Lino Ventura

Bridging argot-rich 50s masterworks like "Rififi" and "Touchez-pas au Grisbi" with Jean-Pierre Melville's pared-down thrillers of the 60s, Classe Tous Risques (1960) (the title refers to a type of insurance policy, à la "Double Indemnity," but is also a pun on "tourist class") is a penetrating study of the underworld tough guy at the end of his rope, drawn from screenwriter José Giovanni's first-hand knowledge of the post-war French underworld. (Film Forum)

Max, an old gangster, and his buddy Riton have got away with 50-million francs in gold bars, who think they ought to retire now... (imdb)

France, 1942, during the occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is one of the French Resistance's chiefs. Given away by a traitor, he is interned in a camp. (imdb)

Florence Carala and her lover Julien Tavernier, an ex - paratrooper want to murder her husband by faking a suicide. But after Julien has killed him and he puts his things in his car, he finds he has forgotten the rope outside the window and he returns to the building to remove it... (imdb)

Inspector Gallien is investigating the rape and murder of two little girls. The only suspect is attorney Jerome Martinaud, but the evidence against him is circumstantial. As the city celebrates New Year's Eve, Gallien calls Martinaud to his office and interrogates him for hour after hour while Martinaud continues to maintain his innocence... (imdb)

John Morlar (Richard Burton) is watching the British television broadcast when an anchorman states that American astronauts are trapped in orbit around the moon. Suddenly someone in Morlar's room picks up a figurine and strikes him on the head repeatedly. His blood splatters the television screen... (imdb)

When Joe Valachi (Charles Bronson) has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura), he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An unsuccessful attempt to slit his throat puts him over the edge to break the sacred code of silence. (imdb)

Gustave Manda, better known as Gu, a dangerous gangster, escapes from jail. He goes to Paris to join Manouche and other friends, and get involved in a gangland killing. Before leaving the country with Manouche, Gu needs a final job to get some money. But that's not so simple when you have Inspector Blot tracking you, and have to deal with the consequences of the shooting in Paris... (imdb)

Biographic movie about the last year of the famous Italian painter Modigliani. Modigliani, a poor painter in Paris of 1919, falls in love with a daughter from a wealthy family. Her parents are against their relation and stop financial help. (imdb)

Two adventurers and best friends, Roland and Manu, are the victims of a practical joke that costs Manu his pilot's license. With seeming contrition, the jokesters tell Roland and Manu about a crashed plane lying on the ocean floor off the coast of Congo stuffed with riches. The adventurers set off to find the loot... (imdb)

Story takes place during 1942 in the Libyan desert at the crucial battle in El Alamein, when the British finally defeated the German "Afrikakorps". During a raid on a German supply dump, the French CO gets killed and the remaining members of the squad have to make their way back to friendly lines. Along the way they lose their patrol car but then capture an enemy truck, together with a German captain (Hardy Krüger). (imdb User Comments)

Movie based on the romance by Leonardo Sciascia "Il contesto". A detective (inspector Rogas) is assigned to investigate the mysterious murders of some Supreme Court judges and a series of judges's Homicide.

A young, ambitious mobster plans an elaborate diamond heist while seducing the daughter of a ruthless mob patriarch as a determined police commissioner closes in on all of them. (imdb)

When they realize the times are changing, five crooks decide to switch from bank robberies to personality abductions. Among their hostages are singer Johnny Hallyday and an ambassador in Latin America. They get framed by a guerrilla leader, who had been kidnapped by them before, and while being tried the French Government decides to let them flee to Africa where they get on with the same old game. (imdb)

The misadventures of a former crook who sets out to recuperate a huge sum of money loaned to his friends in hiding. Georges Lautner offers a sensational parody of the film noir which exercises the talents of Michel Audiard, whose sparkling dialogue is served with relish by Lino Ventura, Jean Lefebvre, Michel Constantin et Mireille Darc. (imdb)

Southern Morocco, 1963. The owner of a truck transports company hires a new driver (a self-called American tough guy) to transport mysterious goods in a brand new magnificent truck. While the established group of drivers of the company is welcoming the new driver, one of them hijack the mysterious truck on the day after, planning to negotiate the sale of goods for its own profit and fly over with his new young bride. The best driver of the company is launched to his young fellow's pursuit. (imdb)

A cold-war spy parody. After the death of an armaments manufacturer, an international group of spies is drawn into a high-stakes battle of wits to obtain the valuable military patents which have been inherited by the lovely widow. (imdb)

Ex-gangster Fernand (Lino Ventura) receives a call from a dying friend, a mob boss nicknamed "The Mexican". The doomed mobster talks Fernand into taking care of some criminal business and looking after his soon-to-be-married daughter. (imdb)

Released from prison apparently under a New Year amnesty, a criminal tries to pick up the threads of a life changed not only by his daring plan to rob a jewellers in out-of-season Cannes but by someone special he met there. (imdb)

