Michael Lonsdale
Michael Edward Lonsdale Crouch (24 May 1931 – 21 September 2020), commonly known as Michael Lonsdale and sometimes as Michel Lonsdale, was a French-British actor and author who appeared in over 180 films and television shows. He is often known in the English-speaking world for... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Les premiers les derniers
Apocalyptic neo-western about two gangsters, a town full of crazy people and Jesus...
Gebo et l'ombre
Set in the late 19th century, about a honored but poor patriarch who sacrifices himself to protect his fugitive son.
Titeuf, le film
Titeuf is a famous character from comics and animation series. In this movie - Titeuf's life never been worse- Nadia didn't invite him to her birthday party, his parent's are close to be deported - and everything looks so bad. No one can solve the problems now but Titeuf in his funny ways ... Or maybe he'll fail too?
Des hommes et des dieux
A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to.
Agora
Tells the story of astronomer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria (Weisz) and her relationship with her slave Davus (Minghella), who is torn between his love for his mistress and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.
Une vieille maîtresse
Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
Tous à l'Ouest: Une aventure de Lucky Luke
Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure
La question humaine
A psychologist discovers troubling links between Nazism and modern-day big business.
Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about Cinema.
A Londoni férfi
One night Maloin, a switchman at a seaside railway station situated by a ferry harbour, witnesses a terrible event...
Goya's Ghosts
Painter Francisco Goya faces a scandal involving his muse, who is labeled a heretic by a monk.
Munich
The political thriller based on the historical events and tragedies of the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich where 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team where kidnapped and killed. The film shows the Israeli secret service and how they acted. A Steven Spielberg film.
Le parfum de la dame en noir
Newly married, Mathilde and Robert are honeymooning at a resort owned by their friends Edith and Arthur, the Chateau d'Hercule. But an unpleasant shock is in store for them.
Sotto falso nome
A mysterious writer is involved in a love affair with his stepson's wife, leading to a web of intrigue and desire.
Le mystère de la chambre jaune
La fille du Pr. Stangerson, Mathilde, a été l'objet d'une tentative d'assassinat. Le journaliste Rouletabille et son ami photographe Sainclair vont enquêter sur le mystère.
Kaena: La prophétie
Compelled by a mysterious force, Kaena, a rebellious, high-spirited teenage girl will defy the High Priest and her people's ancestral beliefs to take the perilous journey through the Axis and discover what dark secrets lie beyond the clouds.
Les acteurs
Les Acteurs is the absurd story of Jean-Pierre Marielle desperately waiting for a cup of hot water, the story of a conspiracy against actors, the story of aging actors whose careers are slowly less active than they used to be, but a stunning tribute to French actors and their cinema.
Le château des singes
Kom is from a tribe of monkeys who live in a canopy. He rejects elders' authority as well as the superstition that the lower world would be inhabited by demons. But he accidentally falls from the trees...
Ronin
A freelancing former US intelligence agent tries to track down a mysterious package that is wanted by both the Irish and the Russians.
La plante humaine
Widowed and recently retired, Mr. Michel leads a peaceful existence in the company of his dog, his books and his television set. But this quiet routine soon turns into a nightmare, with the onslaught of images from the television, showing the turbulence that shakes the world.
Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud
When Nelly, a woman being just divorced, meets by chance M. Arnaud, a mature salesman just retired, begins a strange and special relationship between the two personalities.
Dieu sait quoi
A homage to journalist Francis Ponge in a film that its author regarded as “natural.”
The Remains of the Day
A butler sacrifices love for duty in 1930s England.
Ma vie est un enfer
La naïve et complexée Leah signe par erreur un pacte avec le diable Abargadon. Mais elle est sur les listes du Paradis, aussi l'Archange Gabriel intervientil pour causer la perte du démon. Mais Leah commence à trouver Abargadon séduisant et pas si mauvais que ça. Elle décide de sauver son âme...
Niezwykla podróz Baltazara Kobera
Story about the young Balthazar thrown from one remarkable event to the other. On his way through a plague hit the landscape, he meets the Kabbalists, priests - and himself.
Der Name der Rose
14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to find that several monks have been murdered under mysterious circumstances. To solve the crimes, William must rise up against the Church's authority and fight the shadowy conspiracy of monastery monks using only his intelligence; which is considerable.
The Holcroft Covenant
A man who was a confidant of Adolf Hitler dies and leaves a fortune to make amends for his Nazi past--but his son has to search the world to find it
Le bon roi Dagobert
King's Dagobert I intestinal and sexual problems loom large as he survives an attack on his royal caravan then barely makes it to Rome to personally give thanks to the Pope. After he arrives at the Vatican, he becomes involved in the battle between two contenders for the papacy and has to face the machinations of a ruthless Byzantine princess.
