Gérard Blain

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

A portrait of Gérard Blain, actor and film-maker, an unclassifiable artist, a lard-head and a free spirit. This documentary, packed with eyewitness accounts and archive footage, looks back at his brief career as an actor, his stormy relationship with the Nouvelle Vague and his uncompromising work as a filmmaker. Above all, it paints the portrait of a man with an irreducible character who claims to have always hated adults and their cynicism, ever since his damaged childhood.

A young woman who has gone over to the wrong side of the law with her new boyfriend begins having second thoughts about both crime and her new romance in this drama. Helene is an attractive 18-year-old who has fallen for Paul, a 25-year-old drifter, and one evening as they're having drinks in a cafe in the North of France, Paul decides to rob the bank across the street. Though wary, Helene agrees to help, and soon the couple is 40,000 francs richer -- and on the run from the law. The two hop a train to Marseilles, but it isn't long before Helene begins to think the robbery was a bad idea -- and isn't certain if her relationship with Paul is such a good thing either. Paul, however, isn't troubled by any second thoughts, and is very certain about his feelings for Helene -- so much so that he forces a priest to marry them at gunpoint. This is only the most recent manifestation of Paul's volatile personality, and rather than binding Helene closer to him, it only drives her farther away.

Based upon Vincenzoni's biography, "Pane e cinema", the documentary traces the story of the screen play writer who invented many stories that became blockbusters throughout the world.

A "three people relationship" with a pact involving a terrible past. The pact concerns France, Anne and Pierre.

Martin Becker, a drug addict, journeys to Colombia seeking direct access to supply but vanishes. When his mother Lore is summoned to identify his body, she discovers the corpse isn’t her son, but just someone using his passport. With the aid of adventurous pilot Blain, she uncovers a jungle-backed drug ring where addicts are enslaved by the mafia. Filmed on location in Ecuador, this crime adventure follows their perilous quest for the truth.

François, perpetual rebel against society and its laws, is released after a long imprisonment, and meets up with his family and friends in Lyon. His new love for Maria, a young woman adrift, prompts him to get quick money. François will commit acts of violence that will definitely lose him.

Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues.

Two policemen, Franck and Rupert, intervene in a Parisian heliport where drugs are exchanged for a large sum of money. They decide to keep the loot and find themselves fighting with the mafia.

WW2: in an occupied France, a young Jewish girl wants to become a movie star.

Can a loving relationship of eight years go down the drain because of a single moment of carelessness? Virginie and Laurent have always treasured fidelity, but Laurent's opinions and appetites are starting to shift with the times.

Two would be producers launch a singer's career.

A woman on the brink of middle age becomes bored and takes up playing cards. She becomes hooked on gambling and begins to neglect her husband and children.

A tired and alcoholic police investigator has lost his wife to a hotel owner, and former pimp, but befriends a young woman which isn't at all who she claims to be.

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

Cain has been traveling for a long time throughout Europe. Back "home" he knocks at the door of his parents' trailer only to be rejected by his hateful mother, who once again blames him for his laziness and once again compares him to his brother Abel, a successful businessman and a right guy, good to his parents and stuff. As for his father, now blind and crippled, he escapes his wife by being permanently drunk and he is of no help. In disgust, Cain runs away from the place and contacts Abel, the perfect son, to borrow money from him. But, although Abel tells him he doesn't mind helping him, Cain shoots him down with a gun found in his brother's car.

After getting painfully separated from the woman he loves, Julien leaves his apartment. He goes in search of his old friends but no one is to be found and the city is silent.

Paul has been imprisoned for ten years for passing counterfeit money. He feels victimized enough, both for the prison time and for the crime which led to it; he committed the crime to give his wife the nice things she asked him for. When he discovers that she has remarried a quite wealthy man, he is outraged. However, his ire is not due to her disloyalty to him; he loved their only son to distraction, and now the boy has no knowledge or memory of him.

Pierre Lentier murders an 8-year-old in horrendous circumstances. This 30-something solitary factory worker who lives on the edge of society is sentenced to death. A damning indictment of the death penalty and the manipulative behaviour of the media.

No synopsis available yet.

A female wildlife photographer arrives on an East African reservation where a group of men trap wild animals for zoos and circuses.

A French resistance group free twelve soldiers from a German prison camp, but apparently there's an additional detainee among them suspected of being an enemy spy.

A secret agent works with a scientist to recover documents outlining a new formula to make fuel.

A young man joins a band of brigands, but, faced with their exactions, rebels against them.

An acid portrait of Italian youth at the time, I DELFINI follows a dreary season of discontent and viciousness in the lives of a thoroughly unpleasant group of mostly rich youngsters in a small Adriatic coast city.

