1.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
Film director
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A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. Generally, a film director controls a films artistic and dramatic aspects, the director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking. Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film, the film director gives direction to the cast and crew and creates an overall vision through which a film eventually becomes realized, or noticed. Directors need to be able to mediate differences in creative visions, there are many pathways to becoming a film director. Some film directors started as screenwriters, cinematographers, film editors or actors, other film directors have attended a film school. Some outline a general plotline and let the actors dialogue, while others control every aspect. Some directors also write their own screenplays or collaborate on screenplays with long-standing writing partners, some directors edit or appear in their films, or compose the music score for their films. Film directors create a vision through which a film eventually becomes realized/noticed. Realizing this vision includes overseeing the artistic and technical elements of production, as well as directing the shooting timetable. This entails organizing the crew in such a way as to achieve their vision of the film. This requires skills of leadership, as well as the ability to maintain a singular focus even in the stressful. Moreover, it is necessary to have an eye to frame shots and to give precise feedback to cast and crew, thus. Thus the director ensures that all involved in the film production are working towards an identical vision for the completed film. The set of varying challenges he or she has to tackle has been described as a jigsaw puzzle with egos. It adds to the pressure that the success of a film can influence when, omnipresent are the boundaries of the films budget. Additionally, the director may also have to ensure an intended age rating, thus, the position of film director is widely considered to be a highly stressful and demanding one. It has been said that 20-hour days are not unusual, under European Union law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory. Auteur theory is a film criticism concept that holds that a directors film reflects the directors personal creative vision
3.
Jean-Paul Belmondo
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Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s and one of the biggest French film stars of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His best known credits include Breathless and That Man from Rio, Belmondo was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris. Belmondos father, Paul Belmondo, was a Pied-Noir sculptor who was born in Algeria of Italian descent, whose parents were of Sicilian, as a boy he was more interested in sport than school, developing a particular interest in boxing and soccer. Belmondo made his boxing debut on 10 May 1949 in Paris when he knocked out Rene DesMarais in one round. Belmondos boxing career was undefeated, but brief and he won three straight first round knockout victories from 1949 to 1950. I stopped when the face I saw in the begin to change. As part of his military service, he served in Algeria as a private for six months. His last teenage years were spent at a drama school. He studied under Raymond Giraud then when to the Conservatoire of Dramatic Arts when he was twenty and he studied there for three years. The incident did make front page news, Belmondos acting career properly began in 1953, with two performances at Theatre deAtelier in Paris, Jean Anouilhs Medee and Georges Neveuxs Zamore. Belmondo began touring the provinces with friends including Annie Girardot and Guy Bedos, Belmondo first appeared in the short Moliere. Belmondo had a role in the comedy Be Beautiful But Shut Up, followed by a role as a gangster in Young Sinners. Jean Luc Godard directed him in a short, Charlotte and Her Boyfriend and he supported Bourvil and Arletty in Sunday Encounter. Belmondos first lead role was in Les copains du dimanche and he had a supporting part in An Angel on Wheels with Romy Schneider then appeared in Web of Passion for Claude Chabrol. He played Dartgnan in The Three Musketeers for French television, around this time he had a notable success on stage in Oscar in Paris which led to being offered the leads in star parts. The first of these was Consider All Risks, a story with Lino Ventura. The second was in Jean-Luc Godards Breathless, which him a major figure in the French New Wave. In the words of the New York Times it led to his having more acting assignments than he can handle and he followed it with Trapped by Fear, then the Italian film Letters By a Novice
4.
