Michel Piccoli
Michel Jacques Daniel Piccoli was the son of Henri Piccoli, violinist and Marcelle Expert-Bezançon (1892-1990), pianist and daughter of the French industrialist and politician Charles Expert-Bezançon. In 1954, Michel Piccoli married actress Éléonore Hirt with whom he had a... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Todo modo
1976
Marx può aspettare
"Marx can wait" was something Camillo Bellocchio said to his twin Marco the last time they met before the former died at a young age in the heated days of 1968. This documentary is dedicated to his memory.
Vous n'avez encore rien vu
From beyond the grave, celebrated playwright Antoine d'Anthac gathers together all his friends who have appeared over the years in his play "Eurydice." These actors watch a recording of the work performed by a young acting company, La Compagnie de la Colombe. Do love, life, death and love after death still have any place on a theater stage?
Linhas de Wellington
Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal in Valeria Sarmiento’s intimate epic.
Holy Motors
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old.
Habemus Papam
A story centered on the relationship between the newly elected Pope and his therapist.
Les plages d'Agnès
Agnès Varda explores her memories, mostly chronologically, with photographs, film clips, interviews, reenactments, and droll, playful contemporary scenes of her narrating her story.
De la guerre
Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric), a film director, is conducting research for his latest film, and asks a funeral director if he can stay back at his funeral parlour after the close of business. Bertrand cannot resist getting into a coffin, and accidentally knocks the lid down, locking himself in the coffin.
Ne touchez pas la hache
At a Spanish cloister, a celebrated French general of the Napoleonic Wars recognizes the voice of one of the nuns and recalls how, five years ago, she was the Duchess of Langeais, and he her most persistent suitor.
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.
Jardins en automne
When he loses his position as a powerful government minister, Vincent is dropped by his pretty mistress and must begin life anew, without the privileges of power.
Belle toujours
Deux des personnages étranges du film de Luis Buñuel, Belle de jour retraversent –trente-huit ans après– le mystère d’un secret que seul le personnage masculin détient et dont la révélation est essentielle au personnage féminin. Ils se croisent à nouveau. Elle essaie à tous prix de l’éviter. Mais lui insiste et tente de la convaincre de le revoir.
Espelho Mágico
Luciano, fresh out of jail, was taken by his brother, Flórido, to serve in the home of wealthy Alfreda. He was surprised when she told him that her greatest desire was to see the Virgin Mary. Now comes this rich land owner with her sublime pretensions.
Un homme, un vrai
A strikingly original, offbeat comedy about reconciling married life with being oneself, with musical interludes and stunning locations in Ibiza and the Pyrenees.
La prophétie des grenouilles
It's a catastrophe! A flood has hit our planet and an unusual group of people are all that remains. Led by Ferdinand, a modern day Noah, this little group have managed to defy the furiously raging elements. People and animals alike are dragged through this incredible whirlpool of an adventure.
La petite Lili
This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films.
Ce jour-là
That Day (French: Ce jour-là) is a 2003 French comedy film directed by Raúl Ruiz. It was entered into the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.
Je rentre à la maison
The comfortable daily routines of aging Parisian actor Gilbert Valence, 76, are suddenly shaken when he learns that his wife, daughter, and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Having to take care of his now-orphaned grandson, he struggles to go on with his lifelong acting career like he's used to.
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.
Généalogies d'un crime
An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.
Tykho Moon
The McBee family has erected a government over a future 'colony', that looks like a run-down Paris divided into sectors by the Berlin Wall. All male family members suffer from a mysterious disease and are in urgent need of organ transplants.
Compagna di viaggio
In Rome, Cora is a waitress at a club, walks people's dogs, sleeps with various men, kips with pals, and has a salty tongue. She also has a bruised history: her mother's suicide, her brother's mental illness. Ada, a dog-owning client, hires her to follow Ada's aged and courtly father every day.
Beaumarchais l'insolent
Beaumarchais the Scoundrel is a biopic film based on the life of the French playwright, financier and spy Pierre Beaumarchais depicting his activities during the American War of Independence and his authorship of the Figaro trilogy of plays.
Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma
Monsieur Cinema, a hundred years old, lives alone in a large villa. His memories fade away, so he engages a young woman to tell him stories about all the movies ever made.
L'univers de Jacques Demy
Agnès Varda's documentary portrait of her late husband, Jacques Demy. A companion piece to her Jacquot de Nantes.
