Daughter of the Sands

Secret de Polichinelle roughly translates as Open Secret. The "secret" in question is an illegitimate child, the offspring of young-and-foolish Henri (Bernard Lacret). The baby is adopted by its grandparents, Monsieur and Madame Jouvenol (Raimu and Francoise Rosay). At first taking charge of the child because it is their duty, the Jouvenols come to love the little nipper as if he were their own son. At this point, the film threatens to drown in a morass of sentiment, but the actors and the director manage to stem the bathos with some first-rate comedy vignettes revolving around the care and feeding of the bouncing baby boy.

This musical comedy produced in 1953 for the General Government of Algeria, features the comic trio composed of Rouiched, Mohamed Touri and Sid Ali Fernandel, accompanied by the orchestra of the master of the Algiers Chaâbi El Hadj M'hamed El Anka, the singer Fadhéla Dziria, Mustapha Skandrani on the piano. Some scenes were filmed at the Summer Palace (the current Palace of the Algerian Presidency, called the People's Palace). André Zwobada, the director, will play an important role after the independence of Algeria in 1962, in the production and preservation of the first Algerian newsreels.

An old man about to die gives all his fortune to a young beggar he meets in an Arabian town. He takes him to his house (now the poor man's property) and he strongly advises him not to open one of the doors, the seventh door. "I could throw the key into the sea" says the young lad" No use, you'd dive to get it back". The young man is curious and he cannot resist temptation: he opens the forbidden door. A strange world is waiting for him where a girl, Leila, will be his guide .

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.

Robert and Françoise Monier make a hot air balloon to fly to the stratosphere. After a visit to Venus, they return home, but have only aged 15 days whereas 25 years have passed on Earth.

Eager to find a better life abroad, a Senegalese woman becomes a mere governess to a family in southern France, suffering from discrimination and marginalization.

An episode in the life of the tumultuous poet who murdered his rival, in love with Catherine de Vauselles.

Martine, who has become a major star of the song in Paris, wants to return to visit her hometown. Confronted with Merlerault, a very haughty and noble character who wants to teach her how to live, she succumbs after a time of anger, to the charms of the gentleman. They get married but she forgot to tell her husband that her father is in fact the most famous poacher in the area.

Representing the French authority in Morocco, Captain Ardant is the target of the bloodthirsty rebel leader Malek. In order to appropriate himself in arms, he does not hesitate to take the captain's collaborator hostage and to do despicable blackmail.

The early days of the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens in Marseille and the royal court, including King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing how the comrades help the proletariat against the capitalists.

French Resistance's documentary during the liberation of Paris in August 1944.

In November of 1942, the French submarine, the "Casabianca,", escapes from German-held Toulon, and, upon joining the Free French forces at Algiers, is sent on a secret mission to Corsica to take two secret-service agents to make contact with the underground there. The agents contact the Marquis resistance forces, and learn they are ready to revolt but lack the needed arms and ammunition. The submarine is sent back to Corscia with the necessary weapons for the resistance-fighters, and also returns with trained troops to assist the resistance forces in attacking the Germans.

A ruined banker is abandoned by his mistress. He commits suicide after entrusting a prostitute with twenty-thousand francs. The money changes hands. A crook is arrested in the house of an an actress he had fooled. In a luxury hotel, a typist kills her lover's wife. The trial of the murderer is followed by the bankruptcy of another financier and the money finally returns to the mistress of a suicide in the restaurant in which she had first appeared.