Whistle Down the Wind (1962), Eyes Without a Face - Les yeux sans visage (1959), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Scent of a Woman (1975), The Wild Child (1970), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), A Little Romance (1979), The Ruling Class (1972) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best European Literature On Screen movies.
Storyline: Don Salluste, a petty tyrant in his own home and minister of the King of Spain, falls from grace. Wanting revenge, he tries to compromize the Queen with his valet Blaze, introduced as his cousin. But poor Blaze gets stuck with a rather repulsive duenna, who is madly in love with him and very keen on getting her way. This wild comedy takes off at a dashing pace set by the De Funes, Montand and Sapritch trio.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: based on play, men in tights, man tied up, greed, white slavery, cockatoo, one eyed man ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A Jewish ghetto in central Europe, 1944. By coincidence, Jakob Heym eavesdrops on a German radio broadcast announcing the Soviet Army is making slow by steady progress towards central Europe. In order to keep his companion in misfortune, Mischa, from risking his life for a few potatoes, he tells him what he heard and announces that he is in possession of a radio - in the ghetto a crime punishable by death. It doesn't take long for word of Jakob's secret to spread - suddenly, there is new hope and something to live for - and so Jakob finds himself in the uncomforting position of having to come up with more and more stories.—c.winter
Plot Keywords: year 1944, name in title, male name in title, cellar, attic, sick child, actor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In Paris around 1900, Georges Randal is brought up by his wealthy uncle, who steals his inheritance. Georges hopes to marry his cousin Charlotte, but his uncle arranges for her to marry a rich neighbour. As an act of revenge, Georges steals the fiance's family jewels, and enjoys the experience so much that he embarks upon a life-time of burglary.—Will Gilbert
Plot Keywords: thief, paris france, based on novel, french literature on screen, crime literature on screen, european literature on screen, literature on screen ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Middle-aged Antonin and his friends, the major, now retired, and the canon, are in the river, swimming and philosophizing. Then it starts to rain. It just seems to be that sort of summer. Antonin runs the swimming bath with his portly wife Katherine... A man appears with his horse-drawn caravan. He lays a striped pole across the river and walks over. With a handstand and a magic trick, Ernie the Conjuror invites everyone to that evening's performance... Ernie is a tightrope walker of only modest skill, but with a slim and beautiful assistant, Anna. Antonin speaks to her. The two spend the night in the change room by the river, Antonin massaging her feet all night long. Katherine decides to move into the caravan with Ernie. But now the major and even the canon sense Anna's attractiveness...—David Carless
Plot Keywords: middle aged man, older man younger woman relationship, 1920s, young woman, adultery, priest, military officer ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: On a vacation in France from his nondescript job and life, John Barratt encounters a titled but impoverished French nobleman who looks exactly like him. The nobleman gets John drunk, and switches places with him to take a breather from his failing business and too-complicated life. John tries to convince everyone he is not who they think he is, but he begins to get more and more involved with the count's family, including an unhappy wife, domineering mother, lonely but talented young daughter, bitter spinster sister and the expected mistress. As John gets to know them he feels he can help them with their problems, but is also becoming used to his borrowed life, which has given him a purpose for the first time.—Ron Kerrigan <mvg@whidbey.com>
Plot Keywords: man wears pajamas, restaurant, passport, title based on the bible, look alike, identity swap, impostor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Oliver Bramwell, an insurance inspector, arrives at Lewis Manor where he is to investigate a fire that broke out there on Christmas Eve. He rings the bell and to his amazement he finds himself face to face with Sarah, the woman he once loved in Hong Kong and who, one day, disappeared from his life without apparent reason. Love resurfaces and when Tracey, the owner of the manor and Sarah's husband, dies in a second fire, the couple is reunited. Nevertheless, Oliver suspects Sarah of having tricked him and murdered Tracey with a view to attaining her ends. Fortunately his suspicions are allayed and he can marry Sarah. They are first very happy, until a blackmailer starts preying on them...—Guy Bellinger