Eréndira
While Erendira, a beautiful teenage girl, has a surreal mystical vision, her grandmother's house catches on fire and burns to the ground. Her grandmother holds Erendira responsible and, in order to extract restitution from the girl, forces her into prostitution.
Enigma
Five highly-trained KGB agents are sent to the west to assassinate several Soviet dissidents. In order to stop the diabolical plot, an American agent must infiltrate Soviet intelligence and obtain information from a Russian computer.
Smiley's People
Called out of retirement to settle the affairs of a friend, Smiley finds his old organization, the Circus, so overwhelmed by political considerations that it doesn't want to know what happened.
Chariots of Fire
Based on the true story of British athletes preparing for and competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won four, including Best Picture.
Le risque de vivre
A paean to Darwin and his theories, this documentary on the increasing complexity of life forms as they go up the evolutionary scale is fascinating in its visual images. Microscopic organisms in a tiny drop of water vie for the viewer's interest with birds and monkeys and other animals in their natural setting.
The Passage
During WW 2, a Basque shepherd is approached by the underground, who wants him to lead a scientist and his family across the Pyrenees. While being pursued by a sadistic German.
Moonraker
After Drax Industries' Moonraker space shuttle is hijacked, secret agent James Bond is assigned to investigate, traveling to California to meet the company's owner, the mysterious Hugo Drax.
Die linkshändige Frau
Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them.
Une sale histoire
A group of friends listen as one man tells them a story about a time when, in a small cafe, he discovered a peephole into the ladies' bathroom and became addicted to looking through it at female genitals. They ask him questions and come to conclusions about sex. This is a filmed, scripted version.
Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert
The full soundtrack to Marguerite Duras' 1975 film India Song, about a French ambassador's wife in 1930s India, is here repurposed with all new cinematography. As we hear all the dialogue of a bygone movie, we travel visually through images of absence and decay, bereft of life. It's the ghost of a film, and a further commentary on colonialism.
Mr. Klein
In German-occupied Paris, an immoral art dealer, Robert Klein, leads a life of luxury, until a copy of a Jewish newspaper brings him to the attention of the police, linking him with a mysterious doppelgänger. Will Mr. Klein clear his name?
The Romantic Englishwoman
A marriage crisis between a writer and his wife leads her to flee to Germany and eventually return with another man, through whom the writer is going to overcome his writer's block.
Section spéciale
In occupied France during the WWII, a German officer is murdered. The collaborationist Vichy government decides to pin the murder on six petty criminals. Loyal judges are called in to convict them as quickly as possible.
Ne
The film’s starting point is a previously unseen interview with Godard, in which he expresses his revolutionary ideas and approach to filmmaking. “The Vivarium” poses the question: what happens to the actors in a film if their lines or the script are taken away?
Le téléphone rose
A small industrialist from Toulouse, goes to Paris to negotiate the buyout of his company from an American financial group. During his stay, the representative of the large firm calls on a luxury call girl to facilitate their "business".
La traque
Somewhere in rural France, a young English female tourist is sexually assaulted by two men in the countryside. After she manages to escape, a party of local hunters agree to track her in order to cover up the scandal.
India Song
Anne-Marie Stretter, wife of a French diplomat, lives in 1930s India. She takes many lovers as systems of oppression decay around her.
Galileo
Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and discovers irrefutable proof of the heretical notion that the earth is not the center of the universe.
Folle à tuer
Julie Ballenger has spent five years in a psychiatric clinic. Leaving the clinic apparently cured, she is hired by a wealthy industrialist, Mostri, to work as a governess to his young nephew, Thomas. The boy is heir to a huge fortune after the recent death of his wealthy parents who died in mysterious circumstances.
Un linceul n'a pas de poches
In the newspaper he has just founded, journalist Dolannes exposes all the wheeling and dealing and scandals that go on in his town.
Stavisky...
Irrestisible charm and talent helps Serge Alexandre alias Stavisky, small-time swindler, to make friends with even most influential members of French industrial and political elite during the early 30s.
Les suspects
When an American tourist is murdered in the south of France, the police must investigate. In this movie, the police inspector re-creates the girl's journeys through France until the murder is solved. Suspicions are narrowed down to four possible perpetrators early on, and flashbacks illuminate the roles each one played in the girl's vacation.
Le fantôme de la liberté
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s.
Glissements progressifs du plaisir
A cult erotic drama from the perverse imagination of Alain Robbe-Grillet, SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE delves into the twisted mind of a young woman suspected in the stabbing death of her roommate Nora.
