Simone Simon

A video essay by filmmaker Constantine Nasr.

The newsreel series Jornal Português (1938-1951) was produced for the Secretariat of National Propaganda (SPN/SNI) by the "Portuguese Newsreel Society" (SPAC), under the technical supervision of António Lopes Ribeiro. It was conceived and employed as part of the propaganda machinery of Salazar's regime. Screened in cinema theatres prior to the main feature film, each issue of Jornal had approximately ten minutes in length and covered a variety of official government acts, national political news, major sports events and other assorted social and cultural affairs. Jornal Português is not only an indispensable document for the history of Estado Novo's propaganda, but also an unparalleled audiovisual archive of 1940s Portugal.

Images and sounds expose the duality of Portugal during the days of WW2: a peaceful, god-loving, rural country, providing an escape route for over one hundred thousand European refugees to the Americas; and a political and cultural elite that disguised their Nazi inclinations just enough to play its neutral role in international politics.

Leading man Michel Piccoli plays Pierre, a young musician who briefly catches sight of a beautiful woman dressed in blue and soon spends all of his time trying to track her down. After roaming the streets of Paris in search of the mystery woman, he recruits an old friend to help find her.

A 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of film director Max Ophuls’s collaborators

Director William Fairchild's 1956 British comedy takes a peek into the private lives of various performers employed as extras in a new film that's currently shooting.

A soldier fighting for France loses his memory and has a second career as a national leader, but in Germany.

Tapioca, a small-time thief, hides out in an elegant apartment, where he is soon joined by Cascarilla, one of his apprentices who has become better than his master. When the owners arrive home, the latter offers the wife a bunch of love letters she has written to various lovers for ten million.

Three stories about pleasure. The first one is about a man hiding his age behind a mask to keep going to balls and fancying women - pleasure and youth. Then comes the long tale of Madame Tellier taking her girls (whores) to the country for attending her niece's communion - pleasure and purity. And lastly, Jean the painter falls in love with his model - pleasure and death.

"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress Julie and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Julie and the other head of the school Cara in its final months.

An all-knowing interlocutor guides us through a series of affairs in Vienna, 1900. A soldier meets an eager young lady of the evening. Later he has an affair with a young lady, who becomes a maid and does similarly with the young man of the house. The young man seduces a married woman. On and on, spinning on the gay carousel of life.

This is the sad story of several desperate ladies incarcerated somewhere in Italy in a camp for displaced women after the end of World War II. Among them, Anna, a Yugoslav, who has seen her husband killed in Trieste by political enemies. She is pregnant and her one and only aim right now is her baby to be born. Janka, a beautiful Polish girl who has lost her mind, is reunited with the physician who sent her to a brothel for Nazi officers. As for Yvonne, a light-hearted French woman, she is prepared to do anything to leave the place, including to marry out with an Albanese ice cream man, despite his unappetizing looks. At least,she will stop being a woman without a name.

The story of a harbor signalman who retrieves a suitcase full of money after witnessing a murder, fails to report it to the police, and finds himself the object of murderous and mercenary interest.

Petrus, a Montmartre photographer, is accidentally wounded by Migo, a dancer at the Frou Frou night club, when she is trying to shoot her faithless lover Rodrigue, a counterfeiter. Though Petrus tries to reconcile the lovers, Migo lands up with him after Rodrigue is finally killed by another jealous dancer.

In occupied France during the Franco-Prussian War, a young French laundress shares a coach ride with several of her condescending social superiors. But when a Prussian officer holds the coach over, social standings are leveled and integrity and spirit are put to the test.

A young girl rents an apartment from a man who has recently enlisted in the Marines. The trouble is that he's given out keys to a half-dozen of his friends, and they all keep dropping in.

Amy, the young, friendless daughter of Oliver and Alice Reed, befriends her father's late first wife and an aging, reclusive actress.

The "Eleven Brooklyn Bombshells," a band led by Mickey Monroe ('Dennis O'Keefe (I)' ), are stranded in Tahiti at the time of the fall of France to the Nazis. Suzette "Suzie" Durand (Simone Simon). a French-American girl singing in a nightclub is consumed with a desire to go to the United States. Things go from bad to worse for the band,. and they are faced with the necessity of either taking a girl singer into the group,which they all regard as bad luck, or starving. The band insists that she be dropped as soon as they can earn enough to catch a bot home. But Mickey falls in love with Suzie, and smuggles her on board the ship.

A Serbian émigré in Manhattan believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves will turn her into a feline predator.

Farmer Jabez Stone, about to lose his land, agrees to sell his soul to the devil, known as Mr. Scratch, who gives Jabez seven years to enjoy the fruits of his sale before he collects. Over that time, Jabez pays off his debts and helps many neighboring farmers, then becomes an advocate for the upstanding Sen. Daniel Webster. When Jabez's contract with Mr. Scratch concludes, he desperately turns to Webster to represent him in a trial for his soul.

