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The title credit for Delicatessen reads "Presented by Terry Gilliam," and it's easy to understand why the director of Brazil was so supportive of this outrageously black French comedy from 1991. Like Gilliam, French codirectors Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro have wildly inventive imaginations that gravitate to the darker absurdities of human behavior, and their visual extravagance is matched by impressive technical skill. Here, making their feature debut, Jeunet and Caro present a postapocalyptic scenario set entirely in a dank and gloomy building where the landlord operates a delicatessen on the ground floor. But this is an altogether meatless world, so the butcher-landlord keeps his customers happy by chopping unsuspecting victims into cutlets, and he's sharpening his knife for a new tenant (French comic actor Dominque Pinon) who's got the hots for the butcher's nearsighted daughter! Delicatessen is a feast (if you will) of hilarious vignettes, slapstick gags, and sweetly eccentric characters, including a man in a swampy room full of frogs, a woman doggedly determined to commit suicide (she never gets its right), and a pair of brothers who make toy sound boxes that "moo" like cows. It doesn't amount to much as a story, but that hardly matters; this is the kind of comedy that springs from a unique wellspring of imagination and inspiration, and it's handled with such visual virtuosity that you can't help but be mesmerized. There's some priceless comedy happening here, some of which is so inventive that you may feel the urge to stand up and cheer. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (63)

A black comedy about having the neighbors for dinner...
What can you possibly say about a post-apocalyptic surrealist black comedy about the landlord of a decaying apartment building who creates cannibalistic meals for his tenants who are some of the weirdest characters you will ever find on film? This is a world in which protein is hard to come by and the little old lady across the hall is starting to look good. "Delicatessen," a 1991 French film directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is certainly imaginative but equally rude, a world in which good taste is certainly a relative concept. Of all the tenants trying to avoid being served up as dinner by their neighbors, the best is the woman who keeps trying to commit suicide but whose attempts, um, go slightly astray (I will say no more). This film is certainly on my evolving list of Top 10 Black Comedies, certainly much better than "Eating Raoul," the obvious American cinematic counterpart.

This is especially for francophiles!
This movie is my all-time favorite and for many reasons. If you see it for no other reason, the coordination between the bouncing on the bed, cello playing, painting, mooing toys, etc is well worth it. This scene is a perfect example of why this movie is so amazing. I saw it for the first time on the Independent Film Channel and jumped at every chance afterwards to see it again. The characters are brilliant and you lose yourself in their quirks. Even those who don't speak French will appreciate the movie as a lot of the beauty of the film isn't in the dialogues, but in the style, backgrounds, and subtleties throughout. If there was one movie that everyone should see, this is it. It gives a nice picture of the dark side of humanity without being too frightening and preachy. Plus I am a big fan of Dominique Pinon.

A pity this isn't available
I find it hard to believe this isn't available on DVD when there is so much junk out there that is still available. This film isn't that old. I really hope they bring it out on DVD. I first saw it when I was learning French and years later when I could speak French. Both times it was great.

Dark movie shining bright.
If there is a Hollywood director closest to Jeunet, then it would have to be Tim Burton. Domnique Pinon's character brings to mind a French version of Edward Scissorhands or Ichobald Crane from 'Sleepy Hollow'. The out of place new guy who's blatantly unaware of the machinations that lie behind the faces he sees. In 'Delicatessen' Jeunet spends a lot of time focusing on faces and you get the feeling that it must have been a lot of fun casting this film. Each actor seems to have been chosen as much for their extraordinary face as for their acting abilities. Not a frame is wasted as every facial tick bears with it the same intensity of expression as every action sequence.

Like Burton, Jeunet also came to film direction through animated shorts and it's this animated sensibility that has given him the discipline and vision to create truly amazing live action films. Which is one of the main reasons why this subtitled film seems to be such a success with American audiences. It thrives on that most American of cinematic sensibilities, a heightened sense of unreality. Most European movies prefer to dwell on the emotions that lurk beneath the mundane aspects of everyday life. Not so stateside where such an elevation of the ordinary is met with the Homeric cry of "Bo-ring!" It's not surprising then that European directors such as Jeunet and Pedro Almodovar will continue to have success across the water as long as their fantastical and colourful stories glitter bright in the land that likes to dazzle.

STUNNED...
That was my impression after watching through this very strange movie.

I had started watching it expecting a "weird French film", and that was indeed what I got at first. I couldn't believe the atmosphere that the directors had created in this film, though I imagine it might have been somewhat familiar to some Francophones living in the destruction after WW2. The introductory sequence to this film is MASTERFULLY shot, and it raised my expectations quite a bit.
Unfortunately, the same level of energy didn't seem to last when the movie really started. The atmosphere was fantastic, yes, and the inventions that were made in this movie (a MUSICAL SAW?) were totally unique. However, no amount of weird atmosphere can amend a movie if the story and characters aren't up to the job. In fact, it's a lot harder to create good characters & plot for a movie like this, because the movie has to make sense within its own unique world and yet make us the viewers feel like something REAL is at stake.
For a while, it seemed like Delicatessen was only as deep as its cover; scenes whose only purpose seemed to be to show the inventions of the movie dragged on too long, and the various conversations that the tenants of the apartment building had (I'm assuming you know the general story here) seemed to have no meaning. The Troglodytes that came in about 1/2-way through also didn't quite seem to fit in.
However, by the end of the movie all was justified. I realized just what an enormous task the movie had done; this is not a story of just the two main characters, but a story of at about a dozen tenants of the apartment building. By the end of the movie, each tenant of the apartment building was portrayed as a unique individual, and each had their own story. These mini-stories are masterfully weaved through the main plot of the movie, and much to the movie's benefit, because I came to care for these secondary characters as much as for the main ones.

The movie was also DEEPLY disturbing for me to watch. It doesn't wince at talking about the subject of cannibalism, and the true worth of a human being. It was very disconcerning when I realized, near the end, that this movie had something to say about OUR world as well, and it was not a very approving message.

As strange as it may sound, this could really happen.
Watch the film, and think about it. ... Read more

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This tense, 1964 action drama from John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate) stars Burt Lancaster as a member of the French Resistance trying to prevent Nazi looters from taking valuable art treasures out of the country. A great ride all the way, with Frankenheimer at his inimitable best. This is a true, human-scale action movie of the sort we used to think of before "action" meant blowing up asteroids in space. Kinetic but almost rueful in tone, the film's chases and fights aren't just eye candy but rather encourage audience involvement in moral stakes. Crisp and serious performances all around from Lancaster and 1960s icons Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau. --Tom Keogh ... Read more

Reviews (41)

One of the Best
An engrossing WELL-WRITTEN story (Hollywood, PLEASE take note), excellent cast, superb acting on the part of all the actors (not just the leads), painstaking staging and Frankenheimer's direction blending all these essential elements into a thoroughly enjoyable movie. What can you say about a rousing action movie that also makes you think? You can say it's rarely found in today's films. The primary quandry here is just what is the value of art in terms of the human lives that must be expended to preserve it? Is it truly a country's heritage or just oils on canvas for which the people who will have to die for it have little or no real appreciation? Is it worth saving because of its beauty or its value? And when does the cost of saving it become too high? The movie works on all levels, but the characters (and the actors portraying them) are exceptional. The stand-outs: Burt Lancaster, the yardmaster/resistance leader who really doesn't want to do this one last (and seemingly unimportant) job so close to the end of the war; Paul Scofield, the intense German colonel who loves (obsesses over) the art and is taking Lancaster's attempts to thwart his plans for it very personally; Wolfgang Preiss, the "good German officer" who does not agree with his superior but does his duty until he can do it no more; Jean Moreau, the pragmatic French hotel proprietress who has had to comfort one too many fellow widows and Michel Simon, the old engineer who fondly remembers dating a girl who posed for Renoir and decides to make this fight his own. No one who loves a good movie should miss this film. It's not just for action/war movie fans.

