Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in the stench of 18th century Paris, develops a superior olfactory sense, which he uses to create the world's finest perfumes. However, his work takes a dark turn as he tries to preserve scents in the search for the ultimate perfume.
A self-assured businessman murders his employer, the husband of his mistress, which unintentionally provokes an ill-fated chain of events.
The life of a respected British politician at the height of his career crumbles when he becomes obsessed with his son's lover.
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
'Der Baader Meinhof Komplex' depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.
In Paris around 1900, a young man raised by his wealthy uncle plots revenge after his cousin is betrothed to a rich neighbor. He steals the fiancé's family jewels, reveling in the thrill, and sets off on a lifelong path of burglary.
In Louis Malle's lauded drama, Lucien Lacombe is a young man living in rural France during World War II who seeks to join the French Resistance. When he is rejected due to his youth, the resentful Lucien allies himself with the Nazis and joins the Gallic arm of their Gestapo. Lucien grows to enjoy the power that comes with his position, but his life is complicated when he falls for France Horn, a beautiful young Jewish woman.
This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
An IRA operative escapes to the Americas and teams up with a circus singer to create a popular vaudeville act. When the singer falls for a rebel, they leave the circus behind to become fierce revolutionaries.
Although his alcoholism has been treated, Alain still feels he is deeply unwell and does not feel he can leave the detoxification clinic once and for all. His wife, living in New York, continues to pay for his treatment, but no longer contacts him directly. He intends to commit suicide, but first takes a ride to Paris to catch up with old friends.
There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.
A brash and precocious ten-year-old comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle.
An eccentric family is re-united during the 1968 general strike in France, after the death of the grandmother.
At an Austrian boys' boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture goes too far. Adapted from Robert Musil's acclaimed novel, Young Törless launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics' Prize for first-time director Volker Schlöndorff.
A short documentary about the 1962 Tour-de-France. Topics covered include: crowds of people and motorcycles, drinking raids and feeding, pileups, doping, "the charge," and the mountain stages.
The charismatic, surly son of a wealthy industrialist, Clément, leads a double life as a member of a right-wing extremist organization. When he’s ratted out after a failed assassination attempt on a prominent politician, Clément and his long-suffering wife Anne flee Paris to the idyllic country home of his childhood friend, pacifist print-maker Paul. As affection blossoms between Paul and Anne, the emotional, as well as political tensions, soar and eventually explode.
When he was cutting "Phantom India," Louis Malle found that the footage shot in Calcutta was so diverse, intense, and unforgettable that it deserved its own film. The result, released theatrically, is at times shocking—a chaotic portrait of a city engulfed in social and political turmoil.
An ode to liberated speech and to the power of words, "those one speaks to others, those one speaks in silence", Alain Tanner's third film is inspired by a poet and a poetic text which deeply affected him as a young director.
In his documentary "Humain, Trop Humain," Louis Malle presents his meditative investigation of the inner workings of a French automotive plant.