Annie Girardot
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Annie Girardot was a three-time César Award winning French actress. She often played strong-willed, independent, hard-working, and often women, imbuing her characters with an earthiness. Over the course of a career, she starred in nearly 150 films. In 1955, she began her career, making her film debut in Treize à table. Her performance in Jean Cocteaus play La Machine à écrire in 1956 was admired by the author who called her The finest dramatic temperament of the Postwar period, in 1958, Luchino Visconti directed her opposite Jean Marais in a French stage adaptation of William Gibsons Two for the Seesaw. In 1962, she married Italian actor Renato Salvatori, in 1968, she also starred in the cult anti-consumerism French film Erotissimo. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe, and remains Girardots biggest box office hit in France and she Talks or Philippe de Brocas Dear Detective. In 1974, she starred in the hit teen movie, La Gifle, as Isabelle Adjanis mother. In 1972, she said in an interview to The New York Times, citing as Exhibit A her role as a freak in The Ape Woman. I believe that the acting of any role — from duchess to kitchen slavey — must be a form of transformation, in 1977, she won her first César Award for Best Actress portraying the title character in the drama Docteur Françoise Gailland. Throughout the 1970s, she was the highest paid actress in France, indeed, between the release of Live for Life in 1967 and Jupiters Thigh in 1980,24 of her films have attracted more than one million admissions in France. In her 1989 autobiography, Vivre daimer, she wrote of her popularity that People didnt come to watch a beautiful, vamp-like creature, I played a judge, a lawyer, a taxi driver, a cop, a surgeon. I was never a glamorous star, the 1980s were less kind, as her career floundered and parts dwindled. In 1983, she lost a fortune when Revue Et Corrigée and she subsequently battled depression, but bounced back with several television series in France and Italy. However, Girardot had a comeback on the big screen playing a peasant wife in Claude Lelouchs Les Misérables. The role won her a second César Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1996, upon accepting the award, a joyous and tearful Girardot expressed her happiness that she had not been forgotten by the film industry in a speech that remained very famous. In 1992, she was the Head of the Jury at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival, in 2002, she was awarded the César Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Piano Teacher. She collaborated with director Michael Haneke again, in Caché, on stage she had a triumph in 1974 with Madame Marguerite, which became her signature role that she reprised on numerous occasions until 2002
5.
Sophie Marceau
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Sophie Marceau is a French actress, director, screenwriter, and author. As a teenager, Marceau achieved popularity with her debut films La Boum and La Boum 2 and she became a film star in Europe with a string of successful films, including LÉtudiante, Pacific Palisades, Fanfan, and Revenge of the Musketeers. Marceau became a film star with her performances in Braveheart, Firelight. Marceau was born 17 November 1966 in Paris, the child of Simone, a shop assistant, and Benoît Maupu. Her parents divorced when she was nine years old, in February 1980, Marceau and her mother came across a model agency looking for teenagers. Marceau had photos taken at the agency, but did not think anything would come of it, at the same time, Françoise Menidrey, the casting director for Claude Pinoteaus La Boum, asked modeling agencies to recommend a new teenager for the project. After viewing the rushes, Alain Poiré, the director of the Gaumont Film Company, La Boum was a hit movie, not only in France, where 4,378,500 tickets were sold, but also in several other European countries. In 1981, Marceau made her debut with French singer François Valéry on record Dream in Blue. In 1982, at age 15, Marceau bought back her contract with Gaumont for one million French francs and she borrowed most of the money. In 1988, she starred in LÉtudiante and the adventure film Chouans. That year, Marceau was named Best Romantic Actress at the International Festival of Romantic Movies for her role in Chouans, in 1989, Marceau starred in My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days, which was directed by her long-time boyfriend Andrzej Zulawski. In 1990, she starred in Pacific Palisades and La note bleue, in 1991, she ventured into the theater in Eurydice, which earned Marceau the Moliere Award for Best Female Newcomer. Throughout the 1990s, Marceau began making films, such as the comedy Fanfan in 1993 and Revenge of the Musketeers in 1994—both popular in Europe. That year, she returned to the theatre as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, Marceau achieved international recognition in 1995 playing the role of Princess Isabelle in Mel Gibsons Braveheart. That year, she was part of an ensemble of actors in the French film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders. In 1999, she played Hippolyta in A Midsummer Nights Dream, in 2008, Marceau played a member of the French Resistance movement in Female Agents, and a struggling single mother in LOL. In 2009, she teamed up with Monica Bellucci in Dont Look Back about the connection between two women who have never met. In 2010, Marceau played a business executive forced to confront her unhappy childhood in With Love
6.
