Lucien Nonguet

Auguste is cured! The doctor at the asylum said so. Delighted, his mother gives him a few coins so he can go out for a little entertainment. Auguste settles in a cinema to admire the great Max Linder. Enthused by the film, he goes off with the movie poster to make himself a suit like the star's. With a false visiting card, he goes to an agent, who sends him to the Comica film company. But the charming man is going to make a terrible mistake on his way… This comedy brings together two French silent film stars: Max Linder and Romeo Bosetti.

Open details →

When Max's friends doubt his acting ability, he invites them to a dramatic theatrical performance.

Open details →

Max sees himself as a great dramatic actor but his friends all think he's talentless. So, he invites them to come see him in a play. Unfortunately, lots of things go wrong with Max's props during the production. And, following his big dramatic suicide scene, he finds that his friends have all decided to play a trick on him--though Max has the last laugh.

Open details →

Pathe begat the Son of Man. The actual title (minus an accent) is La Vie et la Passion de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ. It is an April 1914 remake of Pathe's 1902-05 version of the same name, and was shot primarily in the studio rather than on location.

Open details →

Max attempts to take a photo of a woman in a bathing suit, waiting while she swims around. He's waiting for her to emerge so he can snap the photo, but she fools him by diving beneath the sea and running ashore some distance away so he doesn't see her. He then goes to great lengths to rescue her from the deep while she hides and laughs.

Open details →

Max and his young bride attempt to enjoy an Alpine honeymoon, despite the presence of her mother.

Open details →

Max has just been married, but is about to be divorced, because at his marriage party he disgraced himself. Of course, the matter is a secret, but Max was most horribly annoyed with a persistent flea that located itself in his nether garments. So, retiring to a quiet spot, he removed both the garments and the flea, but, unfortunately, he was discovered in his seclusion. In the divorce court Max wins his case, but just how is too good to tell in a story of this sort.

Open details →

On doctor's orders Max buys a new bathtub, but Max struggles to fill it, and when he does, he can't bathe in peace!

Open details →

Open details →

Max is about to make his first call upon a young lady, the daughter of distinguished parents, and he wants to make a good impression. As he dresses to go out he stoops over to fix his shoe and, horrors! He tears his trousers. Where? Well, in a most embarrassing place. He fixes them hurriedly, trusting to have his coat tails cover it, but alas, the coat is too short for this purpose. Nevertheless, he takes a chance and, arriving at the house has the butler make a close inspection. He seems to be all right and enters, but when he bows to his hostess he hears the sickening sound of tearing cloth and knows that his patch has given way. Max hastily seats himself and during the rest of the evening performs the most astounding feats to hide his terrible secret.

Open details →

In a snowy Alpine district Max takes his first lessons in the art of skiing. He leaves the hotel with his skis fixed to his shoes, and his efforts and contortions to get through the door of his room are absurdly ludicrous. Finally he manages to get out and we see him making frantic efforts to maintain his equilibrium on the fairly gentle slope.

Open details →

In this interesting picture we are given a vivid idea of the principal incidents connected with the Dreyfus case, which caused such a stir in military circles in the year of 1894. Alfred Dreyfus, an officer on the general staff, was charged with selling secrets to a foreign power. He was tried and judged guilty on flimsy evidence, and sentenced to imprisonment on Devil's Island, where he remained for eight years, until his influential friends, who took up his case in earnest, proved it was a plot formed by other officers, who subsequently confessed to having forged the documents.

Open details →

After burglars break into a home, lay out a man, and steal valuable merchandise, the police are after them. No part of the force is more relentless than the dogs who pursue the thieves.

Open details →

A soldier, and his sergeant are in love with the same woman. The soldier in a moment of anger attacks the sergeant who for this gesture makes him imprison. The war council's judgment is immediate: deportation to military prison. In the military prison we see shocked and threatened men who are punished with torture and other brutal rites if they do not follow orders. The soldier, after a plot that took place inside the prison, is thrown into a silo that if it had not been for the help of a friend he would have died. The two men try to escape but both die.

Open details →

The story of the life and passion of Jesus Christ, from the proclamation of his birth to his ascension into heaven.

Open details →

“A melodrama of infidelity and violence set in Venice. An old beggar discovers a noble woman's clandestine affair and exposes the couple to the husband, who then kills his wife's lover in their own bedroom.” - BFI.

Open details →

Vera, daughter of a Cossack loves a young tartar who is the enemy of her father. She betrays her father to save the life of her lover, but loses her own life instead.

