Jules Berry

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.

For Les étoiles ne meurent jamais, director/archivist Max De Vaucorbeil has assembled precious film clips of such Gallic greats as Louis Jouvet, Raimu, Harry Baur, Louis Salou and Marguerite Moreno. Francois Perier's narration links the various vignettes together. In its own way, Les Etoiles ne Maurent Jamais can be seen as a precursor to those now-ubiquitous "tributes" on such cable services as American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies.

A married industrialist maintains three mistresses. On the instructions of his wife, the tax inspector seizes the small notebook where he records his illegal dealings. After a stormy marital explanation, the industrialist decides to reduce his costs by getting rid of his mistresses and expresses the intention of returning to legality. But he realizes that everyone, even his wife, prefers the old situation, fraud and mistresses, thanks to which everyone found his little profit.

For the Marquis Barbezieux de Saint-Rosay, nobility is important. If anything can comfort her, it's her family tree. In order to erase any doubt he invites in his castle a cousin of his established in Scotland, whom he instructs to bring him his titles of nobility. A first person introduces himself, calling himself his cousin, but it's not him. Then one, then two, then three false cousins ​​appear in turn. Will the real Saint-Rosay of Scotland eventually present itself?

When he finds a package in the metro, given this period of restrictions, Mr. Truche thinks it may be a good deal, he takes it home but discovers a woman's head inside. A friend of Mr. Truche having just disappeared, the superintendent accuses her of having murdered her and discovers the head buried in his cellar. But the girlfriend, whom Mr. Truche loves platonically, returns from the countryside and at the same time we spot the assassin of the unknown woman.

The manager of a firm has a very unusual idea : asking his employees to pose as gangsters and to hold up a bank before returning the stolen money and pocketing the reward. But things do not go according to plan and the phony thieves get stolen in their turn. They have no other choice than turning into amateur detectives to be able to pay back the stolen dough.

The announcement of the future marriage of Franck Reno, the star singer, causes considerable excitement around the world.

A group of policemen look over three murder cases including a cutthroat that prays on young women, a madman that hid his deformed landlord's corpse in the floor, and a wine aficionado who buries his friend alive.

A circus daredevil is the next victim of a danger-seducing woman who tricks him into a potentially deadly stunt after he attempted to kill her.

Charles Vigne, a wealthy banker, frees Abdul, a good genius imprisoned in a vase. To thank him, Abdul grants his wish: to become a child again, while retaining the experience he has acquired. But the "disappearance" of the banker panics the financial markets and has disastrous consequences for the bank. Eventually, Charles Vigne will ask Abdul to give him back his real age.