Deux fois cinquante ans de cinéma français
At a lakeside hotel, Michel Piccoli discusses the centennial of cinema with Jean-Luc Godard. Godard asks why should cinema's birthday be celebrated when the history of film is a forgotten subject. Through the remainder of his hotel stay, Piccoli tests Godard's hypothesis.
L'ange noir
Stephane, the wife of a prominent magistrate, shoots and kills a man in her home and claims he tried to rape her. While investigating her case, her lawyer becomes hopelessly enmeshed in a web of lies and subterfuges concerning her past.
Al-mohager
The biblical tale of Joseph is told from an Egyptian perspective in this interesting character study. In this film, Joseph is called Ram. Ram, tired of his family's backward superstitious life, and tired of being picked on by his brothers, wants to go to Egypt to study agriculture.
Les demoiselles ont eu 25 ans
Agnes Varda's documentary of the celebrations arising from the 25th anniversary of her husband Jacques Demy's film Les demoiselles de Rochefort.
Le bal des casse-pieds
A tolerant veterinarian turns the other cheek when annoyed but changes his nature when he falls in love.
From Time to Time
In the Visionarium, the Timekeeper is a robot testing a new time machine. Because of the potential dangers, he sends his assistant, the robot 9-Eyes, into the machine. The test works and she travels through all eras. Arriving in the nineteenth century, it was discovered by the author Jules Verne who grabbed it.
Le voleur d'enfants
Although he was once a colonel in Argentina, the principal character in this film is now a wealthy exile living in Paris with his beloved wife, who has been unable to bear children. To fill this void in their lives, he feeds and clothes abandoned children, raising them in his mansion as if they were his own.
La belle noiseuse
The former famous painter Frenhofer lives quietly with his wife on a countryside residence in the French Provence. When the young artist Nicolas visits him with his girlfriend Marianne, Frenhofer decides to start again the work on a painting he long ago stopped: La Belle Noiseuse. And he wants Marianne as model.
Contre l'oubli
A compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
Milou en mai
During the events of May 1968 in France, different worldviews of conflicting relatives collide in their family estate.
Maladie d'amour
Two physicians, one old and one young, fall in love with the same woman, Juliette, a quixotic hairdresser. First, she is with Raoul, the older one; then passion for Clément, the younger doctor, takes over.
L'homme voilé
Claire (Laure Marsac) is a 16-year-old young woman who discovers her father Pierre (Bernard Giraudeau) is not a healing physician but a killer with a bloody war record in the Lebanese conflict. She runs away from home and into the arms of Kamal (Michal Albertini).
Mauvais sang
Sous l'accablante chaleur dégagée par la comète de Halley, la population parisienne est frappée par un virus tuant ceux qui font l'amour sans s'aimer. Dès lors, deux bandes rivales vont se disputer le germe de ce virus qui devrait permettre de créer un vaccin et sauver la population.
Le paltoquet
Une tenancière, un serveur (le paltoquet en question), un bar insolite et ses fidèles (un professeur, un journaliste, un docteur et un honorable commerçant)... Et une créature de rêve qui transforme la réalite en cauchemar policier...
Péril en la demeure
A wealthy wife's affair with her daughter's guitar tutor is threatened when the tutor is attacked and rescued by a hired killer, leading him to suspect their secret is out.
Partir, revenir
Salomé Lerner just finished writing an autobiography. She goes to a TV show called "Apostrophes", hosted by French TV showman Bernard Pivot. Pivot then imagines a film that could be created from her gripping story.
Le matelot 512
Max, who dreams of adventures, abandons his studies at 18 to become involved in the navy. He becomes the sailor 512.
La diagonale du fou
During the Cold War, the World Chess Championship clashed complete opposites - personal and political.
Le prix du danger
In a futuristic society, contestants pit their survival skills against each other in a fight to the death for cash prizes, and the contest is aired live on television.
Une chambre en ville
Set against the backdrop of an increasingly violent strike, a worker falls in love with the middle-class daughter of his landlady.
Scénario du film 'Passion'
Godard constructs a lyrical study of the cinematic and creative process by deconstructing the story of his 1982 film Passion. “I didn’t want to write the script,” he states, “I wanted to see it.” Positioning himself in a video editing suite in front of a white film screen that evokes for him the “famous blank page of Mallarmé,” Godard uses…
Que les gros salaires lèvent le doigt!
