Serge Piménoff

Victor Hugo's monumental novel Les Miserables has been filmed so often that sometimes it's hard to tell one version from another. One of the best and most faithful adaptations is this 240-minute French production, starring Jean Gabin as the beleaguered Jean Valjean. Arrested for a petty crime, Valjean spends years 20 in the brutal French penal system. Even upon his release, his trail is dogged by relentless Inspector Javert. Valjean's efforts to create a new life for himself despite the omnipresence of Javert is meticulously detailed in this film, which utilizes several episodes from the Hugo original that had hitherto never been dramatized. Originally released as a single film, Les Miserables was usually offered as a two-parter outside of France.

Le Cas Du Dr. Laurent (The Case of Dr. Laurent) stars Jean Gabin as a Paris-based doctor who tries to spread the gospel of Natural Childbirth. Working in a cloistered rural community, Gabin runs up against the stone walls of fear and prejudice. His theories are proven sound when unwed mother Nicole Courcel gives birth within Gabin's methodology. The childbirth sequence is filmed straight-on with a delicate combination of taste and frankness. Nonetheless, the lurid ad campaign of Cas Du Dr. Laurent sensationalized this sequence all out of proportion.

Vincent Etchebar is spotted by the impresario Cartoni who gives him the opportunity to break into Paris. But nothing will go as planned.

Vincent Etchebar is spotted by the impresario Cartoni who gives him the opportunity to break into Paris. But nothing will go as planned.

"Thieves We Are" - In flashback, the audience learns why 104-year-old Amedee steals the watch belonging to the town mayor. The story develops into a history of the watch-thievery business, told in anecdotal fashion.

Making his directorial debut, Robert Hossein also assumes the leading role, playing an escaped convict. Hossein and his fellow escapees cross the path of Marina Vlady, with whom they all fall in love. Alas for our "heroes," Vlady intends to avenge the death of her sweetheart at the hands of Hossein and his confreres. Not only do these heels go to Hell, but they do so with a spectacular flourish. Les Salauds Vont en Enfer was adapted by Rene Wheeler from a play by Frederic Dard.

A young woman has a perilous affair with a General from the opposing side during the Revolutionary war.

Three stories, very different in space and time. Lysistrata, a dancer from ancient times, Jeanne d'Arc, medieval warrior and Elisabeth, American war widow who comes on pilgrimage in Italy.

The life of Adrien Wettach, famous in the annals of the circus under the name of Grock, world famous Swiss clown. A series of images from Épinal, retracing the career of a European artist, within the framework of world history. Lots of children, wars, an eccentric Russian countess, Countess Barinoff, who grows old admiring the clown, and a very long quibble about a party wall, all serve to highlight the star's final number.

A man falls in love with a beautiful young woman and begins to suspect that he may have also loved her in a previous life.

Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire has always kept to himself. But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town and discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him.

Madame Clapain dies in dubious circumstances at the home of the Cadifon ladies, of which she was a tenant. A friendly inspector and Thérèse Cadifon each carry out their own investigation.

Maloin, a maritime station guard, spends his nights at the port signal box. One night, he becomes the witness of a murder: for a simple suitcase smuggled, the altercation between the two men turns to drama. While the first falls and drowns, the second flees. Maloin, instead of warning the police, decides to dive in and recover the suitcase...which contains more than 3 million in small denominations! That's when the trouble begins...

In his prison cell, the composer Remi Bonvent composed an opera, The columns bed. The director of the prison, Porey Cave, succeeds made believe he is the author of this work. The death of the two protagonists will prevent the discovery of the truth.

In Macao, where places of pleasure and arms trafficking are concentrated, a tragedy opposes an adventurer and his daughter whom he has brought up in ignorance of his profession. She is torn from her environment and saved from tragedy by a young journalist who loves her.

The duel between a Czarist general and a lieutenant, over the general's wife, is postponed with war approaching. Years later, the rivals meet again but the general realizes his wife has been faithful to him after all.

Married to Karl Ammer, the station master of Thaya, a Hungarian quiet village, Anita is a pretty young peasant who feels deeply bored. She dreams of another life while watching the daily express trains to Budapest. An incident will force her to leave her province: she has to go to Budapest to attend the funeral of an aunt and receive a share of the inheritance. After completing the formalities, Anita misses the train to go back home and then she finds herself alone in the capital. - Written by jsanchez from IMDB.com

The mistress of an engineer meets the man's pregnant wife and decides to give up the liaison.

A small town postal official allows a military officer to sweep his lovely daughter away to St. Petersburg, assuming the man will do the right thing and marry her.Instead, a future of scandal and tragedy awaits her.

A religious fanatic finds his entire life and philosophy turned upside-down as he falls in love with a girl and kills her in a jealous rage. His search is for peace of mind and a desire to justify the murder of the girl to himself. His mind becomes distraught as he gropes trying to rationalize his deed and his world falls apart around him. A police inspector patiently and tirelessly stays on Barrault's trail, without putting him under arrest, though convinced he is the murderer, and waiting for the moment when he feels Barrault will break under the strain of his own religious fanaticism (IMDb).

Paris, 1937. Winckler kills his enemy Gordon, a Chicago mobster, from the stage of a Parisian music hall, where he performs telepathy. He pays another artist, Helene, so that she tells the police they've spent the night together, which doesn't fool Callas, the police officer who investigates the murder. He hires one of his fellow officers in order to seduce Helene.

A slippery femme fatale, a spy for Germany during the Great War, is sent to Thessaloniki in Greece and becomes involved with a man on the other side, a French military officer.

Rudolf, the only heir to Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, is trapped in a loveless marriage to a Belgian princess. As he seeks to flee his stifling environment, he meets the beautiful Maria, and the two enter into a scandalous affair. Despite the interference of the Emperor, the couple refuse to give each other up.

A husband orders his wife to recover a lost slipper. The wife enlists the aid of her friend, Beatrice (Betty Stockfield) to bring the slipper to her in Switzerland, and Georges (Roger Treville) follows Betty.

When he is not conducting his orchestra, a talented young man invents a device to thwart car thieves.Associating himself with a rich Dutch baron, he falls in love with the baron's daughter.

In order not to compromise the great music hall star with whom he spent the night, a man is accused of a murder he did not commit.

An adaptation of the play L'Aiglon by Edmond Rostand, which portrays the life of Napoleon I.

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

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. Originally intended to be the first of six films, director Abel Gance realized the full project would be nigh impossible, and never raised the money to complete the other five. The film's legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens.