1930s French Movies

Denise, an orphaned girl, moves to Paris where she hopes to find work at her uncle's store. But the glamorous department store 'Aux Bonheur des Dames' across the street crushes all the little businesses around. She finds a position there.

In the snow as bells toll, a hooded figure makes its way through the streets to a church.

The rise of a canning maker and then his abandonment of the factory because his ideal of social progress for his workers is undermined by the Board of Directors.

Remember when Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music says "Every time God closes a door, He opens a window?" Well, this is basically the same philosophy followed by a sage authority named Professor Azais. Though he is never seen in the film, Azais's influences dictates every move made by Le Baron Wurtz (Max Dearly), a private tutor. Though he suffers quite a few setbacks, Wurtz presses on, armed by the Azaiz philosophy that every time something goes wrong in one part of the world, it is balanced by something going right elsewhere. This "law of compensations" pays off in big laughs for the audience, and in a happy-ever-after for Wurtz. Azais was based on a play by Georges Berr and Rene Verneuil.

An ex-businessman, ruined and reduced to living under bridges, uses the name of one of his companions in misfortune, Rothchild, to organize a vast scam.

French-language version of Port Arthur (1936), a German language film (q.v.) co-produced by German, French and Czechoslovakian film interests. About espionage, action and romance in the Russo-Japanese War, as the conflict threatens Russian naval officer Boris Ranewsky and his Japanese wife Youki.

The story begins at a concert during which Beethoven's Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra is performed. Romaine, a mysterious woman, is in the concert hall. Pierre, her husband, is first violin of the Orchester Colonne. That evening, she discovers Marcel, a brilliant concerto soloist, and falls in love with him. Pierre and Marcel are friends, which complicates the situation. Pierre invites his friend to the house, without suspecting what will happen. The young woman, trying to find a clever pretext for a one-on-one meeting, quickly reveals her feelings to Marcel.

Aubrey is a debt-ridden man. One day, he has the idea of ​​faking his death and taking on the role of a deceased cousin about to receive a beautiful inheritance. This idea will, however, lead him to very difficult situations.

On his wedding night with Hilda Bergmann, the daughter of a swedish chemist, the young and rich american Willy Keanton is stabbed by an unidentified masked man. He kidnaps the young woman, who is found later on by the count Robert d'Arbel. The detective Jacques Miral, nicknamed « the pointed tower's ferret » is put in charge of the case. Soon, he discovers that an international bandit, Méphisto, seeks to seize the formula of a process against asphyxiating gas, invented by professor Bergmann. The struggle is tough between Miral and the uncatchable Méphisto. Monique Aubray, Keanton's secretary and engaged to the detective, the Nostradamus stallholders and the « mastiff of Bordeaux », and the famous novelist Fortuné Bidon are also involved in the case...

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In 1907, the Gaumont Films company in France made a slapstick comedy (silent, of course) with a title that would translate from the French as 'A gentleman who ate some bull'. Eugene Deslow got hold of that film and added an introduction plus a soundtrack, the latter consisting of commentary narrated by the single-named actor Bétove.

"Bartosch showed that animation could be poetic... It was Bartosch who first dared to give animation the dimension of a great art, trusting it to voice his pain, to lay bare his heart, to tell of his hope for a better future - which he never saw." - Alexander Alexeieff and Claire Parker, 1969

In 1917, in a small village in the North, Abbe Gaillard is suspected by the Germans of facilitating the escape of French and Belgian soldiers. A false alibi makes him innocent and he can thus continue his mission, thanks to the devotion of an Alsatian who, in enemy uniform, obscurely serves his country.

A woman of the world has fallen in love with a metalworker, and one evening gives herself to him. Some time later, the worker becomes blind. One last time, he will touch with his hands the machines with which he will no longer work while the countess returns to her life of pleasures.

A young aristocrat whose ruined father decided to marry her spends one last night as a bachelor at the boarding school ball. But there, cheerful students strip her of her clothes and she finds refuge precisely with her future husband whom she did not know. Of course, the marriage that was so repugnant to them fills them with joy.