In truth, there are two French Detectives in this European crime melodrama. Lino Ventura plays an aging, been-around gumshoe, while Patrick Dewaere is his young, callow and cynical associate. The two detectives don't like each other much at first, but this will change. Their current assignment: getting the goods on a corrupt politician. Occasionally more violent than it needs to be, The French Detective has the twin advantages of authenticity and sincerity. (allmovie.com)

Ralf Milan, a hitman, arrives in Montpellier to kill an important witness. He checks in a hotel without knowing that his neighbour has become neurotic after his wife left him. (imdb)

Police inspector Léonetti, a tough, efficient policeman, has been sent to a second-rate police station after being reprimanded. There he is given a partner, young and beautiful Jeanne Dumas. The duo are soon assigned a very difficult mission: to find a man whose evidence is instrumental in convicting a murderer. They start searching throughout Paris. (imdb)

Jean-Claude Roland and Lino Ventura play Nick and Laurent, a pair of not completely rehabilitated ex-convicts. The twosome is hired by Hector, a well-meaning, unworldly sawmill owner. At first refusing to take their lumberjacking jobs seriously, the larcenous parolees gradually realize that a whole new life has been offered them by the ingenuous owner. (allmovie.com)

Maigrets in the form of veteran tough guy Jean Gabin, who played the character three times throughout the 1950s. In Maigret Sets a Trap, the inspector tackles the case of a psychopathic serial killer. The female victims have all been stripped and stabbed but none of the women was raped. Putting two and two together, Maigret determines that the killer was motivated by rage and frustration rather than sex. Maigret Sets a Trap avoids sensationalism in favor of slow-building suspense. (allmovie.com)

Henri, the Man from Nantes, comes back to his country after a successful stay in the United States, where he was working for Liski, the drug dealer. With the fame of being a tough guy preceding him, he sets himself to the task of knowing why the French operations were not so profitable - and soon he is master of all links of the organization. He can now get it honed to perfection - or destroy it. Only... the Police is following his every step! (imdb)

In the prohibition years, the 'rumrunners' travel through the Caribbean Sea with the forbidden liquor barely escaping the ship patrols. While on the run, one of the bootleggers falls in love with an actress on a movie set. (imdb)

Sunday Lovers is a fitfully amusing study of weekend romantic techniques as practiced in four different cultures. Each episode was filmed by a separate unit in the country where the story was set. "The French Method" (directed by Eduoard Molinaro) finds a businessman (Lino Ventura) trying to secure an important contract through the sexual allure of his secretary... (allmovie.com)

A series of sketches depicting the consequences of breaking one or more of the ten commandments.

15 years after WWII ten members of the underground reunite to expose a traitor among them.

Father Charlie (Lino Venturi) is an ex-con who has been granted an exemption from canon law to become a priest. When a friend of his gets into trouble which looks suspiciously like a frame-up, Father Charlie decides to investigate, with or without the blessing of his bishop. His friend Lee Stevens (Isaac Hayes) is looking for the real culprit as well, and Father Charlie and Lee soon join forces. (allmovie.com)

Who is Anton Haliakov, who has just been abducted by the M.I.5 in London? A Soviet scientist apparently. But sixteen years before the man had another identity, Clément Tibère, and another nationality, French. So what led him to become Russian and to change identity? And why are the British secret services interested in him? (imdb)

Aldo has worked in a gold mine in Canada. A pay day, a band of robbers attack the mine and exterminate all minors except for Aldo and two Indians. Aldo gets rid of his cronies and goes canoeing on the river... (Allociné)

Lino Ventura stars as Bastien Grimaldi, a man driven to heightened anxiety as the plot against him begins to take effect. Bastien's personal relationships give him enough cause for anxiety -- between his new lover Laura and a feisty mother, life provides its own insecurities. When he goes to the police with his problems, Bastien is assigned an off-beat inspector to protect him but is still faced with skepticism about his dilemma. (Allmovie)

The story of Jean Valjean, a Frenchman convicted of minor crimes, who is hounded for years by an unforgiving and unrelenting police inspector, Javert.

Geography professor Jean has divorced his wife.His mistress has also left him.He has to do everything he can to be able to win his young daughter Isabelle's love and affection. (imdb)

A garage owner (Jean Gabin) maintains his business as a front for his gang of criminals.

The film tells the story of Jacques Cournot, captain for hire in the Caribbean, who finds himself implicated in the theft of a boat used by gun runners, boat belonging to a beautiful widow...

A powerful and mysterious voice from the skies of Naples announces the coming of Doomsday and the characters amongst the citizens react and prepare themselves for the end.

Pascal scrapes a modest living selling newspapers in the streets of Paris. Although a little rough around the edges, he has a good heart, so that when he sees a man jump into the Seine, he does not hesitate to come to his aid. (filmaffinity.com)

Chronicles a Mossad team hand picked to hunt down the terrorists involved in the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes. (imdb)

Mystery film about a man who finds there is another world to the one we know. (imdb)

A French secret agent gets a license to kill when he is sent to Vienna to plug a security leak in this routine spy saga. He is caught in the crossfire of international enemy agents trying to eliminate the French. (imdb)

Three little criminals get a tip for a great coup with lots of money in it. Unfortunately they lack the starting funds to buy the required welding torch. So they persuade their successful colleague Alphonse to join their team. But the well thought-out coup fails, and Alphonse is the only one of them who ends up in jail for several years. When he's released, he's out for revenge. (imdb)

Sébastien Grenier,a secret agent eliminates all his rivals in order to decipher who has killed some of his associates. (imdb)

Géo Paquet, aka The Gorilla, breaks from jail. Now an escaped convict, the elite agent must infiltrate a dangerous gang working for a foreign embassy as their leader, a spy enjoying diplomatic immunity, can't be arrested by regular police.

The story of eighteen-year old Agathe (Agathe Aëms) with a firm independence of men even if she uses them to get to the côte d'azur.

Sagamore Noonan lives secluded on a farm in Alabama where he distills whisky clandestinely. He was visited by his brother Doc Noonan and his son Billy. A young stripper, whose bikini contains her adornment of diamonds, and her companion gangster come to disturb their tranquility.

Industrialist Pierre Verdier kills his mistress Jeanne Ancelin by throwing her off a train. Her husband, Ancelin, decides to take revenge on his wife's murderer, who has been acquitted by justice. He waits for him in his house and hangs him. He leaves the place unseen, at least this is what he thinks. But unfortunately for him, Lambert, a taxi driver has witnessed him. Ancelin has no option but to get rid of him... (imdb)

Divorced for years, Julian and Helen meet to conclude the sale of the country house they still own together. Helen, still in love with her ex-husband, imprisons him in a large cage in the basement.

Paris, 1938. In a lavishly decorated nightclub, couples dance the syncopated rhythms of Latin America: Rumba, Cucaracha, Tango, and also the Charleston, Foxtrot and Boston. Among beautiful women, local pimps and Mussolini's spies brush each other on the dance floor, and in the streets. A police inspector is charged with a difficult task, to clean-up the city streets - just when bodies start falling around, as the Mafia and the spies tend each other deadly traps. (imdb)

Crime and Punishment is Dostoyevsky's story about the Nietzchean student Raskolnikov, played in this 1958 French film version by Bernard Bleier. Raskolnikov believes himself above such bourgeois concepts as morality and conscience, which leads to his murder of a hateful old woman. A perceptive police inspector (Jean Gabin) wears down Raskolnikov's sociopathic tendencies, until the student--who has a conscience after all--breaks down and confesses. (allmovie.com)

Romain (Lino Ventura) lost his wife in a forest fire, and his son, who blamed him for the death, left France for Canada. Romain is called to Canada to identify the corpse of a murder victim believed to his son. When the murdered man turns out to be someone else, his son automatically becomes the chief suspect in the murder. (allmovie.com)

Professor Johansson has made a huge scientific breakthrough; a device that will create a huge magnetic pulse that knocks out all electricity over a continent-wide area. The military applications are already being thought of when Dr. Johansson is kidnapped by a group of profit-seeking mercenaries. Meanwhile, his daughter, Karin, finds herself having to consort with all manner of shady characters as she searches for her father. (imdb)

Former agent of the Second Bureau, Paul Lamiani (Lino Ventura) has become an honest father, a restaurant boss. One day, the DST called him and asked him to reconnect with a man named Raymond (Paul Frankeur), a mobster who was involved in trafficking in documents affecting National Defense.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, assassinations in Sicily get the attention of Communist deputy, Pio La Torre, who appeals to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa to become prefect in Palermo and take on the Mafia. Dalla Chiesa approaches the job with the same focus and methods he used in hunting down the Red Brigade. His sweetheart, the much-younger Setti Carraro (everyone calls her Emanuela), wants to be with him in Palermo, but he sends her away, knowing he is in danger. (imdb)

A romantic drama partially set in Amsterdam, this standard tale starts out in a mining area in Holland where conditions are about as rough as they get. Two of the miners, Italians Federico (Lino Ventura) and Vincenzo (Bernard Fresson) take off together for the city's red-light district, where the women pose in windows for prospective customers. There the duo meet Else (Marina Vlady) and Carrel (Magali Noel) who are willing to leave their windows to spend a weekend at a resort with the two men.

Despite the German occupation of Paris, 17-year-old Antoine Michaud (Alain Delon) is having the time of his life. In this atmosphere of chaos and oppression, Michaud is in the midst of a torrid affair with Yvette Grandmaison (Françoise Arnoul), a woman old enough to be his mother. The teenager struggles to hide his true motivations from his father.

Three criminals escape from a French prison and hide in a coastal village where they have to wait for 12 hours until the boat that is supposed to take them to freedom arrives. (imdb)

José María "El Tempranillo" fleeing from justice, takes refuge in Sierra Morena. After a period of hard learning, he becomes the leader of a group of bandits.

Gangster film centering on gun runners. (imdb)

Vera Cruz, 1938. "Le Rital", a tough French hit man, agrees to serve Mexican revolutionaries who want to replace the current President by Chico, an insecure young bourgeois that they intend to manipulate. The killing of the President is to take place in a small town whose "great lady", Camito, is an alluring former thespian and the despot's mistress.