Alain Resnais

1959. A French young woman has spent the night with a japanese man, at Hiroshima where she went for the shooting of a film about peace... (imdb)

In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him... (imdb)

One of the most vivid depictions of the horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps. Filmed in 1955 at the post-war site of Auschwitz... (imdb)

Odile (Sabine Azéma) is looking for a new, bigger appartment. Her younger sister Camille (Agnès Jaoui) just completed her doctoral thesis has fallen in love with an estate agent who is responsible for Odile's apartment and who has an elder employee (imdb)

In Paris in the 1920s, a concert violinist meets and falls in love with a stylish young flapper who's the wife of an old friend... (imdb)

Diego is one of the chief of the spanish Communist Party. He is travelling back to Paris (where he lives) from a mission in Madrid... (imdb)

Joey Wellman, a cantankerous American cartoonist, accepts an invitation to come to an exhibition in Paris, because his estranged daughter Elsie is a student there. He arrives with his girlfriend Lena, and very soon wants to go home as the culture shock is too much for him... (imdb)

Prof. Henri Laborit (played by himself) uses the stories of the lives of three people to discuss behaviorist theories of survival, combat, rewards and punishment, and anxiety... (imdb)

Alain Resnais shows how the Bibliothèque Nationale de France functions as a storehouse of the world's knowledge (fischerelsani.net)

On April 26 1937 the small Basque town of Guernica was bombed without warning by the German aviation. Two thousand people, all civilians, got killed. Like millions all over the world, Pablo Picasso was shocked and he translated his emotion into a magnificent but terrifying picture bearing the name of the martyred city. This film does not only comment on the painting, it also gives it a new life through frantic camera and sound effects. (imdb)

Six people collide and influence each other's lives in significant ways as they navigate the cold winter months in Paris. (IFC Films)

Clive Langham (Sir John Gielgud) spends one tormenting night in his bed suffering from health problems and thinking up a story based on his relatives. He is a bitter man and he shows, through flashbacks, how spiteful, conniving and treacherous his family is. But is this how they really are or is it his own vindictive slant on things? (imdb)

Alain Resnais's third feature film, like his earlier Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, is devoted to the vagaries of memory. The title character is seen only in the 8-millimeter films run over and over again by Bernard (Jean-Baptiste Thierée). A veteran of the French/Algerian war, Bernard was obliged to participate in the torture murder of Muriel, an Algerian girl accused of sabotage... (All Movie Guide)

Irrestisible charm and talent helps Serge Alexandre alias Stavisky, small-time swindler, to make friends with even most influential members of French industrial and political elite during the early 30s. But nothing lasts forever and when his great scam involving hundreds millions of francs gets exposed result is an unprecedented scandal that almost caused a civil war. (imdb)

Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in the experiment causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order. (imdb)

"Smoking" and "No Smoking" are two segments of the movie which are based on closely connected plays. The original plays covered eight separate stories, which have been pared down to three each for these movies. At a certain point in the story of each segment, the five female characters (all played by Sabine Azema) and the four male characters (all played by Pierre Arditi) have their lives skillfully recapped in terms of "what might have happened" if they had made or failed to make certain choices. (Wikipedia)

Three intertwined tales. On the eve of the First World War, Count Forbek starts to build a fantastic castle in the Ardennes forest. After the war he uses it to start a utopian society by brainwashing his friends, including his former fiancee, Livia, and her husband... (imdb)

Elisabeth and Simon have been deeply in love for two months when Simon momentarily dies, but comes back to life. Simon does not want any further medical tests, but the couple are forced to grapple with the possibility of his death. They eventually tell their close friends Jérôme and Judith Martignac about the event. The Martignacs are both clerics, and Judith has just been giving a funeral service for a villager who committed suicide, though Jérôme would have nothing to do with suicide...

Objects die when living eyes see them no more. (imdb)

The "essential" look into molding plastics (imdb)

Running a mere two reels, Van Gogh was fledgling filmmaker Alain Resnais' first effort in his documentary series about famous artists. (amg)

Gauguin is a companion piece to Van Gogh, beginning with a self portrait by Gauguin and following his flight from Paris to an island in Oceania (Tahiti). The film adopts the tranquillity and composure of Gauguin's images of Tahitian women. But this evocation of paradise on earth is shifted as Resnais also evokes Gauguin's images of dream and nightmare. (Emma Wilson)

In seven different parts, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamees army during the Vietnam-war. (imdb)

A musical drawing room farce set in Paris in October, 1925. Gilberte, in middle-age, flirts with men but loves her husband Georges, wishing he were more demonstrative. He's negotiating a deal with an American, Eric Thomson, who turns out to be Gilberte's first husband from an annulled and secret stateside marriage. Along with her sister Arlette, Gilberte begs Eric not to tell Georges about the marriage...(imdb)

A wallet lost and found opens the door to romantic adventure for Georges and Marguerite. After examining the ID papers of its owner, it is not a simple matter for Georges to turn the red wallet he found in to the police. Nor is it that Marguerite can recuperate her wallet without being piqued with curiosity about whom it was who found it. As they navigate the social protocols of giving and acknowledging thanks, turbulence enters their otherwise quotidian lives. (imdb)

A series of 41 documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers and each running between two and four minutes. Each "tract" espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers' strikes and the events of Paris in May '68. (imdb)

In the large drawing room, the butler welcomes some friends whom the playwright, now deceased, asked to be summoned for the reading of his will and who all responded to the request. These 13 actors previously performed in his plays, including one in particular who was considered outstanding in her time. But is she still? (mubi.com)

Film of Jacques Doillon, who entrusts a sequence on Nigeria to Jean Rouch and one on New York to Alain Resnais. The film has one complete duration of 87 minutes; script by Gébé with Gerard Depardieu, Josiane Balasko, Jacques Higelin and the team of Splendid. Originally a comic strip published in Charlie-monthly magazine, this film is an ecological and "tiers-mondiste" utopia . (KG)

The lives of three couples are shaken up by the news their good friend George Riley is ill and has just months to live. (Reuters)

This is the legendary meeting between a young filmmaker and one of the masters of surrealism: the spanish painter Óscar Domínguez, born in La Laguna, Tenerife, in 1906, died in Paris in 1957. In the "Visite," the artist -admirer of Picasso, rebellious disciple of Breton- is presented in solitude, far from the tumult of the exhibitions and parisian circles. An austere approach, almost "povera", with no audio, nor flashy camera movements, but rarely attractive.

A documentary film about occupational diseases shot in 1957 at the Francolor factory in Oissel. It takes the form of a scientific investigation to discover the origin of a mysterious illness that has infected a worker at the factory. (imdb)

Contre l'Oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International. (imdb)

A look at Hartung as he paints. Part of a series produced by Andre Bazin.