monsieurk's - Rented List

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'Pather Panchali' tells the story of a family living in the grip of poverty in a small Bengali village, focusing on the experiences of a young boy, Apu (Subir Banerjee), and paying careful attention to a series of ordinary events: Apu's father sets off to the city in search of work, leaving his

wife to take care of the children and an elderly aunt; a frugal meal is prepared; rains flatten the landscape; a train passes by; someone dies.

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Stephane Audran plays a lonely schoolteacher who develops an inexplicable draw toward an ex-army butcher who may or may not be a serial killer plaguing a small town.

Drawing on Hitchcockian themes of exchanged guilt and shared secrets, Chabrol constructs an extraordinary relationship between the two characters that marries unspoken self-awareness with constant suspense over the unresolved nature of their bond.

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A young man Joseph (Jan Nowicki) visits his dying father Jakob (Tadeusz Kondrat) in a mysterious Polish sanatorium. Joseph realises time does not exist in its real form inside. He soon finds himself in a web which express the longings, and frustrations of his childhood.

The film contains crazed scenes of Jews dancing together and many of the residents are dressed as giant birds. Schulz the writer was seen as the Polish Kafka, he was killed by the SS in the War.

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On a Provencal farm, a protective and devoted mother (Dominique Reymond) raises her seven illegitimate children. Their father is the farm's owner (Daniel Duval), an authoritarian egotist who treats the family as his personal property to be used as cheap labour.

Unable to leave, it is only the mother's love for her children and unwavering strength that prevent the family from falling apart.

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Max (Jean Gabin) and Riton (Rene Dary) are two ageing gangsters who manage to pull off their final heist, a spectacular gold bullion robbery at Orly airport. All is well until Max's former girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau) tips off a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura).

The latter kidnaps Riton and threatens to kill him unless Max hands over the spoils from his robbery...

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"My Golden Days" is a semi-autobiographical prequel to Desplechin's My Sex Life...Or How I Got into an Argument. Paul Dedalus looks back on his early years with newcomer Quentin Dolmaire as Paul the adolescent.

He (Mathieu Amalric) remembers a trip to the USSR, where a clandestine mission led him to offer up his own identity to a young Russian, whom he considers a phantom twin for the remainder of his life. He remembers himself at nineteen in Roubaix, his sister Delphine (Ivy Dodds), his cousin Bob (Theo Fernandez), the parties with Penelope (Clemence Le Gall), Mehdi (Yassine Douighi) and Kovalki (Pierre Andrau), the friend who was to betray him. He remembers University life in Paris, but most of all, he remembers Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a beautiful, rude, haughty soul and the love of his life.

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Based on a novel by George Bernanos, 'Diary of a Country Priest' marked the first in Director Robert Bresson's so-called "prison trilogy" (followed by 'Pickpocket' and 'A Man Escaped').

The film begins with the arrival of a young, sickly priest (Claude Laydu) at the godless parish of Ambricourt in Northern France. Here he becomes drawn into the complex domestic life of a wealthy Count (Jean Riveyre), his tormented wife, his manipulative daughter and his mistress, Miss Louise (Nicole Maurey). Narrated by excerpts of the priest's diary, the film follows his efforts to awaken the villagers from their spiritual lethargy, with their struggles, suffering and triumphs representing in a microcosm those of humankind itself. Bresson's intensely personal style, minimalist approach to dialogue and music, and use of non-professional actors marked a new kind of filmmaking, which was to influence such diverse directors as Paul Schrader, Richard Linklater and Andrei Tarkovsky.

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Jane Magnusson's documentary centres on 1957, a turbulent but miraculously productive year when Bergman, besides unveiling The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries and working extensively in theatre and TV, led a messily complicated domestic life.

This is the springboard for a survey that spirals out to embrace everything from childhood to old age, touching on his many creative achievements, his strengths and failings as a man, and the way his art derived from his life. This release includes both the theatrical version of the film and the expanded, four-hour edition made for Swedish TV, 'Bergman: A Life in Four Acts', in which further illuminating anecdotes are offered by many who knew him - perhaps none, however, quite as revealing as Bergman's own testimony.

