frédérique is secretly meeting with her old boyfriend now living in Paris..

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

A beautiful felon, sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a policeman, is given a second chance – as a secret political assassin controlled by the government.

Here we find a group of misfits who've given up on humanity and have decided to dwell below the pavement. The group has its own hierarchy, of course, and soon the conditions that drove them underground begin to manifest themselves without the influences of the Outside World.

Documentary on the career of Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a television special about the Third World. Sadiel, the exiled leader of a North African state, is being hunted by the ruthless Colonel Kassar, who will stop at nothing to capture his political rival. Once Sadiel arrives in Paris, Darien realizes he has been manipulated. He tries to turn back the clock, not realizing what or who he’s truly dealing with.

A group of young boys develops a crush on a girl, leading to jealousy toward her boyfriend. They scheme to disrupt their relationship, and when the boyfriend catches one of them spying, he punishes him harshly. In retaliation, the boys attempt to make the girl doubt her boyfriend's love.

Désiré is a fine servant and butler who regularly seduces the ladies of the house where he works, but then he moves on. This time he is working for Odette, the mistress of the minister of Posts and he is living a new situation. He has fallen in love with with Odette.

A young journalist uncovers an assassination disguised as a suicide, linked to an American multinational seeking to dominate French industries. Determined to expose the truth, he races against time to gather evidence before more lives—and his own—are at stake.