The best Henri Crémieux’s movies

Three stories about the pleasure. The first one is about a man hiding his age behind a mask to keep going to balls and fancying women - pleasure and youth. Then comes the long tale of Mme Tellier taking her girls (whores) to the country for attending her niece's communion - pleasure and purity. And lastly, Jean the painter falling in love with his model - pleasure and death.

Delphine and Solange are two sisters living in Rochefort. Delphine is a dancing teacher and Solange composes and teaches the piano. Maxence is a poet and a painter. He is doing his military service. Simon owns a music shop, he left Paris one month ago to come back where he fell in love 10 years ago. They are looking for love, looking for each other, without being aware that their ideal partner is very close...

A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.

At the Café des Poètes in Paris, a fight breaks out between the poet Orphée and a group of resentful upstarts. A rival poet, Cègeste, is killed, and a mysterious princess insists on taking Orpheus and the body away in her Rolls-Royce. Orphée soon finds himself in the underworld, where the Princess announces that she is, in fact, Death. Orpheus escapes in the car back to the land of the living, only to become obsessed with the car radio. This film is the central part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).

The evil knight Torchesac, who is at the service of the sinister lord of La Mortaille, gets a very powerful magic flute and uses it for evil purposes. Johan and Pirlouit, assisted by the magician Homnibus, travel to the land of the Smurfs, the only manufacturers of this sort of instrument, to get a new one and battle the usurpers.

Outside time and reality, the experiences of a poet. The judgement of the young poet by Heurtebise and the Princess, the Gypsies, the palace of Pallas Athena, the spear of the Goddess which pierces the poet's heart, the temptation of the Sphinx, the flight of Oedipus and the final Assumption. This film is the third part of Cocteau's Orphic Trilogy, which consists of The Blood of a Poet (1930), Orpheus (1950) and Testament of Orpheus (1960).

A trucker encounters a dead body on the road home. He reports the incident to the police, who suspect that Jean was responsible for the death, and his new truck is impounded. To make matters worse, the man's widow accuses him of having robbed her husband, and a gang of sinister crooks are also harassing him.

Désespéré par la mort de sa femme, le banquier René Duchesne se promène le long de la Seine. Seule la rencontre de Suzanne, son ancienne femme de chambre lui révélant les infidélités de Madame, le sauve du suicide. Monsieur décide alors d'aider sa protégée à sortir de la prostitution, et d'empêcher ses beaux-parents de faire main basse sur l'héritage.

Two scriptwriters argue about the fate of Henrietta, a charming and gamine shopgirl. One favors a comical path for their heroine, who is overcome with sentimental love for a young photographer on Bastille Day. The other has a more thrilling and dastardly fate in mind for her. Among the film's irresistible conceits is Hildegarde Neff as an oversexed circus bareback rider.

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.

Portrait of a two-faced man. By day he is rich, brilliant and respectable financial officer Lussac; at night, he becomes "Mirror", a ruthless gang leader in Marseilles.

Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can't be a French customs agent.

A simple civil servant Léon, who has the unusual ability to walk through walls, falls madly in love with a hotel thief by the name of Susan. He poses as Garou-Garou, a dangerous gangster to attempt to woo her affections, but is arrested and sent to jail. While in jail he annoys the guards by walking in and out of his cell, and keeps persuading Susan to cease her criminal way of life. As fundamentally being an honest and law-abiding citizen, he eventually handles back everything he has stolen, is acquitted by the court, and becomes famous and respected. When he learns that Susan is planning to return to England and start a new life, he decides to confess to her his emotions. However, the couple is interrupted by a sudden rush of journalists. Trying to escape in a building, they get cornered on a corridor, and Léon pushes Susan through a nearby wall. But by doing this, he loses his own wall-walking ability, and the film concludes.

Patterning himself after the American gangster John Dillinger, the criminal (Robert Hossein) is tracked by the inspector (Charles Aznavour), a former childhood friend. Plenty of gunplay and psychology is used to trap the killer. His only tender moments are spent with his girlfriend Stella (Virna Lisi). Dillinger is cornered by the police and kills several innocent victims in a crowd during the shootout. The mob decides to take things into their own hands as they approach the doomed man with a noose when he runs out of bullets.