Plot Keywords: british noir, based on novel, cousin, mother son relationship, christmas eve, secretary, literature on screen ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In London, American heiress Kit Preston (Doris Day) has been married for three months to a British executive, Anthony 'Tony' Preston (Sir Rex Harrison). During a foggy evening while walking across Hyde Park, Kit is threatened by a voice that tells she will be murdered soon. The next day, Kit receives a phone call from the stalker threatening to kill her in the next month. She and her husband go to Scotland Yard, but Inspector Byrnes (John Williams) believes that Kit may be making up the story to get more attention from her husband. Kit's Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) arrives, but only Kit receives the phone call raising the question: is she losing her mind?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: telephone terror, london england, embezzlement, police detective, psychiatrist, psychological torment, scaffold ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A couple uses extremely black comedy to survive taking care of a daughter who is nearly completely brain dead. They take turns doing the daughter's voice and stare into the eyes of death and emotional trauma with a humor that hides their pain.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Plot Keywords: independent film, fantasy sequence, policeman, christmas, prank, prankster, practical joke ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: John Lewis is bored by his librarian's job and henpecked at home. Then Liz, wife of a local counciller, sets her sights on him. But this is risky stuff in a Welsh valleys town - if he and Liz ever manage to consummate their affair, that is.—J-26
Plot Keywords: librarian, bow tie, alarm clock, wales, playwright, library, husband wife relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The frozen body of Paul Fournier is discovered in Greenland where he had disappeared during a scientific expedition in 1905. Perfectly conserved he is brought back to life in the 1960s. His descendants take care of him: to spare him the cultural shock they behave so to make believe it's 1905 and they are his cousins, uncle...—vik-18 <viktor_p@mail.com>
Plot Keywords: 1960s, alternate reality, time travel, time travel comedy, france, grandfather granddaughter relationship, 1900s ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Romance in the prime of life. When Lise's car bumps Antoine's bike, they recognize each other from a brief fling 20 years before while at the Sorbonne. He's now a professor of Greek; she's loathe to tell him she's a police inspector. A call interrupts their first dinner date: a Deputy of the National Assembly has been murdered. She has a suspect, another Deputy, and must track him while deflecting Antoine's eye from her vocation. All roads in the inquiry lead to Christine Vallier, the dead Deputy's mistress, a beguiling 22-year-old whose mother ran the Assembly's snack bar. When more deputies die and Antoine learns Lise's identity, she must act quickly solve the crime and save her future.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: based on novel, gay stereotype, congressman, murder investigation, stabbed in the back, serial killer, police ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Hard up and with a grudge against insurance companies, English pilot Rex Black fakes his death and meets up with his wife and the money in Malaga, Spain when things have quieted down. But when the insurance investigator turns up, Rex starts a game of cat-and-mouse.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: post coital scene, adulterous wife, adultery, cheating wife, unfaithful wife, rivalry, rival ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Young French officer Augustin Robert escorts artist Jean-Michel Venture de Paradis to Egypt during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign. Napoleon sent de Paradis to record Egypt's great monuments and temples that are destroyed by French soldiers in acts of barbarism. During combat, Augustin and Jean-Michel are separated from their regiment, and they start wandering through the desert fighting for their life. In one of the canyons Augustin meets a leopard he names Simoom and a strange bond between them appears.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: independent film, male nudity, nudity, painter, rifle, sandstorm, sand ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In 1940, German soldier Hans Quangel (Louis Hofmann) is killed in action during the French campaign. His parents, Otto (Brendan Gleeson) and Anna (Dame Emma Thompson), are devastated by the loss and their bereavement is unmollified by the joyful hysteria at Germany's victory. Deciding that Führer Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime are responsible for this tragedy and much more, Otto cannot stand by any longer. As such, Otto begins to create handwritten cards denouncing the regime's abuses and lies, which he secretly deposits throughout Berlin while a disillusioned Anna insists on helping him. As the subversive cards pile up over the years, Police Detective Escherich (Daniel Brühl) is tasked to track down the leafleteer while being pressured by his increasingly impatient S.S. superior for an arrest for this "treason", regardless of actual guilt. As the stakes rise even as Nazi Germany's day of reckoning approaches, Otto and Anna are determined to spread the truth regardless of the odds, even as their opposition awaits the fatal mistake that could doom them.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: berlin germany, man hits a woman, bloody mouth, blood, hit in the face, policeman, kiss ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The sequel to The Mouse That Roared (1959), the tiny country of Grand Fenwick has a hot water problem in the castle. To get the money necessary to put in new plumbing, they request foreign aid from the U.S. for Space Research. The Russians then send aid, as well, to show that they too are for the internationalization of space. While the Grand Duke is dreaming of hot baths, their one scientist is slapping together a rocket. The U.S. and Soviets get wind of the impending launch and try to beat them to the moon.—John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Plot Keywords: based on novel, protest, queen, towel, hidden camera, camera, gun ...
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