Gaston Modot
In this mystery, a nouveau-riche Frenchman returns to his Parisian home after finding a fortune in Africa. He is looking for a wife and begins advertising in the newspaper. Instead he finds himself victimized by con-artists.
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.
In a small town in southern France, on the seafront and not far from Italy, Dr. Valerio is working to heal the poor. His young wife, could no longer stand the place, encouraged him to go and settle in Nice but the doctor does not want to leave before having found a replacement. Valerio was particularly friendly with Sandro, an agricultural worker who maintains the trees belonging to Gorzone, wealthy industrialist and major employer in the city. Sandro, disturbed by the serious illness of his wife, is struggling to fulfill its functions. During an absence of his wife, Dr. Valerio meets Clara, a young Italian, and falls for her. The drama erupts when Gorzone dismisses Sandro ...
"Thieves We Are" - In flashback, the audience learns why 104-year-old Amedee steals the watch belonging to the town mayor. The story develops into a history of the watch-thievery business, told in anecdotal fashion.
Set amid the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn-of-the-century France, Jean Renoir’s delirious romantic comedy Elena and her Men stars a radiant Ingrid Bergman as a beautiful, but impoverished, Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love. When Elena elicits the fascination of a famous general, she finds herself at the center of romantic machinations and political scheming, with the hearts of several men—as well as the future of France—in her hands.
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.
Ex-convict Georges Manda returns to the free world determined to go straight and takes a steady job as a carpenter. Unable to completely shake his connections with the underground, he meets with a former prison mate, older gangster Félix Leca, who introduces him to his mistress, the sweet but guarded Marie "Casque d'Or". Marie and Georges fall into a passionate relationship, driving Félix to do everything in his power to ruin the couple.
Henri Faust, retiring after 50 years as a professor in a circa-1700 French university, despairs at the ravages of old age ... whereupon Mephistopheles, agent of Lucifer, appears as a virile, handsome young man and exchanges bodies with him to induce Faust to sign a pact to exchange his soul for renewed youth, riches and power. But though the "new" Faust is attracted by the material improvements in his life, he remains wary of signing, while Mephistopheles, now posing as the aged professor whose body he inhabits, must find a way to trick him into signing the pact - and dissuade him from the love of a gypsy girl who prays for his soul - or find himself damned by his own Master...
Hopes and love and ambitions and friendship in a group of young jazz-loving Parisians.
She's working in a big store, he's a typographer and they lost their winning lottery ticket.
Filmed during the German occupation, this French milestone centers around the theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan and the four men who love her. Voted the “Best French Film in History” by the French Film Academy in 1990.
A man is shot In the hotel of an imaginary South American country. Clarence and Montès, two inspector students, must solve this murder, but they don't know that dead guy is the USA public enemy No.1.
A student from an elementary school accidentally breaks the glass roof of his school. His comrades decide to support it by working during the summer holidays in order to pay for reconstruction.
The adventures of a sailor (Lennard) from Mexico to a lagoon in the Pacific ocean, and the meeting with a lonely girl (Lilian White).
A weekend at a marquis’ country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances.
Aged penniless actors are living in a old people's home. They always talk about their past glory or failures. One day Raphael Saint-Clair comes; he has been a famous actor and had a lot of love affairs. Passions come back, and jealousies... A bitter film about aging, failure and the entertainment.
A film about the early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course, the king Louis XVI, each showing their own small problems.
Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.
Two journalists from different papers are looking for the same story. They want to know, who a group of gangsters getting young women from Europe to South America, where they are forced to work in brothels. But the gangsters have their own battels against each over, so the journalists can escape the danger, in which they've brought themselves.
A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing how the comrades help the proletariat against the capitalists.
Pierre Gilieth has committed a murder in Paris. He flees to Barcelona, where he runs out of money. So he joins the Spanish Foreign Legion. He meets there two fellow countrymen, Mulot and Lucas. He tries to forget his fault... but Lucas's friendship soon appears to be less unselfish...
The French-language version of the The Threepenny Opera with a different cast from the German version.
