René Thévenet

The Vertical Smile

A kaleidoscope of images from history populate this skillfully animated French feature. The story concerns a history professor whose ideas about human history cause him distress. Amid a flurry of newsreel-type images, Joan of Arc's trial is shown. Another theme which emerges is of two ages (in the far past and far future) in which naked humans fight one another with animalistic aggression.

Fight in Vain

Paul lives in Africa. He leads an honest and calm existence. Until the day when he finds his friend Frankovich dead.

The Friends

Philippe is an older man and an industrialist whose wife is confined to her bed. They have no children. As he is preparing to go on a vacation to the seaside, he strikes up an acquaintance with Paul, a young working-class boy, and decides to bring him along. This is Paul's first glimpse of how the other half lives, with their first-class hotels and so on. When he meets some aristocratic young people at the resort, he tries to put over the fiction that he is of their class, with poor success.

Spring

One of four Hanoun films that take their titles from the seasons of the year, SPRING tells two parallel stories: a man, fleeing the forces of order, takes refuge in the forest, while a young girl living with her grandmother in a nearby village approaches the threshold of adolescence, and begins to discover both the world and herself. - Anthology Film Archive

The Modification

While on a train to Rome, Léon muses about his love life after leaving his wife.

Goto, Island of Love

A petty thief works his way up the absurd hierarchy of Goto, an archipelago cut off from civilisation by a tumultuous earthquake. His dream is to possess Glossia, a stifled beauty trapped in a loveless marriage to a melancholic dictator.

The Killing Game

Two cartoonists meet a playboy who lives out the fantasies created in their cartoons. He hires them to create a new comic strip. As they work on the new strip, the playboy begins to live it out. Unfortunately, the new strip deals with murder.

Sweet Ecstasy

Olivier, a handsome but callow and moody young student, picks up an enthusiastic actress during a theatre rehearsal, and is introduced to her acquaintances -- a group of jaded rich kids who spend their time storming around the Riviera harassing passersby, throwing wild parties and following all the latest trends. When sexy Elke gives him the eye, he leaves the actress in the lurch and joins the gang for a decadent party aboard a yacht. However, Elke's wanton ways and Olivier's inexperience do not mesh, and in a snit, he accidentally sets the yacht afire. The gang wreaks its vengeance by luring him into a dangerous contest of bravura on a construction site.

Le Cercle vicieux

A young artist, an occasional gigolo, marries an older woman for her dough; however, he has not broken with his younger lover.

Pantalaskas

An off-beat, uneven tale about a man intent on suicide and the three people who try to talk him out of it, Pantalaskas stars American Carl Studer in the title role of the morose, would-be suicide. Set in Paris and taking place over an entire night, the story has a complication in that the trio who want to prevent the suicide do not speak the man's language -- he is Lithuanian and speaks no French. So the protagonists comb the underbelly of a nighttime Paris, looking high and low but mostly low for anyone who speaks Lithuanian. Depending mainly on dialogue for its impact, the verbose drama reveals how the protagonists undergo a transformation as the night wears on.

The Night of the Great Attack

In 15th century Romagna rules violence and fright. Cesare Borgia wants to incorporate the duchy of Catherine Sforza. But in between is the independent county Fabis, which he wants to bring into his possession.

Soft Skin on Black Silk

Everything you need to know is telegraphed by the title of this Spanish-language drama. The story takes place in a hothouse Mediterranean setting and combines lust, intrigue and murder in the overheated sexploitation style that was popular during the late 1950s and early '60s.

Sins of Youth

In a small provincial town, the boarding-house is run by Mathilde Belin, the overindulging and over-demanding mother of Paul. When she is told by her envious sister Charlotte that her son is having a secret affair with Catherine, a salesgirl, she becomes furious and starts doing everything in her power to separate the lovebirds.

Secrets of a French Nurse

A gangster is back in business after a while and tries to take it back the hard way, but things don't go as well as planned. At the same time, we watch the fate of a young nurse in a hospital. Soon, the two stories meet when the gangster faces his problems.

A Girl in a Pocket

A professor experimenting in suspended animation accidentally shrinks his dog and later, his female lab assistant, when she drinks the liquid by accident and shrinks to 3 inches tall. The professor keeps her in his pocket until he can find an antidote. Sometimes she's naked, too.

In the Park

Short movie starring Marcel Marceau.

Série noire

Léo Fardier is a police inspector who goes to prison undercover as a convict. He shares a cell with Mariani, a Corsican mafioso, whose trust he earns. The day Léo leaves prison, the criminal entrusts him with a letter to deliver to his estranged wife. He finds her, and she falls under his spell. The problem is that he, too, has fallen in love with her.