The cynical boss of a big insurance agency invites his top-salary employees to spend a week-end in his country house. A modest clerical worker, also invited, discovers the hidden reason for this party - and decides to take advantage of it.
Passion
While shooting a film, the director becomes interested in the unfolding struggle of a young factory worker that has been laid off by a boss who did not like her union activities.
La passante du Sans-Souci
Max Baumstein is a reputable businessman who founded an international organization fighting against violations of human rights. Why would he commit an act that apparently negates the principles he has striven for so long to uphold?
La nuit de Varennes
In June of 1791, a group of passengers in a stagecoach find themselves caught up in the events of the French Revolution, when they find themselves in the city of Varennes when revolutionists arrest the fleeing King Louis.
Une étrange affaire
A young Parisian advertising executive becomes so captivated by the unsettling charm of his mysterious new employer that he eventually abandons his family and friends, viewing it a privilege to let the ubiquitous employer take over his home, his life, his desire.
Salto nel vuoto
Mauro, a judge, is worried about his older sister Marta, who took care of him since he was a boy, and now suffers from mental illness and suicidal thoughts. She seems to recover from her depression when Mauro acquaints her with Giovanni, a brilliant actor at the edge of legality. However, Mauro becomes unconsciously jealous of their relationship.
Atlantic City
In a corrupt city, a small-time gangster and the estranged wife of a pot dealer find themselves thrown together in an escapade of love, money, drugs and danger.
Giallo napoletano
A mandolin professor, reduced to playing the itinerant player, sees his feeble gains wasted at the game by his father.
La part du feu
Real estate developer Bob Hansen discovers that his wife Catherine is cheating on him with his partner. He reacts calmly and even encourages their meetings, thinking that this is the only way to not lose them both.
L'état sauvage
L'Etat Sauvage is based on the novel by Georges Conchon which won the highly esteemed Prix de Goncourt. The story chronicles the mindless racism of both the departing French colonial overlords and the emergent black Africans in a newly emerging African state.
Des enfants gâtés
Successful writer/director Bernard Rougerie is at a creative dead end and decides to isolate himself from his wife in order to complete the script for his next film. Bernard moves into an apartment building whose tenants are in the midst of a revolt against their abusive landlord.
Cet obscur objet du désir
After dumping a bucket of water on a beautiful young woman from the window of a train car, wealthy Frenchman Mathieu, regales his fellow passengers with the story of the dysfunctional relationship between himself and the young woman in question, a fiery 19-year-old flamenco dancer named Conchita.
Todo modo
Set during a retreat of Christian Democrat politicians who practice spiritual exercises together, it is an allegory of corrupted power. Disturbing, claustrophobic settings are the background to a series of mysterious crimes. (MoMA)
Mado
Simon Léotard, 49, a real estate developer, meets Mado, 22, a prostitute, and discovers in her a secretive and endearing character.
La dernière femme
Gerard and his 9-month-old son have been left by his wife for feminist reasons. The custody of his son is being threatened by his next romance.
F comme Fairbanks
André Fragman, nicknamed "Fairbanks" after his childhood idol by his film projectionist father, returns home from military service. He meets and falls in love with Marie, an aspiring actress who is rehearsing for a stage production of 'Alice in Wonderland'.
Leonor
Richard is a medieval nobleman. After his first wife dies in an accident and is buried in the family vault, he remarries and has children by his second wife. A mad longing for his first wife Leonor comes over him, and he sells his soul to the devil for a chance to get her back. But when she returns, she is a murderous vampire.
La Faille
During the brutal era of the military government, an innocent tourist manager is accused of being a member of the illegal resistance movement.
7 morts sur ordonnance
Dr. Brézé and his sons, all surgeons with limited abilities fight any competition on their sector with all means.
Vincent, François, Paul... et les autres
Three friends face mid-life crises. Paul is a writer who's blocked. François has lost his ideals and practices medicine for the money. The charming Vincent faces bankruptcy and his wife, from whom he's separated, wants a divorce.
Un amour de pluie
Elizabeth and her daughter Cecile spend their holidays at a lakeside resort in the French mountains. Elizabeth falls in love with a strange Italian, Giovanni, while young Cecile is courted by an apprentice cook. It seems that mother and daughter are drifting apart from each other, but then their holidays are over.
Touche pas à la femme blanche
A highly stylized surreal farce about the events leading up to Custer's Last Stand anachronistically reenacted in an urban renewal area in modern Paris.
