Roger Trécan

In 1525, on the evening of the Battle of Pavia, François 1er was taken prisoner by the armies of Charles-Quint, with the Constable de Bourbon on their side. His mother, regent of the kingdom, commissioned the king's loyal equerry, Antoine de Montpezat, to raise a ransom of two million ecus and send it to Madrid. Despite the treachery of Vandoeuvre, governor of Languedoc and supporter of the connétable de Bourbon, who has his eye on the French throne, Montpezat accomplishes his mission and is reunited with his fiancée, who had almost married the traitor Vandoeuvre.

Convicted of murdering his wife, a crime of which he declares himself innocent, Jacques Mazur is serving a long sentence in a prison where his presence causes disruption.

Set during the bloody and turbulent years of the French Revolution, it follows the life and exploits of François-Séverin Marceau, an idealistic and courageous young man who would become one of the most famous generals of the First Republic.

Daniella, a fashion model, goes to Rome to replace a model who's been murdered. Once there, she meets two men, Count Castellani, whose clothes she'll model, and Karl Bauer, a reporter in the hotel room next to hers. Castellani gives Daniella the spotlight, which prompts jealousy from another model. Is he merely trying to seduce her? It's soon apparent that he has other plans as well: the line of clothes is a cover for smuggling and perhaps espionage. Daniella may be in danger - one model is dead already. Is Bauer to be her protector, or is he after something too? Is anyone who they seem?

An off-beat, uneven tale about a man intent on suicide and the three people who try to talk him out of it, Pantalaskas stars American Carl Studer in the title role of the morose, would-be suicide. Set in Paris and taking place over an entire night, the story has a complication in that the trio who want to prevent the suicide do not speak the man's language -- he is Lithuanian and speaks no French. So the protagonists comb the underbelly of a nighttime Paris, looking high and low but mostly low for anyone who speaks Lithuanian. Depending mainly on dialogue for its impact, the verbose drama reveals how the protagonists undergo a transformation as the night wears on.