Movies by Michel Piccoli

Belle de Jour
Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

La Grande Bouffe
Four friends gather at a villa with the intention of eating themselves to death.

Contempt
A philistine in the art film business, Jeremy Prokosch is a producer unhappy with the work of his director. Prokosch has hired Fritz Lang to direct an adaptation of "The Odyssey," but when it seems that the legendary filmmaker is making a picture destined to bomb at the box office, he brings in a screenwriter to energize the script. The professional intersects with the personal when a rift develops between the writer and his wife.

La Belle Noiseuse
The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.

The Things of Life
The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…

Holy Motors
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.

A Room in Town
Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.

The Dinosaur and the Baby
An hour-long discussion between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard in which they discuss a variety of art forms, the role of the cinema, their collaboration together, and much more. (Filmed in 1964 but released for TV in 1967.)

Scénario du film Passion
Godard constructs a lyrical study of the cinematic and creative process by deconstructing the story of his 1982 film Passion. “I didn’t want to write the script,” he states, “I wanted to see it.” Positioning himself in a video editing suite in front of a white film screen that evokes for him the “famous blank page of Mallarmé,” Godard uses video as a sketchbook with which to reconceive the film. The result is a philosophical, often humorous rumination on the desire and labor that inform the conceptual and image making process of the cinema.

Spoiled Children
Successful writer/director Bernard Rougerie is at a creative dead end and decides to isolate himself from his wife in order to complete the script for his next film. Bernard moves into an apartment building whose tenants are in the midst of a revolt against their abusive landlord. Reluctant at first, he joins their cause and then becomes involved in an affair with young, unemployed resident Anne.

The War Is Over
Diego is one of the chiefs of the Spanish Communist Party. On his way from Madrid to Paris, he is arrested at the border for an ID check but manages to get free. When he arrives in Paris, he starts searching for one of his comrade to prevent him from going to Madrid where he could be arrested.

Invasion
A professor and his wife suffer humiliation at the hands of an invading college dissidents protest.

Themroc
Themroc, a bachelor house painter living at home with his mother, leads a sad and colorless life. One day, after a run-in with his boss, he rebels. He wrecks his apartment, rejects every facet of bourgeois life, and begins acting like an urban, modern-day Neanderthal.

Far West
This Belgian/French tale chronicles the efforts of Jacques (Jacques Brel) to find the Old West in modern America. Dressed as cowboy, he travels throughout western American cities and towns and finds others similarly dressed. These idealists gather together and build an old-western-style town in the middle of an abandoned factory, battling local bureaucracies in the process.
Le Temps des assassins

Salut les Cubains
A photo montage of Cubans filmed by Agnès Varda during her visit to Cuba in 1963, four years after Fidel Castro came to power. This black & white documentary explores their socialist culture and society while making use of 1500 pictures (out of 4000!) the filmmaker took while on the island.

Don't Touch the White Woman!
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.

The Creatures
After a road accident, a writer, Edgar, and his wife, Mylène, take up residence on an island off the coast of France to recuperate. Edgar soon recovers from his injuries and begins writing his next novel, seeking inspiration from the local people. His wife, however, has lost her voice and can only communicate through written notes. The islanders grow suspicious of the reclusive couple, their unease soon turning to aggression. Edgar is equally anxious about his neighbors, particularly a solitary widower, Ducasse, who has taken charge of a lar...

Danger: Diabolik
International man of mystery Diabolik and his sensuous lover Eva Kant pull off heist after heist, all while European cops led by Inspector Ginko and envious mobsters led by Ralph Valmont are closing in on them.

The Incredible Mr. Piccoli
A captivating portrait of French actor Michel Piccoli, who has worked with the greatest filmmakers of his time and has built a dazzling career of remarkable merit and success, focusing on his work during the 1970s and his professional relationship with Claude Sautet, Romy Schneider, Marco Ferreri and Luis Buñuel.