The Grand Maneuver
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The Grand Maneuver
''The Grand Maneuver'' (french: Les Grandes Manœuvres) is a 1955 French drama film written and directed by René Clair, and starring Michèle Morgan and Gérard Philipe. It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland as ''Summer Manoeuvres'', and in the United States under the title ''The Grand Maneuver''. It is a romantic comedy-drama set in a French provincial town just before World War I, and it was René Clair's first film to be made in colour. Plot Armand de la Verne, a lieutenant in the French cavalry and a notorious seducer, undertakes a bet that he will "obtain the favours" of a woman selected secretly by lot, before his company departs for its summer manoeuvres in a month's time. His target turns out to be Marie-Louise Rivière, a Parisian divorcée who runs a milliner's shop, and who is also being courted by the serious and respectable Victor Duverger. Marie Louise's growing attraction towards Armand is tempered by her discoveries about his reputation, while Armand ...
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René Clair
René Clair (11 November 1898 – 15 March 1981), born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960. Clair's best known films include '' Un chapeau de paille d'Italie'' (''The Italian Straw Hat'', 1928), '' Sous les toits de Paris'' (''Under the Roofs of Paris'', 1930), ''Le Million'' (1931), ''À nous la liberté'' (1931), ''I Married a Witch'' (1942), and ''And Then There Were None'' (1945). Early life René Clair was born and grew up in Paris in the district of Les ...
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Magali Noël
Magali Noëlle Guiffray (27 June 1931 – 23 June 2015), better known as Magali Noël, was a French actress and singer. Biography Actress career Born in İzmir to French parents in the diplomatic service, she left Turkey for France in 1951, and her acting career began soon thereafter. She acted in multilingual cinema chiefly from 1951 to 1980, appearing in three Italian films directed by Federico Fellini, for whom she was a favorite performer and known as his muse. She took on a new dimension by embodying one of the symbols of Federico Fellini's sexual fantasies in ''La dolce vita'' (1960), ''Satyricon'' (1969), and ''Amarcord'' (1973), where she played Gradisca, provincial pin-up. She acted in films directed by Costa Gavras, Jean Renoir and Jules Dassin. Despite a notable role in Z by Costa-Gavras, Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1969, and great successes at the theater, it subsequently received less attention from producers. She then returns successfully to the music hall. A ne ...
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Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (; 15 March 1920 – 6 October 1989) was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director. In 1951, Doniol-Valcroze was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'', along with André Bazin and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. The magazine was initially edited by Doniol-Valcroze between 1951-1957. As critic, he championed numerous filmmakers including Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and Nicholas Ray. In 1955, then 23-year-old François Truffaut made a short film in Doniol-Valcroze's apartment, '' Une Visite''. Jacques's daughter Florence played a minor part in it. In 1955, he was a member of the jury at the 16th Venice International Film Festival, and in 1964 a member of the jury at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival. New Wave In his thirties he played a pivotal role in the French New Wave, discussing the beginnings of "the new cinema" as the co-founder of ''Cahiers du cinéma'' and defended Alain Robbe-Grillet. In 1963 he appeared in ...
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André Bazin
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema. His call for objective reality, deep focus, and lack of montage are linked to his belief that the interpretation of a film or scene should be left to the spectator. This placed him in opposition to film theory of the 1920s and 1930s, which emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality. Life Bazin was born in Angers, France in 1918. He met future film and television producer Janine Kirsch while working at Labour and Culture, a militant organization associated with the French Communist party during World War II and eventually they married in 1949 and had a son named Florent. He died in 1958, age 40, ...
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Claude Mauriac
Claude Mauriac (25 April 1914 – 22 March 1996) was a French author and journalist. He was born in Paris, the eldest son of the author François Mauriac. Mauriac was the personal secretary of Charles de Gaulle from 1944 to 1949, before becoming a cinema critic and arts person of ''Le Figaro''. He was the author of several novels and essays, and co-scripted the movie adaptation of his father's novel '' Thérèse Desqueyroux''. He also wrote a study of the novelist Marcel Proust, his wife's great-uncle. Mauriac was also a close friend of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Bibliography Journals *Le Temps immobile **''Le Temps immobile 1'', Grasset, 1974 ; Le Livre de Poche, 1983 **''Le Temps immobile 2 (Les Espaces imaginaires)'', Grasset, 1975 ; Le Livre de Poche, 1985 **''Le Temps immobile 3 (Et comme l'espérance est violente)'', Grasset, 1976 ; Le Livre de Poche, 1986 **''Le Temps immobile 4 (La Terrasse de Malagar)'', Grasset, 1977 ; Le Livre de Poche, 1987 **''Le Temps im ...
