Simone Genevois

In the snow as bells toll, a hooded figure makes its way through the streets to a church.

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 triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.

Luc Froment, a reform-minded engineer, starts working at a steel mill in a small town. There he founds small groups of workers (and their families) under miserable conditions. Under the influence of Fourier's ideas, Froment tries to turn the mill into a workers' co-operative.

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.

Out of love for his adoptive mother, Carl Brenner allows himself to be accused and imprisoned because of an illegal operation carried out by Doctor Stefan Brenner, the legitimate son of Mrs. Brenner. A few years later, Stefan died of alcoholism and Carl made a name for himself under his name.

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 charming story of a young society girl and the pathetic love of a youth..." Considered a lost film.

Julien Villandrit is the owner of the estate of Les Basses-Bruyères and its textile factory, where the manager is his childhood friend Corradin. Julien marries his neighbour Régine, unaware that Corradin also loves her. Julien is sent to gaol for a murder actually committed by Corradin. The only witness to the truth is the woodsman Rudeberg and Corradin buys his silence by paying for the education of his son Pascal. Julien's struggle to clear his name and to rescue Régine and their daughter Christiane from Corradin's scheming extends over many years and faces many setbacks.