Best movies like Topaze

Cesare Botero, an ambitious and corrupt young minister, hires a new spokesman, honest and polite high school professor Luciano Sandulli.

Lucienne Delamare and Pierre Maury are having an affair. Lucienne's husband Paul is the mayor, and a French deputy. Pierre's wife Clotilde has been weak and sickly for years. Lucienne's husband holds no excitement for her, and he is always away in Paris on business. Pierre is now the vice-mayor, thanks to Paul. Lucienne and Pierre have a secret meeting spot by a lake along a country lane. Pierre's wife dies suddenly, by suicide the town gossips believe. Pierre confesses otherwise to Lucienne. Paul proposes a shady land deal which will "benefit the town", and wants Pierre's political support and collusion. Then Paul discovers proof of his wife's affair...

A corrupt night court judge tears an innocent young family apart in his efforts to elude a special prosecutor.

Léon Ménard, a farmer and an apparently simple man of the country, is invited to visit his uncle Henri Ménard, a prosperous industrialist. He encounters a number of people scheming to marry into the Ménard family for the sake of money. Ménard discovers and thwart the plots and manages to unite a young couple who truly are in love. The romantic comedy ends happily with a double marriage. Henri's daughter Nicole marries Didier, and Ménard marries his new-found love Rosine. It turns out that Léon is "not so stupid" after all.

An Algerian man's life-long dream finally comes true when he receives an invitation to take his cow Jacqueline to the Paris International Agriculture Fair.

Mobster Nick Scanlon has managed to buy several of the local government and law-enforcement officials. However, he can't seem to touch the incorruptible police captain Tom McQuigg, who refuses all attempts at bribery. A prosecuting attorney, Welch, and a police detective, Turck, are crooked and make McQuigg's job as an honest officer nearly impossible.

A small-town politician falls for an idealistic zookeeper.

A crusading young reporter planning a series of articles about a corrupt politician is framed for a crime and sentenced to serve five years at a prison farm.

The story of an idealist's rise to power in the world of Louisiana politics and the corruption that leads to his ultimate downfall. Based on the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Robert Penn Warren, loosely based on the story of real-life politician Huey Long.

A tough kid comes to a new high school and begins muscling his way into the drug scene. This is a typical morality play of the era, filled with a naive view of drugs, nihilistic beat poetry, and some incredible '50s slang.

At a picturesque lakeside estate, a love triangle unfolds between the legendary diva Irina, her lover Boris, and the ingénue Nina.

Picking up moments after the end of Marius, this film follows Fanny’s grief after Marius’s departure—and her realization that she’s pregnant. Panisse continues courting her and embraces the baby’s impending arrival as a gift, so long as its paternity remains a secret. Fanny and Panisse wed, but after her baby’s birth, Marius returns unexpectedly and demands what he believes is still his.

Respected liberal Senator Joe Tynan is asked to to lead the opposition to a Supreme Court appointment. It means losing an old friend and fudging principles to make the necessary deals, as well as further straining his already part-time family life. But it could be a big boost to his career, so he takes it on. Helping him prepare the case is pretty southern researcher Karen Traynor, and their developing relationship further complicates and compromises his life.

The last of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.

Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.

Mr. Topaze (Peter Sellers) is an unassuming school teacher in an unassuming small French town, who is honest to a fault. He is fired when he refuses to give a passing grade to a bad student, the grandson of a wealthy baroness. Castel Benac (Herbert Lom), a government official who runs a crooked financial business on the side, is persuaded by his mistress, Suzy (Nadia Gray), a musical comedy actress, to hire Mr. Topaze as the front man for his business. Gradually, Topaze becomes a rapacious financier who sacrifices his honesty for success and, in a final stroke of business bravado, fires Benac and acquires Suzy in the deal. An old friend and colleague, Tamise (Michael Gough) questions him and tells Topaze that what he now says and practices indicates there are no more honest men.