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Billancourt Studios
Billancourt Studios was a film studio in Paris which operated between 1922 and 1992. Located in Boulogne-Billancourt, it was one of the leading French studios. It was founded in the silent era by Henri Diamant-Berger. During the Second World War the studio was used by Continental Films Continental Films was a German-controlled French film production company. It stood as the sole authorized film production organization in Nazi-occupied France. Established in October 1940, it was entirely bankrolled by the German government, and ..., a company financed by the German occupiers. They are also known as the Paris-Studio-Cinéma. History Henri Diamant-Berger set up his studios in the buildings sold by the aircraft cabin builder Niepce and Fetterer, taking advantage of the infrastructure left behind and the immensity of the buildings. He thus created the first modern French studio, including on the same place restaurant, workshops, dressing rooms. A clean power plant produces light ...
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Léon Barsacq
Léon Barsacq (18 October 1906 – 23 December 1969) was a Russian-born and naturalized French production designer, art director and set decorator. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film '' The Longest Day''. He was the brother of French theatre director André Barsacq and the father of film actor Yves Barsacq. Selected filmography * ''Compliments of Mister Flow'' (1936) * '' Southern Mail'' (1937) * '' I Was an Adventuress'' (1938) * '' Beating Heart'' (1940) * '' The Mysteries of Paris'' (1943) * '' Children of Paradise'' (1945) * '' The Last Vacation'' (1948) * '' Eternal Conflict'' (1948) * ''White Paws'' (1949) * ''Maya'' (1949) * ''The Glass Castle'' (1950) * ''Two Pennies Worth of Violets'' (1951) * '' Imperial Violets'' (1952) * '' The Beauty of Cadiz'' (1953) * ''Their Last Night'' (1953) * ''The Lady of the Camellias'' (1953) * ''All the Gold in the World ''All the Gold in the World'' (French: ''Tout l'or du monde' ...
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Pierre Billard
Pierre Billard (3 July 1922 – 10 November 2016) was a French journalist, film critic and historian of cinema. Career Born in Dieppe (Seine-Maritime), Pierre Billard followed the courses of resistant Valentin Feldman during the Occupation of France. They would become close and the teaching of Feldman marked him permanently. He then went to study at the Sorbonne, before specializing in cinema. President of the "Fédération française des ciné-clubs" from 1952, in 1954 he founded the magazine ', of which he was chief editor from ''Cinéma 54'' to ''Cinéma 67''. After he worked as journalist and film critic for ''Les Nouvelles littéraires'', '' Candide'' and '' L'Express'', he was one of the cofounders of the weekly '' Le Point'' where he directed the cultural pages until 1987. In the early 1980s, he was also editor-in-chief of the professional weekly magazine ''Le Film français''. Pïerre Billard has taught the history of cinema at the Institut d'études politiques de Pa ...
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Belle Époque
The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque (; French for "Beautiful Epoch") is a period of French and European history, usually considered to begin around 1871–1880 and to end with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era of the Third French Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations. In this era of France's cultural and artistic climate (particularly within Paris), the arts markedly flourished, and numerous masterpieces of literature, music, theatre, and visual art gained extensive recognition. The Belle Époque was so named in retrospect, when it began to be considered a continental European "Golden Age" in contrast to the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. The Belle Époque was a period in which, according to historian R. R. Palmer: " European civilisation achieved its greatest power in global politics, and also ex ...
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Don Juan
Don Juan (), also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. Famous versions of the story include a 17th-century play, '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra'' (''The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest'') by Tirso de Molina, a 1787 opera, ''Don Giovanni'', with music by Mozart and a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and a satirical, epic poem, ''Don Juan'', by Lord Byron. By linguistic extension, from the name of the character, "Don Juan" has become a generic expression for a womanizer, and stemming from this, Don Juanism is a non-clinical psychiatric descriptor. Pronunciation In Spanish, is pronounced . The usual English pronunciation is , with two syllables and a silent " J", but today, as more English-speakers have notions of Spanish, the pronunciation is becoming more common. However, in Lord Byron's verse version the name rhymes with ''ruin'' and ''true one'', suggesting the name was ...
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Arlette Thomas
Arlette Thomas (1927–2015) was a French stage, film and television actress. She also worked frequently as a voice actress, dubbing foreign films for their French release. She was awarded the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti in 1949. She is the mother of the actor Pierre Jolivet.Rège p.539 Selected filmography * ''Land Without Stars'' (1946) * ''White Paws'' (1949) * '' Le paradis des pilotes perdus'' (1949) * ''The Strange Madame X'' (1951) * ''Huis clos'' (1954) * ''The Grand Maneuver'' (1955) * ''Girl and the River'' (1958) * '' Naked Hearts'' (1966) * ''A Time for Dying'' (1969) * ''Les Misérables ''Les Misérables'' ( , ) is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original ...'' (1982) References Bibliography * Bessy, Maurice & Chirat, Raymond. ''Histoire du cinéma français: encyclopédie des films, 1940–1 ...
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Judith Magre
Judith Magre (born 20 November 1926) is a French actress, born in Montier-en-Der, Haute-Marne Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.1926 births Living people French film actresses French television actresses
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