The Late Mathias Pascal

Le marchand de plaisirs

The Blindness of Youth

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

Rose-France

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).

La Femme d'une nuit

A lieutenant of the French navy, ready to kill himself in despair, renounces his project after spending a night with a beautiful stranger, the Princess of Lystrie.

Sacrifice of Honor

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.

News Item

An experimental short from 1923 France which offers silent narrative in diverse, optical multi-exposures and severe close-ups offering dense montages which create psychological constructs that unfold a Parisian love affair which turns into a threesome of great emotion and consequences. Also notable for using Antonin Artaud as the male lead.

Le Carnaval des vérités

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.

The Scandal

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?

Zuiderzeewerken

This documentary documents the construction of the Afsluitdijk, the massive hydraulic engineering project that sealed off the Zuiderzee from the North Sea. Filmed over several years, it focuses on the labor required to build the dike and the final closing of the last gap in 1929.

L'Argent

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.

The Inhuman Woman

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.

El Dorado

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.

Little Devil May Care

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.

Forfaiture

Denise Moret joins her husband, Pierre, in Mongolia where he works as a civil engineer. One night she loose a lot of money on the roulette and therefore is forced to borrow money from Prince Lee-Lang. The Prince immediately begins to flirt and make advances towards Denise. Advances she rejects.

The New Men

Dedicated to men, natives and French, which under the leadership of General Lyautey, made modern Morocco. After a historical prologue where we see Clemenceau yield to the entreaties of Lyautey, we are witnessing the arrival of settlers on Moroccan soil with the rapid rise of one of them: the ambitious Bourron. Similarly it has conquered the land from scratch, Bourron could conquer a woman, Christiane, who followed him not without confessing his love for another man. It is this love that Bourron will use later to acquire a forest of olive trees, which he believed to be the symbol of its success. Christiane accept but never forgive her husband...

Le Bercail

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

The Passion of Joan of Arc

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

A husband and wife struggle to keep their marriage alive until they realize they are both secretly working as assassins. Now, their respective assignments require them to kill each other.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

City Lights

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind flower girl. His on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

The War of the Roses

Barbara and Oliver Rose live happily as a married couple. When Barbara starts to wonder what life would be like without Oliver and likes what she sees, the two begin a campaign to force each other to leave their house, with their divorce lawyer D'Amato caught in the middle.

Hobson's Choice

A widower refuses to let his three daughters marry in order to avoid paying settlements, so they'll just have to outsmart him.

Days of Heaven

In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.

The Kid Brother

The timid youngest son of the most important family in town must use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and the love of a beautiful new woman in town.

Persuasion

In early 19th-century England, dire financial straits reacquaint the aristocratic Anne Elliot with her wealthy ex-fiance Frederick Wentworth. The two must choose between either putting the past behind them or listening to their hearts.

Pennies from Heaven

During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.