Stavisky...

Director: Alain Resnais
Year Released: 1974
Rating: 0.5

Professional huckster and sneering gadfly Stavisky (Jean-Paul Belmondo) spends like there's no tomorrow and gets involved in a scandal that leads to his own ruin; Leon Trotsky, meanwhile, is holed up in a nice house nearby, trying to avoid the ol' ice axe. Has all the charm and wit of two accountants discussing numbers and tax brackets and ends with my personal favorite of third act devices, the courtroom scene (albeit broken up due to editing). Without the sense of humor or plenty of 'quirk' present in something like Mon Oncle d'Amerique, and aside from the small bit with Gerard Depardieu - whose character is trying to manufacture a devise to determine the sex of a newborn (!) - Resnais' film is populated with crashing bores.