Acting
Patachou
Born 1918-06-10 · Paris, France
Henriette Ragon (10 June 1918 – 30 April 2015), better known as Patachou, was a French singer and actress. She was an Officier of the Légion d'honneur. Born in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, Henriette Ragon began her working life as a typist, then a factory worker, a shoeseller and an antique dealer. In 1948, with her husband Jean Billon she took over a cabaret-restaurant in Montmartre, called Patachou. (Their son Pierre Billon had some success as a singer in the 1970s and wrote J'ai oublié de vivre for Johnny Hallyday.) She began to sing in the bistro, and journalists began to call her Patachou after the name of her cabaret (pâte-à-choux means cream puff dough). Georges Brassens sang there, and together they sang the duet "Maman, papa". She was the first to interpret other songs he composed such as "Le bricoleur", "La chasse aux papillons", etc. The evening she sang them for the first time, she suggested her audience stay to the end of the show and meet the writer of these songs, and Brassens went up on to the Patachou stage for the first time and sang Le Gorille and P..de toi. Sometimes she would collect half-ties (she would snip the neckties of customers reluctant to join in the singing and immediately staple them to the ceiling, a habit which has created a very original decor of the place - hundreds of neckties hanging above) – Thomas Dewey and Errol Flynn were among her victims. Her first records were released in 1952. She appeared at the Bobino, a Montparnasse music-hall, toured in France and then further afield. From 1953 onwards, she could be seen on-stage at the Palladium, the Waldorf Astoria, and Carnegie Hall, and throughout the United States. From the beginning of the 1970s she toured Japan and Sweden where 'L'eternal Parigot', with her cheeky Parisian register, was popular. Patachou was made Officier of the Légion d'honneur on 1 January 2009. Patachou died on 30 April 2015 at the age of 96. Source: Article "Patachou" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Acting credits
The engagement of a young couple is spoiled by the antics of their relatives.
Tendre piège
1996
5.5A writer leaves his upper-class life and journeys with a woman claiming to be his sister, and her two friends.
Pola X
1999
6.3The 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.
Napoleon
1955
4.6A collection of artifacts from an archeological dig in Egypt are brought to the famous Louvre museum in Paris, and while experts are using a laser scanning device to determine the age of a sarcophagus, a ghostly spirit escapes and makes its way into the museum's electrical system.
Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre
2001
5.8A self-conscious and self-referential adventure into the (pretend) lives of legendary actors in Paris.
Actors
2000
6.0A charming comedy about going on a rather long walk. Félix is a laid-back guy living in the bleak northern coastal town of Dieppe. He lives happily with his lover Daniel and is a soap opera enthusiast and HIV-positive. After losing his job, Félix decides to find the father he never knew in Marseilles. Agreeing to meet Daniel in the southern port city in a week's time, Félix throws on his backpack and starts hiking. On his way, he discovers that family need not always be connected by blood.
Adventures of Félix
2000
7.2Nineteenth-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.
French Cancan
1955
7.3A "three people relationship" with a pact involving a terrible past. The pact concerns France, Anne and Pierre.
Open Season
1993
5.5No synopsis available yet.
Hold-up en l'air
1996
4.3In this drama, an American art student is trapped amidst the political turmoil of war-torn Europe while visiting Paris and staying at the fabulous Ritz hotel. Rather than cope constructively with it all, the fellow opts to ignore it and continue living the high-life for as long as possible.
The Man Who Lived at the Ritz
1988
6.1A documentary view of the galas of Paris’s Palais Garnier in the 1950s and ’60s.
A Night at the Opera
2020
5.4Imagine a slightly dilapidated three star hotel in the tenth arrondissement run by a very distinguished lady with moral fibre and panache, Mrs. Coppercage. Alongside tourists visiting Paris, Mrs. Coppercage rents three rooms to three women at a monthly rate. Each woman is marked by life, yet they go on as best they can, never closing their eyes to the world around them, or to the men who impatiently await them. Faubourg Saint Martin opens as a love story and ends like a song as shots ring out and punctuate the chorus.
Faubourg St Martin
1986
6.5Victor Meynard, a hit man who still lives with his mother, is becoming more reluctant to pull the trigger during assignments. He meets a young man, Antoine, whom he takes under his wing after being unable to kill him. Their lives change when he meets Renée, an art forger who has earned the wrath of powerful mob leaders. Unwilling to assassinate the new object of his affections, Victor must run and hide with two new friends in tow.
Wild Target
1993
5.3Paris, 1938. In a lavishly decorated nightclub, couples dance the syncopated rhythms of Latin America: Rumba, Cucaracha, Tango, and also the Charleston, Foxtrot and Boston. Among beautiful women, local pimps and Mussolini's spies brush each other on the dance floor, and in the streets. A police inspector is charged with a difficult task, to clean-up the city streets - just when bodies start falling around, as the Mafia and the spies tend each other deadly traps.
La Rumba
1987
7.0Professor Charles Buisson, astronomer and Nobel Prize winner, has just discovered a nova. He informs the other observatories by telephone. Just as he thinks one of them is calling back, he finds himself on the line with a young woman threatening suicide at the Ruban Bleu cabaret, if her lover hasn't joined her by midnight. Intrigued, the professor decides to go and prevent the unfortunate woman from committing suicide. One of his students, who earns her living as an understudy in a knife act, helps him in his investigation, while the school principal and a policeman suspect him of being a prankster or even of selling drugs. For the scientist, it's an opportunity to discover a world of music-hall that he'd never known before: "I thought I knew the sky chart by heart, but there's one planet that was totally unknown to me: Earth. I'll be back!
Femmes de Paris
1953
NRA man sings next to a young girl playing the piano. A bucolic landscape, smiles, pensive faces. With them stands a woman (their mother?) who listens to them play and sing.
With Feeling
1987
A young woman is sure that her son is alive
Le Cœur étincelant
1995
Dan, a journalist, lives alone with his daughter since his wife left him for a friend. When he accepts an appointment with him, he finds him dead. Dan decides to investigate the circumstances of the death.
Les matins chagrins
1990
5.2A miraculous mushroom is discovered by a film director's daughter. It would be used to cure an actress.
The Carpathian Mushroom
1990
7.5After the closure of a lace factory in Calais, Andrée, Lulu and Solange are out on the street.
Les Petites Mains
2001
7.0Documentary on the singer Damia made for TV.
Damia: Concert en velours noir
1989