Jimmy Berliet

Gabrielle (Helene Hallier), an ambitious but innocent would-be young chorine, trumps a music hall publicity stunt to become the new Parisian nightclub Cinderella. But this lighter-than-champagne-bubbles story is only a pretext for LA REVUE DES REVUES's white-hot, non-stop procession of outrageously and scantily attired exotic dancers, showgirls, and acrobats.

In a strange bank, a young clerk, in love with a typist, gets asleep after a minor incident. His dream sarries him into the retirement house of old fairies, that he will manage to help to grow younger. He then lands on the towers of Notre-Dame, and into the Musée GRévin, where a revolutionary court is in the process of judging the lovers, one of them soon being changed into a dog. But it was just a dream, and the journey ends up well...

Mathias Pascal, only son of a once-rich family, marries beautiful Romalinda, who has a terrible mother-in-law. She controls her daughter, and soon his home life becomes a nightmare. His only moments of lights are his mother and baby, but both die on the same day. Shocked, he leaves his hometown and goes to Monte Carlo, where he wins a fortune at the casino. Returning home, he reads his own obituary in a paper. They have found a corpse in a creek and connected it with his disappearance. Mathias, noticing that he is now free from all ties to his old life, decides to start a new one.

A young man, unsuccessful in love, manages to leave his body and tours Paris, disembodied and invisible, playing practical jokes: a row of coats walks off from a hotel cloakroom; an unattended taxi drives itself away; a row of top hats appears on the pavement.

Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair's first and most 'dada' film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes. We witness a rooftop chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, a hearse pulled by a camel (and chased by its pallbearers) and a dizzying roller coaster finale. A film of contradictions and agreements.

Married carnival performers are subjected to the abuses of their employer in this silent film gem that has not received as much attention as it deserves. When the boss' unwanted advances on the wife are refused, he taunts a lion until it nearly kills her. But the other performers assist in a unique plot for revenge. Jaque Catelain directs and stars in this film made for influential French director Marcel L'Herbier's production company. Some sources also list L'Herbier as co-director, as he is credited here. The film boasts some rapid-fire editing techniques that were decades ahead of its time.