Le trio infernal
Marseilles, 1919. Georges Sarret is a distinguished and respected lawyer, recently honoured for his services in the First World War. He takes as his lover Philomène Schmidt, a young German woman, who has just lost her job and home.
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.
Grandeur nature
Michel is a middle-aged man with money and social standing. But he dreams of owning a doll to be his lover. When he finally gets one, he realizes he has become a slave to his own fantasy.
Themroc
Themroc, a bachelor house painter living at home with his mother, leads a sad and colorless life. One day, after a run-in with his boss, he rebels. He wrecks his apartment, rejects every facet of bourgeois life, and begins acting like an urban, modern-day Neanderthal.
Les noces rouges
In a small French town, the mayor discovers his wife is cheating on him, a betrayal that eventually leads to murder.
La grande bouffe
A group of men hire some prostitutes and go to a villa in the countryside. There, they engage in group sex and resolve to eat themselves to death.
La femme en bleu
One day, Peter sees fleetingly a woman dressed all in blue. Obsessed with her, he went looking for him, helped by his wife Aurélie, who prefers to confront a rival rather than a fantasy. But this woman-such really exists? This quest, is it not in vain?
Liza
En croisiere sur un yacht avec des amis, Liza eprouve l'envie de tout quitter et nage jusqu'a l'ile la plus proche. Elle fait la connaissance du proprietaire des lieux, Giorgio, qui vit seul dans une boule de pierre. Ils passent la nuit ensemble. Giorgio la ramene a terre mais Liza revient, tue le chien et prend sa place.
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
L'attentat
Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a television special about the Third World. Sadiel, the exiled leader of a North African state, is being hunted by the ruthless Colonel Kassar, who will stop at nothing to capture his political rival.
César et Rosalie
A young woman becomes entangled with a successful businessman, but her ex tries to win her back, provoking intense jealousy that leads her to reconsider her choice. Ultimately, one man's actions force a resolution to her dilemma.
Max et les ferrailleurs
A detective decides to go undercover and set up a group of robbers, but he may be getting too caught up in the task at hand.
La décade prodigieuse
The tormented and unstable young sculptor Charles Van Horn summons his old family friend Paul Regis in Paris and tells him that he has weird nightmares followed by amnesia, and last time he had awaken with his hands full of blood. Paul and Charles travel to the countryside to the manor of Charles' stepfather, the millionaire Théo Van Horn that i...
L'udienza
Caustic satire on bureaucracy of the Vatican authority and a simple Italian who wants to achieve the audience with the Pope.
Les choses de la vie
The mind of Pierre Bérard, a successful middle-aged architect, is torn between his unstable present with Hélène, his younger lover, and his happy memories of the past with Catherine, his ex-wife; but his true destiny awaits him at a crossroads on his way to Rennes…
Topaz
A French intelligence agent becomes embroiled in the Cold War politics first with uncovering the events leading up to the 1962 Cuban Missle Crisis, and then back to France to break up an international Russian spy ring.
La voie lactée
Two tramps going on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, meet different christian heresies. They meet too the Marquis of Sade.
Dillinger è morto
Back home, Glauco, an industrial designer, finds his wife in bed with a serious headache. She has left him dinner but it is cold and Glauco decides to prepare himself a gourmet meal...
La prisonnière
An art gallery owner's photography hobby reveals a dark side, catching the attention of an artist's wife who's drawn to him despite her stable marriage.
La chamade
Alain Cavalier's adaption of Francoise Sagan's 1966 novel is the classic story of the wealthy, older lover, his mistress, and a younger man.
Diabolik
International man of mystery Diabolik and his sensuous lover Eva Kant pull off heist after heist, all while European cops led by Inspector Ginko and envious mobsters led by Ralph Valmont are closing in on them.
Benjamin ou Les mémoires d'un puceau
Set in 18th century France, a naive 17-year-old orphan named Benjamin is taken in by his wealthy aunt, the Countess de Valandry. There, he is seduced by a variety of women, including a few flirtatious maidservants and neighboring countesses who all want to be Benjamin's "first".
Mon amour, mon amour
Vincent and Agathe live together since many years. They're not married. Vincent had to move to Nice because of some professional projects. Agathe keeps living in Paris. Now Agathe discovers she's pregnant. Must they marry?
Les demoiselles de Rochefort
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.
Belle de jour
A bored wife of a wealthy doctor spends her afternoons exploring exciting escapades as a call-girl in a chic Paris brothel.
