Daniel Boulanger

Joker -- Four mates are playing a friendly game of cards and one of them decides to tell a joke... with an unexpected punchline.

To keep her ancestral home from falling apart, a marquise (Madeleine Renaud) turns the place into an inn. Slow business threatens the house once again, until bank robber César Maricorne (Yves Montand) and his two dopey partners happen by. They hope to lay low at the inn, unaware that the proprietors will kill for the stolen cash. One hilariously failed murder attempt follows another in this comedy that co-stars Maria Schell and Jean Rochefort.

Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati again thrust the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, along with a host of other lost souls, into a bafflingly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to a modern age tiptoeing on the edge of oblivion.

Cartouche is the story of a kid from the back streets who wants to become king of Paris. Brought up amongst petty thieves, he becomes their leader through an audacious and elegant coup which wins him the love of the beautiful Venus. Inspired by his gang and his love for Venus, Cartouche rules without equality over Paris’ underworld. He repeatedly escapes the clutches of his sworn enemy, the Lieutenant General of the police, Ferrussac. After a near brush with death, Cartouche discovers Madame de Ferrussac with whom he falls in love. Heartbroken, Venus nonetheless forgives him.