Underrated war actioner--art for whose sake?
_The Train_ has held up well since its release in 1965. Dismissed as an improbable shoot-em-up then, it tells a much richer story than the special-effects vehicles in the genre nowadays. Burt Lancaster isn't especially gallic as the Frenchman Labiche, but his acting talent and intensity soon steamroller any resistance the viewer may have. Paul Scofield is perfectly cast as a cultured monster, the Nazi colonel who is bent on spiriting the paintings away into Germany. One can easily picture him murdering hostages between sips of cognac.

Shot in black and white, the film is dark and greasy-looking. The screen is filled with churning railroad machinery much of the time, which dwarfs the people around it. The wheezing, snorting engines are also stars in this movie. Even the sky looks dirty in the daylight scenes. Oh yes, there's a sensational train wreck, too. Definitely less mindless than your average Rambo flick, but no less exciting.

The Train
Is a work of art worth a human life?
We are near the end of World War II. It's August 2, 1944, the "1511th day of German occupation" of Paris. German Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) enters a dark museum and turns a spotlight on a painting. He stares at it with the eyes of a lover beholding his best beloved. He turns another spotlight on another painting. The Hun is humanized, and we sympathize with his quiet passion.
It comes as a bit of a shock when he announces that he is taking the paintings, hundreds of Miros and Picassos and Matisses and others, with him when the Germans evacuate Paris. A resistance group, led by railroad worker Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), is enlisted to stop them. Labiche initially refuses. It's one thing to blow up a train, dangerous enough - it's another to stop a train without damaging what's inside it. National heritage or not, men will die. There are more important targets than a train filled with art. Things change, though, and eventually Labiche and the remnants of his resistance group find themselves trying the impossible.
I've always been a little leery of Burt Lancaster. Maybe I was traumatized by viewing THE RAINMAKER or ELMER GANTRY at a young and impressionable age. He sometimes seems all horse teeth and braying charm and dis-tinct e-nunc-ee-a-shun. Not so here. In THE TRAIN he's restrained and natural and completely convincing. Scofield is equally strong as his brutal nemesis.
Sometimes the extras on a dvd aren't worth the bother, but I loved the director's commentary by the late John Frankenheimer. It was like taking a course in the art of film making.
Frankenheimer tells us he was trying to give the movie a realistic feel, which I understood before listening to the commentary track but didn't really understand how he went about it. One trick he used was to open the f-stop on the camera and keep everything in focus, something that would have been impossible if THE TRAIN wasn't shot in black and white. Everything is kept in focus and he keeps the background action busy and interesting.
Frankenheimer is an unabashed fan of Burt Lancaster, with whom he made five movies. Not only does Lancaster do all his own stunts in this one, including a dangerous backwards fall off of a moving train, he even fills in as a stunt double for another actor. The original stuntman made a fall off a roof look like an "olympic jump," and 'realism' was the keyword in this one. Lancaster did take a nice tumble off the tiles, but you've got to wonder about the wisdom of it all. Lancaster was injured during the filming of THE TRAIN; on his first day off in weeks he played a round of golf and twisted his knee when he stepped into a hole. His right knee swelled up 'like a basketball.' Frankenheimer shot Labiche in the leg halfway through the movie to explain the limp.
The only phony movie aspect to this movie is the dubbed voices of some of the French actors. You can't hide dubbing very well, and Frankenheimer doesn't have much to say about it. I wouldn't knock a star or even a half-star off because of it. This is a tremendously entertaining film.

Great movie.
There are an amazing amount of action films these days. Each one of them attempts to beat the last one's visual effects. And in this competition, hollywood has lost track of what makes a truly great action film... Skill. Most of the action films these days are entirely uncreative, and many of them are very, very boring. Who really want's to see a dozen tiles fall to the ground and break in slow motion, as films such as "the Matrix" use this technique constantly. But this film is different. It carries raw emotional power, and it's star, at age 50, did all of his own stunts, and even drove the locamotives that his character drives. This movie is awesome, and I highly recommend you buy this DvD. And by the way, this music track is a lot of fun to listen to when you're sick.

Perfect film on less- than- great DVD
The audio on the MGM DVD was lacking the full spectrum of audio, in my opinion. If you don't care so much about audio, it would be a 5 star DVD, but for those feeling that audio is an important factor, a star must be deducted. Bass and treble just weren't tweaked in DVD production which made the audio seem really flat, and I know that MGM could have produced a better job. It seems that a good number of the MGM DVDs lack the care and attention of producing consistently superior products.

The DVD gives the viewer options to listen to music only and has an option for director's comments during the film. I was at first dismayed because at the beginning of the movie, director John Frankenheimer just wouldn't open up. But he started sharing some interesting things as the movie progressed. There is also an 8- page booklet that gives some interesting production notes and history.

The video quality from, I think, an original film print is pristine. Frankenheimer's locations and times of filming were very effective in evoking a very dismal feeling as the European conflict was drawing to a conclusion. I love Frankenheimer's use of deep focus -- which is using wide angle lenses to have both near and far- away characters and scenes in focus -- to give a vision that many other filmmakers fail to incorporate effectively.

I'm glad that there was explanation in the film about why people were more concerned with paintings than people in a story that was loosely based on an actual event. Many westerners like Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster) would not care about the value of crates of artwork in a time of war, but schooling by caretaker Miss Villard (Suzanne Flon) expressed the passion and pride that the French feel for such paintings. This helped explain why some would scarifice their lives to save the crates. (Ms. Flon, born in 1918 is apparently still alive and acting, too.)

It's quite a story of saving "priceless" paintings at the expense of one's life. It seems like a WWII action film (which has its share of blowing stuff up), but its story actually weighs the value of art against the value of life. Labiche from the very beginning of his introduction battles Col. von Waldheim (Paul Scolfield), who wants him to deliver the art to Germany AND The Resistance, who want the art protected from the Nazis. Labiche is actually alone in his own beliefs as an American, being tugged by both sides while ultimately struggling with making sense of the conflict over the art.

The movie is well- developed from Lancaster asking Frankenheimer to direct "The Train" after original director Arthur Penn abandoned the project a week after production. I only say that because everything that was directed by Frankenheimer was terrific. The choice of the players, scenery, editing, camera placement and post production yielded a perfect war film that wasn't simply about war. It was about the value of life and what people value in their lives.