Leda Beth Vincent lives in the small town of Shiloh and works as a cocktail waitress there. She is not too well thought of as she is nothing of a blushing virgin. But she is far from a whore and brings up her daughter Julie, a high school student, as a loving responsible mother. So, when she becomes aware that Julie's very popular history teacher, Mr Baker, spreads antisemitic ideas among his pupils, Leda Beth decides to ask Mr Baker for an explanation. But she comes up against a wall. Nobody in town - Julie less than all others - wants to support her and it looks as if she will have to bring the Board of Education to court. The trouble is that a school dropout and a tramp of her kind does not count for much compared to the holders of knowledge and of morality.

A union pensioner and his wife are robbed, but find that merely getting the assailants brought to justice is not enough for their consciences.

France, 1815. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon heads for exile. Royalists occupy Paris and attempt to restore the monarchy. However, the battle doesn't seem to be over. On July 6, Talleyrand, a shrewd politician of flexible convictions, invites chief of police and zealous revolutionary Fouché to supper and tries to convince him to serve the king. Over the meal they insult each other, accuse each other, and, at first sight, look like mortal enemies. But they definitely have one thing in common: they are both power-hungry.

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. What follows is a tale of cruelty, depravity and lies -- the very building blocks of love.

On an ocean voyage, a card shark and her father cheat a naive man out of his money. Things take a twist when the girl falls in love with the man she's just fleeced.

A Boston school teacher fights with a group of impoverished Frenchmen for possession of an inherited château. Elizabeth Rockwell is indignant when she finds her château filled with squatters, a widower with five messy children, who have no regard for private property rights.

A charismatic peddler from the Bayous finds his true calling in politics. Is he a demagogue in the making?

Jean-Jacques Daloiseau has worked as civil servant in the Ministry of Health and his now retired.Jean-Jacques and his old friend Robert have always dreamed of a sailboat and a trip around the world by sailboat.They have found a nice sailboat: Robert has paid his part but Jean-Jacques needs to sell a ground in the Soth of France.And also Jean-Jacques needs to speak with his wife Carole about this trip around the world with Robert.Then begin all the difficulties and impediments.Carole doesn't agree with this and runs away to London.Then one daughter ,Pauline, has problems with her husband and has come back home with her children.So Jean-Jacques becomes a nanny and has to solve all the problems of his daughters, find the money for boat and recover the love of Carole.

A man is unjustly convicted of a brutal crime. In prison he must fight for survival, justice and freedom.

A young lawyer is elected mayor of the city and promises to rid it of the corruption it's famous for. The problem is that most of the corruption he's vowed to eliminate is caused by the crooked political machine that helped elect him.

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. To enable Philomène to remain in France, Georges finds her a husband – who dies conveniently of natural causes a month after the wedding. Georges repeats the trick with Philomène's sister, Catherine – marrying her off to an old man who dies suddenly so that the scheming trio can profit from his life insurance. When an accomplice in the scheme, Marcel Chambon, threatens to blackmail them, Georges and his two lovers have no option but to kill him and his mistress...

Mirele Efros, "the Jewish Queen Lear," was the masterpiece of Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin, an enormously influential Yiddish playwright whose works sought to describe and promulgate the ethos of mentshlekhkeyt: the practice of honesty, decency, and devotion toward family and community. This sophisticated version of his stage classic faithfully recreates Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Grodno, Poland.

An honest and naive schoolteacher gets a lesson in how the world works outside the classroom, when a rich Baron and his mistress use the teacher's name and outstanding reputation in a crooked business scheme.

A comedy about a dimwitted man who must obtain a high-school diploma before he can inherit an inn.

A tale of a socially inept schoolmaster who must confront his own principles.

All the games and behind-the-scenes of Silvio Berlusconi's power, including politics, media and soccer. Citizen Berlusconi is the original version of the documentary written by Andrea Cairola and Susan Gray broadcast on August 21, 2003, during the Wide Angle program of Thirteen/Wnet New York, the major U.S. public TV station Pbs.

A self-serving journalist uses influential women in late-1800s Paris and denies the one who truly loves him.

Suzy, a beautiful woman, is coming back to Paris to attend the funeral of her lover, a married man. Cecile, his wife, is holding Suzy responsible for his suicide. By finding Suzy in Paris, Cecile is trying to seek the truth by playing a psychological game on her.

Proper parents who treat their adult children as teenagers have a son who wants to go to Paris to study art, and a daughter in love with a married man.