Georges Paulais

A dancer with a child is forced to endure humiliating events after her lover leaves her.

This biography was one of two films commissioned to honor Joan of Arc on the 500th anniversary of her death, but it was soon undeservedly relegated to obscurity in favor of Carl Dreyer's triumphant 'La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc'. The comparison is unfair: Dreyer was an artist, but director Marco de Gastyne certainly proved himself a distinguished craftsman and his emphasis on the Maid of Orléans early life in Domrémy serves as a picturesque matching bookend to Dreyer's impassioned courtroom drama. (imdb)

Abandoned by the father of her child, the begging young mother desperately seeks refuge in a monastery church....

Also known as Lilac, this early Anatole Litvak-directed talkie was based on a play by Tristan Bernard and Charles Henry Hirsch. The story bears traces of the Bertold Brecht-Weill piece The Threepenny Opera, with heroine Lilac (Marcelle Romeo) consorting with the criminal scum of Paris. Lilac falls in love with a handsome detective (Andre Luguet), but he doesn't let his emotions stand in the way of his duty, and in the end he reluctantly turns her over to the authorities.

Paris, 30's declared professional rivalry between two stars of the musical, Yvonne and Gaby leads to dire consequences. Yvonne's body is found in the theater. Gaby's future is threatened against the judgment to which it is subjected, with a probable prison sentence.

Belphégor deals with a series of mysterious appearances by a masked-and-robed figure in the Louvre; a security guard is murdered, and a later police trap is foiled when the phantom--"Belphégor" (the name of a legendary demon)--uses knock-out gas. Journalist Jacques Bellegarde of "Le Petit Parisien" (the real-life newspaper which published the original story), investigates, and eventually discovers famous detective Chantecoq and his vivacious daughter Colette are also on the case.

Story set in the Middle Ages. A page and the daughter of a baron want to marry each other against the will of her father, who wants his daughter to marry another man. A sorceress predicts the future for the couple and provides the page with a bottle of poison for the other marriage candidate, which almost falls into the wrong hands.