Watch for the one scene of a runaway train's derailment -- one of a dozen cameras mounted to film the scene -- came within inches of being wiped out by the locomotive's wheels and the scene has become a classic in filmmaking history. ... Read more

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An appealing, free-floating lunacy fuels What's New Pussycat?,and there's enough of it bubbling around to carry the movie past its manydefects. The cast is like a collection of terribly attractive people stumblingover each other at a disorganized cocktail party--they aren't always witty, andsome of them are drunk, but there's enough going on to keep you distracted.Peter O'Toole plays a swinging London womanizer seeking help for his addiction,who makes the mistake of consulting one Dr. Fritz Fassbender (Peter Sellers), ademented psychoanalyst. Woody Allen made his movie debut here and wrote thescript (much altered, to Allen's chagrin, in the filmmaking process). This movieand Casino Royale--which also features Sellers, Allen, Ursula Andress,and a Burt Bacharach song--are overstuffed '60s artifacts, brimming with modchaos. Alas, neither film is as funny as it should be. --Robert Horton ... Read more

Reviews (20)

My "What's New, Pussycat?" Review
Now HERE'S an absolutely uproarious 60's comedy featuring Peter Sellers at his peak and Woody Allen's first screenplay to a major motion picture. I also highly recommend Casino Royale, which also features Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Capucine, and Ursula Andress (great cast, eh?). Although not rated, this film would probably be rated PG-13. It doesn't have much profanity or any nudity, but it contains adult themes that might confuse younger viewers. Woody Allen gets the most laughs in this movie, which came as no suprise to me when I first saw it. Highlights include Peter Sellers and Woody Allen one-on-one, and the ending is golden. I highly recommend this movie.

What's New, Pussycat?
Peter O'Toole, as a troubled fashion editor, visits psychiatrist Peter Sellers for help with his fanciful and complicated love life (Romy Schneider, Paula Prentiss and Capucine). However, Sellers has problems of his own and at time the roles become reversed. Ursula Andress also drops into the fray. Woody Allen is present in what I believe is his first film as both actor and writer. The film shifts back and forth from sophisticated comedy to slapstick. I always liked this funny and outlandish film. The VHS copy is not bad. I did find that the sound level was not consistent.

The Ridiculous and the Sublime
Maybe sublime is too strong a word. This is one mess of a movie. It's like a nerdy kid trying desperately to be cool. Most of the jokes are unbelievably juvenile and even lame, and it's often obvious many of the cast members realized they were in a piece of crap and decided to at least enjoy themselves-- which actually helps.

That said, there are moments (and I mean moments) that make it worth watching. Paula Prentiss steals the show from everyone, there are some laugh-out-loud lines in the picture and some of Peter O'Toole's reactions are priceless. Another good scene is the one Peter Sellers and Woody Allen share. Finally, there may even be one emblematic shot in it too, during the getaway at the end of the picture.

What's new Pussycat is endearingly goofy and AWFUL, but I'm looking forward to it coming out on DVD.

second best movie of the 60s
I consider this to be the second best movie of the 60s. The best is Casino Royal. This is the first comedy movie written by Woodie Allen and it shows great hand crafting with many little details. There are several sub plots that interweave and come together in the last 15 minutes. One of the most amusing parts is the famous homosexual woman, Capucine, playing a heterosexual nymphomaniac.

Sigmund Freud may have enjoyed this "comedy"
An International all-star cast delivers a confusing and rediculous "comedy classic". It's all about 40ish "Casnaovas" with nothing but "sex on the brain". Seeing Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen (the 3 LEAST SEXY guys ever to team up sharing the spotlight as leading men) cause attractive women to willingly offer themselves at the drop of the magic word "pussycat", is not funny, but stupid.

The plot (if you can call it that) seems like it is made up as you go. The jokes are sophomorish and lame. Beautiful actresses like the German Sensation Romy Schneider (featured in the GREAT comedy "Good Neighbor Sam" with Jack Lemmon just a year earlier) and the glamorous Italian star Capucine are wasted as "doormats" to nymphomaniac Peter O'Toole.

Credit does go to the fetching Theme Song by Tom Jones. The tune carries through countless mindless scenes, the only reason not to stop watching the dreadful story alltogether. Viewers will eventually tune out the horribly fake German accent delivered by the obscessed "freudian" psychiatrist Peter Sellers. My final diagnosis: Skip this mess of a film!** ... Read more

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As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and filmgoing had evolved as a favorite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates, along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris (quoted from an essay that accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD) will ring true: "To understand and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa." --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (39)

the greatest sci-fi film ever: not a special effect in sight
'Alphaville' is Jean-Luc Cinema Godard's 'The Wizard of Oz', the story of an American stranded in a strange fantasy city, who must find its controlling wizard before he can return home, evading forces sent to destroy him. Eddie Constantine reprises the role of Lemmy Caution that made him famous in 1950s France, as the roughneck FBI agent who fisticuffed, dame-bothered and slang-winked his way through a series of simple-minded thrillers. here he has become Special Agent 003, sent by his superiors in the Outlands to assassinate Professor Von Braun, the brains behind Alphaville, a futuristic city controlled by a philosophical computer, and which bears more than a passing resemblance to Gaullist Paris.

Alphaville is a classic dystopia, its minions brainwashed, dehumanised and branded; photographs of its leader on every available wall; the surveilling computer present in every room. dissidents are tortured or murdered in elaborate rituals (e.g. diving-board firing-squads in swimming pools before a gallery of socialites). Double-talk couched in the complexities of dialectic numb the brain; dictionaries are censored daily.

Much of the fun in Godard films of this period lies in their playfulness with familiar cinematic genres; and the trappings of the gangster and spy genres, the detective story and sci-fi adventure (brawls, shoot-outs, car-chases, interrogations, (literal) femmes fatales etc.) are made ridiculous by their slapstick treatment, comic exagerration and over-emphatic music. 'Alphaville' may be a pulp adventure, but the world Lemmy must negotiate is not one of genre, but of ideas, about reality, history, politics, freedom, love, poetry, dreams, the mind, logic, conformity, escape, all reverberating in an environment based on One Big Idea.

'Alphaville', like Chris Marker's similar 'La Jetee', is less a futuristic satire than a reflection of contemporary France (its dark and dense mise-en-scene like a negative photograph of the familiar city; with its extraordinary modern architecture reconfigured as a giant prison), with memories of the recent Nazi Occupation. But, as its name suggests, Alphaville is also the first (cinematic) city of post-modernity, where meaning and authority is decentred, where language ceases to have any shared value, where time ceases to exist, the past and future are abolished, and the mindless live in an eternal present, unable to learn from mistakes or hope for improvement, unable to acknowledge the value of culture. Lemmy seems to be set up as a very 'human' interloper, a repository of 'our' feelings and values in a culture that would seek to suppress them. But Godard called him a Martian', and he is a stranger to Alphaville, which, after all, is our world: he is a figure from pulp fiction , a risible set of signifiers who can only offer Natasha a choice between who gives her orders.

Most dystopias, like '1984' and 'Blade Runner', ultimately fail, because they are as cold and inhuman as the worlds they portray. 'Alphaville', especially in its visionary climactic half hour, shares more with Nabokov's novel 'Bend Sinister' - positing whimsy, idiosyncrasy, gags, Surrealism (Eluard, Bellmer), pop art, the absurd, the unexpected, the daft, the poetic, the aesthetic, the cinematic (especially Melville's 'Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan'), Anna Karina's gorgeous coats against the Brave New World.

