Marie Bell
Also Known As: Marie-Jeanne Bellon-Downey
Biography: Marie Bell (23 December 1900 – 14 August 1985), born Marie-Jeanne Bellon-Downey, was a French tragedian, comic actor and stage director. She was the director of the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris from 1962 onwards, and this theatre now bears her name. Marie Bell was born on 23 December 1900 in Bègles near Bordeaux (France). With her Irish father, she spent her childhood between Bordeaux and England. Bell was a classical actress. She also appeared in avant-garde theatre, Jean Genet in particular. Her interpretation of the role of Phèdre is highly noted : "Voir Marie Bell dans Phèdre est une chance unique pour quiconque veut savoir ce qu'est le génie français." André Malraux During the German Occupation of France (1940–1944), she participated in the French resistance as one of nine directors of the Front national du théâtre. She was awarded the decoration of the Légion d'honneur by President Charles de Gaulle. Bell married Jean Chevrier, who was also an actor. Bell died on 14 August 1985 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. She was buried alongside her husband Jean Chevrier at the Monaco Cemetery not far from Josephine Baker. Source: Article "Marie Bell" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Bordeaux, Gironde, France
Adult: No
Birthday: December 23, 1900
Age: 124 years old
Gender: Female
Deathday: August 14, 1985
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Known For:
The Phantom Wagon
Overview: French version of the Selma Lagerlof story, most famously filmed in 1921 by Victor Sjostrom, about a poor sinner who only realizes what misery he's wrought when he dies on New Year's Eve and is collected by Death in his carriage.
Genres: Fantasy Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1939-09-07
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Cocoanut
Overview: A small town gentleman learns that his prim and proper wife was once a showgirl, and that, even worse, he had enjoyed a one night stand with her in the Orient.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1939-02-17
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Paris
Overview: Jean Fleury, a young engineer who has designed a revolutionary engine for the Revoil motor company, is engaged to Aimée Valois, a seamstress, his neighbor across the hall. But the charming young lady is hired one day by a nightclub and lets herself be lured by the easy life in Paris. So much so that, to Jean's great distress, she breaks up with him. But, along with time, Aimée gets tired of her vain and frivolous lifestyle and comes back to Jean.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1924-12-13
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Phèdre
Overview: In the absence of her royal husband Theseus, thought to be dead, Phaedra declares her love to Hippolyte, Theseus's son from a previous marriage.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1968-10-16
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The Joker
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1930-11-14
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Poliche
Overview: Didier Méreuil, affectionately called Poliche, is in love with Rosine, a beautiful girl, so he does everything to please her. She does not love him, and accepts a seductive airplane pilot who proposes to her. One day, she discovers that the funny man is just a front behind which there is a serious Didier. She will try to make up and live with him - but the gap between them is already too large.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1934-07-27
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Fedora
Overview: Fedora swears to avenge the death of her fiancé, Prince Yarischkine, killed by Ipanoff who fled to Paris. She finds Ipanoff whom she falls in love with and he confesses to having killed her fiancé because Yarischkine was his wife's lover. But learning that her brother was executed because of Fedora, Ipanoff leaves her. Fedora commits suicide.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1934-03-23
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Sous la Terreur
Overview: During the French Revolution in 1793, a member of the Convention, seduced by the Comtesse de Beaulieu, helps her to discover the truth about the relationship between Agnès de Fitz-James and the count who was guillotined.
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1936-05-22
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Temptation
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1936-07-26
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Les Demi-Vierges
Overview: Maxime, heir to an old provincial family, is deeply in love with Maud whom he makes his fiancée. But learning that the young girl's life has not always been beyond reproach, he refuses to marry her and returns to his castle in the company of his sister who, happier than him, has met a man worthy of being in Paris. love.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1936-12-04
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Blanchette
Overview: Blanchette, unable to find a job, prostitutes herself in Paris. She then finds the man she loves when her morale is at its lowest.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1937-03-12
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Pantins d'amour
Overview: A rich, idle young man falls in love with a cabaret singer. Very skilful, she pretends to remain insensitive to this love, thus hoping to better achieve her ambitious ends.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1937-04-23
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Legions of Honor
Overview: An officer is tried for self-inflicted injury.He is thrown out of the Foreign Legion .
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1938-02-17
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La Glu
Overview: A young Breton sailor falls in love with a visiting stranger called 'La Glu'. He drops his betrothed, mother and friends so that he can live with her. La Glu is murdered. Who did it? Relatives and friends are all suspects.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1938-04-27
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Those of the Sky
Overview: An airplane manufacturer asks his son-in-law to try out the prototypes he builds. This one ends up having an accident because of fatigue, and pushes the sacrifice to help his rival.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1941-03-05
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Vie privée
Overview: Beautiful and adored by the public, the great actress Florence once faulted with Remi, a disreputable individual. A little girl was born who lives in the countryside. Dorcier, the director, would like to marry Florence and wonders about her private life and her past existence. A jealous rival unleashes slander.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1942-05-29
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Life Dances On
Overview: After the death of her husband, Christine realizes she has possibly wasted her life by marrying him instead of the man towards whom, in her youth, she had a stronger inclination. To overcome these dreary thoughts, she decides to find out about him and the other men who danced with her during a ball that was a turning point in her life, many years ago. She pays a visit to those forgotten acquaintances one after the other; Christine is not only surprised to see how they have fared, but also discovers the impact she had, unknowingly, on the feelings and the destiny of these persons.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1937-09-09
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Sandra
Overview: Sandra returns to her childhood village to take care of family business, but childhood memories and secrets soon overcome her.
