Browse 90 movies from Les Films de la Pléiade
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
Sep 1962
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
Nov 1960
Annie is a middle-age wife, still sexy and pampered by her husband, Phillippe, who is the owner and general manager of a dynamic company. Under the deluge of sexy Swedish movies, sexy advertising on the streets, sexy intimate clothing in ladies' shops, and even talks about sex and marital infidelity with her mother and female friends, Annie starts feeling left aside by her husband, and trying to attract in a number of ways - and failing. It's not the all-purpose secretary at the office that is keeping him late, it's a tax expert that, asking the most innocent questions, is finding out how Philippe can manage a company without profits, and still manage a home, may be two... with high quality levels.
Jun 1969
Devout Roman Catholic Jean-Louis subscribes to an austere moral code influenced by the philosophy of 17th-century physicist Blaise Pascal. When he spots a pretty girl at church, he promises to one day marry her. But then an old friend introduces him to alluring divorcee Maud. After a conversation about love and credo, the chaste Jean-Louis spends the night at Maud's, conflicted about his desires.
If love is a universal phenomenon, it is never the same: the animal world experiences brutal and rapid unions, or, on the contrary, slow and difficult approaches, followed by sometimes interminable embraces.
Nov 1965
A report on this extraordinary boom town that owes its fortune to oil.
Jan 1956
An intimate cinéma vérité style documentary following french mega star Johnny Hallyday's summer tour.
Jun 1972
The morning of her wedding day, Nana visits a hairdresser's shop in Mamaia, a popular Romanian resort on the Black Sea shore. Bumping into a band of joyous rock-and-roll musicians, she's having a good time. But what with her fiancé?
May 1967
A tragic spin on the futility of revolution, in cinema and elsewhere.
Feb 1969
Dedicated “to the exiled, proscribed, expelled, banned,” this montage of documentary images codirected and written by Jean Cayrol—a former deportee who wrote the commentary for Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog —makes the Spanish Civil War a synecdoche for all forms of brutal exclusion.
Jan 1961
Part of Reichenbach's series of short documentaries on America.
Jan 1958
Olivier and Françoise, newlyweds, have Chantal at their service, whose main function is to pretend to be his boss, while she takes care of the housework. But Olivier is suddenly tempted by an extramarital affair with a young Italian woman, Frédérique. Pretending a business trip, he sends his wife and maid to their respective mothers, intending to bring Frédérique to his home...
May 1964
A example of Jean Renoir's talents as a director as he works Gisèle Braunberger into the right frame of mind.
Sep 1969
All the researchers of the IMPS laboratory are males - with one exception : Mademoiselle Clara, Antoine, the cleaner, desperately yearns for. Night after night, when Clara is alone, going on with her experiments, the young man awkwardly manoeuvres with a view to declaring his flame. But the cold scientist remains unconcerned. In his trouble, Antoine regularly drops and breaks phials and other test tubes full of dangerous chemical products. He doesn't care when his skin gets into contact with acid. His heart burns too much for him to be able to feel the burning of his skin. And if he can't GIVE his hand to Clara will he really mind to... LOSE it ?
Jan 1971
In 1743, in the French countryside, a strange epidemic deserted the region. 200 years later, a young woman wakes curiously languid after a restless night. Her husband received a letter a few hours later asking him to go to a remote place for business, where he would have to spend the night. If he succeeds in reassuring his young wife, who has a presentiment of being separated for the first time from him, the first night spent in his host's house will topple everything.
Sep 1964
A man has found a way to win any bet he places on a horse. However, he himself must never be the person to place the bet.
Dec 1969
Serge follows Hélène in the crowded streets of Paris and manages to seduce her. Werther takes Sophie to her dentist, Raoul, who tries to seduce her too.
Dec 1964
Feb 1964
During a desultory night on the town, two men talk about their experiences with women. One of them disparages his ex-wife, while the other is enamored of the prostitute he was with earlier in the evening. Without realizing it, both men are talking about Janine.
This short features a man who is visited by his ex-lover. The moment she arrives, the man starts his constant barrage of speech; the woman doesn't say much. She just mocks the man and pretends she isn't listening. She pulls faces at him and larks about; while the man is trying his best to get her back in his life, then in the next sentence he says he hates her.
Dec 1958