Neuilly-sur-Seine
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Neuilly-sur-Seine is a French commune just west of Paris, in the department of Hauts-de-Seine. A suburb of Paris, Neuilly is immediately adjacent to the city, the area is composed of mostly wealthy, select residential neighbourhoods, and many corporate headquarters are located there. Originally, Neuilly was a hamlet under the jurisdiction of Villiers. In 1224 another charter of Saint-Denis recorded the name as Lugniacum, in a sales contract dated 1266 the name was also recorded as Luingni. In 1316, however, in a ruling of the parlement of Paris, the name was recorded as Nully, in a document dated 1376 the name was again recorded as Nulliacum. Then in the centuries the name recorded alternated between Luny and Nully, and it is only after 1648 that the name was definitely set as Nully. The name spelt Neuilly after the French Academy standard of pronunciation of the ill as a y, various explanations and etymologies have been proposed to explain these discrepancies in the names of Neuilly recorded over the centuries. The original name of Neuilly may have been Lulliacum or Lugniacum, some interpret Lulliacum or Lugniacum as meaning estate of Lullius, probably a Gallo-Roman landowner. This interpretation is based on the many placenames of France made up of the names of Gallo-Roman landowners and these researchers contend that it is only after the fall of the Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions that the area of Neuilly was deforested and settled. Thus, they think that the name Lulliacum or Lugniacum comes from the ancient Germanic word lund meaning forest, akin to Old Norse lundr meaning grove, however, this interesting theory fails to explain why the d of lund is missing in Lulliacum or Lugniacum. Or perhaps the consonants were simply inverted under the influence of the settlements of France called Neuilly. On 1 January 1860, the city of Paris was enlarged by annexing neighbouring communes, on that occasion, a part of the territory of Neuilly-sur-Seine was annexed by the city of Paris, and forms now the neighbourhood of Ternes, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. On 11 January 1867, part of the territory of Neuilly-sur-Seine was detached and merged with a part of the territory of Clichy to create the commune of Levallois-Perret. On 2 May 1897, the name officially became Neuilly-sur-Seine. However, most people continue to refer to Neuilly-sur-Seine as simply Neuilly, during the 1900 Summer Olympics, it hosted the basque pelota events. The American Hospital of Paris was founded in 1906, in 1919, the Treaty of Neuilly was signed with Bulgaria in Neuilly-sur-Seine to conclude its role in World War I. In 1929, the Bois de Boulogne, which was divided between the communes of Neuilly-sur-Seine and Boulogne-Billancourt, was annexed in its entirety by the city of Paris. It was the site of the Château de Neuilly, an important royal residence during the July Monarchy, Neuilly-sur-Seine is served by three stations on Paris Métro Line 1, Porte Maillot, Les Sablons and Pont de Neuilly
7.
Marthe Keller
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Marthe Keller is a Swiss actress and opera director. Marthe studied ballet as a child, but stopped after an accident at age 16. She changed to acting, and worked in Berlin at the Schiller Theatre, kellers earliest film appearances were in Funeral in Berlin and the German film Wilder Reiter GmbH. She appeared in a series of French films in the 1970s, including Un cave, La raison du plus fou and she also acted alongside William Holden in Billy Wilders 1978 romantic drama Fedora. After 1978, Keller worked more steadily in European cinema compared to American movies and her later films include Dark Eyes, with Marcello Mastroianni. In April 2016, she was announced as the President of the Jury for the Un Certain Regard section of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and she was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress for this performance. In addition to her work in film and theatre, Keller has developed a career in music as a speaker. She has performed the role of Joan of Arc in Arthur Honeggers oratorio Jeanne dArc au Bûcher on several occasions, with conductors such as Seiji Ozawa. She has recorded the role for Deutsche Grammophon with Ozawa, Keller has also recited the spoken part in Igor Stravinskys Perséphone. She has performed classical music melodramas for speaker and piano in recital, the Swiss composer Michael Jarrell wrote the melodrama Cassandre, after the novel of Christa Wolf, for Keller, who gave the world premiere in 1994. Kellers first production as a director was Dialogues des Carmélites. This production subsequently received a performance in London that year. She has also directed Lucia di Lammermoor for Washington National Opera and her directorial debut at the Metropolitan Opera was in a 2004 production of Don Giovanni. Keller has one son, Alexandre, from her relationship with director Philippe de Broca, Marthe Keller at the Internet Movie Database Yahoo. Movies biography of Marthe Keller Marthe Keller at AllMovie
8.
