A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into...
Helene is based on Helene Wilfur, a novel by Vicki (Grand Hotel) Baum. Madeleine Renaud essays the title role, a young medical student in love with aspiring musician Pierre Regnier (Jean-Lous Barrault). Pierre's father, a noted surgeon, puts pressure on his son to give up music in favor of...
Exiled from the court of Spain, Don Salluste, the chief of police, wants to take revenge on the Queen. One day he meets Ruy Blas, a young student who happens to be a lookalike of Don Cesar, his nephew. Salluste disguises Ruy Blas and presents him as Don Cesar. It doesn't take long before Ruy Blas,...
Captain Justin Mollenard works for a company that sells armaments to the Far East. After an eventful stay in Shanghai, where he and his cargo are the victim of a malicious attack, he returns to his hometown of Dunkirk. Mollenard receives a frosty welcome from his wife Mathilde, who resents the way...
France under Louis XIII. 1615. The Duke of Angoulême is at the head of a group of gentlemen who are conspiring to drive the Florentines out of court, of whom Concini is the all-powerful leader. A cadet from Gascony, Adhémar de Capestang, who was later to become the Capitan, left his native...
Monsieur Durand-Bidon's mother-in-law is decidedly cantankerous. She never ceases - she who is a duchess - to reproach the latter for his low origins. One morning, at dawn, while he comes home "well watered", he is surprised with a comrade at the bottom of a bathtub. Taken for a homosexual,...
Two husbands claim to be Freemasons so they can go out at night. Where do they go, if not to the lodge, the Masonic lodge? In reality, one goes to visit a pretty and particularly welcoming concierge in his dressing room, and the other spends his evenings in the dressing room of a little music-hall...
A traveler without a ticket gets off the train he has stopped, becomes an occasional station master, fraternizes with the inspector who is chasing him, protects the loves of the wife of the real station master who has abandoned his post to make sure of his wife's fidelity, and takes the train back...
Brothers Moïse and Salomon run a modest bazaar near the Butte Montmartre, under the sign of "everything for nothing". There are office items, perfumes and leather goods. Their niece, the beautiful Lia, twenty years old, a graduate in synthetic chemistry, lives under their roof. She is less close...
Alexandre Dumas' romantic novel Lady of the Camelias (more popularly known as Camille) was filmed twice in 1953, first in Argentina, then in France. The Argentine film was heavily modernized, while the French version returns to Dumas' 19th-century milieu. Micheline Presle is excellent as...
A student monitor in a high school in the French provinces has no control over the pupils. He is in love with the caretaker's daughter but his superior, the Dean of Discipline, is also his love rival. Now, the two men are sent on military temporary duty and irony has it that in the Army the Dean is...
French language version. A Chinese cabaret singer will do whatever it takes to save her brother when he is sentenced to death for trying to save her from a lecherous Duke.
Three happy reservists are doing a military period. One evening out and about, thinking they were going back to the barracks, they enter a boarding school for young girls. They exchange their uniforms for the dresses of three teachers, which launches them into a series of incredible adventures for...
The niece of a shady tavern-keeper of Port Said, surrounded by dangerous men who haunt the ports, meets a man whom she will love and with whom she flees.
The tailors Moïse and Salomon Lévy decide to marry Mina, Salomon's daughter to a good match, to save themselves from the competition that Cohen makes for them. Mina will eventually succeed in marrying Pierre, from a marriage of love, without this harming the family business.
A prudish man becomes, by inheritance, owner of the Bal Tabarin which, according to the testamentary provisions, he must manage himself. He launches himself happily into this life of pleasures and hides it from his family.