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.
La Grande Illusion is a 1937 French war drama film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are German prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. In 2002, he was ranked fourth on the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. With Claude, he made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur; the critic Penelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film."
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 epic historical drama 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 last film Fleming directed before his death in 1949.
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.
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.
Picnic on the Grass is a 1959 French comedy film written and directed by Jean Renoir, starring Paul Meurisse, Fernand Sardou and Catherine Rouvel. It is known in the United Kingdom by its original title or in translation as Lunch on the Grass. A satire on contemporary science and politics, it revolves around a prominent biologist and politician who wants to replace sex with artificial insemination, but begins to reconsider when a picnic he organizes is interrupted by the forces of nature. The film brings up issues of modernity, human reproduction, youth and European integration. It ridicules rationalist idealism and celebrates a type of materialism it associates with classical mythology and ancient Greek philosophy.
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.
Simone Marie Jeanne Berger, better known as Simone Sylvestre, was a French film actress. Sylvestre died on 29 March 2020, at the age of 96.
Véra Sergine was a French actress. She was married to actor Pierre Renoir and was the mother of cinematographer Claude Renoir.
