Charleston Parade

A Salute to France

Commissioned to prepare Allied troops for the liberation of Europe, the film uses a blend of staged narratives and historical footage to promote solidarity and dispel the myth that France was a nation of willing collaborators.

Grand Illusion

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

The Rules of the Game

The Marquis de la Chesnaye and his wife host a weekend gala where a variety of complicated romantic and social entanglements between guests and servants lead to tragedy, all against the backdrop of a looming war.

La Chienne

Cashier Maurice Legrand is married to the wretched Adele. By chance, he meets Lucienne, 'Lulu', and makes her his mistress. He thinks he has finally found love, but Lulu is a streetwalker, still in love with her pimp.

The River

Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature—shot entirely on location in India—is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the Bengal river around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir’s subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its people, The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

French Cancan

Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.

This Land Is Mine

Somewhere in Europe, in a city occupied by the Nazis, a gentle school teacher finds himself torn between collaboration and resistance, cowardice and courage.

La Bête Humaine

Returning by train to the French port of Le Havre, Jacques Lantier, a tormented railwayman, meets by chance the impulsive stationmaster Roubard and Séverine, his wife.

Marquitta

The tumultuous relationship between a street singer and a prince.

BBC2 Play of the Week

An anthology of plays and novels adapted into feature length TV movies, broadcast on BBC2 from September 1977 to April 1979.

Backbiters

About the conflict between social classes through the life of the unhappy Catherine Ferrand, an orphan girl, who is a victim of the jealousy of women and the greed of men.

Experiment in Evil

Dr. Cordelier, living in a suburb of Paris, withdraws from society to pursue research into the functioning of the human brain. His lifelong friend, Maître Joly, becomes concerned when Cordelier draws up a will that bequeaths his entire estate to a stranger, Monsieur Opale; he cannot understand why Cordelier defends him, considering Opale attacks women and children. After a colleague is killed, Joly confronts Cordelier and discovers the truth behind his friend's behavior.

The Amazing Mrs. Holliday

A missionary tries to outwit the U.S. government and smuggle Chinese orphans into the country.

Nana

Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.

The Southerner

Sam Tucker, a cotton picker, in search of a better future for his family, decides to grow his own cotton crop. In the first year, the Tuckers battle disease, a flood, and a jealous neighbor. Can they make it as farmers?

The Spanish Earth

Joris Ivens’s advocacy documentary for the Republican cause intercuts a besieged Madrid with a nearby village digging an irrigation canal, linking the war to bread, land, and survival. Produced by the writers’ collective Contemporary Historians, edited by Helen van Dongen, scored by Marc Blitzstein, and narrated in its U.S. version by Ernest Hemingway (after an initial Orson Welles track), it blends frontline reportage with persuasion against Franco’s forces and their German–Italian backers.

The Aerial

An entire city has lost its voice. Mr. TV, the owner of the city's only television channel, is carrying out a sinister plan to control all of the city's inhabitants.

The Call of Cthulhu

A dying professor leaves his great-nephew a collection of documents pertaining to the Cthulhu Cult. The nephew begins to learn why the study of the cult so fascinated his grandfather. Bit-by-bit he begins piecing together the dread implications of his grandfather's inquiries, and soon he takes on investigating the Cthulhu cult as a crusade of his own.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein, a young medical student, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée; but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster.

The Impossible Voyage

Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.

Aelita: Queen of Mars

A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A doctor's research into the roots of evil turns him into a hideous depraved fiend.

Woman in the Moon

A scientist discovers that there's gold on the moon. He builds a rocket to fly there, but there's too much rivalry among the crew to have a successful expedition.

Elephants Dream

Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect. Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D animated “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.

Metropolis

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Johnny Express

In the year 2150, Johnny, a lazy Space Delivery Man, must deliver a package on a planet he does not fully understand.