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Mathusalem (1927)
Character: N/A
Mathusalem (or Methuselah) is a 1922 play by Ivan Goll, considered a precursor of the theater of the absurd. The 1927 run of the play saw five sequences-- some of Jean Painlevé's earliest film work-- projected against a backdrop of white clouds.
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L'enfant de ma soeur (1933)
Character: Loche
Valerian writes his uncle, colonial millionaire, for money. He meets a quartermaster, Napoleon, who pretends to be a doctor of law. They become friends.
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Le Juif Errant (1926)
Character: Jacques Dupuis, dit Gringalet
Guilty of insulting Christ Ahasverus became forever eternity the wandering Jew. On 13 February 1682, during a night of pogrom in the Warsaw ghetto a Frenchman married to a Polish Jew is assassinated by members of a secret society.
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Mater Dolorosa (1933)
Character: N/A
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.
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La Femme d'une nuit (1930)
Character: Jaroslav
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.
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Graziella (1926)
Character: Cecco
During a trip to Naples, a young French man falls in love with a fisherman's granddaughter, Graziella. They are separated when he must return to France, and Graziella soon dies.
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L'enfant roi (1923)
Character: N/A
An eight part ciné-novel (episodic film) set during the French Revolution, telling the story of the Dauphin's childhood in Versailles, his life at the Conciergerie during the Revolution, and his untimely death.
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Coup de feu à l'aube (1932)
Character: Trembleur
A crime has been committed by the Trembleur gang, which specializes in jewelry thefts. The Berlin police are on the trail of the mysterious leader. Thanks to a cunning policeman posing as a member of a rival gang, the bandits are trapped in a suburban villa.
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Koenigsmark (1935)
Character: Cyrus Back
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 film was known in the United States as Crimson Dynasty.
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Surcouf (1925)
Character: Jacques Morel, un traitre
Based on Charles Cunat's novel, Surcouf tells a romanticized version of the life story of Robert Surcouf, a French privateer and slave trader who operated in the Indian Ocean from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century.
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Bonaparte et la révolution (1972)
Character: Marat (archive footage)
Abel Gance's 1971 sound edition of his epic 1927 'Napoleon', which contains much of the silent original, with new material shot and added in both 1965 and 1971, and with sound synchronization from both the 1932 reissue and this version.
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Tarakanova (1930)
Character: le jeune tzigane
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.
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Verdun, visions d'histoire (1928)
Character: The intellectual
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.
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Faubourg Montmartre (1931)
Character: Follestat (as Artaud)
This is the story of two sisters: one of them is a semi-whore with her pimp, the other one tries to walk the line, in spite of her sisters’ attempts to debauch her. Enter a not-so-handsome young man the younger sister falls in love with.
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Liliom (1934)
Character: Le rémouleur (The Knife Grinder)
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 Liliom; he's fired by his jealous employer for going out with Julie. The two lovers move in with Julie's aunt; unemployment emasculates him and a local weasel tempts him with crime. Julie, now wan, is true to Liliom even in his bad temper. Meanwhile, a stolid widower, a carpenter, wants to marry Julie. Is there any future on this earth for Julie and Liliom, whose love is passionate rather than ideal?
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Seans : hommage á Antonin Artaud (1977)
Character: (archive footage)
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, composed experimental world music and directed some of his own plays and a play by Beckett.
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Sidonie Panache (1934)
Character: L'émir Abd-el-Kader
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.
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Napoléon (1927)
Character: Jean-Paul Marat
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 Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.
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La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928)
Character: Jean Massieu
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.
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Les Croix de bois (1932)
Character: Soldat Vieublé
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.
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Fait-divers (1923)
Character: M. Deux
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.
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Imag-en cada verso (2019)
Character: self (archive sound)
A BLACK AND WHITE FILM. A FLASH OF SOME COLOR. IMAGE IS IMAGINATION.
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L'Argent (1928)
Character: Mazaud
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.
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L'Opéra de quat'sous (1931)
Character: Un mendiant
The French-language version of the The Threepenny Opera with a different cast from the German version.
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Lucrèce Borgia (1935)
Character: Girolamo Savonarola
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.
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Mater dolorosa (1917)
Character: N/A
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 specialist in pediatrics, has no time for his wife Marthe. She seeks solace in the arms of his brother. Unable to keep up the charade, Marthe attempts to shoot herself, but it is her lover who is mortally wounded.
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