Claude Chabrol
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Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Chabrols career began with Le Beau Serge, inspired by Hitchcocks Shadow of a Doubt, thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches, La Femme infidèle, and Le Boucher – all featuring Stéphane Audran, sometimes characterized as a mainstream New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career. In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière, on the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary and La Cérémonie. Some of his films become almost private jokes, made to amuse himself. Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was born on 24 June 1930 to Yves Chabrol and Madeleine Delarbre in Sardent, France, Chabrol said that he always thought of himself as a country person, and never as a Parisian. Both Chabrols father and grandfather had been pharmacists, and Chabrol was expected to follow in the family business, but as a child, Chabrol was seized by the demon of cinema and ran a film club in a barn in Sardent between the ages of 12 and 14. At this time, he developed his passion for the genre, detective stories. After World War II, Chabrol moved to Paris to study pharmacology and literature at the Sorbonne, Some biographies also state that he briefly studied law and political science at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. After graduating, Chabrol served his military service in the French Medical Corps, serving in Germany. Chabrol has claimed that while in the army he worked as a film projectionist, after he was discharged from the army, he joined his friends as a staff writer for Cahiers du Cinéma, who were challenging then-contemporary French films and championing the concept of Auteur theory. He also wrote for Arts magazine during this period, among Chabrols most famous articles were Little Themes, a study of genre films, and The Evolution of Detective Films. In 1956 he helped finance Jacques Rivettes short film Le coup du berger, unlike all of his future New Wave contemporaries, Chabrol never made short film nor did he work as an assistant on other directors work before making his feature film debut. In 1957 Chabrol and Eric Rohmer co-wrote Hitchcock, a study of the films made by director Alfred Hitchcock through the film The Wrong Man. Chabrol had interviewed Hitchcock with François Truffaut in 1954 on the set of To Catch a Thief, years later, when Chabrol and Truffaut had both become successful directors themselves, Hitchcock told Truffaut that he always thought of them when he saw ice cubes in a glass of whiskey. The most prolific of the major New Wave directors, Chabrol averaged almost one film a year from 1958 until his death. In the mid-sixties it was difficult for Chabrol to obtain financing for films so he made a series of commercial potboilers and spy spoofs, Chabrol had married Agnès Goute in 1952 and in 1957 his wife inherited a large sum of money from relatives. In December of that year Chabrol used the money to make his directorial debut with Le Beau Serge. Chabrol spent three months shooting in his hometown of Sardent using a crew and little known actors
9.
The 400 Blows
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The 400 Blows is a 1959 French drama film, the debut by director François Truffaut, it stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of the films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel, filmed on location in Paris and Honfleur, it is the first in a series of five films in which Léaud plays the semi-autobiographical character. The 400 Blows received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, the film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing in 1960. The 400 Blows had a total of 4,092,970 admissions in France, making it Truffauts most successful film in his home country. The 400 Blows is widely considered one of the best French films in the history of cinema, in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics poll of the greatest films ever made, Antoine Doinel is a young boy growing up in Paris during the 1950s. Misunderstood by his parents for playing truant from school and stealing, the boy finally quits school after being caught plagiarizing Balzac by his teacher. He steals a typewriter from his stepfathers work place to finance his plans to leave home, the stepfather turns Antoine over to the police and Antoine spends the night in jail, sharing a cell with prostitutes and thieves. During an interview with the judge, Antoine’s mother confesses that her husband is not Antoine’s biological father, Antoine is placed in an observation center for troubled youths near the seashore. A psychologist at the center probes reasons for Antoines unhappiness, which the youth reveals in a series of monologues. One day, while playing football with the boys, Antoine escapes under a fence and runs away to the ocean. He reaches the shoreline of the sea and runs into it, the film concludes with a freeze-frame of Antoine, and the camera optically zooms in on his face, looking into the camera. The English title is a translation of the French but misses its meaning, as the French title refers to the idiom faire les quatre cents coups. On the first prints in the United States, subtitler and dubber Noelle Gillmor gave the film the title Wild Oats, before seeing it, some people thought the film covered the topic of corporal punishment. The semi-autobiographical film reflects events of Truffauts and his friends lives, in style, it expresses Truffauts personal history of French film, with references to other works—most notably a scene borrowed wholesale from Jean Vigos Zéro de conduite. Truffaut dedicated the film to the man who became his father, André Bazin. Besides being a study, the film is an exposé of the injustices of the treatment of juvenile offenders in France at the time. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 32nd Academy Awards, the film holds a very rare 100% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews
