Jacques de Baroncelli
Francois Roques, a power-and-money-mad editor of a Paris newspaper invites four women to a housewarming at his penthouse apartment. He plans on one of them to meet death by means of a loose railing on the balcony.
Marie is one of her kind. While the other girls are after gold, diamonds and jewels, she swears by ... poverty! She does not remain the companion of a banker too long for obvious reasons. But when she can be the muse of a poor music composer it is fine by her. Unless the musician becomes too famous...! Then, she leaves him! But maybe not forever... He can fall into poverty again, can't he?
Cabaret star Zazu (Josephine Baker) intervenes when young lovers are sundered by their parents' feud.
Edwige Feuillère and Pierre Richard-Willm star in director Jacques de Baroncelli's adaptation of the Balzac novella The Duchesse de Langeais, which tells the tale of a Parisian socialite who is romantically pursued by a Napoleonic war hero. With a screenplay by Jean Giraudoux.
Volpone, an elderly Venetian, connives with his money-crazed servant to convince his greedy friends that he is dying, knowing that each will try to curry favor with him in order to be named his heir. He is inundated with valuable gifts, and soon finds himself entangled deeper and deeper in a web of lies.
Cambo, a banker, has been in trouble since a certain Parizot has tried to extort stocks from him. Following the advice of his friend Quincampoix, Cambo decides to trade places with Bardac, a painter, who happens to be his lookalike. Bardac slips into Cambo's shoes with delight although he does not really live up to his task. But Cambo, who manages to ruin Parizot, makes a 100% profit on the situation. There are of course some misunderstandings when one man is mistaken for the other, notably as concerns Lulu and Geneviève, respectively Bardac's and Cambo's sweethearts, but things finally return to their initial state.
An expressionist comedy greatly influenced by German Expressionism set in a bohemian enclave of northern Paris, which Clouzot made shortly before he served as assistant director to Anatole Litvak and E.A. Dupont and began scripting French versions of German films at Berlin’s UFA studios.
Womanizer Don Mateo helps a girl in a train when attacked by a other woman. This girl, Conchita - a cigarette maker, soon visits the rich Don Mateo at his palace in Sevillia. He falls for her, but she likes to play with him.
Claire is married to the elderly owner of a brewery. She seeks excitement with her childhood friend René.
Based on the short story by Nodier and the play by Maeterlinck.
Dulac's earliest extant title, LA CIGARETTE concerns a liberated young woman and her older husband who believes she is having an affair--speaking to a real postwar crisis of masculinity in France. With its understated acting and location shooting, Dulac fuses realistic tendencies with impressionistic visual association, building tension between modernity/antiquity, life/death, and masculinity/femininity through cinematic-specific techniques, editing, and more.
Ramuntcho, a young smuggler, loves Gracieuse and the two would like to get married, but Gracieuse's mother Dolorès won't hear of it. Ramuntcho goes to America to seek fortune. On his return, Ramuntcho learns that Gracieuse, forced by her mother, became a nun. He decides to take her away but when he sees her kneeling in prayer, renounces to carry out his plan and leaves.
