Princely Nights

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

A poem to love and patriotism soon after the end of World War I. A highly original and poetic film using many experimental camera techniques, which proved too fanciful for many but which established Marcel L'Herbier's reputation as a talented innovator. This is the director's debut film and it is considered the second impressionist film, the first being Abel Gance's, 1918, La Dixième symphonie (The Tenth Symphony).

An American star, visiting Paris, falls asleep in the Louvre while a guide comments on Watteau's "Voyage à Cythère". She dreams that the painting's characters, beautiful ladies, escape, scattering across Paris after a tour of the fashion houses.

Before the Battle is the English-language title of this espionage melodrama. The first half of the film takes place aboard a French cruising ship, steaming through dangerous waters during WWI. Among the passengers is heroine Jeanne (Annabella), who was once in love with first-officer D'Artelles (Robert Vidalin) but he now seems strangely preoccupied. It turns out that the ship is on a secret mission, which ultimately dooms the vessel to a Lusitania-like death. After the sinking, Captain De Corlaix (Victor Francen) faces a court-martial, and it is at this point that the film clarifies several baffling plot points. Despite its complexity, the story is fairly believable, with the exception of the grafted-on romantic subplot.

Four young friends share the carefree, cheerfulness, laughter and dances of Bohemian life. Rodolphe the painter, Alexandre Chaunard the composer, Colline the philosopher, as well as Marcel and his friend Musette. Mimi, a romantic young girl, falls in love with Rodolphe.

Adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, the film portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.

A woman suffers ill repute when she deserts her husband for a fling with an adventurer and gives the lover jewelry to pay the hotel bill. Will the husband be understanding and forgive her?

Comtesse Della Gentia and her lover Paul attempt to seduce and blackmail a rich neighbour Juan, who is in love with a naïve young friend of theirs, Clarisse. Their plot fails; the Comtesse kills herself at a ball, and her lover re-covers her face with its mask.

A famous singer Claire Lescot, who lives on the outskirts of Paris, is courted by many men, including a maharajah, Djorah de Nopur, and a young Swedish scientist, Einar Norsen. At her lavish parties she enjoys their amorous attentions but she remains emotionally aloof and heartlessly taunts them. When she is told that Norsen has killed himself because of her, she shows no feelings. At her next concert she is booed by an audience outraged at her coldness and she decides to visit the vault in which Norsen's body lies.

In Granada in Spain, Sibilla works as a dancer in a squalid cabaret called El Dorado, struggling to earn enough to care for her sick child. The boy's father Estiria, a prominent citizen, refuses them both help and recognition, fearful of jeopardising the engagement of his adult daughter Iliana to a wealthy nobleman. Iliana however slips away from her engagement party to meet her real lover Hedwick, a Swedish painter. Sibilla, in desperation after a further rejection by Estiria, sees an opportunity to blackmail him by locking the lovers overnight in their meeting-place in the Alhambra.

Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.

Ludivine, a lttle tomboy, takes on the too polite Delphin. Being caught, and punished, she wants him and his father to be dead. When the latter dies, she feels guilty and takes Delphin under her wing.

Evelyne attempts to reconnect with her family after a traumatizing experience with a young writer.

A scandalised Frenchman returns from Africa where he has been involved in illegal trading of mines (resulting in the deaths of many African miners). His bourgeois family are wary of the shame that he will bring so he must try to redeem himself and his family's name.

A vamp seduces a banker and breaks with him when she's obtained all that she wanted.