
Acting
René Génin
Born — Died
1890-01-25 — 1967-10-24
Place of birth
Aix-en-Provence, France
Known for
Acting
Credits
60 titles
Known for
7.0Two men pull off a daring daylight payroll heist in Milan, making a fast getaway. One is returning to France after years in hiding, needing money to start fresh with his family.
The Big Risk
1960
7.6Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
Eyes Without a Face
1960
7.6After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.
Daybreak
1939
7.4Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news.
Port of Shadows
1938
7.2Inhabitants of a flophouse struggle to survive under the harsh treatment imposed by the landlord, Kostyleva. One resident, young thief Wasska Pepel, ends his affair with the landlord's wife, Vassilissa, and takes up with her sister, Natacha. Pepel also befriends the baron, a former nobleman fallen on hard times, but Pepel's attempts at happiness are complicated when he's accused of murder by a spiteful Vassilissa.
The Lower Depths
1936
5.8A publicity-minded French mayor reunites quintuplets and their earthy father, all six played by Fernandel.
The Sheep Has Five Legs
1954
Film credits
1960s · 9 titles
7.0Two men pull off a daring daylight payroll heist in Milan, making a fast getaway. One is returning to France after years in hiding, needing money to start fresh with his family.
The Big Risk
1960
7.6Dr. Génessier is riddled with guilt after an accident that he caused disfigures the face of his daughter, the once beautiful Christiane, who outsiders believe is dead. Dr. Génessier, along with accomplice and laboratory assistant Louise, kidnaps young women and brings them to the Génessier mansion. After rendering his victims unconscious, Dr. Génessier removes their faces and attempts to graft them on to Christiane's.
Eyes Without a Face
1960
6.9Georges Franju's Judex is an arch, playful tribute to the serials of the influential silent filmmaker Louis Feuillade. Franju shuffles through the plot of Feuillade's lengthy serial of the same name, about an adventurer named Judex whose revenge against the corrupt banker Favraux unleashes a complicated series of schemes.
Judex
1963
4.5To repay a debt, Marcel must commit a robbery in a large department store. Unfortunately his booty is intercepted by a gang of thugs.
How Not to Rob a Department Store
1965
6.3Jules is a shepherd who lives a humble and solitary life in rural Provence. From time to time, he is visited by a lonely widow, Fine, who longs to be his wife. One day, Jules comes across an unexploded bomb lying on the ground in open countryside. After a few foolhardy attempts to set the bomb off, Jules makes a surprising discovery. It is filled with thousands of bank notes…
Croesus
1960
5.3A group of people visit a weird old man who is a student of the black arts. The man lives in an ancient, cursed castle. Soon people in the group start being killed off.
The Burning Court
1962
5.0As the driver of a garbage truck in Arles, Marc-Antoine leads a quiet life with his wife, Mélanie, and their two children. When Amédée's "Fanny" is stolen from the bouliste club, Marc-Antoine offers to repaint another one. As soon as the work is finished, he becomes a local celebrity and, intoxicated by his new-found fame, leaves his family to go with Hélène, the young waitress, to his friend Septime's house in the Camargue to take up painting. Eventually, Marc-Antoine realizes that he is dissatisfied and that his success seems dishonest. He realizes that happiness awaits him with his wife, children and friends, and resumes his simple life without remorse.
Cocagne
1961
8.0In 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.
La salamandre d'or
1962
4.7Henri has a beautiful wife, Sophie. Unfortunately, suffering from an unhealthy jealousy, he spends much of his time watching his wife's every move, and a few domestic scenes often ensue.
Jaloux comme un tigre
1964
1950s · 10 titles
5.8A publicity-minded French mayor reunites quintuplets and their earthy father, all six played by Fernandel.
The Sheep Has Five Legs
1954
6.9A small village is torn apart by a quarrel between the baker and the italian grocery tenant, mother of a pregnant young girl. She accuses the baker's son, doing his military service in Algeria, to be the father of the would be child. Offended, the baker refuses to deliver bread to the villagers standing on the mother's side.
The Wild Oat
1953
7.2Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.
The Law Is the Law
1958
6.0Dr Pierre Richard learns that his wife Madeleine has been unfaithful for years. This comes as a shock after a decade of supposedly wedded bliss. Back home, he demands answers, and a long night of explanations ensues.
The Moment of Truth
1952
5.8A doctor, leading an agreed life of the provincial petty bourgeoisie, falls in love with a young woman. As their relationship deepens, he becomes violently jealous and blames her for her dating and friendships.
Forbidden Fruit
1952
7.3Jean Michaut is a bargeman who lives near an old barge cemetery named "Bras-Mort". He is in love with Monique, the daughter of a wealthy boat owner. The girl returns his affection which goes against her family's class prejudices. Her family prove willing to do anything to separate the lovers, but, Monique will not buy in. On the contrary, she leaves her intolerant family to live with Jean among simple, more tolerant bargemen.
The Lovers of Bras-Mort
1951
6.5Based on the novel of the same name by writer Edouard Peisson, this Jean Delannoy film display one boy’s unconditional love for his mother, despite her tragic mistreatment of him. After being raised by a shepherd for the past 12 years, Simon (Pierre-Michel Beck) is reunited with his mother Marie (Madeleine Robinson). Marie is a prostitute in Marseilles and is now stable enough to welcome Simon back into her life. Unaware of her profession at first, Simon is happy to have his mom back, but in time he learns how she makes her living. This troubles Simon but he continues to love her, despite not loving her chosen profession. His anger toward this issue gets directed toward Marie’s louse of a boyfriend, Paul (Frank Villard), and the result is a heartfelt tale about love and family.
Savage Triangle
1951
6.9Anthology film with three shorts each featuring a famous detective: Monsieur Wens, Lemmy Caution and Maigret.
Full House
1952
4.8The Adventures of Cadet Rousselle that on the French Revolution left his hometown in search of fortune. He thinks he knows love with Violeta, a dancer in a band of comedians but ends up involved in a monarchist plot.
Cadet Rousselle
1954
7.0In a small village, a farmer discovers his wife has committed suicide, but suspicions of murder arise, dividing the community. Amidst the conflict, he develops feelings for a young woman who is the sister of a man harboring a personal grudge against him.
The Hunting Ground
1951
1940s · 20 titles
7.2Paris, France. Commissaire Wens follows the lead of a ruthless murderer to an unexpected place.
The Murderer Lives at Number 21
1942
6.7The everyday life and activity of "La Dernière Heure", a major evening newspaper, seen through the eyes of Hélène Perrin, a cub reporter trained by Pierre Rabaud, a star in his field. Side by side they will investigate several events: an air show that ends tragically, the coming to France of a Hollywood actress, a lightship caught in a terrible storm...
The Newspaper Falls at Five O'Clock
1942
5.3Maigret is called to the high-class Hotel Majestic to investigate a body. The wife of a wealthy American has been killed - but to Maigret's surprise she has a gun in her purse. He begins to follow up the handful of clues that could explain her secret life and her demise.
Majestic Hotel Cellars
1945
6.7An old woman living in an inn is killed and her family members seem like the likely culprits.
It Happened at the Inn
1943
4.7A little bank employee wins a plane in the lottery and amazes his companions with his audacity.
Sur le plancher des vaches
1940
6.2Maloin, a maritime station guard, spends his nights at the port signal box. One night, he becomes the witness of a murder: for a simple suitcase smuggled, the altercation between the two men turns to drama. While the first falls and drowns, the second flees. Maloin, instead of warning the police, decides to dive in and recover the suitcase...which contains more than 3 million in small denominations! That's when the trouble begins...
The London Man
1943
7.5Hervé is a tough sea captain in command of the "Duchesse Anne", a rum-trading ship. But the sea dog hides a tender heart and he allows Marie-Douce, a poor slum girl who dreams of seeing the wide world,on board. To have her accepted by the crew, he passes her off as his niece. A seasoned master like him, wise enough to ban alcohol use on his ship, should have known better : a beautiful girl on the deck cannot but unleash the savage instincts of all those men without women.
Le Bateau à soupe
1947
7.0Jérôme owns a boat with his crook of an uncle, La Rose de la Mer. They sail with a band of crooks hired by the uncle to scuttle the ship and collect the insurance premium.
The Sea Rose
1946
7.3Having lost his memory due to serving in World War I, Gaston has spent the past 15 years in a psychiatric hospital. Due to his large disability pension fund, several families claim him as their missing son. Gaston is introduced to the Renaud family by the Duchess Dupont-Dufort and her lawyer. The Renaud family attempt to revive Gaston's memory with stories of his past, but he is apalled by some of the things he hears and dislikes the man he is supposed to be.
The Traveler Without Luggage
1944
6.2In 1825, Paul-Louis Courier, a Republican writer known for publishing pamphlets against the French monarchy, was killed in the farm where he had retired. Was it a political assassination or a vicious crime? Those who have known him loved him or hated him are interrogated by the police. Will the guilty person(s) be ferreted out?
