The best Edmond Ardisson’s drama movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Edmond Ardisson’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Edmond Ardisson.
Les Misérables
7.4/10
Victor Hugo's monumental novel Les Miserables has been filmed so often that sometimes it's hard to tell one version from another. One of the best and most faithful adaptations is this 240-minute French production, starring Jean Gabin as the beleaguered Jean Valjean. Arrested for a petty crime, Valjean spends years 20 in the brutal French penal system. Even upon his release, his trail is dogged by relentless Inspector Javert (Bernard Blier). Valjean's efforts to create a new life for himself despite the omnipresence of Javert is meticulously detailed in this film, which utilizes several episodes from the Hugo original that had hitherto never been dramatized. Originally released as a single film, Les Miserables was usually offered as a two parter outside of France.
La Marseillaise
7/10
A film about the early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course, the king Louis XVI, each showing their own small problems.
Manon
6.8/10
A World War II French freedom fighter falls under a devious woman's spell.
Manon of the Spring
7.5/10
Marcel Pagnol's adaptation of his own novel Manon des sources, the story of a shepherdess who exacts her revenge on the townsfolk she blames for killing her father, in two parts: Manon des sources and Ugolin.
We Are All Murderers
7.2/10
Originally titled Nous Sommes Tout des Assassins, We Are All Murderers was directed by Andre Cayette, a former lawyer who detested France's execution system. Charles Spaak's screenplay makes no attempt to launder the four principal characters (Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, Antoinine Balpetre, Julien Verdeir): never mind the motivations, these are all hardened murderers. Still, the film condemns the sadistic ritual through which these four men are brought to the guillotine. In France, the policy is to never tell the condemned man when the execution will occur--and then to show up without warning and drag the victim kicking and screaming to his doom, without any opportunity to make peace with himself or his Maker. By the end of this harrowing film, the audience feels as dehumanized as the four "protagonists." We Are All Murderers was roundly roasted by the French law enforcement establishment, but it won a special jury prize at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival.
The Case of Dr. Laurent
6.4/10
Le Cas Du Dr. Laurent (The Case of Dr. Laurent) stars Jean Gabin as a Paris-based doctor who tries to spread the gospel of Natural Childbirth. Working in a cloistered rural community, Gabin runs up against the stone walls of fear and prejudice. His theories are proven sound when unwed mother Nicole Courcel gives birth within Gabin's methodology. The childbirth sequence is filmed straight-on with a delicate combination of taste and frankness. Nonetheless, the lurid ad campaign of Cas Du Dr. Laurent sensationalized this sequence all out of proportion.
Shock Troops
7/10
A French resistance group liberates some German prisoners. Turns out one of them is a spy.
Under the Paris Sky
7.2/10
Fates of multiple otherwise disconnected characters intertwine miraculously under the sky of Paris. And it all happens in one day.
L'école buissonnière
7.3/10
Recourse in Grace
6/10
Mario di Donati, a deserter from the Italian army, lives in Paris under a false name with Germaine, his French lover. When the latter learns about his hidden past, she feels hurt by Mario's lack of trust in her and she distances herself from him. In despair, Mario surrenders to the law but, at the time of trial, he runs away to join the woman he loves.
Prélude à la gloire
6.8/10
