It is extremely regrettable that this mini series is not available in French on DVD. The first French television channel (TF1) had however broadcast this film in two parts in French. However the DVD is only available in Dutch, English, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. except in French! This is a monumental error on the part of ABC who produced this mini series because if the French language had been available, the DVD would have been sold tens of thousands of times more. It is to be hoped that the next time this DVD is released, this error will be corrected... (at least with French subtitles).

To look at one was to see the other. For family, even the girls’ own father, it was a constant guessing game. For strangers, the surprise was overwhelming. And for the twins Olivia and Victoria Henderson, two remarkable young women coming of age at the turn of the century, their bond was mysterious, marvelous, and often playful–a secret realm only they inhabited.

Olivia and Victoria were the beloved daughters of a man who never fully recovered from his wife’s death bearing them in 1893. Shy, serious Olivia, born eleven minutes before her sister, had taken over the role of mother in their lush New York estate, managing not only a household but her rebellious twin’s flights of fancy. Free-spirited Victoria wanted to change the world. She embraced the women’s suffrage movement and dreamed of sailing to war-torn Europe. Then, in the girls’ twenty-first year, as the first world war escalated overseas, a fateful choice changed their lives forever.

It began when Victoria’s life was about to become a public scandal. It led to a painful decision, and brought handsome lawyer Charles Dawson into the Henderson’s life and family. Hand-picked by the twins’ father to save his daughter’s reputation, Charles was still mourning his wife’s death aboard the Titanic, struggling to raise his nine year-old son alone, determined never to lose his heart again. Charles wanted to believe that, for the sake of his son, he could make an unwanted marriage work. But in an act of deception that only Olivia and Victoria could manage, the twins took an irrevocable step, which changed both their lives forever; and took one of the twins to the battlefields of France, the other into a marriage she longed for but could not have.

From Manhattan society to the trenches of war-ravaged France, Mirror Image moves elegantly and dramatically through a rich and troubled era. With startling insight, Danielle Steel explores women’s choices: between home and adventure, between the love for family and the passion for a cause, between sacrifice and desire. But at the heart of Mirror Image is a fascinating, realistic portrait of identical twins, two vastly different sisters who lead their lives and follow their destinies against a vivid backdrop of a world at war.

Three sisters. Three destinies. Three lives as different as the changing images of a kaleidoscope.
August 1944: Solange meets a young American soldier, Sam Walker, in Paris. It's love at first sight. At the end of the war, she joined him in New York. But their love story, which began as a fairy tale, ends tragically fourteen years later when Sam Walker, who has become one of Broadway's most famous actors, is at the height of fame. Their three daughters, aged eight, five and one, suddenly find themselves alone in the world and, placed in different families, lose all contact. Hilary, the eldest, who has kept the memory of her past, will experience a sordid and miserable childhood. Alexandra, the youngest, will be raised in France in a rich aristocratic family, she will marry a French baron, ignorant of her birth like Megan, the youngest, who practices medicine in a hospital in Kentucky. The three sisters should never have seen each other again if, on the eve of dying, their father's best friend, consumed by remorse at his indifference, had not hired John Chapman, a private detective, to find them. For this one then begins an eventful investigation which leads him from the slums of Boston to the mountains of Kentucky passing through the aristocratic circles of Paris. Haunted by these three young women, he never ceases to see them reunited. But, when the day of the reunion comes, the truth comes out and the protagonists of the drama are suddenly confronted with a terrible secret...

This story is part of a book by Alexandre Dumas entitled "The thousand and one ghosts" (Les mille et un fantômes) Collection of fantastic stories.

Good movie, I only find the presence of Bruce (brute Willis) and Steve Buscemi regrettable because I don't consider them to be good actors. But I respect those who appreciate them but because of that, it's not the film I would want to watch again unlike "Deep Impact", served by excellent actors and actresses.

Yves Montand as an envious and intriguing old scoundrel for whom only money and possession matter; that was quite unexpected.
The film is a masterpiece that finally has a satisfying moral: the scoundrel, who thinks only of taking advantage of others without pity, will get the terrible punishment he deserves when he finds out who he killed! Ditto for his "Galinette"  who will become madly in love with Manon, the daughter of the man they murdered in various ways, his grandfather and him; Manon who, knowing the whole truth, will reject him like a bad dog. "Galinette" will only have to draw the consequences of his crimes.
Note that initially, it was Michel Colucci (Coluche) who had been approached by Claude Berri for the role that Daniel Auteuil plays masterfully.
Nice "skewer" of actors, except Hippolyte Girardot who for me does not have the talent among these giants.

