8 Movies Directed by Renè Clair

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While singing in a lower class quarter in Paris, the street singer Albert falls in love with the Romanian party girl Pola, who is the companion of the gangster Fred. One night, Albert meets with Pola, who has just found that Fred had stolen her key, and his friend Louis proposes to toss to date her. However, Albert brings her to his room and they spend the night together, with Albert sleeping on the floor and Pola on his bed. Early in the morning, the pickpocket èmile brings a bag with stolen pieces and asks Albert to keep the bag for him. When the police busts Albert's room and finds the stolen goods, he is arrested and sent to jail. Meanwhile Fred travels and Pola seeks comfort with Louis, and they stay together. When èmile is arrested by the police, he confesses that Albert is innocent and he is released and seeks out Pola. Meanwhile Fred returns to Paris and also seeks out Pola that is with Louis. The three men that are under the spell of the gorgeous lady dispute her love and only one wins.

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A famous left-wing satirical comedy about two ex-convicts, one of whom escaped jail and then worked his way up from salesman to factory owner, where he oversees a highly mechanized operation where the workers are reduced to mere automatons. Fearful of being exposed over his past, at first by his friend and later by another gangster, the owner chooses to give his factory to the workers, then escapes with his friend to the freedom of the open road. The production company for "A Nous la Liberte" was for more than a decade embroiled in a lawsuit claiming that Charles Chaplin had seen their film and plagiarized many ideas from it as he developed "Modern Times."

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An American businessman's family convinces him to buy a Scottish castle and disassemble it to ship it to America brick by brick, where it will be put it back together. The castle though is not the only part of the deal, with it goes the several-hundred year old ghost who haunts it.

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Young Claude, teacher by day, is a struggling composer by night. Alas, everyone around him seems to prefer noise to music. But in his dreams, he lives in other eras where he is appreciated, lionized, and the conquerer of delicious women (idealized forms of women he's seen in waking life). The dreams are suitably dreamlike, yet have a kind of reality, for he revisits them after waking. The conflict between waking and dream worlds leads to amusing, strange, even fantastic situations. Which world will prevail?

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A French lieutenant makes a bet that he can seduce any woman in town in the two weeks before his regiment leaves for maneuvers, but his chosen target (a Parisian divorcèe) isn't like other girls he's known.

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A French lieutenant makes a bet that he can seduce any woman in town in the two weeks before his regiment leaves for maneuvers, but his chosen target (a Parisian divorcèe) isn't like other girls he's known.

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"Les quatre vèritès" aka "The Four Truths" is a movie anthology that consists of four segments, all loosely parodying fables from the 17th-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. The US cut usually features only 3 segments. The first segment "Death and the Woodcutter" about a common organ grinder (street performer who plays mechanical musical instrument called street organ on the street for a living) who is driven to the edge of sanity by bureaucracy was cut from the US release for its serious tone. The second story "The Crow and the Fox" is about a jealous husband who keeps his wife under lock and key since he lives in a town full of single men. Their neighbor is determined however to service the missus. The third story "The Tortoise and the Hare" follows a jealous wife who decides to win her adulterous husband back. The final tale "Two Pigeons" is about a young man and woman who accidentally lock themselves up in a flat and end up falling for each other.