A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his...
Soon after the death of his first wife (whose dowry was inadequate), Charles Bovary, a country doctor in Normandy, marries Emma Rouault. In her new home, Emma finds conflict with her mother-in-law, a husband uninterested in the social whirl, and general discontentment; thereby proving an easy...
After serving in the trenches of World War I, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war. He thinks he has succeeded, but the government subverts his discovery, and Europe slides with...
A man is a hunter at Maxim's restaurant. He lives in the provinces and his family is unaware of his profession. As soon as he has enough money, he quits his job and goes home for his daughter's wedding to a marquis. This one is a regular at the restaurant and the man tries to prevent the wedding...
Mme Beaudrier, the wife of a Parliamentary Senator, hurls a pastry at visiting King Joan IV of Cerdagne, sparking off a series of farcical events involving all levels of the government and their mistresses.
1920, in a small village in Provence. Monsieur Pascal, a young schoolteacher, is faced with a lack of interest from his pupils. He decides to radically change the methods employed by his predecessor. He listens to the children, draws inspiration from their discoveries and takes them out into...
The voyages of Pierre Savorgnan de Brassa through Africa. This great explorer, the founder of Brazzaville (Congo), was born in Italy but chose France as his motherland.
At the urging of her childhood friend Brémontier, Lucie de Kéradec, a wealthy widowed countess who wishes to remarry, invites all of her seven suitors to her mansion. Her untold intention is to test them by claiming to be ruined. The experience is a success in that each of the potential husbands...
Some try to travel around the world with a time constraint, but Lavarède has to perform an even harder task than Phineas Fogg. His assignment is to go around the globe with a mere five cents coin. Worse, he can't even spend it or else he will not come into the money of his inheritance. To make...
The romantic life of the head of a bandit gang, wanted by the police. Cartouche gets away with being deported to Louisiana after unmasking a plot by a Duke against the throne.
"Les Trois Valses" traces the love story of two people over three eras. In the first waltz (music based on Johann Strauss I), Yvonne is a sensitive Parisian ballet dancer, whose romance with a dashing officer is brought to an abrupt end by his family. She goes off to Vienna to become a big star. In...
Octave Laburette only makes blunders in his job with a backroom worker. He buys ten thousand shares of the Compagnie Générale des Cacahuètes, when the client wanted to sell them. His boss registers them on his own account: Octave then owes the agency sixty thousand francs and his wife informs...
Activities and exploits of firefighters in the context of a village then the capital and under the bombardments of the Second World War where the saving of lives was more important than that of factories.
Misfortunes and disarray of the little clown Leroy who is upstaged by a comrade, Bertini, and sees himself abandoned by his girlfriend Ginette, preferring his collaborator to him.
In a small provincial town, the new colonel of the dragoon regiment consigns all his men. Three soldiers defy orders and jump the wall. But the colonel becomes indulgent thanks to the intervention of the general who did not remain insensitive to the charm of a young American.
After losing her only child and falling for another man, a wife no longer loves her husband, but he thinks if he takes her back to some of the places they enjoyed in earlier years, it might rekindle their doomed marriage.
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...
