Antonin Artaud

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the ...  (more)

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 ...  (more)

Tarakanova is a 1930 French historical drama film directed by Raymond Bernard and starring Édith Jéhanne, Paule Andral and Olaf Fjord. It depicts the life of Princess Tarakanoff, the pretender to the throne of Catherine II in Eighteenth Century Russia.  (more)

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 ...  (more)

Two women love the same man in a world of few prospects. In Budapest, Liliom is a "public figure," a rascal who's a carousel barker, loved by the experienced merry-go-round owner and by a young, innocent maid. The maid, Julie, loses her job after going out with ...  (more)

Koenigsmark is a 1935 British-French drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur and starring Elissa Landi, John Lodge and Pierre Fresnay. The film is based on the novel Koenigsmark by Pierre Benoît. It's sets were designed by the art director Lucien Aguettand. The ...  (more)

Hardly one of French filmmaker Abel Gance's masterpieces, The Torture of Silence nevertheless has more dramatic and psychological value than your average romantic-triangle tale. Simply put, the film concerns a doctor, his wife, and his brother. The doctor, a ...  (more)

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.  (more)

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.  (more)

A dramatized re-enactment and documentary of the Battle of Verdun as seen by both French and German soldiers, shot on site of the actual battle.  (more)

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The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.  (more)

One of the most popular melodrama films directed by Abel Gance. A paranoide, fanatical and obsessively jealous husband obducts his own son to bully his wife.  (more)

Valerian writes his uncle, colonial millionaire, for money. He meets a quartermaster, Napoleon, who pretends to be a doctor of law. They become friends.  (more)

In 1842, during the conquest of Algeria Sidonie Panache disguised as a Soave runs away with her lover who is doing his military service there.  (more)

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

A seance in which Antonin Artaud can be seen as a swirling depiction of a theater of freedom in the rubble of the hateful counter between actor and audience. Percival is the author of many books in Swedish and English. He has exhibited his paintings and photographs ...  (more)

The French-language version of the The Threepenny Opera with a different cast from the German version.  (more)

Two sisters struggle to stay on the straight and narrow.  (more)

A lieutenant of the French navy, ready to kill himself in despair, renounced his project after spending a night with a beautiful stranger. He ends up finding her, the heiress princess Lystrie. The German version (Königin einer Nacht) was an operetta, the Italian ...  (more)