For years now, Chief inspector Gustave Picard has been trying to bring down Salviati, the dreadful leader of a drug-selling gang. Lucienne Préville, an informer who works for him, has infiltrated the gang but her position is dangerous. On the other hand, Scoppa, Salviati's former right-hand man,...
Daughter of a French officer and an Annamite, Mahlia was brought up in Indochina by Mr. and Mrs. de Roussière. Their son, Henri, would like to marry her but they are against it. Mahlia flees and Henri is killed for trying to protect her. The young girl enters the Mission to raise children there in...
A young engineer, Lucien Rombeau, is sent to the Sahara by the oil company that employs him, which wants to put an end to drilling that it considers unproductive. He ends up agreeing with the chief prospector, who refuses to stop the work and is convinced that prospecting will not be in vain.
Jean Diserens has a double life: he's a property developer and... drug dealer. He's looking for a new way to sell it. But his superior, Crazy Capo, doesn't see things the same way.
An African physician returns home after studying medicine in Paris. He marries and settles down to life in the bucolic splendor of his native land. When he has a confrontation with a white plantation owner, the white man sees red and casts a spell on the African doctor. Although he realizes the...
Paris, 1884. Bella Fontanges, a renowned ballerina, is married to Georges de Segar. But after just a few years together, the couple slowly sinks into weariness. Bella has forgotten what happiness used to taste like. Then a mysterious squire appears. Aware of the couple's faltering situation, he...
A mysterious figure signing himself "The Ferret" keeps sending letters to the police, tipping them off about murders that are to be committed around Paris. Among those caught up in the police manhunt is a fraudulent clairvoyant.
One of the most popular melodrama films directed by Abel Gance. A paranoide, fanatical and obsessively jealous husband obducts his own son to bully his wife.
Mademoiselle Bressac is a bossy spinster who manages "Le Clos", her estate, with an iron hand. But is she really a bad person? Her manners are abrupt but they only hide a heart of gold. Doesn't she bring up four orphans, Dominique, Fabien, Chantal and Jean? And as if it were not enough, she has...
This flashback heavy melodrama is a loose adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Kreutzer Sonata named after the Beethoven piece. The story concerns marriage, divorce, love, carnal lust and jealousy.
A young settler from Algeria is in love with the boss's niece. Of course, the father of the young man is formally opposed to the marriage. But helped by his mother and by the kingpin himself, the boy achieves his goals.
Tom Proby is a representative from a British engineering firm sent to Sicily to convince the landowners (all in the Mafia) to allow his company to build an oil refinery on some waterfront real estate. Proby talks to the mob bosses about the project, but disagreements between different bosses...
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.
After being saved from suicide due to an unhappy marriage, Marie hesitates between two other men, but lands up rejoining her husband in the colonies as she now expects a baby.
The fiancée of a gangster who has been shot by the police takes an entire police station hostage, armed with a revolver and a bottle of nitroglycerine...
Two adaptations. First, "Le Rideau cramoisi" by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly is about a young second lieutenant of hussars, garrisoned in the provinces, who evokes a strange adventure. Staying with an old couple, he acts as acquaintance with Albertine, the daughter of his hosts, fell in love...
