This documentary is a testimony to the ambition to make ‘’a European film’’ that could compete against Hollywood. It is also an exceptional portrait of a director who was haunted by the game of chance, and coincidence.

Monsieur Hulot is almost a silent film: Jacques Tati prefers gestures and noise to words, which, similar to his contemporary Beckett, are reduced to a succession of incomprehensible vowel sounds.

Jacques Demy directs ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ in 1963. Portrait of a film : Geneviève and Guy fall in love in Cherbourg, in 1957. Guy is called to service in Algeria, leaving Geneviève behind, pregnant and broken-hearted. The film is the dream…

Billy Wilder films ‘Some Like It Hot’ in 1958. Portrait of a film: a movie that is at once a satire of the United States and its imitators, a burlesque parody, a thriller, a musical comedy filmed in black and white, an audacious look at the confusion…

David Lynch’s ‘Wild at Heart’ is released in 1990. Portrait of a film: two innocents share a passionate, sexual love adventure as they traverse a crazy world. It is Romeo and Juliet retold as a rock n’ roll road movie, a love forged in hell. It wins…

François Truffaut directs ‘Jules&Jim’ in1961. Portrait of a film: born from the enthusiastic discovery of an autobiographical novel written by Henri-Pierre Roché and love at first sight for the actress Jeanne Moreau, without whom the film would never…

Jean-Luc Godard directs “Contempt” in 1963. Portrait of a film: Brigitte Bardot, who is at the time one of cinema’s global icons, shares the lead in the film with Fritz Lang who plays himself, a creator of movies. The film blends two ruptures: that…

Marcel Carné’s ‘Children of Paradise’ is released in 1945. Portrait of a film: filmed during the Occupation, Marcel Carné draws out the filming so that it would be the first movie projected at the moment of Liberation. At its release, ‘Children of…

Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’ is released in 1946. Portrait of a film: after the fall of the Third Reich, the U.S. Secret Service, in order to prevent terrorist attacks, infiltrates the web of Nazi expatriates in South America. Hitchcock encrusts a…

Gérard Oury directs ‘The Mad Adventures of ‘Rabbi’ Jacob’ in 1973. Portrait of a film: Louis de Funès, in his usual role - an authoritarian who terrorizes those around him - a role enhanced by racism and anti-semitism, is forced to conspire with an…