Director
Mad italian melodrama.
Italian silent film
Director
Italian silent film
Barckes
Italian silent serial
Screenplay
Italian silent serial
Director
Italian silent serial
Adaptation of the Émile Gaboriau novel.
Director
The first adventures of Chéri Bibi
Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.
No plot available. The director Maurice Tourneur perceived this film to be indicative of the advances French cinema could have taken had it not been derailed by World War I.
The Twins, regular bad men of the regiment, have been condemned to the military prison, and it goes much against the grain of the kind-hearted Captain Hurluret to see these poor fellows confined to their cells. His leniency toward them, however, is speedily taken advantage of with most amusing results.
Baron de Nyborg
Protéa is the last film directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, one of the early film pioneers in France. The hero of this film is a female spy, an acrobatic Mata-Hari, played by his favorite actress, Josette Andriot, who wore a characteristic costume of a close-fitting black jersey, two years before Musidora achieved cult status with her similar appearance as Irma Vep. This final masterpiece reflects Jasset's popular style: rhythmic action, fantastic realism, rich visuals, an anarchistic philosophy, a disdain for psychology, and an attention to lighting that earned him the nickname “the Rembrandt of the cinema". Although Jasset died shortly after completion, the film had considerable success and Andriot went on to make four more films in the series with other directors.
Grandmother Hall, aged fast falling in health, is greatly comforted by her only two grandchildren, daughters of her own daughter long since past before. She has made a will in which she stipulates that Lawrence, her son, shall inherit her wealth providing he assumes the care of her grandchildren, and who are, of course, his nieces. She dies. Lawrence claims the estate and orders his nieces to get out and earn their own way. A second will is found, properly filed and recorded. It is read and they learn that it is a repudiation of the first will, should Lawrence fail to live up to the terms therein. Lawrence tries to break the will but fails and the estate is ordered delivered to the girls. The granddaughters kind-heartedly offer Lawrence a home with them.
Nick Carter, the famous detective, is ordered to prosecute the gang of Zigomar. Carter gets into various thorny situations but manages to escape every time, helped by Olga, a former girlfriend of Zigomar. Carter finally manages to trap Zigomar and Zigomar is arrested. However, Zigomar avoids going to court by apparently poisoning himself.
Charles Maucourt
In 1912 Jasset turned from fantasy and spectacle to realism in making the first of two Zola adaptations, as part of Éclair's new series of social dramas. For Au pays des ténèbres, based on Germinal, he took his crew to Charleroi in Belgium to film in authentic locations, and although he updated the story to the present, he went to great lengths to recreate in the studio the detail of the actual mining galleries, exploiting the ability of film to be a recorder of contemporary reality.
A sensational detective story, founded on the romance of Leon Sazie. The noted criminal who terrorized all Europe is shown in these three Zigomar reels in a dramatic and intense struggle for supremacy with Paulin Broquet, the celebrated detective, who takes the two in the most varied and finest resorts.
Eugenie Grandet has discovered where her father, a miserable old miser, keeps his treasure. Eugenie's cousin, Charles, is the bearer of a letter from his father to his uncle, Eugenie's father. The letter informs the miser that Charles' father, his only brother, is reduced to a state of utter ruin, and unless he can obtain immediate help, he contemplates suicide.