But we shouldn't get too comfortable in this ''us vs. them', anti-totalitarian model: Professor Von Braun, with dark, impenetrable shades permenantly welded, is the clean-cut image of the director; he too forces Anna Karina (his daughter, Godard's wife) to perform for strangers and suppress her personality; he, like Godard, is the creator of Alphaville.

The Beauty of Individuality Exemplified
It is a rare thing to see a film that not only shows one what life is, but espouses a concrete vision of what life should be. Even more rare is a film which does this by situating characters in a world where one would not want to live thereby isolating the very essence of what makes on human. Godard's Alfaville not only accomplishes this feet but it creates an artistic embodiment of all that true individuality stands for. More potent than 1984 and just as beautiful as novels such as Atlas Shrugged, Alfaville shows one who is willing to watch and listen the true value and purpose of freedom and the ominous results when that freedom is removed from their lives. The music, cinematography and overall directing could only be done by an individual who's sense of life is majestic and bordering on, if not completely genius. This is not only great science fiction but it is art at its highest ideal, a work that makes me proud to be human.

a weird film and quite interesting
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

This film which is one of several involving the character Lemmy Caution remains popular to this day as one of the few science fiction films with no special effects. It is a good view of a technocratic society an has elements which at the time seemed like fantasy but in our computer age seems more feasible.

The film also has a voice over that is really deep and raspy that sounds very interesting.

The DVD does not have any special features but still is a good one to buy.

The Eternal Theme of the Individual VS The State
It should not surprise anyone that a film from Jean-Luc Godard will invariably attract the usual assortment of Post-Modernist, ethically and politically retarded, anti-Western afficionados. Some of that can be seen in the reviews for this film, both on this page and throughout the Internet. The truth however, is that while Godard was a borderline socialist and critical of the supposed decadence of "America", he was more of a heroic individualist than anything else and his pre-1970 films all demonstrate this fact.

Alphavile is without a doubt, his greatest achievement and it is a work that speaks of an artistic sensibility all but lost in the France of today, which is overun with rampant anti-intellectualism and a worship of un-reason.

Godard takes the Bogart-like "Lemmy Caution" character out of his former slew of 40/50's French spy thrillers and puts the very same character into a future where a technocratic dictatorship exists. In doing so, the very best idealism of American pulp-fiction is given back its soul by a French director, Godard, who truly was interested in the world of ideas.

This film not only shows why a totalitarian state must be destroyed, it also demonstrates some key philosophical concepts in the process. Through Godard, we learn that it is language that first must be assaulted before one can enslave man, then mathematics, then history and finally, the human mind itself. We can see parallels to this line of thinking through the world today and yet, how ironic that it is today's France that probably best embodies Godard's nightmare come to life (for a Western democracy of course).

The cinematography of Alphaville is superb, as is the musical score by Paul Misraki which is one of the finest I have experienced, for it reaches its crescendo with the most important line in the film, almost as an answer to a question. The theme of Alphaville is simple enough - the Individual against the State, but the soul of Alphaville reaches higher to a level where Man is sanctified against all intrusions on his life, liberty and happiness.

Anna Karina plays the part of the Ideal Woman still capable of feeling and understanding the value of love and that immortal word that may still one day save humanity - "I". It is a rare thing to find a work of art that speaks so eloquently to the sublime beauty of Man, Humanity and Individualism. Godard does this and more in Alphaville and for that, he should go down in history as one of Europe's finest artists.

Note - One would need to watch this film about 3 times to completely grasp every important nuance. Also, Anthem and 1984 are good reads along the same vain.

An Analysis of Genre
As usual with Godard moments stand out. In this film the most absurd sequence involves a diving platform in what looks to be an eastern bloc recreational center and a number of black sweatered and bereted revolutionaries with sub-machine guns standing on the pool deck spraying the divers as they dive. Whats it all mean? Well I suppose you could say its Godards way of commenting on the wests ability to turn even political oppression into mass entertainment.

I like a number of Godard films: Breathless, My Life To Live, Contempt, Pierrot Le Fou, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, In Praise of Love --still Alphaville remains kind of a hard one for me to get into. Perhaps because I am not too keen on science fiction. It seems the people who like this film are the ones who like science fiction in general. To me science fiction is full of cliches and so is film noir and so to me it seems Godard is using these genres to address cultural cliches -- and yet he is also making pointed comments on modern culture as he does so. You can always count on a Godard film to be smart and even though its not one of my favorites Alphaville is no exception to that rule.

Anna Karina looks great as always. Unfortunately for Lemmy Caution she is the daughter of Alphaville's overlord. No one really believes the future will look like a parking garage nor that a super-computer will run our lives and that people will become vacant automatons. Only a handful of early twentieth-century authors thought the future was leading us toward Alphaville. In the context of the swinging sixties sci fi just looks campy and noir even campier. Whats going on in Godards head? Hard to say in this film. To me its funny, but a surprising amount of people seem to take this sci fi stuff seriously.

I think the new wave band of outsiders enjoyed genre hopping because it gave them a chance to flex their movie knowledge. Plus genres come loaded with rules which the new wavers can then subvert -- so that is the fun of Alphaville, subversion of genre and in this case its a double dose of subversion because Godards subverting two genres, sci fi and noir. I think its interesting to note that in both of these genres men and women relate in steretypical and fatalistic ways -- and the new wave was about being hyper-conscious of these film conventions. Perhaps what Godard is really saying is that in order to invent life anew we must break free of these conventions. This is of course something his characters often fail to do although in some films they try. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Capucine fans, alert
The other reviews for this film have listed most of it's major flaws. It is indeed improbable that this group of people would become such close friends, and George Hamilton as a Frenchman strains credibility as much because of his public image as for any other reason. The thing that sets this movie apart for me is that it features a really good perfomance from Sam Wanamaker and the last good role (that I am aware of) for Capucine. I realize she is an actress of limited range, but I was always fond of her and enjoyed many of her movies. Most of her later career work amounts to cameo roles in productions not worthy of any name actress let alone one with her style and class. Her character has style, grace, compassion and courage, as I would like to believe the lady did herself. If you are a Capucine fan, I recommend this movie highly.