1 homme de trop
A French resistance group liberates some German prisoners. Turns out one of them is a spy.
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 créatures
A young mute woman, living in a small village, is expecting a baby. Her husband is at the same time writing a novel and using the villagers as his characters. In the creative process, reality and imagination are constantly intertwined.
La voleuse
Drama of an unmarried mother who regrets having had her child fostered and fights its foster parents to have it restored to her.
La guerre est finie
A veteran Republican fighter's ardent dedication to overthrow of Franco's regime is challenged. He realizes that the center of political struggle has shifted away from him, and is forced to make choices about his life and political ideals.
La curée
Renee Saccard is a pampered, selfish young wife of a middle-aged Parisian businessman who falls in love with her stepson but is driven to the point of madness when her husband tricks the stepson into betraying her.
Masquerade
The British send an American and a war hero to kidnap and hide an oil-country prince.
Le coup de grâce
During WWII, Bruno gave away many people to the Gestapo. Now, 25 years after, with a new face given by plastic surgery, he is back and becomes friend with his victims' relatives and friends...
Compartiment tueurs
The witnesses of a train murder must take the investigation into their own hands if they want to survive.
Le journal d'une femme de chambre
Celestine has a new job as a chambermaid for the quirky M. Monteil, his wife and her father. When the father dies, Celestine decides to quit her job and leave, but when a young girl is raped and murdered, Celestine believes that the Monteils' groundskeeper, Joseph, is guilty, and stays on in order to prove it.
De l'amour
Hélène, who has just broken up with Raoul, a dentist, lets herself be seduced (though not without great resistance) by the obstinate Serge. Raoul, a modern Don Juan, now focuses on charming Sophie, a pretty patient of his, but is beaten on the finish line by... the young woman's ex-husband.
Le mépris
Contempt / Le Mépris is a film about filmmaking. Godard’s Masterfully staged melodrama tells of a woman’s love for a middle-class lifestyle and how a film maker must buy it for her while at the same time working as a writer for the film ‘The Odyssey’ to be directed by Fritz Lang.
Le jour et l'heure
In Nazi-occupied France during WWII, a French woman helps two downed Allied airmen to evade capture by the Germans and make their way into neutral Spain.
Le doulos
A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisting, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust?
Adieu Philippine
Michel is a young technician in the fledgling TV industry and is due for military service in two months at the time of the Algerian War. Juliette and Liliane are inseparable best friends, and aspiring actresses, who hang around outside the TV studio. Michel invites them in to watch, flirts with them both, and dates them separately and together.
Rafles sur la ville
Michel Piccoli plays a police inspector whose best friend is murdered on the orders of gang boss Charles Vanel. The inspector knows full well that Vanel is too crafty and well-connected to ever stand trial for his crime, so he carefully lays a subtle trap for his adversary.
Les copains du dimanche
Casti and Trébois, two friends who are workers at the same factory, have developed a common passion for flying. They dream of starting an aviation club. In the meantime they spend all their Sundays restoring an old plane under the supervision of Raf, a former RAF pilot...
Les sorcières de Salem
Salem 1692. The young Abigail, seduced and abandoned by John Proctor, accuses John's wife of being a witch in revenge. It will be the beginning of a series of witchcraft trials and a dark moment in American history.
La mort en ce jardin
In a remote Amazon jungle village, a group of angry diamond prospectors revolt when the local government undertakes a violent crackdown.
Les grandes manoeuvres
Sûr de son charme, un soldat en garnison parie avec ses camarades qu'il est capable de séduire la première femme qui passe, avant les grandes manoeuvres. Il met son plan en oeuvre et tombe amoureux de la jeune modiste choisie au hasard.
Les Mauvaises Rencontres
Catherine Racan, a young journalist who always puts her career over her love life, is brought in by the police for questioning. They are looking for a doctor who illegally performs abortions and now they are interrogating all of his previous clients.
French Cancan
A comedy/drama about a world-weary impresario who transforms a laundress into a theatrical star.
...Sans laisser d'adresse
Thérèse Ravenaz is a charming young woman but also the victim of a seducer who abandoned her as soon as she told him that she was expecting his baby. To trace her unworthy lover, she boards a taxi driven by friendly cabdriver Emile Gauthier, who agrees to help her.
Sortilèges
The story begins with the murder of a horse trader, which sets free a black stallion that roams through the snow and the village terrifying the people as it gallops.