French Impressionist Cinema
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- DirectorAbel GanceStarsSéverin-MarsJean TouloutEmmy LynnComposer Enrid Damor knows nothing of the past life of his new wife Eve Dinant : she lived as a debauchee with an adventurer, Fred Ryce. Fred Ryce meets Damor's daughter, Claire, and tries to marries her. He blackmails Eve. Enric learns something about her and Fred and composes a symphony to express his pain... A melodrama.
- DirectorAbel GanceStarsRomuald JoubéMaxime DesjardinsSéverin-MarsThe story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.
- DirectorAbel GanceStarsAlbert DieudonnéNicolas RoudenkoEdmond Van DaëleA film about the French general's youth and early military career.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsLéon MathotGina ManèsEdmond Van DaëleMarie wants to escape from her job and also from her lover, Paul, an unemployed drunk. She dreams of going off with Jean, a dockworker. The two men quarrel and fight over Marie on two occasions, but Paul retains a hold over her. Marie has a baby who falls ill and as time goes on Jean and a crippled neighbor try to help the child. Paul nearly causes the death of the child whilst in a drunken stupor and in a final struggle that occurs, the crippled woman seizes Paul's gun and shoots him dead.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsEdmond Van DaëleSuzy PiersonNino ConstantiniA renowned doctor and his brother live and work together until the brother falls in love with Marie, a singer, and gives up medicine to be with her. After a time however, she misses her old life and goes back on the stage - an act which leads her lover to commit suicide. Later the doctor and Marie also meet, and she becomes his mistress. He finds out about his brother's suicide and goes through his artifacts looking for a clue as to what might have been the cause. He finds a photograph of Marie and realizes the truth, which decimates their relationship.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsJeanne HelblingSuzy PiersonOlga DayPsychological narrative avantgarde film about a wealthy young businessman who consecutively falls in love with a classy English woman (Pearl), a Russian sculptress (Athalia), and a naive working-class girl (Lucie). Overpowered by weakness, the coward sidesteps the obligations that love affairs impose: rather than living up to his dates he takes his sports-car from an ultra-modern garage and speeds to the fashionable beaches of Deauville. On his way, he is fatally hit by a descending swallow. The film is divided into three segments each of which consists of events the woman experienced. These sequences are embedded in scenes in which each of the three women is telling and casting her mind back to her own love affair. Thus, present, future and past merge and cannot be distinguished clearly. The intertwinement of several layers of time experience, recollection, telling and showing have been regarded as a source of inspiration of Alain Resnais and this film prefigures his "L'Année dernière à Mariënbad" to a certain extent.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsJean DebucourtMarguerite GanceCharles LamyAllan visits the sinister Usher family mansion, where his friend Roderick is painting a portrait of his sickly wife Madeline. The portrait seems to be draining the life out of Madeline, slowly leading to her death.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsGina ManèsMarcelle SchmittMadame DelaunayBased on the story by Honoré de Balzac. Caught in a storm, two young doctors book into an inn for the night and find themselves sharing a room with a Dutch diamond merchant. During the night Prosper steals from the merchant, but when he awakes in the morning he finds the merchant dead and his friend gone. When the stolen property is found on him he is arrested for the crime and executed. 25 years later the innkeeper's daughter relates the tale to a traveler, who in turn later relates it at a dinner party. At that party is Frederic Taillefer, the missing friend and murderer.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsBlanche MontelMarie LacroixMaurice TouzéBargeman Louveau finds an abandoned boy, Victor, and with the authorities permission takes him back to his own family where he raises him. 10 years later Victor and Louveau's daughter Clara have fallen in love, and it is then that Louveau is called to Paris, where it has been discovered that Victor is really the son of Maugendré, a charcoal shipper on the Nivernaise canal. Meanwhile, Victor protects Clara when a jealous bargehand attacks her and he manages to save the family barge from crashing into the lock. Returned to his real father, Victor is sent away to be educated but misses Clara and his life on the barges. When Maugendré realizes this he lets him return and when they are married he gives Victor and Clara a barge of their own.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsNathalie LissenkoGenica MissirioCamille BardouA mother sells a photo of her daughter to the press for publicity, and a daughter suddenly dies leaving the mother desperate surrounding by portraits of her daughter all around town.
- DirectorJean EpsteinStarsGiboisJean-Marie LaotMalgornOn an island off the coast of Brittany four isolated men collect seaweed. Two young best friends have a quarrel and when one's thumb becomes infected his friend must risk his life on the ocean to bring him to the doctor.