Average Movie
This Italian made WWII movie is average at best. The major cast members are luminaries from the United States, France and England. The battle scenes are well-done with plenty of tanks and extras, but there is not much of a plot. The story, focusing on a group of friends from different nations who go separate ways during the war, is improbable and only dwelt one sporadically. Recommended only for WWII movie fans. The VHS from Media is of good quality.

action
good action. good story of friends during that time period when wars did breakup friendships ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Missing in Action
I have no idea why this film is so hard to find. It's never shown on television, it's unavailable on US DVD, and the VHS version has been cut down from the original. This wonderful film is moving and exciting--and missing in action. ... Read more

Reviews (41)

One of the Best
An engrossing WELL-WRITTEN story (Hollywood, PLEASE take note), excellent cast, superb acting on the part of all the actors (not just the leads), painstaking staging and Frankenheimer's direction blending all these essential elements into a thoroughly enjoyable movie. What can you say about a rousing action movie that also makes you think? You can say it's rarely found in today's films. The primary quandry here is just what is the value of art in terms of the human lives that must be expended to preserve it? Is it truly a country's heritage or just oils on canvas for which the people who will have to die for it have little or no real appreciation? Is it worth saving because of its beauty or its value? And when does the cost of saving it become too high? The movie works on all levels, but the characters (and the actors portraying them) are exceptional. The stand-outs: Burt Lancaster, the yardmaster/resistance leader who really doesn't want to do this one last (and seemingly unimportant) job so close to the end of the war; Paul Scofield, the intense German colonel who loves (obsesses over) the art and is taking Lancaster's attempts to thwart his plans for it very personally; Wolfgang Preiss, the "good German officer" who does not agree with his superior but does his duty until he can do it no more; Jean Moreau, the pragmatic French hotel proprietress who has had to comfort one too many fellow widows and Michel Simon, the old engineer who fondly remembers dating a girl who posed for Renoir and decides to make this fight his own. No one who loves a good movie should miss this film. It's not just for action/war movie fans.

Underrated war actioner--art for whose sake?
_The Train_ has held up well since its release in 1965. Dismissed as an improbable shoot-em-up then, it tells a much richer story than the special-effects vehicles in the genre nowadays. Burt Lancaster isn't especially gallic as the Frenchman Labiche, but his acting talent and intensity soon steamroller any resistance the viewer may have. Paul Scofield is perfectly cast as a cultured monster, the Nazi colonel who is bent on spiriting the paintings away into Germany. One can easily picture him murdering hostages between sips of cognac.

Shot in black and white, the film is dark and greasy-looking. The screen is filled with churning railroad machinery much of the time, which dwarfs the people around it. The wheezing, snorting engines are also stars in this movie. Even the sky looks dirty in the daylight scenes. Oh yes, there's a sensational train wreck, too. Definitely less mindless than your average Rambo flick, but no less exciting.

The Train
Is a work of art worth a human life?
We are near the end of World War II. It's August 2, 1944, the "1511th day of German occupation" of Paris. German Colonel von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) enters a dark museum and turns a spotlight on a painting. He stares at it with the eyes of a lover beholding his best beloved. He turns another spotlight on another painting. The Hun is humanized, and we sympathize with his quiet passion.
It comes as a bit of a shock when he announces that he is taking the paintings, hundreds of Miros and Picassos and Matisses and others, with him when the Germans evacuate Paris. A resistance group, led by railroad worker Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster), is enlisted to stop them. Labiche initially refuses. It's one thing to blow up a train, dangerous enough - it's another to stop a train without damaging what's inside it. National heritage or not, men will die. There are more important targets than a train filled with art. Things change, though, and eventually Labiche and the remnants of his resistance group find themselves trying the impossible.
I've always been a little leery of Burt Lancaster. Maybe I was traumatized by viewing THE RAINMAKER or ELMER GANTRY at a young and impressionable age. He sometimes seems all horse teeth and braying charm and dis-tinct e-nunc-ee-a-shun. Not so here. In THE TRAIN he's restrained and natural and completely convincing. Scofield is equally strong as his brutal nemesis.
Sometimes the extras on a dvd aren't worth the bother, but I loved the director's commentary by the late John Frankenheimer. It was like taking a course in the art of film making.
Frankenheimer tells us he was trying to give the movie a realistic feel, which I understood before listening to the commentary track but didn't really understand how he went about it. One trick he used was to open the f-stop on the camera and keep everything in focus, something that would have been impossible if THE TRAIN wasn't shot in black and white. Everything is kept in focus and he keeps the background action busy and interesting.
Frankenheimer is an unabashed fan of Burt Lancaster, with whom he made five movies. Not only does Lancaster do all his own stunts in this one, including a dangerous backwards fall off of a moving train, he even fills in as a stunt double for another actor. The original stuntman made a fall off a roof look like an "olympic jump," and 'realism' was the keyword in this one. Lancaster did take a nice tumble off the tiles, but you've got to wonder about the wisdom of it all. Lancaster was injured during the filming of THE TRAIN; on his first day off in weeks he played a round of golf and twisted his knee when he stepped into a hole. His right knee swelled up 'like a basketball.' Frankenheimer shot Labiche in the leg halfway through the movie to explain the limp.
The only phony movie aspect to this movie is the dubbed voices of some of the French actors. You can't hide dubbing very well, and Frankenheimer doesn't have much to say about it. I wouldn't knock a star or even a half-star off because of it. This is a tremendously entertaining film.

Great movie.
There are an amazing amount of action films these days. Each one of them attempts to beat the last one's visual effects. And in this competition, hollywood has lost track of what makes a truly great action film... Skill. Most of the action films these days are entirely uncreative, and many of them are very, very boring. Who really want's to see a dozen tiles fall to the ground and break in slow motion, as films such as "the Matrix" use this technique constantly. But this film is different. It carries raw emotional power, and it's star, at age 50, did all of his own stunts, and even drove the locamotives that his character drives. This movie is awesome, and I highly recommend you buy this DvD. And by the way, this music track is a lot of fun to listen to when you're sick.

Perfect film on less- than- great DVD
The audio on the MGM DVD was lacking the full spectrum of audio, in my opinion. If you don't care so much about audio, it would be a 5 star DVD, but for those feeling that audio is an important factor, a star must be deducted. Bass and treble just weren't tweaked in DVD production which made the audio seem really flat, and I know that MGM could have produced a better job. It seems that a good number of the MGM DVDs lack the care and attention of producing consistently superior products.

The DVD gives the viewer options to listen to music only and has an option for director's comments during the film. I was at first dismayed because at the beginning of the movie, director John Frankenheimer just wouldn't open up. But he started sharing some interesting things as the movie progressed. There is also an 8- page booklet that gives some interesting production notes and history.

The video quality from, I think, an original film print is pristine. Frankenheimer's locations and times of filming were very effective in evoking a very dismal feeling as the European conflict was drawing to a conclusion. I love Frankenheimer's use of deep focus -- which is using wide angle lenses to have both near and far- away characters and scenes in focus -- to give a vision that many other filmmakers fail to incorporate effectively.

I'm glad that there was explanation in the film about why people were more concerned with paintings than people in a story that was loosely based on an actual event. Many westerners like Paul Labiche (Burt Lancaster) would not care about the value of crates of artwork in a time of war, but schooling by caretaker Miss Villard (Suzanne Flon) expressed the passion and pride that the French feel for such paintings. This helped explain why some would scarifice their lives to save the crates. (Ms. Flon, born in 1918 is apparently still alive and acting, too.)

It's quite a story of saving "priceless" paintings at the expense of one's life. It seems like a WWII action film (which has its share of blowing stuff up), but its story actually weighs the value of art against the value of life. Labiche from the very beginning of his introduction battles Col. von Waldheim (Paul Scolfield), who wants him to deliver the art to Germany AND The Resistance, who want the art protected from the Nazis. Labiche is actually alone in his own beliefs as an American, being tugged by both sides while ultimately struggling with making sense of the conflict over the art.

