Émile Durand, an insecticide manufacturer, is appalled to learn that his son Gérard has fallen in love with Suzy, the daughter of a travelling theatre company. Realising his father will never favour the union, Gérard joins the company on their next tour. In an attempt to heal the rift, Durand’s wife goes after Gérard and ends up performing in their next play…
The Twins, regular bad men of the regiment, have been condemned to the military prison, and it goes much against the grain of the kind-hearted Captain Hurluret to see these poor fellows confined to their cells. His leniency toward them, however, is speedily taken advantage of with most amusing results.
Protéa is the last film directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, one of the early film pioneers in France. The hero of this film is a female spy, an acrobatic Mata-Hari, played by his favorite actress, Josette Andriot, who wore a characteristic costume of a close-fitting black jersey, two years before Musidora achieved cult status with her similar appearance as Irma Vep. This final masterpiece reflects Jasset's popular style: rhythmic action, fantastic realism, rich visuals, an anarchistic philosophy, a disdain for psychology, and an attention to lighting that earned him the nickname “the Rembrandt of the cinema". Although Jasset died shortly after completion, the film had considerable success and Andriot went on to make four more films in the series with other directors.
A mother loses first her son and then her husband in the trenches of France during the First World War. She devotes herself to the French cause and to helping those wounded in the war.
The film based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Duma, is concerned with fraternal royal strife at the court of Henri III. Tragically caught between the millstones of history are the gallant Count de Bussy and the woman he adores, la Dame de Monsoreau.
The story of the children of Captain Grant.
In 1912 Jasset turned from fantasy and spectacle to realism in making the first of two Zola adaptations, as part of Éclair's new series of social dramas. For Au pays des ténèbres, based on Germinal, he took his crew to Charleroi in Belgium to film in authentic locations, and although he updated the story to the present, he went to great lengths to recreate in the studio the detail of the actual mining galleries, exploiting the ability of film to be a recorder of contemporary reality.
Drama in which the love between Claude and Germaine is tested when Claude is falsely accused and Germaine's father doesn't approve of their relationship.
A Nick Carter serial
Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.
No plot available. The director Maurice Tourneur perceived this film to be indicative of the advances French cinema could have taken had it not been derailed by World War I.
A visitor to an insane asylum realises that the inmates have taken control.
Willy wasnt very proud when he arrived home, for once again he was at the bottom of his class. As punishment his parents informed him that he would not be allowed to see the Conjuror...
Paulin Broquet, the great Parisian detective, has brought the notorious bandit, Zigomar, to justice. Determined not to let the law punish him, he had taken poison in the Hall of Justice. Then he was brought to a hospital where he lay motionless and was visited by hundreds of persons. Among the visitors was a slender woman, dressed in black, who secreted herself in the hospital, and, when all the others had gone, went to the bedside of Zigomar and administered an antidote for poisoning.
Silent mystery
The first adventures of Chéri Bibi
The story of "Jack" is well-known. It is a beautiful story of a natural child. His mother, Ida de Borancy, worships the dear little nameless and fatherless being whom she decides, as he is getting on in years, to place in a boarding school. The child's professor of literature is a certain Amaury D'Argenton, a failure of the faculty, and an uninspired poet. During one of her visits to the institution, Mme. de Borancy is attracted by D'Argenton, and falls in love with him. The "Ne'er-do-Well" soon gives up his starving position and makes his abode with her, exercising over her absolute control. He soon learns to hate little Jack and forces her to leave him permanently at school. The poor child, unaccustomed to the separation, runs away, only to find, when he arrives at his former home, that his mother has moved and is now living thirty miles away. He undertakes the journey on foot, and reaches his mother's house completely exhausted. Here he meets Dr. Rivals and his daughter, Cecil.
Eugenie Grandet has discovered where her father, a miserable old miser, keeps his treasure. Eugenie's cousin, Charles, is the bearer of a letter from his father to his uncle, Eugenie's father. The letter informs the miser that Charles' father, his only brother, is reduced to a state of utter ruin, and unless he can obtain immediate help, he contemplates suicide.
Adaptation of the Émile Gaboriau novel.