This edition of Screen Snapshots has more of a vaudeville flavor as opposed to Ralph Staub's usual candid-camera at home with the stars offerings. Ken Murray, assisted by the Brewer Twins, is the MC, while the Andrews Sisters sing "In Apple Blossom Time" and the pre-"Uncle Miltie" Milton Berle plays his clarinet. The rest of the players, with contract-player faces belonging to 20th-Century Fox, RKO Radio, Universal and Columbia, just pass through. Production Number 3851.

Cavalcade D'Amour is divided into three sections, each depicting a romance occurring within the walls of the Chateau de Champs. Legend has it that whoever marries in the Chateau is doomed to an unhappy life. This proves to be the case in 1639 and 1839, but the heroine of the 1939 segment, Corinne Luchaire, is determined to break the jinx. She is convinced that she will prove an unsuitable bride for Claude Dauphin, and he is likewise convinced that he will turn out to be an inadequate groom. But the couple's respective families will not be dissuaded, and the marriage takes place as scheduled? with unexpectedly happy results!

Returning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.

This short shows how Hollywood gets ready for the world premiere of an "important" movie. The film celebrated here is Marie Antoinette (1938), which had its premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre. We see the street leading to the theatre transformed to suggest a garden that might be seen in a French palace. This includes the placement of trees and other foliage, as well as large statues along the route. Grandstands are set up so fans can see their favorite stars as they arrive for the premiere. Finally, the proverbial "galaxy of stars" arrives in their limousines. Fanny Brice and Pete Smith make remarks at the microphone set up on the carpet outside the theatre.

Two young men try to wrest their father from the clutches of a gold digger but by mistake think the woman is a young nightclub singer with whom they both fall in love.

As part of their public feud, Bandleader Bernie pretends a girl singer is no good so columnist Winchell promotes her in his column.

A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, and then marches away to war.

Three young women in Budapest share living quarters while searching for romance.

When a busybody teacher in a girls' finishing school finds a love letter from a student to an unknown man, a minor scandal erupts.

Sylvie, a rich girl, learns at the same time the death and the ruin of her father. Forced to find work in Paris, she is given shelter by a medical student who soon falls for her. Another young man falls in love with her. When her benefactor gets ill and finally dies, Sylvie refuses to give the other man her heart out of faithfulness for the dearly departed. But youth commands and after a time love -but not oblivion - triumphs.

In 1913, in Russia, a widower hides from his daughter that he is a butler in a meeting restaurant. She meets a banker who is trying to seduce her and takes her to this restaurant. The father, knowing the decadent life of this client, immediately sends his daughter home. The pure love that her piano teacher devotes to her will allow the young girl to console herself for her disappointments...

A handsome but penniless young man takes a summer job as a swimming instructor in a picturesque Alpine lake resort. He falls in love with a young heiress who is staying there with her father, but he also grabs the attention of tomboyish Puck who lives on the other side of the lake and who saves him from drowning one foggy night. Further havoc is caused by the arrival of Eric's old sweetheart whose husband is wanted by the police.

A woman steals to have enough money to please her husband. Her nephew, madly in love with her, reports this to a detective who catches her red handed.

Because a sailor once told Pedro Savedra his wife, Marion, cheated on him, he left her. Learning later that it was nothing but a practical joke, Pedro decides to find her and win her back. He finally traces her in Palma de Mallorca, where she has become a cabaret singer. To set her free, he needs money and accepts a job. But Palesco, the nightclub owner, does not agree to let Marion go and will not shy about throwing a wrench in the gears.

The maid of a doctor, he had some canvases he didn't care for bestowed on him once by an unknown artist, thankfully has saved them as the paintings are now worth some money and others want them.

His aunt hopes to make this young aristocrat an honored soldier. But the colonel has it out for him.Will the new recruit be able to adapt to military life?

After he is thought dead, a painter who had no success before suddenly becomes a man of repute, and a statue is even prepared in his honor.

A hotel worker who is really an aristocrat falls for a lady customer but instead of getting married he prefers to stay at work and get what female company he can from the staff.

An unemployed youth pretends to be the long lost son of an elderly industrialist but after helping the man with his business decides to confess his dishonesty and go away.

A bureaucratic civil servant is annoyed by the spoiled daughter of a rich chocolate maker, but lands up marrying her.

A legendary French singer, missing for years and presumed dead, returns with no memory, his face hidden, his voice unmistakable. The woman who never stopped loving him clings to hope, while those who once betrayed him begin to fear he remembers everything.

Two different sales agents named Max Durand live at the same address. One of them pretends to be the other so he make the money and get the girl that he wants.

Célestin, the organist of a convent, has written and composed a light operetta under the name of Floridor. One day, the Mother Superior asks him to chaperone one of the boarders, Denise de Flavigny, who is returning home to get married. Now, Denise, for all her goody goody looks, soon proves as saucy as can be. Things get even more complicated when Célestin starts courting Corinne, the star of his operetta, to the great displeasure of a commander of dragons, the young woman's lover. Worse, the latter is none other than the Mother Superior's brother... To say nothing of Lieutenant Fernand de Champlatreux, who happens to fall in love with Denise, his fiancée that he has never seen before...!