Best movies like How to Keep the Red Lamp Burning

Five swindle stories, taking place in five international cities: Tokyo, Japan ("Fumiko's Five Benefactors" by Hiromichi Horikawa); Amsterdam, The Netherlands ("A River of Diamonds" by Roman Polanski); Naples, Italy ("The Road Map" by Ugo Gregoretti); Paris, France ("The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower" by Claude Chabrol); and Marrakesh, Morocco ("The Confidence Man" by Jean-Luc Godard). Godard's segment was not included in the original French cinema release, and Polanski's segment was not included on the 2016 home disc release.

A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.

Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.

"Le Dabe" retired many years ago and now he lives in the Tropics where he owns stables and horses. He is a very rich man. He was the king of all money counterfeiters. He is contacted from Paris to organize a new job. He says no. But when he finds out the the currency that should be counterfeited is the Dutch florin, he accepts immediately. He retired after having counterfeited 100 florin notes just before the Queen Wilhelmina retired them from circulation. He flies to Paris. But the gang is not to be trusted, at least not all of them.

In World War II France, American soldier Michael Blake captures, then loses Nazi-collaborator art thief Paul Rona, who leaves behind a gem studded gauntlet (a stolen religious relic). Years later, financial reverses lead Mike to return in search of the object. In Paris, he must dodge mysterious followers and a corpse that's hard to explain; so he and attractive tour guide Christine decamp on a cross-country pursuit that becomes love on the run...then takes yet another turn.

A love story that follows the maneuverings of a society lady as she connives to initiate a scandalous affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a prostitute.

Three stories. A solitary sailor falls from his boat and washes ashore on a tropical island. While seeking rescue, he's found by a nearly naked woman who is playful and compliant. He decides to erase his signs of distress and remain on the island. What awaits? In the second, an adolescent searches for the words of a nursery rime he remembers bits of. His journey takes him into dreams, sexual awakening, and Oedipal fantasy. Third, a man of wealth in late-nineteenth century Paris hires a prostitute for the night. She's also cabaret performer and takes him to her room. He fears he's about to be robbed. What's her secret?

Rita is a girl that lives on taking gangsters as lovers. But when the money stops coming, she swears revenge.

A great French restaurant's owner, Monsieur Septime, is thrust into intrigue and crime, when one of his famous guests disappears.

When a romance between a widow and a notorious libertine takes an unexpected turn, Mademoiselle de Joncquières becomes instrumental to one lover’s plans for revenge.

In a small town in post-WWII France, 16-year-old Janine tries to improve her conditions by any means necessary. Three people—Michel, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette, a photographer she meets in prison—will help her learn from her mistakes.

Angelique is saved by the king of the cutthroats when she is endangered in the streets of Paris. After her hero is killed, she has many amorous affairs and becomes a successful businesswoman.

Hong Kong action diva Maggie Cheung (playing herself) comes to France when a past-his-prime director casts her in a remake of the silent classic Les Vampires. Clad in a rubber catsuit and unable to speak a word of French, Cheung finds herself adrift in the insanity of the film industry…

A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.

When the wealthy owner of an upscale brothel dies, our hero Victor, is sent on a wild goose chase to find the three beautiful heiresses. His only clue is that each of the three women have a hamster branded on their buttocks! When the girls are mysteriously murdered, it is up to Victor to solve the murders.

Set in France at the end of World War II Albert Dehousse finds out his father wasn't a war hero and his mother is a collaborator.

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.

Cass Bunning, a farm boy with a talent for shooting, meets up with Nellie, a naive woman from the East, who has been lured West by the promise of a waitressing job which turns out to be in a brothel.

After winning the lottery, François goes to a bar in Pigalle and offers one hundred thousand Euros per month to a prostitute named Daniela to live with him as his wife until his money runs out.

In the absence of his wife, a clarinet player is induced by a friend to meet a call girl, but arrived after a crime. Perceived by some people leaving the scene of the crime covered by his raincoat, he became the only suspect for the police. His only hope is to discover the murderer before is name is mentionned publicly, specially in front of his wife.

The film consists of seven roughly 15 minute episodes, each showing what will happen if one or more of the Ten Commandments will be broken: Jérome Chambard is warned that he will lose his job if he continues to swear; Françoise Beaufort enamored of a stripper calls on her only to find her married to a janitor who doesn't know what kind of dancing his wife performs; Denis, a Jesuit novice, leaves the order to avenge his sister's suicide, which was provoked by Garigny, who seduced her into prostitution and drug addiction; Philip buys a necklace for Micheline though he is bored with her; a young man find out that his real mother is not Madeleine, but actress Clarisse Ardant; Didier Marin, cashier of a bank, was fired by his boss; the Devil appears as a serpent for Jérome Chambard and the bishop are eating.