The wife of a jet-set millionaire takes a holiday in Berlin and poses for racy photographs. These are stolen, a man is killed, and she decamps to the French Riviera with a different photographer, who may also now be in danger.

No synopsis available yet.

The fiancée of a gangster who has been shot by the police takes an entire police station hostage, armed with a revolver and a bottle of nitroglycerine...

The story of five girls that lose their virginity.

Rome 1943. The German Commandant of the city causes a turmoil in the Jewish community by offering them what seems to be an expensive way out of imprisonment and death.

A husband and wife meet three years after their formal separation, when they return to the provincial town where they once lived to pick up their divorce decree.

Three episodes of varying pitch and quality. In the first a maid plans the elimination of her lover's wife with him, but she doesn't enjoy the fruits of victory. In the second (The patrol) a soldier of the Foreign Legion neglects his duties for running after a prostitute. The third segment has as its protagonist a general of the belle époque that goes on a date.

A young crook called Joë Caligula and his crew make war on a Parisian gang.

Alvaro Cosenza, also known as the Hunchback from Quarticciolo, during Rome's occupation by Nazis in 1943, decides to revolt.

Two young men in a village in Sicily raping a girl. In the end, two skilled lawyers will succeed in getting them to complete the trial, but one, who in the meantime has fallen in love with the victim.

A young man who lives on scams and deceptions manages to convince a wealthy industrialist who has come from the province to finance a film. Having received an adequate advance, he begins to lead an expensive life among luxury cars and beautiful women.

The trials and tribulations of a group of artist friends and a gay gallery owner living in the Via Margutta neighbourhood of Rome. Stefano is a talented painter, devoted to his art but not interested in promoting himself, while many of his fellow artists are far more adept at selling their persona than creating art.

In this romantic drama, a middle-aged gambler tells a casino croupier her life story. The story is told in flashback and chronicles the woman's romantic exploits with men. Though she was involved with many men, only one really touched her heart. He was a bartender who was tragically shot and killed during an attempted robbery. She later marries and has a daughter. Unfortunately she alienates herself from her daughter when she has an affair with her daughter's fiance. Her remorse is short lived. The film jumps back to the present with the woman leaving the casino on the arm of a handsome millionaire.

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.

The love life of an aging architect used to love affairs with call girls, who in the end settles down with a girl of his class but still longs for the life he has led so far, which ends in disillusion.

Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.

In the heart of Paris, a restaurateur's mundane life is disrupted by the arrival of his ex-wife's daughter, who claims to be in need after her mother's death. After marrying her, tensions rise when she becomes involved with a young student, leading to betrayal and murder. As secrets unfold, he uncovers the truth about her past and her manipulative nature.

After long absence, a man returns to his hometown only to find his best friend has become an alcoholic.

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.

This short features a man who is visited by his ex-lover. The moment she arrives, the man starts his constant barrage of speech; the woman doesn't say much. She just mocks the man and pretends she isn't listening. She pulls faces at him and larks about; while the man is trying his best to get her back in his life, then in the next sentence he says he hates her.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

The Lourmel couple are taking part in the final round of a TV game show: the wife has to answer questions; if she fails, her husband drives a racing car to make up the lost minutes. Moments before the start of the show, a phone call informs Lourmel that her six-year-old son has been kidnapped, and that the ransom is the amount to be won on the game show.

In a small Italian town, the local youngsters realize that their youth is coming to an end and marriage will soon follow. They gather together for one last time in an attempt to revive their younger days, but this comes to a dismal conclusion. Gradually it dawns on the group that childhood is over and the next stage in human growth must be faced.

Lyon, 1953. Maria Manzana is the oldest of a family with five children and the only one who has a job. Maria's mother is deceased and her father is regularly drunk and violent. One evening when he wants to beat his daughter Christine, Mary helps her sister and accidentally she kills her father. At Maria's advice the family would prefer to flee. Anna, the girlfriend of Mary's brother Michael, accompanies them. Michael doesn't want to leave her behind. A friendly trucker brings Mary and her company to the south. The group then walks on deserted roads to a village, that was abandoned more than 25 years ago due to lack of water.

Coveted by many of the men around her, the sensual Nathalie is a magnet for passion. After many adventures and dramas, she will find the happiness she longs for.

In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.

An officer, two of his comrades and a social worker want to create the "Carrefour", a place for lost children and teens to give them a chance not to fall by the wayside and spend most of their life in jail.

Fabienne believes herself to be cheated on by her husband Claude and divorces her. He leaves for America and does not return until eight years later. He then meets his daughter.

The crew of a tank from the 1st French army took part in the liberation of Strasbourg during the fall of 1944.

Portrait of actor and filmmaker Gérard Blain, shot in Tourcoing (France) on December 10, 1999 at 3:00 PM.