The movie is well- developed from Lancaster asking Frankenheimer to direct "The Train" after original director Arthur Penn abandoned the project a week after production. I only say that because everything that was directed by Frankenheimer was terrific. The choice of the players, scenery, editing, camera placement and post production yielded a perfect war film that wasn't simply about war. It was about the value of life and what people value in their lives.

Watch for the one scene of a runaway train's derailment -- one of a dozen cameras mounted to film the scene -- came within inches of being wiped out by the locomotive's wheels and the scene has become a classic in filmmaking history. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse - DVD MAJOR GLITCHES
There are two major glitches in this DVD. At the end of chapter 8 and again in chapter 25 at the 2:30 mark, two different video sequences cut in: One is a color soccer instructional, and the other a Japanese (I think) dubbed B&W film. How could such a thing get past the mastering phase??

Otherwise, this is a great film, wonderfully presented with all the extras listed in these other reviews. But these glitches make it unacceptable. I hope the same problems don't pop up in Vol. 2 of the series!

Last Fritz Lang "Mabuse" film is a Treasure!
This disk is one of my favorites. Although not quite up to the standards of it's two predecessors, the Third Dr. Mabuse film (and the last directed by Lang himself) is wonderful and more than worth the purchase price.

David Kalat's extraordinary commentary is easily THE BEST I have ever heard (and I've heard quite a few.) He strikes the perfect balance between knowledge and wit - the narration is informative without being dry or condescending and, indeed, is quite lively at times. His delivery style is remarkably excellent throughout and is a major reason I consider the disk to be one of my most valued.

Two tiny quibbles, stuff so small as to bother only me: The English Language captioning, written for the German audio track, is a little disorienting when viewed in connection with the English language track. Most of this has to do with the demands of lip-synchronization between two languages. Still, and despite the additional cost it might have created, two independent sets of captions would have been appreciated - one for each of the different languages. This would be a welcome addition for a hearing impared viewer.

The other minor quibble is that the documentary really needed captioning, much more so than the feature owing to the heavy accented speech.

All told, though, this is absolutely a remarkable film and a remarkable, and very treasured disk. AllDay Entertainment is releasing some extraordinary stuff, and deserve kudos and, above all, purchases!

One of a kind movie
A truly unique movie that was way ahead of its time in exploring the theme of the loss of privacy in the modern world. The kind of movie that shows you don't need a big budget or amazing special effects to create a truly outstanding sci-fi film.

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
Last movie of german-american director Fritz Lang, 1000 EYES OF DR MABUSE must not be neglected even if one can prefer M, FURY or MOONFLEET in the royal filmography of this Master. Personally, I confess that I'm very fond of this movie, maybe not for the right reasons. 1000 EYES OF DR MABUSE is one of these movies I've discovered a sunday afternoon on TV when I was twelve or thirteen years old. And even now, I can remember the nightmares generated by the blind medium or the multiple hidden rooms of The Luxor Hotel. To be short, I've bought the DVD right after its release.

As bonus features, you will have the choice between the subtitled german version or an english dubbed version, a very interesting commentary of the producer of the DVD who is a Dr Mabuse specialist (12 Dr Mabuse movies have been produced until now !). And last but not least, you will discover a featurette presenting interviews of Fritz Lang's specialists including Forrest Ackerman.

Naturally, there are a lot of other good reasons to put this DVD on the shelves of your library but, if you have stopped at this peculiar page of Amazon, you surely already know that Fritz Lang's 1000 EYES OF DR MABUSE is a valuable addition to any movie lover's collection. So, have fun with the mad doc.

A DVD for the child in you.

a nightmarish alegory of the modern society; a masterpiece
The Mabuse films by Fritz Lang are not just "cop-and-thieves" thrillers: of course they are quite enjoyable as a thriller-suspence crime movies, but for those with the eyes to see, Mabuse is really a metaphore of power and its functions in a modern society. Already in 1922, when Lang made the first Mabuse films (DOCTOR MABUSE in two parts; a new restored DVD of this film is now in preparation), he foresaw not only the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, but also a society under control (or hypnosis) by the medias and informations sirculating on them. Lang's last entry to the series, THE 1000 EYES OF DR.MABUSE, is a nightmarish alegory of the post-war modern society. The Luxor Hotel where the story mainly takes place is a buiding made by the Nazis and has a secret camera system ovserving every single thing that happens in it. The idea that we are all observed by those who are in power has now, as you see around yourself, became our own reality. Many contemporary filmmakers, such as Wim Wenders with his END OF THE VIOLENCE, try to portray the same idea, but none of them are as efficient as Lang, inspite of the low budget Lang was allowed to spend, and the classic cliche framework (involving a psychic clairvoyant and an American millionaire hero). It's a masterpiece, in the sense that it is really an oeuvre of the master. The new digital transfer from original 35mm elements is almost flawless and displays Langs lucid vision of the world in a stunning manner. In the bonus featurettes, people who knew Lang in his last years talks about him, and is also quite interesting. One problem, though: the featurette tells us the name of those people but most of them we don't know who they are. I am also looking forward for the release of THE TESTAMENT OF DR.MABUSE (the 1932 original) on a DVD that looks as good as this one. ... Read more

Description

The most terrifying zombie massacre ever to come to the screen! In a small lakeside town in the French countryside, young women are disappearing without a trace. The superstitious locals blame "The Lake of Ghosts," but the town's mayor (Howard Vernon) seems reluctant, or powerless, to take any action. When another girl is found with her throat ripped out, a Paris reporter begins to uncover the deadly secrets of the lake and the dead, green-faced Nazis who are aroused to action! ... Read more

Reviews (23)

Scared the Living Hebby Jeebys Outta Me!
This movie has honestly got to be one of the most horrifying, gruesome movies of all time. Despite what other reviewers may say about this movie, it is very graphic and very scary. The so-called fake make-up that the zombie's wear looked like real skin coming off and that gave me the jitters all over! What I think had me staying up all night with my teddy bear and night light on was seeing the zombies come out and take the girls in the lake and then even showing underwater shots of their lake that was obviously filmed in a spooky dooky 4 ft. deep pool!! I truly don't see how anyone couldn't have enjoyed this film because it really makes your heart skip a few beats and then some. If you want a terrifying zombie film with the most realistic-looking zombies and an amazingly intricate and well-developed plot, look no further. This movie will leave you scarred with a phobia for lakes and swamps for as long as you live as it has done to me!

most erotic zombie film
Leave it to Jean Rollin to make quality erotic/horror pictures. He's previously graced us with such films as "Lips of Blood" and "Grapes of death", but "Zombie Lake" even surpasses those monumental achievements. The film commences with a sexy lady removing her clothing, then he give a close-up view of her privat parts(score!). There is a story, but who cares because in no-time a bus load of girls, take of their cloths off and hit the lake. This is where Rollins' genius comes into play, when He brings us underwater to see between the chicks legs! All in All great film, but be sure to bring some tissues to clean up after!

