Life's Shadows

Gaston de Méville has written a libel against Madame de Pompadour and her Royal Lover, King Louis XV. But the Marchioness is all the less mad at Garston as she has fallen for him and she does all she can to save him from the punishment he normally deserves. One night, while is performing in a play at the Palace, he is denounced. But the King is merciful to Gaston and his content to banish him to Canada.

The film follows the comic (mis)adventures of a poor street musician, who is roped into posing as an eccentric nobleman. He and his antics are rapturously received by the members of a bourgeois family desperate to mingle with the aristocracy. The daughter of the family takes a fancy to the baron (in reality, merely a “joke baron”), assuming him to be immensely wealthy.

Heads Up, Charley is a 1927 German silent comedy film directed by Willi Wolff and starring Ellen Richter, Anton Pointner, and Michael Bohnen. Marlene Dietrich appears in a supporting role.

Here Richter plays an Armenian princess whose father is being held prisoner by a despotic and corrupt pasha. A confrontation at the New Year’s Eve Ball at the Paris Opera leads to the princess being wrongly suspected of attempted assassination against the pasha. With the help of an English diplomat, she manages to flee Paris, but the pasha and his henchmen are hot on her heels. This marks the start of an extended, action-driven cat-and-mouse game that stretches to the outer regions of the Bosporus – and back again.

Historical romance about French monarch Louis XV and his infatuation with Madame Pompadour.

Only You is a 1930 musical by Hermann Feiner and Willi Wolff starring Fritz Schulz and Walter Janssen.

Adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's 1931 play Fanny.

When a travelling troupe threatens to unleash a saucy Berlin revue on the provincial town of Emilsburg, the local Morality Society, a band of sanctimonious middle-aged men, stages a protest. Meanwhile, the reigning monarch is concerned that his son and heir is not living his life to the full. Ninon d’Hauteville, a showgirl and the revue’s star attraction, takes a job as piano teacher to the young prince after her engagement at the local theatre was brought to a premature end, a result of the Morality Society’s interference. It doesn’t take long for those hypocrites to get wind of this. While on the outside they appear to be concerned with running the immoral woman out of their town, behind closed doors they rank among the new piano teacher’s most ardent pupils. However, Ninon, out to right the wrong done against her, secretly keeps a “diary” of their visits, recording each encounter on film with a hidden camera.

Deviating from the historical facts, Lola is introduced as a young Spanish “Gypsy” who becomes involuntarily embroiled in an attempt to poison the Infante of Spain (a short but splendid cameo by Heinrich George). As a result, she has to flee the country, arriving first in Italy, where she is taught how to act like a lady. Later, in Paris, she is invited to dance at the city’s prestigious opera house, becoming a worldwide sensation. She then becomes secretly involved in a revolutionary plot by Louis Napoléon, the future emperor of France. When the plot fails, Lola is once again forced to flee, this time to Munich, where she captures the attention of Ludwig I. Their ensuing affair arouses a great deal of hatred among the people and the establishment, however. In the end, Lola has no choice but to leave again, and vanishes into the night mist.

A spectacular action-adventure travelogue with stages in Genoa, Suez, Colombo, Singapore, Canton, Yokohama, Honolulu, San Francisco, New York and Brest.