The Farm of Seven Sins
1949
5.0Angelo, a glass-blower from Murano, and Georgia Maglia, the pretty daughter of a fallen fascist magistrate, are chosen to be the stand-ins for the stars of a film version of "Romeo and Juliet" being shot on location in Venice and Verona. It is not long before they fall in love and their romance parallels that of Shakespeare's timeless heroes. Indeed their union is threatened by the schemings of Raffaele, the Maglia family's dubious tout...
The Lovers of Verona
1949
8.0When Monsieur Crauqual, the supervisor, is found hanging, all wonder why this rather rich person decided to kill himself. And when a pupil is found hanging too, François and his friends decide to investigate. They are certain there is a killer within the walls of Collège François 1er and determined to prevent him from going on running wild.
The Kids Are Leading the Investigation
1947
8.0The children born from a first marriage of a widower and a widower who have remarried do not get along. Frequent quarrels break out in the household which finally finds calm thanks to the presence of a new little girl.
The Law of Spring
1942
5.5The story of how the people of Paris cope with the strains and struggles of war, from the siege of the city by the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 to the invasion by the Germans in World War II.
The Heart of a Nation
1943
7.0When her godmother dies, Nicole's happiness collapses and her fiancé leaves her because she is ruined.
The Passenger
1949
8.0A soccer enthusiast like his father, Martin Lambert is the (gifted) goalkeeper of the local team. He falls in love with Jeanette and soon marries her. Alongside a happy marital life, Martin becomes a successful professional. Which proves a mixed blessing since fame makes him vain and haughty and his marriage gets seriously affected. But the Second World War breaks out and Martin is drafted. Taken prisoner a few months later, he is sent to a camp. When he is released, he tries resume his career but his wounds hurt too much and he has to give in. But not soccer: he will now proudly train young shoots.
Les Dieux du dimanche
1949
5.0Mimile is a street singer and also a very inventive free rider. With his friend Georges, a musician in the same orchestra, they meet Arlette Sicleton and Lulu. Arlette is the sister of Sicleton, a sports event organizer and Lulu is the daughter of Ledoux, the supervisor in charge of tracking down free riders. After many misunderstandings, love will triumph.
The King of Dodgers
1945
9.0She dragged out a more than mediocre life in the port of Antwerp; he is a renowned pianist-virtuoso. These two solitary beings, totally different, meet by chance on a liner and gradually realize that they complement each other harmoniously.
The Beautiful Trip
1947
7.5In France, in 1930, a supervisor of a boarding school for young offenders seeks to awaken the music by forming a choir, despite the skepticism of his boarding school director.
A Cage of Nightingales
1945
7.0Edith, a young orphan, is exploited as a waitress and bullied by her adoptive father. But she has a dream: she wants to become a star. One day the Orient Express, which never stops at the little station across the café she works in, is forced to pull up due to a technical incident. And out of a carriage gets ... a company of dancers, who start rehearsing before Edith's amazed eyes. She meets the director of the company, handsome dancing star Harry Belmont, who takes an interest in her beauty and in her natural talent. When she leaves her obnoxious father for Vienna, Harry is absent. She nearly gets seduced by a libidinous man but, after a narrow escape, she gets a job from Treberg, the owner of the restaurant she had dined in. Treberg finds her there, hires her as a dancer and the pair soon meets tremendous success. A star is born but, realizing that he comes second to her, he prefers to vanish.
L'inconnu d'un soir
1949
1930s · 20 titles
7.6After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.
Daybreak
1939
7.4Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news.
Port of Shadows
1938
7.2Inhabitants of a flophouse struggle to survive under the harsh treatment imposed by the landlord, Kostyleva. One resident, young thief Wasska Pepel, ends his affair with the landlord's wife, Vassilissa, and takes up with her sister, Natacha. Pepel also befriends the baron, a former nobleman fallen on hard times, but Pepel's attempts at happiness are complicated when he's accused of murder by a spiteful Vassilissa.
The Lower Depths
1936
7.1Mild-mannered novelist of Western fiction, Amédée Lange, and his colleagues take over a publishing house after their exploitative boss disappears, only for the superior to return and try to reclaim the profits from their successful cooperative.
The Crime of Monsieur Lange
1936
6.1When her fiancé breaks off their engagement, Danielle leaves London and returns to her mother, Jenny, in Paris. With her business partner Benoît, Jenny runs what appears to be a respectable nightclub – it is in fact a place where wealthy men can buy the favours of attractive young women. Oblivious to her mother's professional and personal life, Danielle meets a handsome young man named Lucien, and falls in love with him – not realising that he is Jenny's lover...