Zombie Lake is quite entertaining...
The video box reads... "The Most Terrifying Zombie Massacre Ever To Come To The Screen". In truth, it is quite possibly "The Worse Zombie Massacre to Ever Come to Any Screen". I am a fan of laughably bad "B" Cinema, and enjoyed this very much. No one should take it seriously. Its no Dawn Of The Dead and will never be. Its a peice of eurotrash Cinema about Nazi Zombies who emerge from a lake wearing horribly done green makeup, and feed on bare breasted beauties who dare to swim in said lake. So, basically... the whole movie is an excuse for gratutious nudity and zombie carnage. I love it! If you want a new peice of cheese you can laugh at and add to your collection, pick this one up.

A different kind of Zombie film
As a fan of Italian horror/zombie movies, I wasn't sure what to make of this French release when ordering it. The price was right however so I decided to give it a try. While not the worst film I have ever seen, it was completely different from Italian Zombie flicks. The violence is toned way down. Even when someone is killed there is a limited amount of blood. There are other noticeable things about the movie that only took me one viewing to notice such as: the underwater scenes of the zombies were obviously filmed in a pool (you can see the side wall in the background), the time line is way off as a former Nazi solider who died during the war could not have an eight-year-old daughter 35 years after World War II (this part really amazed me) and as mentioned by other reviewers, the makeup was poor (it would rub off when the zombies attacked someone).
That being said, it was different and it was worth the price ($9.99) although I'm glad I didn't spend $20 or more on it.
It was nice also to finally see a film by Jean Rollin, a director I have heard of but had never had the chance to see any of his works.
Don't expect anything along the lines of Italian cinema here and you won't be disappointed.

i can't believe i paid good money for this trash
if there was a way to rate this "no stars" or "negative stars" i would. however, one is the lowest i can use. i suppose READING the reviews here rather than looking at only the stars would have given me a clue that, while in the mood for a good zombie movie and getting the living tar scared out of me, i purchased a comedy.
if you want to be scared....RUN...AWAY from this movie. find something else like "the sound of music" or "europa, europa"...the nazis in these films are more scary than the ones in "zombie lake". ... Read more

Description

The inspirational pre-cursor to New Wave classics such as Godard's BREATHLESS, and Truffaut's SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, Jean-Pierre Melville's lighthearted noir, BOB LE FLAMBEUR, was co-written by French pulp author Auguste le Breton (Rififi).Bob Montagné--nicknamed "Le Flambeur" (high roller or compulsive gambler)--maintains his distinguished lifestyle at the roulette table, betting on the horses, and playing cards in the back rooms of Parisian nightclubs.When the losses begin to add up Bob decides to go for one last score: the safe at the Deauville casino.BOB LE FLAMBEUR inventively blends humanistic characterizations with gritty, high contrast cinematography creating a kind of new fifties realism nostalgic for the Hollywood gangster and noir films of the 30s and 40s only to culminate in an ironically twisted finale. ... Read more

Reviews (12)

A staggering, hugely influential, one-off.
If 'Bob le Flambeur' is known at all today it is as inspiration for the New Wave, with its cheap location shooting, its cinephilia (especially american) and its dismantling of genre. In this, it is perhaps even more successful than 'A Bout de Souffle' - despite Godard's best efforts, he is defeated by the charisma of his stars.

Melville called 'Bob' a 'comedy of manners', and it is much lighter in tone than his later, more famous gangster films. As the title suggests, it is Bob's gambling, rather than criminality, that is important - look at how the circle of the roulette wheel and horses shape the film's imagery and structure.

There is a tragic gangster plot, a heist, an Oedipal conflict, but they co-exist with the comedy, a dream modernism and a documentary evocation of 1950s Montmartre (its nightclubs, neon lights and cacophony of sounds (three years before 'Touch of Evil')) and Deauville (its casinos and beaches). This is the sort of movie that will spend ten minutes on a man playing cards, and one on the heist he has spent the whole movie organising.

interesting piece of film history
Warning: this is NOT an action movie. You will be disappointed if you're expecting to see a lot of details surrounding the planning and execution of a major heist. Get Rififi if that's what you want.

'Bob' is stylish, leisurely paced, and NOT a caper flick (or barely qualifies as one). The film is not about a heist, it is about Mr. Bob and his all-consuming passion for gambling. Gambling is his sustenance, his downfall, and his savior. Women only seem to bring trouble (except for Yvonne, the cafe owner). How he acts and thinks, his values and judgments, are part of the old world of gangster-gentlemen which doesn't exist any more. It is, like many French films, a study in character, and what an interesting character it is!

Add it to your collection
This, of course, is a great movie and the DVD also has a really interesting interview with Daniel Clauchy, the actor who plays Paulo, talking about the experience of making this film and working with Melville. Also, an interesting interview with Melville excerpted in the DVD booklet. Not to be a brat, but it's worth nothing that, although one of the other reviewers writes the budget for this film was 10X that of other films of the time, it is actually the opposite--Melville shot this for about 18 million (old) francs, about a tenth of what other feature films cost at that time. He used his own script, unknown actors--famously discovering 15 yr old Isabelle Corey walking down the street--and only a small crew, cutting as many costs as possible. The film, however, looks big budget--gorgeous shots of Montmartre, Pigalle, and Parisian nightlife and a beautifully slick, noir style. Isabelle Corey is wonderful, but also see Guy Decomble from 400 Blows as the police inspector.

It's just a great movie: it's meticulously crafted, there's nothing falsely intellectual about it, and it's interesting to see how much influence this has had on all the heist films that have followed.

See This!
Most people reading the reviews I assume already know of the movie and are thinking about buying it because they can't find it or because they've seen it and like it. For those who haven't seen it...do.

It's said filmmaker Melville is sort of a grandfather of the French New Wave. But BOB LE FLAMBEUR is more entertaining today than anything Godard or Truffaut ever made. This flick isn't just an exercise in style; sure, it has plenty of that, but it also has a great cast of characters, a good plot, and is just plain fun. In other words, this film isn't a mood movie. It's the real deal.

Have fun dropping the title into conversation. Do it slyly and, when someone says they've never seen it or heard of it, act offended. And make sure you say the title with a thick French accent. It's fun! I'm kidding, of course (or am I?). But this is a really good movie!

Not so good
Wonderful to look at with nice shots of Montmatre at night and a good opening during a Paris dawn. Also, the "bad" girl Anne is worth looking at twice.
But the story is full of holes and bad editing especially in the last 15 minutes. And this is to the detriment of the film in such a way as to render the film no more than a stylish exercise as opposed to a true heist film or noir classic.
If your intent is to look at pioneering film of the French New Wave or to see how the French appreciate Hollywood film noir, then by all means RENT it.
But if you want to see a wonderfully realized French heist movie of the same period with a true understanding of noir, then find yourself a copy of Jules Dassin's RIFIFI, which is a far superior movie. ... Read more

