FRENCH NOIR WATCHLIST BY ZABBY

Maurice Legrand, a meek cashier married to a nagging wife, has a secret passion: he's a Sunday painter. He falls in love with Lulu, a young woman dominated by Dédé, the pimp who she works for. Dédé pushes Lulu into a relationship with him.

Willy is broke and his mistress always wants more money. A stranger in a pub agrees to murder his aunt, but everything will not go as planned. Maigret will try to separate fact and fiction.

Early example of poetic realism: A grubby poor neighborhood, where buildings are slated to be taken down, reacts to the arrival of a young woman, whose father has spent time in prison.

A young man is haunted by the murder of a neighborhood pawn broker and hounded by the local police inspector who suspects that he is guilty.

Five unemployed penniless workers win 100,000 Francs with the national lottery. Instead of sharing the money, they buy a ruin and build an open-air cafe. But difficulties come to split their friendly group apart.

A wanted gangster is both king and prisoner of the Casbah. He's protected from arrest by his friends, but is torn by his desire for freedom. A visiting Parisian beauty may determine his fate.

Soldier Lucien meets elegant Madeleine one night in Cannes. Lovestruck, he follows her to Paris after he is discharged. Their love affair begins anew, but eventually runs cold and he returns to Orange in the south of France. She follows.

In this classic adaptation of Emile Zola's novel, a tortured train engineer falls in love with a troubled married woman who has helped her husband commit a murder.

A military deserter finds love and trouble (and a small dog) in a foggy, French port city.

On the meandering Canal St. Martin, at the Parisian Hôtel du Nord, a nearly fatal gunshot separates a dejected young couple. But, amid a sad but beautiful panorama of lively characters, love has the final say. Can life be a fairy tale?

Strange things happen at night at the St. Agil secondary school. Baume, Sorgue and Macroix - three of the school's pupils - discover a suspicious man on the premises. Shortly after this unsettling event, pupils begin to go missing.

Justin Mollenard is a sailor and arms smuggler who does not support the hypocrisy of society. He has a wife in Dunkirk who reproaches him the fact of having neglected the family for many years.

An innocent man spends time in prison for murder, then escapes and falls in love with the wife of the real perpetrator.

After committing a murder, a man locks himself in his apartment and recollects the events that led him to the killing.

Frank, a hobo, ends up in a garage-truck stop in the middle of nowhere. Nick Marino, its older, kind and naive owner, is married to Cora, a sexy and mercenary woman half his age. Frank, although not a fan of hard work, accepts Nick's offer to work for him. Of course, it is not for Nick's sake that the young man becomes his attendant, but for the love of Cora under whose spell he has fallen at once. It does not take long before Cora, who despises her husband, asks her lover to help her get rid of him. Frank is reluctant at first but.

After one of her fellow taxi dancers is murdered by an unknown man who she met through a personal column advert, Adrienne Charpentier is recruited by the police to answer a series of similar adverts to try to track down the killer.

The story concerns an old globe-maker who is mysteriously killed while going through the town portraying Pere Noel ("Father Christmas" aka Santa Claus).

Loursat, a lawyer, lives with his daughter Nicole. Abandoned by his wife about 20 years ago, he has sunk into alcoholism. One day, the corpse of a stranger is discovered in the attic of his residence.

Inspector Wens moves into a Paris boarding house to catch a serial killer.

A French village doctor becomes the target of poison-pen letters sent to village leaders, accusing him of affairs and practicing abortion.

An escaped convict needing funds for a getaway by sea takes advantage of a prosperous looking young traveler he meets.A nightclub singer involved with them both complicates things.

In a lost French village, an old woman is killed and her savings stolen. Several members of her family, all called "Goupi", are suspected.

Gilles Mauvoisin, the only descendant of his late uncle Octave, inherits his entire fortune. Uncle Octave was poisoned with arsenic and suspicion focused immediately on his widow, Colette Mauvoisin. But Gilles has doubts about her guilt and conducts his own investigation.

An internationally renowned engraver manages to make counterfeit notes for the love of a woman. She is a blind woman who cannot see the ugliness of the excruciatingly disfigured engraver.

After an elderly maid is murdered, opinions are manipulated, evidence is planted, violence erupts, and panic ensues.