ven if spy thrillers (which, naturally, proliferated during the Cold War) are favorites of mine, sometimes I find it hard to follow the films' convoluted plots -which, more often than not, end up not being all that interesting or even the central focus of the films themselves! However, I must say that this particular example takes the cake: never during the course of the 90-plus minutes of the film is it made at all clear just which side the various characters are on and what kind of information they're peddling! In spite of this, the film is rendered watchable by the typically gloomy East European settings, its constant double-crosses and moments of violence and, above all, its weathered gallery of performers - Lino Ventura, Jean Servais, Wolfgang Preiss, Jean Bouise and Rene' Koldehoff (the cast also includes Adrian Hoven and Marilu' Tolo, who's wasted as the only female in the group).

Angèle is a 1934 French drama film directed, produced and written by Marcel Pagnol. It stars Orane Demazis as a naive young woman who is seduced and abandoned. It is based on the novel Un de Baumugnes by Jean Giono.

1952 film by Max Ophüls

Evelyne, a judge's young wife, falls in love with Remy, that lives in Paris, during Holidays. After following him in the lovers city, she decides to return home to inform her husband about all - but her plane crashes.

French military man Adrien Dufourquet gets an eight-day furlough to visit his fiancée, Agnès. But when he arrives in Paris, he learns that her late father's partner, museum curator Professor Catalan, has just been kidnapped by a group of Amazon tribesmen who have also stolen a priceless statue from the museum. Adrien and Agnès pursue the kidnappers to Brazil, where they learn that the statue is the key to a hidden Amazon treasure.

A fairy godmother helps a princess disguise herself so she won't have to marry her father.

1934 French film released in three parts directed by Raymond Bernard

In the fictitious island of Ojeda, people lives a dictatorship and the island is a penal colony with ordinary and political prisoners together. When the Governor Mariano Vargas is murdered by a sniper, his idealistic secretary Ramón Vázquez is assigned director of security in charge of the prison. Vázquez is in love with the widow Inés Rojas and they have a love affair. But when the new governor Alejandro Gual Miguel arrives in the island, he wants Inés to be his lover. Further he forces the killer to sign a false confession telling that Vázquez is the responsible for the attempt against the previous governor and blackmails Inés. But Inés is a female fatale that knows the political games and manipulations.

During the cold and rainy off-season a man arrives in a seaside town and, giving his name only as Pierre, checks into the only hotel which remains open. His arrival arouses curiosity and a degree of suspicion, as people note that he appears to know the area, yet gives no explanation for his presence at that bleak time of year in the dead-end town.

1955 film by Jules Dassin