Brief Ecstasy

Frédéri, a young man from a good family, is in love with a woman he met in the arena of Arles. He wishes to marry this woman.

Two police inspectors track down a mysterious criminal who signs his crimes with a fiery triangle. When they have just discovered an accomplice, one of the police officers, in love with the young girl, is shot dead. His colleague will then have only one goal in mind.

This government commissioned film -- made on the occasion of the forty year anniversary of queen Wilhelmina's reign -- chronicles the lives of two Dutch families from 1898 to 1938 against the backdrop of the social and political events of the times. It shows the emergence of trade unions, the troubled years of the First World War, the development of aviation and Schiphol airport, the Dutch East Indies and the lives of the Dutch royal family.

A theater troupe is touring Manon Lescaut, starring Denise, whose husband is a sick alcoholic. Tired of his violent outbursts, and wanting to rebuild her life, she runs away and finds refuge with a doctor who hires her as a nurse in his clinic. However, another jealous nurse commissions a detective to investigate, and ends up uncovering Denise's past.

During the First World War, a woman doctor falls in love with one of her patients who turns out to be a German spy. She herself ends up working for German intelligence.

A genius director whose daring and sensual films have earned him the nickname "The Merchant of Love", claims to escape commercial contingencies and direct the film of his life on his own. It is a resounding failure that leads him to the forfeiture from which the fate of a woman's love.

To be able to win paradise, a selfish old billionaire, who has just died, must make someone happy. He will have to guide a young girl through the intricacies of love.

Locked in a train, a group of suicide candidates await the death promised them by a crook. When they have almost gone mad with anguish, the door opens.

Martine is searching for her sister that disappeared mysteriously. Lequévic agrees to help her.

Laurent meets Louvaine and brings her back to his island.

Thérèse kills her lover during the very night of her wedding to the count of Vétheul. To gain a night with her, a modest local worker agrees to bury the body.

In the tenement slums of Paris between the world wars, impoverished street singer Albert yearns for beautiful Romanian immigrant Pola. Pola's boyfriend, local hoodlum Fred, grows jealous of Albert's constant attention to his woman and frames the hapless musician for one of his own petty crimes. But while Albert is in prison for Fred's misdeed, Pola ends up falling for Albert's faithful best friend, Louis.

Due to a complex series of events a Guards Officer in a small European country is imprisoned. He manages to escape in the company of an idiotic milliner and they briefly take shelter with some gypsies, where the Captain falls in love with a young woman. Having been discovered by an American promoter while performing with gypsy orchestra in a tavern, the three accompany him to London as the latest new musical sensation. A great success, they begin a European-wide tour when their plane is forced down by bad weather in their homeland. Here events are satisfactorily resolved.

Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the 'Miss Europe' pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it's too late; she's even then being named Miss France. The night Andre planned to propose to her, she's being whisked off to the Miss Europe finals in Spain, where admirers swarm around her. Win or lose, what will the harvest be?

When her architect father brings home a much younger new wife, rebellious and resentful teen Jenny goes to extreme lengths to sabotage their relationship.

The happiness of a newly-married couple, Henry and Jeannie Saint Clair, is shattered when the husband is made a paralytic in an automobile accident. The wife still loves him, although he is incapable of any physical love. She is slowly drawn into a short-lived affair with a handsome athlete, Robert Vanier. When the husband learns of the affair, he commits suicide. But the wife cannot forget him and she sends her lover away.