Directed by Jean Grémillon • 1943 • France
A shimmering glass hotel at the top of a remote Provençal mountain provides the setting for a tragicomic tapestry about an obsessive love pentangle, whose principals range from an artist to a hotel manager to a dam worker. Scripted by Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche, the film was banned from theaters for the duration of the occupation for its dark portrayal of the hedonistic excesses of the ruling class. Today, it is often singled out as Jean Grémillon's greatest achievement.
Up Next in Season 1
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The Eternal Return
Directed by Jean Delannoy • 1943 • France
Starring Jean Marais, Madeleine Sologne, Jean MuratJean Cocteau—who wrote the script in his typical blend of the dreamlike and the mythic—and director Jean Delannoy transpose the immortal tale of Tristan and Isolde to 1940s France in this rhapsodic roma...
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La tête d’un homme
Directed by Julien Duvivier • 1933 • France
Starring Harry Baur, Valéry Inkijinoff, Alexandre RignaultJulien Duvivier’s meticulously crafted adaptation of a novel by legendary crime writer Georges Simenon stars Harry Baur as the author’s most indelible creation, Inspector Jules Maigret, who he...
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Children of Paradise
Directed by Marcel Carné • 1945 • France
Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre BrasseurPoetic realism reached sublime heights with CHILDREN OF PARADISE, widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimon...
