Summary: Europa Europa offers a picaresque tale of the childhood and adolescence of the German Jewish Solomon ‘Solly’ Perel during the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, and the Second World War. Solly lives happily with his family in Peine, Germany, but, when the persecution of Jews commences, they flee eastward, where he eventually becomes separated from…
Tag: French Movies
Children Of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis) – Summary, Analysis
Summary: The film, which takes place in 1840s Paris, is divided into two parts. In the first, Garance (Arletty) is unhappy in her relationship with Lacenaire (Herrand), a dandified thief. She attracts the attention of Baptiste (Barrault), a mime artist at the Funambules Theatre. Baptiste has a rival for his affections in aspiring actor Frédérick…
Delicatessen – Summary and Analysis
Summary: In a (probably) post-apocalyptic future, ex-clown Louison answers an advert for a handyman and arrives, pushing his taxi, at the apartment building of delicatessen owner Monsieur Clapet. Clapet sells meat for the only currency worth having in this dystopian landscape – corn. Offered a job with room and board, Louison enters the surreal world…
The Decline Of The American Empire – Summary and Analysis
Summary: Eight friends, four women and four men, most of them academics, spend a sunny September day chatting about culture, history, food and sex – mainly sex. The men, history professors Rémy and Pierre, their gay friend Claude, an art historian, and teaching assistant Alain, spend the afternoon in a comfortable country house by the…
A Man Escaped – Summary – Analysis
Summary: A man involved in the French Resistance to German occupation during the Second World War, Lieutenant Fontaine, is captured and imprisoned in Fort Montluc in Lyon.1 He carefully and meticulously plans his escape, seeing the achievement of each stage along his journey towards freedom as a personal victory. When Jost, a young teenage prisoner,…
Chocolat (1988 Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: As France, a French woman in her thirties, returns to contemporary Cameroon, she encounters an African American father and his son who think she is a tourist. She gets a ride from them, and a long flashback begins focusing on the woman’s childhood in colonial Cameroon in the 1950s. France’s father is the chief…
Caché / Hidden (Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: Hidden is an art-house thriller which focuses on Georges Laurent, an arts journalist living in Paris, whose family comes under an unexplained threat with the arrival of several videotapes. These are anonymous surveillance tapes of the exterior of the family’s apartment, an unfamiliar Paris street and the farmhouse where Georges grew up. The investigation…
Boudu Saved From Drowning: Summary and Analysis
Summary: After losing his dog, the tramp Boudu tries to drown himself in the Seine. He is rescued by a Parisian bourgeois antiquarian bookseller, Lestingois. Insisting Lestingois is now responsible for his welfare Boudu is brought back to the Lestingois apartment. It is not long before Boudu’s anarchic behaviour clashes with the prim and proper…
Bob le Flambeur: Synopsis and Analysis
Synopsis: Bob is an ageing, former gangster turned gambler in Montmartre (Paris), leading a pleasant if unconventional life with his friend Roger, his protégé, Paolo, and a young woman, Anne, who he has picked up on the street and who he helps out. After a spell of bad luck, he’s running out of money and…
Bamako (Movie): Summary and Analysis
Summary: In an outdoor courtyard in the Malian city of Bamako a court hearing is taking place listening to witnesses give evidence: the plaintiff is Africa, the accused are the IMF, the World Bank and their associates. The latter institutions are accused of causing the poverty of many African countries, through their policies. Evidence for…