- DirectorGermaine DulacStarsGermaine DermozMadeleine GuittyJean d'YdAn unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.
- DirectorGermaine DulacStarsRégine BouetMaurice SchutzJean-David ÉvremondA serial (known in French as a cine-roman) in which the adventures are told from the perspective of the kidnapped heroine.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsÈve FrancisJaque CatelainMarcelle PradotSibilla is a single mother, working as a gypsy dancer in a lousy cafe in the south of Spain. Unable to keep with the costs of his son's medical bills, she asks for help to Estiria, her son's biological father and one of the richest men in town. After being rejected, Sibilla vows to save her son's life by any means necessary - even at the cost of her own life.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsClaude-France AïsséJaque CatelainBaron Byron Khun de ProrakA French chauvinistic propaganda film made during the Great War.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsSuzanne DesprèsPaul CapellaniJaque CatelainIn this symbolist drama of truth and falsehood, a countess and her lover try to seduce and blackmail a rich man living near them who is fond of a naïve young friend of theirs. The plot does not go as well as planned.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsCharles BoyerClaire PréliaSuzanne DorisNolff, a tough Breton fisherman is happy: his wife has just given birth to a son, Michel. His only wish is to make him a fisherman like him. But when he becomes a man, Michel becomes a good-for-nothing who spends his time in taverns with his evil genius friend Gwenn la Taupe. The sea will be his judge.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsJaque CatelainLéonid Walter de MaltePhilippe HériatClaire Lescot is a famous first lady. All men want to be loved by her and among them is the young scientist Einar Norsen. When she mocks at him, he leaves her house with the declared intention to kill himself.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsIvan MozzhukhinMarcelle PradotLois MoranMathias Pascal, only son of a once rich family, marries beautiful Romilde, who has a terrible mother-in-law. She controls her daughter, and soon his home life becomes a nightmare, as well as his job as assistant librarian in his home town. His only moments of lights are his mother and his baby, but both die on the same day. Shocked he leaves his hometown and gets to Monte Carlo, where he wins a fortune at the Casino. Returning home, he reads his own obituary in a paper. They have found a corpse in a creek and connected it with his disappearance. Mathias, noticing that he now is free from all ties to his old live, decides to start a new one, and goes to Rome, where he rents a room in a pension full of fake spiritualists who are controlling the owner. The chief of the gang, Terence, wants to marry the owner's daughter Adrienne, and has convinced her father to give her to him, with no regards of Adrienne's feelings, who is in love with and loved by Mathias. When Terence steals Mathias 50,000 Lira, and Mathias, being officially dead can neither marry Adrienne nor denounce Terence to the police, he decides to do something about his state and travels home, just to notice that Romalinda has remarried.
- DirectorMarcel L'HerbierStarsBrigitte HelmMarie GloryPierre AlcoverThe business tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by his rival Gunderman, when he tries to raise capital for his company. To push up the price of his stock, Saccard plans a publicity stunt involving the aviator Jacques Hamelin flying across the Atlantic to Guyana and drilling for oil there, much to the dismay of Hamelin's wife Line. While Hamelin is away, Saccard tries to seduce Line. Line finally realizes that she and her husband were pawns in Saccard's scheme, and she accuses him of stock fraud.
- DirectorLouis DellucStarsÈve FrancisEdmond Van DaëleGaston ModotTopinelli, who runs a bar in a harbor in Marseille with his wife Sarah, begin to quarrel in conflict when a sailor, who turns out to be a past lover of Sarah, dances with her on arrival to the bar.
- DirectorLouis DellucStarsÈve FrancisGine AvrilNoémi SeizeA woman appears at the house where she used to live a long time ago. The new inhabitants, a married couple with a toddler, welcome her to stay for the night. Meanwhile, the wife has to choose between family and adventure.
- DirectorLouis DellucStarsÈve FrancisEdmond Van DaëlePhilippe HériatAfter the death of her mother, Germaine moves in with her father in a small town near the Rhône river. She falls in love with a young man, Alban, already engaged.
- DirectorJean RenoirStarsCatherine HesslingPierre LestringuezJacqueline ForzaneWhen the vivacious and beautiful Nana bombs at the Théâtre des Variétés, she embarks on the life of a courtesan, using her allure and charisma to entice and pleasure men.