In the tenement slums of Paris between the world wars, impoverished street singer Albert yearns for beautiful Romanian immigrant Pola. Pola's boyfriend, local hoodlum Fred, grows jealous of Albert's constant attention to his woman and frames the hapless musician for one of his own petty crimes. But while Albert is in prison for Fred's misdeed, Pola ends up falling for Albert's faithful best friend, Louis.
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
This relatively straightforward dramatic biography was one of two films commissioned to honor Joan of Arc on the 500th anniversary of her death, but it was soon undeservedly relegated to obscurity in favor of Carl Dreyer's triumphant 'La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc'. The comparison is unfair: Dreyer was an artist, but director Marco de Gastyne certainly proved himself a distinguished craftsman, and his emphasis on the Maid of Orléans early life in Domrémy serves as a picturesque, matching bookend to Dreyer's impassioned courtroom drama.
A young doctor gets stuck on a ship after treating an injured first mate. Later, he rescues a woman from plane wreckage, and with the help of the cook, he hides her away from the rowdy and dangerous crew.
This epic adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo was directed by Henri Fescourt, and stars Jean Angelo, Lil Dagover, Pierre Batcheff, the beautiful Marie Glory, and Bernhard Goetzke as the Abbé Faria.
Raimundo Davidson is a young man in love with Florence, the niece of Dr. Belforger, master of hypnotics, who takes advantage of this faculty to intervene in a series of illegal business with his friend Burner. Aware of the fortune of Davidson, they accelerate their marriage with Florence to obtain it through the girl. Davidson is put on notice of Belforger's activities by an insurance firm. Discovered and stopped by the doctor, Davidson finally meets with Florence.
King Louis XI tries to unify France by all means fair or foul, which does not please his powerful rival Charles the Bold. It is against this troubled backdrop that the loves of the daughter of a wealthy bourgeois and the king's god-daughter Jeanne Fouquet and knight Robert Cottereau unfurl in spite of all the obstacles in their way. One of these being a pack of hungry wolves trying to stop Jeanne from carrying out an important mission assigned to her by the king himself.
Max accepts a wager that he cannot remain in a haunted castle for one hour (11 PM to midnight) without crying for help. As soon as he arrives he encounters strange and nightmarish visions, but he is nevertheless on the verge of winning the bet when a phone-call brings startling news.
Militis, a sailor, returns to a bar where he finds Sarah, the girl he once loved and is still attracted to. However, he is now married to an exotic woman who took care of him during an illness. In 2008, a new version of the film was released with the full French intertitles from an original negative.
A Spanish festival reveals the emotional distance between a woman and a man.
An French orientalist fairy tale starring France Dhélia, Gaston Modot, Sylvio De Pedrelli and Marcel Lévesque.
Hardly one of French filmmaker Abel Gance's masterpieces, The Torture of Silence nevertheless has more dramatic and psychological value than your average romantic-triangle tale. Simply put, the film concerns a doctor, his wife, and his brother. The doctor, a specialist in pediatrics, has no time for his wife Marthe. She seeks solace in the arms of his brother. Unable to keep up the charade, Marthe attempts to shoot herself, but it is her lover who is mortally wounded.
Much to his annoyance, Onésime's relatives arrive to stay with him, and the family resemblance is striking.
Looking after his aunt and uncle's house when they're away, animal lover Onésime turns it into a hospital for sick animals.
When Onésime gets declared dead by drowning, the supposed-widow consults a private detective specialized in missing persons.
Onésime becomes enamoured of a girl and sends a messenger to her on a motorcycle.
Ernest Bourbon -- that's Onesime -- has decided to learn to box, for some reason, and also fight an American fighter who's touring France.
Calino's uncle leaves him an inheritance, but only if he can uncover it hidden in his uncle's house. Detective Onésime is called in to help, and is soon tangling with some criminals after the treasure too.
Onésime came down and threw himself on stage, starting into the great aria at which he excelled. We must say, in respect for the truth, that he earned what critics calls "the estimated success": Onésime, who has the voice of a barrel salesman, sings like the pulley in a well.
While accompanying his lady to a fashionable casino, Onésime hears someone playing an overpowering waltz on a mandolin, and he starts dancing with his lady. Everyone, from the kitchen hands to the chef, dance until their out of breath.
Difficulties ensue when Calino and Onésime get married on the same day, in the same registry office.
