Jean Périer

Biography of Lucien Guitry, stage comedian, by his son, movie director, and a poetic reflection on the passionate love of both men for their chosen art forms.

An old man about to die gives all his fortune to a young beggar he meets in an Arabian town. He takes him to his house (now the poor man's property) and he strongly advises him not to open one of the doors, the seventh door. "I could throw the key into the sea" says the young lad" No use, you'd dive to get it back". The young man is curious and he cannot resist temptation: he opens the forbidden door. A strange world is waiting for him where a girl, Leila, will be his guide .

Renée Ménard, a young mixed-race Indochinese, arrives in France to find her French father, whom she only knows is called Paul Ménard. In the hope of identifying her father, she meets a series of men with that name.

A gentleman, falsely accused of an assassination, becomes a formidable bandit. Condemned by the king, he will be rehabilitated thanks to the intervention of a young girl whom he will marry.

In 1860s France, a couple who have recently acquired a dilapidated country house in Vendôme discover within it the secret of a passionate love affaire that once took a macabre and sadly turn. it all began 50 years previously, when the wealthy landowner Gérard de Clergue fell madly in love with the beautiful young dancer Clara Biondi. In the course of the ensuing romance, Gérard remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that Clara had a previous lover, James de Poulay...

A banker who lost everything in the stock market is on the verge of committing suicide when the Devil appears to him and offers to give him a fortune every day on one condition: he must do evil things with the money! Will the banker keep his end of the deal...

France, 1880. Francois Roquevillard is a respected lawyer in Chambery and the head of a family that prides itself on its impeccable morals. Francois's world rapidly begins to fall apart when his son Maurice elopes to Italy with Edith Frasne, the wife of an esteemed notary.

A law student passed his exam in his first B.A. year in Paris ;he is in love with a girl who is not from the bourgeoisie and the boy is afraid his father might not approve of their union.

Julie and Désirée Clary are courted by the brothers Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte. Joseph marries Julie and Napoleon is affianced to Désirée. When Napoleon breaks the engagement and marries Joséphine de Beauharnais, Désirée becomes involved with General Bernadotte.

The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.

Herr Werther, a new magistrate to the Grand Duchy of Walheim who is a violinist and poet, seems to have fate on his side as he meets and pursues a beautiful local woman, Charlotte. But as Werther sets to propose marriage, Charlotte reluctantly tells him she has been promised to another, Werther's superior, Judge Hochstätten. Werther and Charlotte decide to keep their romance from the judge and each descends into depression. Will they be able to keep their feelings a secret?

"Les Trois Valses" traces the love story of two people over three eras. In the first waltz (music based on Johann Strauss I), Yvonne is a sensitive Parisian ballet dancer, whose romance with a dashing officer is brought to an abrupt end by his family. She goes off to Vienna to become a big star. In the second waltz, her daughter, an even bigger star, but now of Paris music halls, has a brief flirtation with the rakish man-about-town who is the son of suitor number one. She throws him over pretty quickly for a chance to shine at a Gala performance. Finally, in the third waltz, the two get together, when she is a movie star, and he is posing as an insurance salesman.

The history of one of France's most famous streets is retold, featuring multiple performances from Guitry himself.

Jeanne supports supports his family on his modest salary. Her boss is arrested for fraud. Jeanne is forced, out of poverty, in the street.

A British officer poses as a traitor in order to infiltrate a team of terrorists who are sabotaging ships, while a seductive cabaret dancer is working for the mysterious genius who runs the enemy spy ring.

An officer is tried for self-inflicted injury.He is thrown out of the Foreign Legion .

Henri Pierson, the chief engineer of a railway line crossing Yunnan in China, must prevent the incessant attacks of a gang of looters.

A courier carrying a large sum of money intended for Bonaparte's army is attacked. A miscarriage of justice will lead an innocent person to the guillotine.

In 1914, during the First World War, the rich chatelaine de Boissière, with a sulphurous past, took in Jean le Barois, a young soldier lost in territory occupied by the Germans, who was none other than the son of the man she loved, then ruined. The young man, after having despised her, falls madly in love with the woman who pushed his father to suicide.

As its title indicates, La Mort du Cygne (The Dying Swan) is set in the special world of the ballet. Young dance student Janine Charrat idolizes her teacher-role-model Yvette Chauvire, and will do anything to help Chauvire further herself.

A young lord who has abandoned his pregnant mistress hires his son, twenty years later, as secretary. He will try to fix his mistake.

While still behind bars, a crook manages several schemes including one that almost gets his penniless young lawyer into trouble.The crook's mistress, married to a rich man, then becomes attracted to the lawyer.

After finding and adopting a child, a man gets a job at an all-girls school which doesn't allow families. Once the girls find the baby, they become his forty little mothers. At the same time, the child's true mother searches for him.

At the English court, at the beginning of the 18th century, Lady Henriett fell in love with a farmer, Lionel, who, following a mistake, believes her to be his servant. By learning his quality, Lionel refuses to receive the one he already considered his fiancée. The queen herself will appease this lover's quarrel and, moreover, will free the peasants of his kingdom.

Guitry reprises his role as Pasteur which he played successfully at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1919.

A gypsy has cast a spell on Livette, the fiancee of Renaud, the proud guardian nicknamed, King of the Camargue. Renaud wants to punish the witch who frightened Livette. But then, meeting the gypsy, he is taken under the strange spell that emanates from her. She arranges to meet him in an isolated hut in the middle of the muddy ponds. Livette, warned of her betrothed betrayal, goes to the place where she is to meet the infidel. But Renaud changed the stakes that line the only fordable passage. And Livette dies, even more from Renaud's betrayal.

Three friends, Fred, singer, Claude, painter and André, extra, live in the same studio and share everything, even their girlfriend. Fred falls in love with a young girl but leaves her when he learns that she is rich. The two friends will try to fix this problem.

The maid of a doctor, he had some canvases he didn't care for bestowed on him once by an unknown artist, thankfully has saved them as the paintings are now worth some money and others want them.

In a palace on the Côte d'Azur, a whole fauna evolves: a colonel who cheats on his wife, the colonel's daughter who flirts with Fred, Fred's friend, Emmanuel, who is in love with Marion, and Marion who kills himself. believing that Emmanuel does not forgive him for having, out of idleness, yielded to Fred one day.

During an inquest after a woman is killed, the judge suspects his own son. The woman's lover had been friendly with the son and he was also supposed to be married to the judge's daughter.

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 in serial installments), investigates, and eventually discovers famous detective Chantecoq and his vivacious daughter Colette are also on the case.

Charming Mimi-Trottin is in love with typographer Louis Chausson, nicknamed Godasse. She meets Doudou, actually a Vicomte, estranged with his parents who are rich automobile manufacturers. Godasse abandons Mimi because of his professional ambitions and Doudou rescues her from a suicide. After making peace with his parents, the young man has Mimi hired as a typist at the factory. After winning a race with one of his father's car, he soon wins the heart and the hand of Mimi.