Galinette: nickname given by the "papet" - the old César - to his nephew Ugolin

Bourvil used in a counter-intuitive role. This role of ruthless cop who never smiles suits him like "a cigar in a pipe..." Bourvil was an actor, yes, but only humorous. Only the film "La traversée de Paris" with Jean Gabin, as an art painter and Louis de Funès as a black market profiteer can suit such an actor. I didn't like it at all! And it's the only film with Bourvil that I don't like.
Imagine Benny Hill in the role of Quasimodo in "Notre Dame de Paris"... For me, it's the same thing. Bourvil was absolutely not a dramatic actor.

Melville "put his finger in his eye up to his shoulder blade..."

Aged 73 and in ill-health, a former prime minister of France, the widower Émile Beaufort, spends his days in his country house near Evreux dictating his memoirs to his secretary. He gets to the point, some twenty years earlier, when he had to devalue the currency. After secretly meeting the governor of the central bank and the minister of finance, he agreed to make the announcement one Monday. That morning, huge currency speculation broke out and Beaufort realised only one other person knew of the plan. This was Philippe Chalamont, the head of his private office, whose father-in-law was a banker. He made Chalamont write out and sign a confession, which he has kept ever since.

In his last term as prime minister, he was a passionate advocate of European union, seeing it as a healing of the hatreds which had torn the continent apart. His most persuasive opponent turned out to be Chalamont, by then in Parliament, who argued it would be bad for French business. In disgust at this petty-minded and sectional approach, Beaufort resigned and gave up politics.

Chalamont has now been asked to form a government and Beaufort summons him to Evreux that evening. Before his enemy turns up, he removes the confession from its hiding place, puts it in his pocket and dozes off in front of the fire. He wakes up to find his secretary searching the room and, confronted, she admits she was bribed to find the incriminating document. Beaufort burns it and waits. When shown in, Chalamont opens with a spiel about relying in his new post on the advice of Beaufort, whom he has always admired and trusted, and how he too now believes in European unity. Beaufort is not fooled, preferring France to have a new prime minister who is not a crook and a liar, so he threatens to divulge the currency incident to the media. Next morning, the news is that Chalamont has declined to form a new government.

For me, it's one of Jean Gabin's greatest roles, along with the one he plays in "Les Grandes Familles".

Retired from the SNCF, Baptiste Talon returns to Vendée in his native village of Tioune to find two old friends there: Jean-Marie Péjat and Blaise Poulossière. He tells them that he has decided to go to the Gouyette hospice. Jean-Marie Péjat, cycle repairer and old bachelor, decides to accompany him following an incident during a ball at the Fête aux Escargots where he realized that he was no longer very young. Blaise Poulossière, a former pig breeder living in his family now led with an iron fist by his son, also decides to join them.

And here are the three friends on the road with their bags and their basket of "pinard" (wine), for a trip punctuated by many adventures. But, once at their destination, disappointed by the austere atmosphere that reigns in the hospice run by sisters, they have no other plan than to return to the village. Having succeeded in fleeing Gouyette, they return to the village but are sharply lectured by the mayor who nevertheless accepts their return on the condition of being wise. How long will these incorrigible ganaches always on the lookout for a good joke be wise?

A hilarious comedy with three movie monsters united; enough to spend a pleasant moment.
Gabin and Fresnay had already played together in "La grande illusion" (1937).

In France during the Second World War, under the Nazi occupation, Édouard Martin, who has all the appearance of a "quiet father", is an important leader of the resistance without his family's knowledge. He is assisted by Simon and Pelletier who is secretly in love with his daughter Monique. She discovers her father's activities and sees the birth of her love for Pelletier. While an action on the neighboring factory is being prepared, the young Pierre Martin flees the house to join the maquis. To keep his family and neighbors away from the bombardment of the factory, Édouard Martin organizes the engagement of Pelletier and his daughter in town, which alerts the German police who arrest him. Wounded but saved by the guerrillas, the quiet father is proudly recognized by his son.

This story is taken from real events, which took place in the town of Woippy in Moselle, where the quiet father, Jean Ernest Kempnich, a horticulturist by profession, resisted the Nazis. The film is supposed to take place in Confolens and Angoulême, but in reality the exteriors were shot in Olonne-sur-Mer (where the "quiet father's house" still exists, as we see it in the film ) and Les Sables d'Olonne in the spring of 1946, the interiors being produced at the Radio-Cinéma Des Buttes Chaumont studio in Paris.

Noël Noël is equal to himself, a very great actor! The "race" of actors that we no longer do... I believe that the rating given by the members is quite severe for this excellent film and its incomparable actors, especially for Noël Noël who co-directs in addition to playing the main role.

But of course that only engages me.