His double behaves very badly, while the real Onésime suffers the consequences.
Calino goes politely around to three or four people from the bourgeois class, trying to sell them a lightning rod: but due to a factory defect, the apparatus attracts lightning instead of driving it away.
One day, Calino has the bold and imprudent idea to follow a woman down the street. The woman leads him all the way to the traveling lion cage run by her husband. To avoid her husband's jealous anger, the woman introduces Calino as an apprentice lion tamer.
When the train workers go on strike, Zigoto terrorizes the town in a hijacked locomotive.
For some time now, Sosthène, clerk at the Grand Laundromat of Papillon-sous-Bois, has been in love with Alphonsine, the girl who brings the laundry. One evening, he decides to win the heart of his beloved, who until now has been cruel and deaf to his fiery declarations, and if necessary, he'll kidnap her. Hidden at the edge of the woods, when Alphonsine goes by, Sosthène rolls through the grass until he lands at the beauty's feet, proclaiming his love in a deranged voice: "Be mine, or die!", "You idiot!". Blood rushes to Sosthène's head. His breath becomes so ragged that it can be heard a mile away, catching the attention of the famous detective Zigoto who was walking Bouboule, his no less famous police dog.
In an effort to secure a promised inheritance, Onésime invents a time machine that speeds up activity on earth, hyper-animates men and machines, and telescopes the human life-cycle.
While the costume maker Onésime is absent, his mannequins begin to play...
Drama in which a dismissed servant takes revenge by setting the lions of his ex- mistress free. Madam Berre, the widow of an African traveler, has a lion and two lionesses in her conservatory. Fred, a servant who abused her beasts, is sent away by her. Under the pretense of haven forgotten his hat, he comes back while Mrs. Berre receives guests that evening. Fred lets the lions out of their cages.
The short by Jean Durand begins with his frequent character, Zigoto (Lucien Bataille) reading a boring book. So, instead he goes on an outing in his new car with his friends. The captioning says it's a new '101 horsepower car'--this, during an age when the horsepower of cars actually was between 4-30 horsepower! So, in other words, it's supposed to be a super-fast car.
Onésime needs to take care of an infant and does everything he can to avoid that responsibility.
An Indian maiden wishes to marry her lover, but her father refuses because he does not have the requisite bride price.
Not having enough money to pay his drink bill, Onésime sells his soul to the Devil.
When gold is discovered the first man there gets to stake his claim. Joe and another man race each other, which involves a thrilling episode on a train.
A mine owner discovers a vein of gold but unfortunately dies. His wife doesn't want to sell the mine and so the forman decides to lock her up in a cottage with a dangerous and hungry leopard.
Just as the streets to hell, to hear it from the travelers, are paved with good intentions, the illustrious police officer Zigoto's brain is full of the most commendable initiatives. While passing before a door, he sees a piece of rope underneath and thinks it his duty to bend down and pick it up. But he's amazed to see that the more he pulls, the longer the cord becomes: "For a thousand prefects - that was his favorite exclamation - do they take me for a pulley?" Upon the arrival of two officers, the men open the door, when all of a sudden a black, horned mass crashes into them.
Calino decides to take a boarder. The gentleman turns out to be a huntsman. All goes well until pay day when the roomer refuses to get out of bed to pay his bill. He says that his pocketbook is in one of his trunks in the garret. Up goes the anxious Calino and his officious mother and sister only to find, upon ransacking each trunk, a furious African lion emerge. The hungry beasts pursue the trio in full haste and the complications and situations encountered are unusually comical. Calino never pays the board bill.
A magic wand falls into Calino's hands, and he turns everything he touches into running water, until he falls victim to his own witchcraft. The catastrophic meets the fantastic, for the triumph of the absurd.
Julius wants to marry Nelly, but her uncle forbids that. An attempt to court her failed, but the second attempt with the help of an aircraft might work.
Clément Mégé borrows the shotgun of a sleeping hunter and goes after big game, like ducks and a cat. Soon he gets caught up being chased by some policemen.
But when he refuses to tip the assistants at the fancier's sales room they lay a scheme for revenge, which takes the form of a practical joke and supplies the onlookers with much merriment.
