Peter Glenville

Behind the scenes short documentary about the cast and crew during the filming of The Comedians.

"Lionpower from MGM" (1967) is an exciting 60's promotional short subject, which showcases MGM's releases for the 1967-68 film season under a "five seasons" theme--fall, winter, spring, summer--plus a "fabulous fifth season". The main music is set to the rousing theme from "The Magnificent Yankee" composed by David Raksin in 1950. The promo is narrated by some of the best voice-over actors of the time, and is an excellent time capsule of a by-gone era.

Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block and he needs a new play, so he takes an opportunity to observe his upper class neighbors of 1900 Paris. There is Monsieur Boniface with hard domineering wife Angelique; also, Monsieur Cotte with beautiful but neglected wife Marcelle. Henri Cotte traces architectural anomalies (mostly "ghost" sounds in the drain pipes) and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso, which happens to be the chosen romantic rendezvous spot of Marcelle and Monsieur Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this is under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.

Sent to a home for "problem" girls, incipient juvenile delinquent Gwen receives a crash course in petty crime. Back on the outside, she falls in with the usual bad crowd, and suffers spectacularly as a result.

In the early part of this century, Maddelena a teenage Italian girl, is attacked whilst walking in the woods. The attack leaves her mentally scarred and our story flashes forward to the 1940s where Maddelena is still troubled. She disappears one day and her daughter vows to find her.

A country girl goes to Paris to sing professionally, where she falls in love with a member of the British Embassy. They are parted by the outbreak of the Second World War, but subsequently reunited again...

During the Nazi occupation of Belgium during World War II, a Belgian resistance group revives the newspaper "La Libre Belgique" to expose and counter Nazi propaganda efforts to deceive the people. They are so effective that the Nazis offer a reward for the capture of the paper's staff, although they don't know their identities. One of them is a well-known entertainer, and when his jealous partner hears of the reward, he turns him in. The paper's publishers escape capture, but their staff doesn't. The paper's founders must find not only a way to keep from getting captured by the Nazis but keep their newspaper going and get their staff released.

Robert Maine is torn between returning to the glamour of Hollywood and working with a small theatre company in England.

“A successful human target act of two brothers is sorely tried by the efforts of a gold digging blues singer to split them up.” - BFI.