Simone Genevois
Father-and-son lion tamers, Rabbas and Léo share a mistress - Rosita, the " lovely bitch " of the film's title. She is as wild as their lionesses and, in a single night the father is injured and the son attempts suicide. Only when Rosita leaves the circus can things get back to normal.
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 massive 5 1/2 hour biopic of Napoleon, tracing his career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign), his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797 (the film stops there because it was intended to be part one of six, but director Abel Gance never raised the money to make the other five). The film's legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens.
Film composed of 10 episodes: 1.- L'Ami felon. 2.- Le secret de L'etang. 3.- L'Ambition au service de la haine. 4.- L'Implacable verdict. 5.- Le Pont vivant. 6.- La Voix du sang. 7.- Les Caprices du destin. 8.- En Champ clos. 9.- Les Angoisses de Corradin. 10.- Le Triomphe de L'amour.
Widow Simone d'Argentières lives in Neuilly with her son Jean and her friend Hélène Castillon, whose brother Georges wants to marry Simone. Both the chauffeur Pistol and the servant Malar are in love with the maid Prunette. Georges makes a deal with businessman Paramine in the hope of ending his financial troubles while Albert D'Amentières proposes to his sister-in-law Simone who declines arguing that she does not wish to give Jean a step-father. Hélène overhears this and repeats it to Georges who says in front of the servants: "What a shame she has a son'. Little Jean leaves for a vacation with old father Pailloux at the country. Gypsies settle near by and their leader Luigi meets Paramine who is here under the assumed name of Simon and gives him money. The next day, little Jean disappears.
Simone has been brought up by her widowed father and Hermance, the old governess. She loves her father and worships her dead mother. But nobody has ever told her about the strange circumstances in which her mother lost her life. In fact, fifteen years earlier, following a hunting party, Mme de Sergeac had been found in her bedroom, killed by gunshot. Beside her, her husband, wounded and unconscious. Now Simone is fifteen. She is in love with Michel Mignier, but she still does not know the truth. It is Hermance, the governess, who will the reveal the whole thing ...
"A charming story of a young society girl and the pathetic love of a youth..." Considered a lost film.