Jenny
1936
7.0After the death of her husband, Christine realizes she has possibly wasted her life by marrying him instead of the man towards whom, in her youth, she had a stronger inclination. To overcome these dreary thoughts, she decides to find out about him and the other men who danced with her during a ball that was a turning point in her life, many years ago. She pays a visit to those forgotten acquaintances one after the other; Christine is not only surprised to see how they have fared, but also discovers the impact she had, unknowingly, on the feelings and the destiny of these persons.
Life Dances On
1937
6.1An employee at a jewelry store falls in love with a woman who secretly plans to rob the store.
Fric-Frac
1939
7.4In a college, three friends form a secret society. Their objective - going to America. One night, after one of their secret meetings, one of them sees a man coming out from a wall. The next day, after he talks about it, he disappears. Then, the second one vanishes. Are they gone to their dreams? That's when the art teacher is murdered. Suspicions now are too high so the third one decides to investigate.
Boys' School
1938
7.0A French farce set in Victorian London where a botanist and his wife get into trouble when they pretend to go missing in order to hide from their sanctimonious cousin – an Anglican bishop who is leading a campaign against such writing.
Bizarre, Bizarre
1937
5.0Somewhat reminiscent of 'Mädchen in Uniform' (1931), the story is set in a private girl's school, populated almost exclusively by children from broken homes. Among the few students who can claim family stability is Micheline Presle, but even her happiness is threatened when her lawyer father Andre Luguet inaugurates an affair with stage actress Jacqueline Debulac. With the help of Debulac's daughter Louisa Carletti, Presle is able to break up her father's romance and deliver him into the open arms of her mother Marcelle Chantal.
Girls in Distress
1939
6.8The mistress of an engineer meets the man's pregnant wife and decides to give up the liaison.
Orage
1938
A jealous husband (Pegotte), his wife, and a friend are returning from a night of heavy drinking. An argument breaks out and escalates into a fight. Believing he has killed his friend, the husband panics and locks him in a trunk. The trunk is then delivered to the home of strangers in Paris, where the friend eventually wakes up.
Le crime de Monsieur Pegotte
1935
7.0A journalist takes command of a ship after the crew mutiny against the brutal captain. It was an adaptation of the novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London.
The Mutineers of Elsinore
1936
7.2French version of the Selma Lagerlof story, most famously filmed in 1921 by Victor Sjostrom, about a poor sinner who only realizes what misery he's wrought when he dies on New Year's Eve and is collected by Death in his carriage.
The Phantom Wagon
1939
9.0Ramuntcho is a young man who has fallen in with a gang of smugglers, led by Itchoua, who carry their contraband across the border into Spain. He is in love with Gracieuse whose mother, Dolorès, bitterly dislikes Ramuntcho because he was born an illegitimate child. His smuggling activities force him to join the army and he is sent to Saigon and, because of her mother's desire to marry her off to someone else, Gracieuse joins a convent.
Ramuntcho
1938
6.8Mathias Pascal, saddled with a stupid wife and a nagging mother-in-law, leaves home and is extremely lucky at several gambling resorts. He returns home and discovers that a drowned man, fished out of the river, bears an uncanny likeness to him and is being buried by his family as him. This, to him, is a pleasant turn of events and he goes to Rome, where he falls in love with Louise Paleari. Count Papiano, a jealous suitor of Louise's, threatens him with arrest unless he produces credentials to prove his identity.
The Man from Nowhere
1937
10.0A rich sugar factory manager wants to marry his daughter to an aristocrat, while the young girl is in love with an engineer, employed in a rival company.
Le Choc en retour
1937
8.0Driven by necessity, Jean Larcher, a young agricultural engineer, accepts the degrading mission of leading to ruin, under cover of administering it, a huge cocoa plantation on the island of São Tomé. His employers, a financial coalition, indeed plan to dispossess its owner, an inexperienced young woman who has just inherited it, of her property. But when Jean comes into contact with her, he recognizes Francesca, a girl he had fond feelings for when he was a student.
Satan's Paradise
1938
10.0General Mikailoff once killed a lieutenant he mistakenly believed to be his wife's lover. Subsequently, she meets Henri de Cassel, so different from her drunkard husband, becomes his mistress and agrees to flee with him. She is surprised by her husband who, dead drunk, shoots the young man's reflection in the mirror.
Le vertige
1935
8.0The rise of a canning maker and then his abandonment of the factory because his ideal of social progress for his workers is undermined by the Board of Directors.
La fusée
1933
