Acting
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.
Crossbow follows the adventures of William Tell and takes place in the 14th-century in Switzerland. William Tell and his son are imprisoned by the tyrannical Gessler. As Governor of Austria, Gessler plans to stop the Swiss uprising. Having split the apple on his son's head with his crossbow, much to Gessler's chagrin, there is no stopping William Tell's legendary strength and skill.
The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
VĂ©ronique is a beautiful young French woman who aspires to be a renowned singer; Weronika lives in Poland, has a similar career goal and looks identical to VĂ©ronique, though the two are not related. The film follows both women as they contend with the ups and downs of their individual lives, with VĂ©ronique embarking on an unusual romance with Alexandre Fabbri, a puppeteer who may be able to help her with her existential issues.
Prague, 1920. Milena's father wants her to follow in his footsteps and be one of the first female doctors in Czechoslovakia, but she is determined to be a writer. She elopes to Vienna with the Jewish music critic Ernst Pollak, and starts a correspondence with Franz Kafka. She leaves Pollak and returns to Prague with her father, where she befriends and translates Kafka. As a journalist, Milena covers the 1923 Ruhr worker's strike and meets the communist architect Jaromir.
An adolescent groupie zeroes in on her Blondie-like idol after the singer chances to cross her orbit on a publicity tour. Gradually their lives intertwine as, with near-operatic intensity, the film delves into the emotional dependency on both sides of celebrity culture.
January 1966. In a Paris apartment, police discovers the corpse of Georges Figon, the man who broke the scandal of the Ben Barka affair and undermined Gaullist power.
Hoping to entrap Maria von Gall, who runs a courageous underground railroad for Jews in France, the Nazis kidnap her son Thomas, a brilliant 11-year-old chess master. An exchange arrangement goes awry and he sees her die in a hail of bullets; but he is rescued by his American father, whom he has never met before, and who plans to flee with him to Spain. However, Queen Maria had solemnly entrusted her little pawn Thomas with a precious secret and a terrifying mission, and it was time for him to move. A pawn may become an important piece by slowly, quietly advancing all the way through the enemy's ranks. Or a pawn may die trying. Retreat is what a pawn can never do.
A father and daughter are reunited some 11 years after the father's drug addiction tore the family apart.
Somewhere in France during the Middle Ages. BĂ©atrice is impatient to see her father return from English captivity. She doesn't expect however that the father whom she loves from distance will be the most hateful person who will submit her and her family to abuse and humiliation.
At 18, Claire is torn between swim practice and the pangs of first love. The elderly and eccentric Maurice Reverdy takes her in in his big house, but the girl carefully avoids this faraway figure, who is none other than her grandfather. Proud, rebellious, solitary, they represent two generations that are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by one another. Their lives will intertwine, as one seeks out her future and the other is tormented by his past.
A sensitive, 14 year old orphan in a military school learns about life and love from his classmates and teachers.
Emile Michel, Lapland, orphan, is obliged to bring back within the tribe the ancestral totem: a gold plumb line "borrowed" formerly by his grandfather Raymond Michel. His quest will take him aboard a floating boat that crosses Baffin Bay in the icy waters of Greenland.
An English hermit has somehow been brought to France in the period following the French Revolution, and prior to the Napoleonic Era, a period (1795-1799) known as "The Directory." He eventually comes down out of his tree into a chateau owned by an Italian nobleman and his wife. Before long, the hermit has washed and bathed and become quite presentable, even charming. However, his appearance in their midst is like a sentence of death for many of those who associate with him.
Paule is pushing 50, as she repeatedly observes in her voice-over commentary. When she – a philosophy lecturer with a 10-year marriage and a 15-year-old daughter – learns that her husband is having an affair with a 28-year-old, this number takes on a special weight. The Internet site “L’âme-sœur” is supposed to help Paule get through her burgeoning midlife crisis...
Fleeing fame, the writer Anatole Hirsch decides to publish his new book under the name of his cousin, Martin Bassane. This book wins the Prix Goncourt. A film inspired by the story of Romain Gary.