The owner of an apartment building is found murdered. Two rival policemen, Boucheron and Lambert, investigate the matter and get into the private lives of the tenants: an unfaithful judge, a crippled blind man and his daughter, an eccentric knife thrower, a shoplifter (and proud of it!), a bourgeois lady who has a bone to pick with a gigolo, a mistress who cheats on her lover, not forgetting the caretaker and a soldier in love.

A cold-war spy parody. After the death of an armaments manufacturer, an international group of spies is drawn into a high-stakes battle of wits to obtain the valuable military patents which have been inherited by the lovely widow.

Based on the true story of the notorious Marquis de Sade. In 18th century Paris, an innocent beauty's search for her missing sister leads her into the deadly sensuous realm of the infamous Marquis de Sade. Imprisoned for his sordid crimes, the Marquis likewise has the beauty morally trapped... for she must help him complete his banned book of lust, or never learn the fate of her sister. It becomes a test of wills and wit, as the Marquis attempts to convert her to his deviously sexual philosophy. When the Marquis escapes his prison, she must follow him to his remote chateau of sin to finally discover her sister's fate, and to face her own.

For more than 15 years, two Marseille friends and criminals battle the law, rival gangs, prison authorities and even mined beaches in order to survive.

An aging gangster, Fernand Naudin is hoping for a quiet retirement when he suddenly inherits a fortune from an old friend, a former gangster supremo known as the Mexican. If he is ambivalent about his new found wealth, Fernand is positively nonplussed to discover that he has also inherited his benefactor’s daughter, Patricia. Unfortunately, not only does Fernand have to put up with the thoroughly modern Patricia and her nauseating boyfriend, but he also had to contend with the Mexican’s trigger-happy former employees, who are determined to make a claim.

Felix is a middle-aged bourgeois husband. Much to his discomfort, he learns that his wife Gabrielle is carrying on with a young man--a very young man. Rather than express outrage, Felix decides that there's something lacking in him. He spends the rest of the picture trying to keep his wife by altering his own personality and outlook.

Overnight, Paris is invaded - although peacefully - but the Chinese Army, and millions of Chinese people... It's the Nazi occupation all over again, with modern - funny - twists.

Julian, 25, and Louis, 12, are two brothers who work and live on a barge in the centre of Paris. They transport gravel and resort to petty crime to make ends meet. They have grown up alone and now they are inseparable, wedded to a life on the river. A receiver of stolen goods offers them the opportunity of a lifetime, to steal a painting by Manet from the Musée d'Orsay. Louis takes charge of the theft and, against the odds, he succeeds in removing it from the gallery and taking it aboard his barge. Rosalie, a museum guard, follows Louis to his home and confronts him. After a fight, the two brothers secure Rosalie in the hold of their boat and make a quick getaway. Later, Rosalie emerges from her hidey hole and makes the brothers an unexpected offer...

Six vignettes set in different sections of Paris, by six directors. St. Germain des Pres (Douchet), Gare du Nord (Rouch), Rue St. Denis (Pollet), and Montparnasse et Levallois (Godard) are stories of love, flirtation and prostitution; Place d'Etoile (Rohmer) concerns a haberdasher and his umbrella; and La Muette (Chabrol), a bourgeois family and earplugs.

In France in 1946, the difficult return to civilian life of five deportees and prisoners of war after having lived through the hell of the Second World War.

Goubi, the simpleton of his village in the French Department Allier, has but one wish: to see Paris. One day, the truckers Grafouillère deposit a drunk Goubi in the biggest market of Paris (the "Halles"). The poor man is completely lost, but the meat merchant Dessertine takes him under his wings when he hears that Goubi was likewise 'raised by the State'...

Marcel is a taxi driver who luckily pickups a gorgeous woman who begins to undress herself while in the back seat. Soon she leads him to a Private Club where he can pick any woman he wants to satisfy his sexual fantasies. After he enjoys a few exciting moments with 2 lovely ladies he is introduced to the many characters that make up the Private Club and begins enjoying the sexual games. The Private Club isn't all that's on Marcel's mind though as he is madly in love with Lisa who he met in Paris.

Juan Sahagún, since childhood, feels passion for his mother. One day in the street he sees a woman identical to her. He follows her and finds out that she works as an actress in a theater company, so Juan decides to hire the whole company to represent the people who have influenced him in his past. They recreate the same situations of yesteryear and Juan acts as the child he was, to relive the memories already forgotten.