Acting
Jo Dest is known for The Wages of Fear (1953), The Damned (1947) and Flesh and the Woman (1954).
In a run-down South American town, four men are paid to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin into the jungle through to the oil field. Friendships are tested and rivalries develop as they embark upon the perilous journey.
Stuck in a loveless marriage, bourgeois industrialist Francois falls in love with Janine, another man's wife. Francois sets up Janine as his mistress, and she, mercenary soul that she is, likes the set-up so much that she continues the relationship even when her own husband returns from WW II. In the long run, however, Janine is the loser in the situation.
June 1944, a French town towards the end of the occupation. Following several attacks perpetrated by the resistance, the inhabitants who listen to English radio are rounded up by the Germans in a prison and considered as hostages. In one of the cells are found men from all walks of life: an aristocrat, the Viscount of Saint-Leu, Doctor Noblet, a resistance fighter, Béquille the wanderer with a wooden leg, and a strange character nicknamed "Black Market". The latter arouses mistrust among the prisoners, because it could well have been introduced by the enemy.
An Alsatian, head of a section of the Gestapo, is actually spying on behalf of the French and dismantling a Nazi network. His activities are brought to light by the Germans and he owes his life only to the intervention of a young woman.
Commander Gerard and his band of guerrillas have found the ideal hideout: a nursing home in the Alps where, along with the mentally ill, are also hiding a Jewish girl and a Swiss doctor who might be a spy for the Germans ...
This character study of a French patriot during the Nazi Occupation has comedian Noel as the chief of the underground who uses his hobby of growing orchids to hide his radio equipment.
Film in two eras.1st era: They are not angels. Chronicle of a Free French parachute training camp during the Second World War. 2nd era: Terre de France. A group of paratroopers landed in Brittany sabotages the German installations.
The story of the Swiss soldier, Henri Dunant, who was responsible for the founding of the Red Cross, and who was offered the first Nobel Peace Prize.
In order for important British admiralty papers to pass into the hands of the Germans, the spy Gordon has the ingenious idea of transforming a lamentable drunkard into a Lady, haughty but submissive to his orders. Stella's transformation is complete, the success extraordinary. Why must a French officer touching the heart of the former pochard bring down the fragile edifice? A submarine is about to blow up, Gordon is shot down and a confessed Stella returns to her horrible taverns to drown her sorrows in alcohol for good.
1944, France experiences its last days of German occupation. A microcosm representative of the various attitudes adopted during this troubled period, some heroic, others less brilliant, the Grégeois family, scattered by the war, will strengthen its ties according to the Allied advance on the territory and the liberation of Paris, with its joys but also its sorrows, because not all of its members will survive the relative chaos that will characterize this end of the world war.