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A marriage that has fallen on hard times is further tested by the couple's implication in a murder. Jenny Lamour (Suzy Delair) is a music hall chanteuse married to her pianist husband Maurice (Bernard Blier).

Keen to get ahead, Jenny leaps at the chance when an ageing wealthy businessman (Charles Dullin) offers her the chance of some gigs. However, when she agrees to a meeting at his home and he is found dead later in the evening - Maurice's untamed jealousy is in the frame. A Maigret-esque detective, Antoine, played by Louis Jouvet leaves no stone unturned in his exceedingly private investigations of the down-at-heel showbiz couple's sad, tempestuous life. 'Quai des Orfevres' was Henri-Georges Clouzot's first film in four years. He had been banned from film making following the controversy surrounding the release Le Corbeau.

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In the hypothetical Latin-American country of Eldorado, the idealistic and anarchist poet and journalist Paulo Martins (Jardel Filho) fights against the populist governor, Felipe Vieira (Jose Lewgoy), and the conservative president Porfirio Diaz (Paulo Autran), supported by revolutionary forces.

Paulo is depressed, since the two corrupt politicians were his former friends and have been elected with his moral support-Paulo Martins opposes the two equally corrupt political candidates. Paulo is torn between the madness of the elite and the blind submission of the masses.

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Beautiful, troubled Dominique Marceau (Brigitte Bardot) came to bohemian Paris to escape the suffocation of provincial life, only to wind up in a courtroom, accused of a terrible crime: the murder of her lover (Sami Frey).

As the trial commences and the lawyers begin tangling over Dominique's fate, the Oscar-nominated 'La Vérité', directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique), delves into her past, reconstructing her struggle to find a foothold in the city. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of an impulsive young woman misunderstood and mistreated by those around her, and of her ultimately tragic affair with an up-and-coming conductor. With an astonishing performance by Bardot, Clouzot's affecting and intricately constructed film - a huge late-career success for the French master - renders a harsh verdict against a hypocritical and moralistic society.

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Inspired by the 2005 Paris riots, director Ladj Ly's Oscar-nominated 'Les Misérables' is an exhilarating "Molotov cocktail of a movie". Stephane (Damien Bonnard) has recently joined the Anti-Crime Squad police unit in the suburbs of Paris, where Victor Hugo set his famed novel 'Les Miserables'.

Alongside his new colleagues Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djebril Zonga), both experienced members of the team, he quickly discovers tensions are on the brink of exploding between local gangs. When the trio finds themselves overrun during the course of an arrest, a drone captures the encounter, threatening to expose the reality of everyday life.

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A young woman is questioned by a detective (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a repressed judge (Michael Lonsdale), a curious nun, a sexually-obsessed priest and her lawyer, all of whom suspect her of being a modern witch.

The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, bound to the posts of her bed, a pair of scissors impaled in her heart. Does the woman have the powers to make all around her fall prey to her spell, forcing them to slide progressively into desire, lust and, ultimately, the unknown?

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Winner of the 1952 Venice Film Festival silver lion award, Kenji Mizoguchi's tragic tale, set in the 17th Century, of a young noblewoman's fall from grace established his reputation as one of Japan's greatest directors.

Kinuyo Tanaka stars as O-Haru, a beautiful courtesan who surrenders to her passion for a commoner, played by Toshiro Mifune. As punishment, she and her parents are banished into exile where O-Haru desperately attempts to escape her past. A compelling and powerful critique of feudal Japan as seen through the eyes of a woman, 'The Life of O-Haru' portrays the human dramas and historical settings with unflinching realism and atmospheric detail, demonstrating Mizoguchi's complete mastery of the medium.

The story centers on Pedro da Silva, orphan in a boarding school: Father Dinis, a descendant of libertines; a countess maddened by her jealousy; a businessman who mysteriously made his fortune as a pirate, all searching for the true identity of our main character. The feature spans over two discs.