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.

A young woman loves a thief and follows him in all his bad tricks. Tired of this life, she leaves him the day she meets a young man with whom she falls in love. But she learns that he is a policeman and desperate, tries to commit suicide.

A colonel decided to be represented at the regiment festival of a tragedy in verse by the poem written by his sister.

Chénérol, a wealthy merchant, one day discovers that his wife is having an affair and that his nephew is playing with him. Indeed, the latter, Théodore, does not work but earns money by using a few dirty tricks.

A vagabond arrives in a village where he works for a rich landowner, Master Pierre; he seduces one of the girls, gets her pregnant and hits the road again.

When an up-and-coming singer's career is jeopardized by morphine addiction, her brother takes on the ruthless dope pushers who are intent on keeping her hooked.

Having been kicked out by their wives on a wintry night they attempt to smuggle their little dog into an apartment house where dogs are not allowed.

Jazz session by a small group of musicians.

A man from a wealthy family falls in love with a florist, but the lover has to go to war and to leave his darling crying... and giving birth to a child.

A bureaucratic civil servant is annoyed by the spoiled daughter of a rich chocolate maker, but lands up marrying her.

Professor Branck invented Fortuna a machine providing absolute luck, fortune and success, to whoever uses it, provided they are a virgin. Trying the experiment, Lucien Lepur, a street vendor who has never known a woman before, becomes the man of all successes. But he soon regrets Micheline his fiancée and finds himself under the influence of Professor Branck. Helped by Casimir, Micheline snatches Lucien from Professor Branck. Falling into her arms, Lucien loses all his powers but wins love.

Produced for the National Federation of Building Workers Ciné-Liberté, a Popular Front organization intended to counteract capitalist interests in the film industry, Epstein’s union documentary examines building policy from the perspective of ordinary workers and notable architects. In addition to touring the Cathedral of Chartres and the Paris Exposition of 1937, the film features rare interviews with Le Corbusier (at his drawing board, no less) and Auguste Perret.

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.

The plot revolves around an oil swindle in a South American country.

Lucie turns the house of chic dandy Gaston upside down.

Marthe, a robust peasant, is a single mother. For her child to be happy, she abandons him to the Duchemin household, eager for an impossible motherhood. Later, the young man is still unaware of the obscure sacrifice of his real mother.

French silent film pioneer Abel Gance directs this 1935 classic about Lucrezia Borgia, her brother, Cesare. and her father, Pope Alexander VI -- one of history's most ruthless and ambitious crime families.

An indigenous uprising in British controlled Iraq threatens the route to India, as a lobe triangle develops among the expatriates.

In the village of Sableuse, the local manor has been bought out by a nouveau riche, Emile Cousinet. When his wife Lisette, a former music hall actress, flees to Paris with young Pierre de Sableuse, Cousinet asks Father Pellegrin, the village vicar, to bring the lost sheep back home.

A young man who wishes to launch his girlfriend in the theater, borrows money from his aunt, making her believe that he wants to buy groceries. His aunt arrives and then wishes to visit “her” grocery store; to save the day he borrows the store of a credulous grocer.

A group of French soldiers, including the patrician Captain de Boeldieu and the working-class Lieutenant Maréchal, grapple with their own class differences after being captured and held in a World War I German prison camp. When the men are transferred to a high-security fortress, they must concoct a plan to escape beneath the watchful eye of aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, who has formed an unexpected bond with de Boeldieu.

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.

In the Yukon, searching for gold, Hurricane picks up a paper and discovers that the girl back home is planning to marry another man. Abandoning all care, Hurricane is soon embroiled in a fight in which guns play a part. It is then that the true value of one of his companions, Flossie, a girl of the gold-fields, becomes apparent.

The adventures of a pompous jeweler who refuses to listen to the advice of his level-headed employees. In due time, the jeweler is robbed, but his sharp-eyed subordinate manages to prevent the villains from getting very far. Wising up in a hurry, the jeweler finally proves himself worthy of the love of the heroine.

A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.