Caravan to Vaccarès
Neil Bowman, meets Lila, a British photographer, in France. They're hired to escort a Hungarian scientist to New York by French landowner Duc de Croyter but face a gang of ruthless kidnappers after the scientist.
The Day of the Jackal
An assassin targets the president of France in this tense Frederick Forsyth thriller.
Papa, les petits bateaux
Marc and his gang have a brilliant idea (or so they think!) : they will kidnap Vénus de Palma, a (very) rich heiress. Well Venus, also known as Cookie, is duly abducted but holding the lovely twenty-year-old beauty is a horse of another color.
Out 1: Spectre
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
L'automne
Julien, a movie director, is on the phase of editing his new film, "Juliette sacrifiée". Hurried by his producer, he asks for the help of a professional editor. It is Anne, with whom Julien is soon falling in love.
Chut!
A small saver discovers the scam that threatens all subscribers to the "Caution foncière". He embarks on an incredible adventure to recover the funds paid in by his friends, and succeeds in exposing the scandal.
Out 1, noli me tangere
While two dueling theater groups rehearse plays by Aeschylus, two solitary individuals wander the Parisian streets hustling the populace for cash and unravel a conspiracy.
Les assassins de l'ordre
A judge investigating police corruption finds that the deeper he digs, the more roadblocks he finds.
Le souffle au coeur
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.
Le printemps
One of four Hanoun films that take their titles from the seasons of the year, SPRING tells two parallel stories: a man, fleeing the forces of order, takes refuge in the forest, while a young girl living with her grandmother in a nearby village approaches the threshold of adolescence, and begins to discover both the world and herself. -…
Il était une fois un flic...
Pour piéger un trafiquant de drogue, un commissaire, célibataire endurci, doit jouer les pères de famille.
L'étalon
Veterinary surgeon William Chaminade is having a peaceful holiday in the South of France when he is witness to an event that will change not only his life but the destiny of France! A young woman tries to kill herself by jumping from the upstairs window of the hotel where he is staying.
L'hiver
While working on a documentary about the city of Bruges, an artistically frustrated filmmaker must deal with the increasing difficulties in his marriage.
Hibernatus
A rich businessman faces a quite weird problem - his wife's grandfather has been revived thanks to science. But he is not aware that many decades have passed.
Détruire dit-elle
In a secluded hotel circumscribed by a dense forest Max and Alissa Thor meet Stein and Elisabeth. Max, a professor of future history and an aspiring author, is immediately attracted to the brooding wife of industrialist Bernard Alione, Elisabeth, who is recovering from a miscarriage.
La mariée était en noir
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal ? What is her purpose?
La grande lessive (!)
Révolté par l'apathie de ses élèves, qu'il attribue à leur surconsommation de télévision, Armand Saint-Just, professeur de lettres, entreprend de neutraliser les antennes réceptrices sur les toits de Paris.
Concerto pour un exil
Young Africans in Paris face insecurity and vague future. Should they stay in France, or return to their homes?
Baisers volés
Baisers voles is the second of two films from the ‘Antonie-Doinel-Zyklus’ by French director Truffaut. The film depicts the life of a young twenty year old man who’s life revolves around casual jobs and women, especially young violinist Christine Darbon (Claude Jade's screen-debut).
Les compagnons de la marguerite
Jean-Louis Matouzec works for French National Library as an expert looking after the restoration of old manuscripts.He falsifies marriage certificates as his wife refuses divorce.
Paris brûle-t-il?
Near the end of World War II, General Dietrich von Choltitz receives orders to burn down Paris if it becomes clear the Allies are going to invade, or if he's unable to maintain control of the city.
Les copains
Seven old pals live inseparable lives, dividing their time between hilarious pranks and memorable drinking bouts. Bénin is the mastermind, Broudier the enforcer and Lesueur the prankster. One evening, a grandiose plan was hatched: to wreak havoc in two peaceful sub-prefectures: Ambert and Issoire.
Behold a Pale Horse
Manuel Artiguez, a famous bandit during the Spanish civil war, has lived in French exile for 20 years. When his mother is dying he considers visiting her secretly in his Spanish home town. But his biggest enemy, the Spanish police officer Vinolas, prepared a trap at the hospital as a chance to finally catch Artiguez.
Snobs!
Four vice-presidents fight among themselves to reach the top post after the president dies. Their wives take part in the various schemes to downgrade the opposition by unorthodox means.
Le procès
Arrested for an unnamed crime, Josef K. is trapped in a surreal bureaucratic maze where justice is unknowable and guilt is assumed.
Le crime ne paie pas
A husband tries to kill his wife using the plan he saw in a film. But real life is not a film.
Adorable menteuse
A romantic comedy about love adventures of two beautiful sisters - Juliette and Sophie.