Genres: Drama Mystery
Original Language: it
Release Date: 1965-09-16
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La valse de l'adieu
Overview: The life of composer Frédéric Chopin through his youthful love for Maria Wodzińska, a young Polish aristocrat he was unable to marry because of his own situation, considered too modest by the girl's family. On the threshold of death, Chopin remembered his beloved and the piece he composed when he left her: La Valse de l'adieu.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1928-10-13
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Hotel Paradiso
Overview: Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block, and he needs a new play. But he takes an opportunity to observe the upper class of 1900 Paris - Monsieur Boniface with a domineering wife, and the next-door neglectful husband Henri with a beautiful but ignored wife, Marcelle. Henri traces architectural anomalies (most ghost sounds are drains) and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso, but this hotel is the assignation spot of Marcelle and Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this is under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1966-03-01
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The Tomboy
Overview: The eponymous garçonne or flapper is Monique Lerbier, an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man she does not love which her parents have forced on her. She then falls into all sorts of carnal temptations and artificial pleasures previously unknown to her. These include her being seduced into a lesbian love affair by a chanteuse.
Genres: Drama Romance
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1936-02-21
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Madame Récamier
Overview: The film displays Madame Récamier 's conflict with Napoleon. Twice she was pressed to become one of the Empress's ladies. In revenge for her refusal Napoleon declined to save her husband from ruin.
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1928-06-28
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The Man Who Killed
Overview: The new French military attaché at the Constantinople embassy helps a young woman being blackmailed by her own husband.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1931-01-16
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The crazy adventure
Overview: Fred, a journalist, faces an international intrigue to protect the mysterious Nelly.
Genres: Crime
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1931-03-13
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The Great Game
Overview: Pierre , a young lawyer, has enormous debts due to his mistress Florence and her whims of luxury life. Pierre has gone too far and put the family firm in jeopardy. They ask him to expatriate. To avoid scandal, Pierre joins the Foreign Legion. In Morocco, near the desert, Pierre goes with his comrades of the Legion to a bar-restaurant-brothel, owned by a shady character, Mr. Clement . Clement lives more or less with Ms.Blanche who is a fortune teller with cards, as a hobby. But Clement is also after his girls now and then. Pierre is still obsessed with Florence but he meets Irma , one of Clement's girls, who is the double of Florence except for hair color. Irma has had an accident and has lost part of her memory at a certain point of her recent past, and Pierre slowly persuades himself she is Florence, but cannot remember it. Advised by Ms.Blanche, Irma finally accepts to act as if she was Florence because she is falling in love with Pierre.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1934-05-02
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Colonel Chabert
Overview: The story of a French officer who is assumed dead during the Napoleonic Wars, but returns ten years later to a very different France, both on a political and personal level. The film is based on the novel Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1943-12-01
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The Man with the Hispano
Overview: The almost financially ruined French gentleman Gaston Dewalter spends several days in Biarritz before going off in the Hispano-Suiza, a luxe car which was a present from his friends. George becomes the lover of Lady Stéphane Oswill pretending he is wealthy. Then Stéphane spends the remaining funds with which the now desperate George hoped to rebuild his fortune in Senegal.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1933-03-24
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The Leopard
Overview: As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: it
Release Date: 1963-03-27
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Quand minuit sonnera
Overview: A criminal is being blackmailed by his former accomplices. He does everything in his power to gain time because the statutory limitation for the crime he committed starts at midnight.
Genres: Crime Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1936-11-27
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Closed Shutters
Overview: 1930. Adelaide is fed up with Paris and founds a 'retreat' for her women friends in a Breton port. They live well and take their pleasure seriously, until the attractive sailor Thomas arrives and nothing is ever the same again.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1973-02-01
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Le Roman d'un jeune homme pauvre
Overview: Maxime de Champcey, a bankrupt marquis, is hired by the wealthy Laroque and falls for his daughter Marguerite. She loves him too but rejects him under the belief he's a fortune hunter.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1935-02-21
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How to Make a French Dish
Overview: In this romantic drama, a middle-aged gambler tells a casino croupier her life story. The story is told in flashback and chronicles the woman's romantic exploits with men. Though she was involved with many men, only one really touched her heart. He was a bartender who was tragically shot and killed during an attempted robbery. She later marries and has a daughter. Unfortunately she alienates herself from her daughter when she has an affair with her daughter's fiance. Her remorse is short lived. The film jumps back to the present with the woman leaving the casino on the arm of a handsome millionaire.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1964-01-29
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Figaro
Overview: A silent adaptation of the 1778 Beaumarchais play The Marriage of Figaro, with material also used from its two sequels.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1929-03-04
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Caprice de princesse
Overview: Princess Isabelle is in love with the young man in charge of her library. But André is looking for a simple woman without money. He falls in love with a shopgirl who could be the Princess' sister. It's up to Isabelle come up with a scheme to find love...
Genres: Comedy
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1933-01-01
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La nuit est à nous
Overview:
Genres: Romance Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1930-01-10
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Luck
Overview: A beautiful widow gambles away her fortune at baccarat and is forced her to sell her jewels and ask Victor for hospitality. Victor tries to seduce her but she loves the shy Gaston.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: fr
Release Date: 1931-12-24
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