Open details →

A criminal gang descends into the sewers of Paris and uses an interior exit to get their hands on a safe. They move it out of town, where they work to open it.

Open details →

In all likeliness an inspiration for Griffith's The Lonely Villa (1909), Terrible Anguish tells the brief and tragic tale of a family being torn apart while the husband is away at work.

Open details →

An entomologist guilty of trying to capture rare insects is condemned to be pinned on a giant cork.

Open details →

The French short film recreates key moments from the Russian revolution of 1905 in Odessa.

Open details →

Martyrs of the Inquisition

Open details →

A couple of young boys clamber over a fence and break into the hen coop. They steal some eggs and a fat chicken. The adults are after them, but the boys start a fire by accident and lead the adults on a long chase.

Open details →

A dramatization of the uprising in Odessa, Russia in 1905: A ship's crew, tired of being mistreated, mutinies and takes over their ship. When they reach land, a sailor who died during the mutiny is made a martyr, inspiring an uprising in the city. Then the authorities decide to repress the revolt with a brutal show of force.

Open details →

Various scenes from New Testament and Old: Christian martyrdom under Roman rule, Daniel in the lion's den, and Belshazzar's vision of a floating hand spelling the end of his rule.

Open details →

The assassination of the Grand Duke Serge.

Open details →

Short film dramatizing the riots in St. Petersburg in three scenes: Fanaticism and superstition, Demonstrators leaving, and Legal crime.

Open details →

Russian soldiers demolish a synagogue and ill-treat the Jews.

Open details →

The Battle of Liaoyang began on August 29, 1904 and continued until September 1 when the Russians were forced to retreat. On September 6 the Japanese occupied the Yentai Mines to the north of Liaoyang. (The History of the Russo-Japanese War by Sydney Tyler published 1905)

Open details →

The film depicts the assassination of the Russian minister in charge of the secret police. The bombing assault against the Chief of Police, Von Plèhve by a student named Sasanoff happened in Saint Petersburg on July, 29, 1904. It was reconstructed in Montreuil in the first days of August. For the sets, H. Laurent asked Touchard, director of exteriors to find newly dead horses, and a carriage from the year 1900. Laurent dismantled the carriage and burned parts of it and with a picture from the Petit Jornal Illustré, he recontructed the scene.

Open details →

The 1904–1905 Pathé short Un coup d’œil par étage (literally “A Glance on Each Floor”) is an inventive early comedy that presents a whimsical peek into life across multiple apartments in a single building. It plays with cinematic point-of-view and narrative structure in a way that was novel at the time. The film cuts between brief vignettes on each apartment floor: a man at a phone, a pillow fight between children, an elderly lady with a cat—and finally, a resident scrambling to extinguish curtains that have caught fire. Structured as a vertical tour ("par étage"), the short runs about 6 minutes in restored screenings and was featured in retrospectives on early cinem

Open details →

Recreation of a real-life fire that took 602 lives.

Open details →

Early silent adaptation of the fairy-tale Puss In Boots.

Open details →

Historical legend composed of five Scenes. 1. William Tell's heroism. 2. The Plot. 3. The Apple. 4. Death of Gessler. 5. The Swiss cheer their Liberator. This popular and interesting legend takes place amidst the country life of the mountain populations. The beautiful and picturesque sites which exist in Switzerland have given us an opportunity of utilising the resources our theatre affords, and our scene-painters have been able to have a free run on their imaginations, and have completed the work by a series of magnificent scenes in the most artistic character.

Open details →

An early Pathé version of Don Quixote told in 15 chapters.

Open details →

First part in Napoleon's short film life adaptation, followed by L'Empire (grandeur et décadence). The scenes are: At school in Brienne. On the bridge of Arcole. The campaign in Egypt. Passage of the St. Bernard Pass. Garden party in Malmaison. According to Ferdinand Zecca's notes (labelled "1904"), this is the first film Lucien Nonguet shot for Pathé.

Open details →

The story of Jesus Christ has been portrayed countless times throughout the history of cinema, from the chaste and embryonic staging of the silent film era to the frenetic dynamism of the digital age at the beginning of the 21st century. Death and rebirth are present in a perpetual cycle in which the sacred myth is transformed into the product of a spiritual franchise.

Open details →

Recommended by a friend of the Ambigu Theatre, Max is summoned to Joinville studios. His first role is that of a husband who comes home late.

Open details →