Description

Jane Fonda plays the bored wife of an ambitious and cynical industrialist who ends up falling in love with her stepson in Roger Vadim’s tragic and passionate story. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An adult French farce from Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim
Although it is set in modern Paris, "The Game Is Over" is actually based on Emile Zola's novel "La Curee." This 1966 film was directed and produced by Roger Vadim for his wife, Jane Fonda. The film is the old story about a woman, Renee (Fonda), who marries an older man, Alexandre Sacaard (Michael Piccoli), but falls for his sexy young son Maxime (Peter McEnergy). By setting Zola's story in modern Paris, Vadim is obviously out to explore the morality of the rich in France. The film was a smash in Europe but a failure in the United States, although critics on both sides of the Atlantic tended to like it as an example of adult farce (although Judith Christ put it at the top of her list of "Perfectly Marvelous Awful Movies to Eat Chocolates and Play Russ Columbo Records By"). However, while this film certainly starts off as something of a farce, Vadim turns it into more of a gothic horror movie at the end. Any visions you have of Fonda swimming nude in a goldfish pond are going to be replaced by nightmares involving German police dogs. On balance, this might be the best of the Vadim-Fonda efforts... ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An adult French farce from Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim
Although it is set in modern Paris, "The Game Is Over" is actually based on Emile Zola's novel "La Curee." This 1966 film was directed and produced by Roger Vadim for his wife, Jane Fonda. The film is the old story about a woman, Renee (Fonda), who marries an older man, Alexandre Sacaard (Michael Piccoli), but falls for his sexy young son Maxime (Peter McEnergy). By setting Zola's story in modern Paris, Vadim is obviously out to explore the morality of the rich in France. The film was a smash in Europe but a failure in the United States, although critics on both sides of the Atlantic tended to like it as an example of adult farce (although Judith Christ put it at the top of her list of "Perfectly Marvelous Awful Movies to Eat Chocolates and Play Russ Columbo Records By"). However, while this film certainly starts off as something of a farce, Vadim turns it into more of a gothic horror movie at the end. Any visions you have of Fonda swimming nude in a goldfish pond are going to be replaced by nightmares involving German police dogs. On balance, this might be the best of the Vadim-Fonda efforts... ... Read more

Reviews (12)

A staggering, hugely influential, one-off.
If 'Bob le Flambeur' is known at all today it is as inspiration for the New Wave, with its cheap location shooting, its cinephilia (especially american) and its dismantling of genre. In this, it is perhaps even more successful than 'A Bout de Souffle' - despite Godard's best efforts, he is defeated by the charisma of his stars.

Melville called 'Bob' a 'comedy of manners', and it is much lighter in tone than his later, more famous gangster films. As the title suggests, it is Bob's gambling, rather than criminality, that is important - look at how the circle of the roulette wheel and horses shape the film's imagery and structure.

There is a tragic gangster plot, a heist, an Oedipal conflict, but they co-exist with the comedy, a dream modernism and a documentary evocation of 1950s Montmartre (its nightclubs, neon lights and cacophony of sounds (three years before 'Touch of Evil')) and Deauville (its casinos and beaches). This is the sort of movie that will spend ten minutes on a man playing cards, and one on the heist he has spent the whole movie organising.

interesting piece of film history
Warning: this is NOT an action movie. You will be disappointed if you're expecting to see a lot of details surrounding the planning and execution of a major heist. Get Rififi if that's what you want.

'Bob' is stylish, leisurely paced, and NOT a caper flick (or barely qualifies as one). The film is not about a heist, it is about Mr. Bob and his all-consuming passion for gambling. Gambling is his sustenance, his downfall, and his savior. Women only seem to bring trouble (except for Yvonne, the cafe owner). How he acts and thinks, his values and judgments, are part of the old world of gangster-gentlemen which doesn't exist any more. It is, like many French films, a study in character, and what an interesting character it is!

Add it to your collection
This, of course, is a great movie and the DVD also has a really interesting interview with Daniel Clauchy, the actor who plays Paulo, talking about the experience of making this film and working with Melville. Also, an interesting interview with Melville excerpted in the DVD booklet. Not to be a brat, but it's worth nothing that, although one of the other reviewers writes the budget for this film was 10X that of other films of the time, it is actually the opposite--Melville shot this for about 18 million (old) francs, about a tenth of what other feature films cost at that time. He used his own script, unknown actors--famously discovering 15 yr old Isabelle Corey walking down the street--and only a small crew, cutting as many costs as possible. The film, however, looks big budget--gorgeous shots of Montmartre, Pigalle, and Parisian nightlife and a beautifully slick, noir style. Isabelle Corey is wonderful, but also see Guy Decomble from 400 Blows as the police inspector.

It's just a great movie: it's meticulously crafted, there's nothing falsely intellectual about it, and it's interesting to see how much influence this has had on all the heist films that have followed.

See This!
Most people reading the reviews I assume already know of the movie and are thinking about buying it because they can't find it or because they've seen it and like it. For those who haven't seen it...do.

It's said filmmaker Melville is sort of a grandfather of the French New Wave. But BOB LE FLAMBEUR is more entertaining today than anything Godard or Truffaut ever made. This flick isn't just an exercise in style; sure, it has plenty of that, but it also has a great cast of characters, a good plot, and is just plain fun. In other words, this film isn't a mood movie. It's the real deal.

Have fun dropping the title into conversation. Do it slyly and, when someone says they've never seen it or heard of it, act offended. And make sure you say the title with a thick French accent. It's fun! I'm kidding, of course (or am I?). But this is a really good movie!

Not so good
Wonderful to look at with nice shots of Montmatre at night and a good opening during a Paris dawn. Also, the "bad" girl Anne is worth looking at twice.
But the story is full of holes and bad editing especially in the last 15 minutes. And this is to the detriment of the film in such a way as to render the film no more than a stylish exercise as opposed to a true heist film or noir classic.
If your intent is to look at pioneering film of the French New Wave or to see how the French appreciate Hollywood film noir, then by all means RENT it.
But if you want to see a wonderfully realized French heist movie of the same period with a true understanding of noir, then find yourself a copy of Jules Dassin's RIFIFI, which is a far superior movie. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

Simply Terrible
Anyone who has read my reviews or seen my listmania list knows im a huge fan of gothic horror. As for this one, save your money for something better. The dubbing was horrific and i had a hard time understanding what the characters were saying. The movie was hard to follow (perhaps because i could'nt understand what was being said) and very slow moving. It was very hard to get through this one.

Franco fans will love this.
Typical Fanco film - castles, chained women, mad doctors, ghosts, lots of atmospheric photography. The story is an insane cross between "House of Usher", and the Orloff films (And does re-use some Orloff footage for flashbacks.) The film looks very nice, with plenty of colour and fantastic scenery shots. Not one of Franco's best, but atmospheric and entertaining.

piece of crap
AVOID AT ALL COSTS! do not le the title fool you this film has nothing to do with zombies. i rented this movie under its alternate title "Revenge in the House of Usher" cause i knew it was alzo titled as "Zombie 5." i thought it would ave been better than it's follower "Zombie 4:Virgin Among the Living Dead" by was i wrong. if you ever see this ovie under this title or th other titl "Revenge in the House of Usher" RUN! unless you like movies with meaningless plots,horrible acting, the weakest blood and gore. then go ahead buy it but dont say i didnt warn you.

IGNORE AT ALL COSTS
ignore this movie at all costs! ignore the title this movie hs nothing to do with zombies what so ever. its just a mix up of volent scenes put together in so many confusing orders. dont buy this movie unless you want the whole 'weird' zombie set. its code named tha because there's two sets of zombie films. this set is not the set to Lucio Fulci's masterpiece "Zombie" oh no it isn't. my advice ignore this [one] and move on. ... Read more