Michel Auclair

In this stylish heist noir from director Jacques Deray, master director of the French crime film, five men pool their money to go in on one huge narcotics deal.

Maigret is summoned by the Countess to the Château de Saint-Fiacre, where she shows him a letter she has received predicting the day on which she will die. Jean Gabin is perfect as Georges Simenon's secure and steady sleuth.

This masterful adaptation of Prévost's 1731 novel 'Manon Lescaut' marks quite a departure for Henri-Georges Clouzot, the French director lauded for his acclaimed thrillers 'The Wages of Fear' and 'Les Diaboliques'. A classical tragic romance transposed to a World War II setting, Clouzot's film follows the travails of Manon (Cécile Aubry), a village girl accused of collaborating with the Nazis who is rescued from imminent execution by a former French Resistance fighter (Michel Auclair). The couple move to Paris, but their relationship turns stormy as they struggle to survive, resorting to profiteering, prostitution and even murder. Eventually escaping to Palestine, the pair attempt a treacherous desert crossing in search of the happiness which seems to forever elude them... Clouzot's astute portrayal of doomed young lovers caught in the disarray of post-war France wowed the jury of the 1949 Venice Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion award.

From Henri Verneuil comes a captivating conspiracy thriller about a young journalist who uncovers an assassination plot hatched by an American multinational company intent on taking over several French industries. He aims to gather enough evidence to expose the American corporation for what it really is, before French companies start to disappear—along with their employees.

French radicals hire British hitman to assassinate Charles de Gaulle.

In this gritty, violent, and suspenseful thriller, Alain Delon plays Gerfaut who comes to the aid of a man laying wounded in the road, not knowing that the man has taken two bullets to the belly. Soon he becomes the target for the killers who see him as a dangerous witness. But Gerfaut has been around the block a couple of times and he won't be so easily eliminated.

This filmed version of the 1927 George Gershwin Broadway musical Funny Face utilizes the play's original star, Fred Astaire, and several of the original tunes, then goes merrily off on its own.

In Jean Cocteau's enchanting take on the classic fairy tale, a young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious but noble beast.

In 1945 at the close of the war, a submarine leaves Oslo for South America with German leaders and several pro-Nazi officials aboard hoping to escape their fate in Europe. A young French doctor is forced to join them to tend a wounded passenger. The stage is set for scheming, intrigue and mutiny. A claustrophobic and gritty post-war rediscovered gem from director Clément.