Acting
Le Grand Échiquier is a French variety television program created and presented by Jacques Chancel. It aired at 8:30 pm on the first channel of the ORTF from January 12, 1972 to July 12, 1972, then on the second color channel of the ORTF from September 1972 to December 1974, and finally on Antenne 2 from January 1975 to December 21, 1989. The program returned to France 2 on December 20, 2018 and is hosted by Anne-Sophie Lapix.
RĂ©mi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, RĂ©mi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, RĂ©mi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.
Following the death of his wife, a renowned musician ostracises himself from the outer world and dedicates his life to music. However, his life changes when a young man approaches him to learn music.
Not long before World War I, in a French Alpine town near the Italian border, a pack of slaughtered wolves is delivered to local taxidermist Leon (Patrick Chesnais). A surviving black cub comes down from the mountains looking for his family, and is saved from discovery and certain death by Leon’s young daughter Angele, who releases him back into the wild. The Great War comes and goes, making local foundry owners the Garcins rich. Family patriarch Albert Garcin (Michel Galabru), who happens to be Angele’s godfather, has given a free lifetime’s lease of a shack in the hills to a gypsy woman (played in flashbacks by Elisa Tovati in which she’s seen, literally, having dances with wolves on stage). Her son Guiseppe (Stefano Accorsi), who appears to be slightly mentally handicapped, guards the wolves he’s befriended up there, especially the black pack leader he calls Carbone.
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Alain Brissot, an executive in a major company, was made redundant following a redundancy plan, but decided to put up a fight by continuing to occupy his office against all odds... He soon went on hunger strike, and, after many ups and downs, ended up taking back the job of his former manager, who had himself been ousted following the failure of a lucrative contract with an African country.
Philibert, a robust lad and eldest son of an artichoke farmer, stands out from the other boys in the village. Idealistic and ingenuous, he foresees for himself a glorious future in artichokes and is saving his virginity for an as-yet-unknown woman chosen for him by God. Before he dies, his father tells him that he isn't his real parent. Philibert's real father was a gentleman murdered in the most cowardly way by a man from Burgundy who is recognisable by a rose-shaped strawberry birthmark on his neck. With a pouch full of ideals and artichokes, Philibert leaves his village and gallops towards Burgundy, accompanied by Martin, his rather deceitful manservant. Philibert's courage, kindness, physical and moral purity will thus be severely tested when faced with the baseness and venality of villains and the temptation of women each more lustful than the last.
Rosella Hightower teaches the role Aurora in Tchaikovsky's' Sleeping Beauty' to Elisabeth Platel.
1974 French TV film
An old lady returns from Africa where she made a fortune to find her son in Paris, whom she has not seen in five years, with the intention of bringing him back with her. But this project fails.
First performed in 1732, Marivaux's play on the theme of cross-dressing, depicts the stratagems of the young princess LĂ©onide in love with Agis, the legitimate heir to the throne of Sparta. To meet the prince, watched over by the philosopher Hermocrates and his sister, LĂ©onide disguises herself as a man and seduces the whole household.
Alceste loves Célimène, a flirtatious woman from the Parisian high society. He loathes this world for its hypocritical etiquette but, shaken by a public trial he is called to by this social circle, he must visit Célimène to ask for her help…
At Versailles, the last rehearsal of a play, ordered to molière by Louis XIV the king. Staged in their own characters, actors and author display their art's conception. It is, too, the opportunity for them to answer by irony to their detractors.
The Learned Ladies is a comedy by Molière in five acts, written in verse. A satire on academic pretension, female education, and préciosité (French for preciosity), it was one of his most popular comedies and the last of his great plays in verse. The character Trissotin, the main antagonist, is a caricature of Charles Cotin, an adversary of Nicolas Boileau and Molière, who both saw him as the perfect example of a pedantic scholar and mediocre scribbler.
The Venetian performance world is on the alert: an impresario is looking for talent to stage what he defines as the most beautiful opera of his time. Everyone goes there from their pushy little merry-go-round to attract the favors of the character and extricate themselves from misery. But the main interested party hardly seems to be sensitive to these effects.
Two married couples share the same holiday house. Everything seems to go smoothly except that Pierre, one of the two husbands, is irresistibly attracted to Marthe, his friend's wife. As for the latter, she feels exactly the same for him. One night (or is it the same thing every night?) Pierre and Marthe remain in the living room after their mutual partners have gone to bed. They talk and banter pleasantly until they half-wordily evoke the present that could be theirs if they had married each other or what future they could contemplate if they escaped together.
