Abel Gance

This documentary focuses on the making of the 235-minute, silent epic Napoleon, the masterpiece of French director/writer/actor Abel Gance. Napoleon showcased Gance's talents with the camera, his use of multiple-images (like a split screen), and his handling of crowded action scenes -- all brought forward in this documentary by his later assistant, Nelly Kaplan. While Gance was shooting Napoleon in 1925-26, he and his crew were also being filmed for a documentary titled Autour de Napoleon. The only extant reels from that documentary are included in this film, as well as views of Gance's unique "triptychs" -- three different scenes lined up side-by-side across a super-wide screen to convey the effect of a panorama, or of three separate interludes. Nelly Kaplan put together this documentary using old footage, such as Gance filming the famous snowball fight at the Brienne military school and still photographs and excerpts from Gance's production diaries.

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Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the history of French cinema from its birth to the beginning of the 1960s. With commentary read by Jean Rochefort.

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Marcello Mastroianni, Isabelle Adjani, Alain Delon, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen... the biggest stars in cinema were welcomed by Christian Defaye on his show Spécial cinéma. Between intimate confessions from actors and immersion in the world of the greatest filmmakers, Christian Defaye took viewers on a journey into the fascinating world of cinema for nearly thirty years.

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Abel Gance's 1971 sound edition of his epic 1927 'Napoleon', which contains much of the silent original, with new material shot and added in both 1965 and 1971, and with sound synchronization from both the 1932 reissue and this version.

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BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.

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Omnibus was an arts-based BBC television documentary series, broadcast mainly on BBC1 in the United Kingdom. The programme was the successor to the long-running arts-based series 'Monitor'. It ran from 1967 until 2003, usually being transmitted on Sunday evenings. During its 35-year history, the programme won 12 Bafta awards. Among the series' best remembered documentaries are Cracked Actor, a profile of David Bowie, and Rene Magritte, a graduate film by David Wheatley, 'Madonna: Behind the American dream', a film produced by Nadia Hagger, and a profile of the British film director Ridley Scott. For a season in 1982, the series was in a magazine format presented by Barry Norman. The series was replaced by 'Imagine' hosted by Alan Yentob.

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The life and work of Abel Gance as told by himself. Includes extracts from many of his films and considers his contribution to the cinema.

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A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.

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The plot concerns a comet hurling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions to people on the impending disaster.

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A short silent documentary on the making of the 1931 Abel Gance directed film, "La Fin du Monde".

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Convinced that his family is tainted by generations of evil, Roderick Usher is hellbent on stopping his sister Madeline’s wedding to prevent the cursed Usher bloodline from expanding. When her fiancé Allan arrives at the crumbling estate to claim his bride, Roderick goes to ruthless—even deadly—lengths to keep them apart.

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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.

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Blaise Cendrars' AUTOUR DE LA ROUE (1923), a behind-the-scenes short documenting the production.

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Sisif, a railwayman, saves a young girl named Norma orphaned by a train crash and raises her as his own daughter alongside his son, Elie. As she becomes an adult, Sisif grapples with whether to tell Norma the truth about her parentage.

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A film about the life of Molière (1622-1673).

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Abel Gance's 1971 sound edition of his epic 1927 'Napoleon', which contains much of the silent original, with new material shot and added in both 1965 and 1971, and with sound synchronization from both the 1932 reissue and this version.

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Based on the play by Victor Hugo, portraying the rise, fall and execution of Fabiano Fabiani, a fictional favourite of Mary I of England.

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Duelist and poet Cyrano de Bergerac and musketeer d'Artagnan meet and team up to stop the conspiracy against King Louis XIII of France.

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Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.

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France, the beginning of the XIV century. Every night, Queen Margaret of Burgundy and her two sisters arrange orgies, to which beautiful nobles are invited. The young men were brought blindfolded, and after a night of love they were killed and their corpses thrown into the river, because the queen was afraid that her husband would learn about her adventures. One of her lovers managed to escape death. He knows the secrets of the queen, knows that she once gave birth to a son from him, claims that he has evidence that Margarita wanted to kill her father and blackmails her.

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Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Catherine de Médicis, celebrates her wedding with Henri de Navarre. Officially, it's a rapprochement between the League and the Huguenots. In fact, it was an opportunity to bring all the Huguenots to Paris and kill them all at once. King Charles IX fails in his attempt on Coligny's life. Queen Margot tries to save her husband from the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre by preventing the annulment of his marriage, forcing Henri to share her bed. Two knights from opposing camps are wounded and, saved în extremis, are hidden together by the queen and her cousin. Margot falls in love with one of them, but has to run to warn her husband of a new attack...

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Out of love for an actress, Isabelle, the Baron de Sigognac joins a traveling troop en route to Paris. When an actor dies, he takes over his role: that of Captain Fracasse.

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Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus) is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation. Although the film is not set in any specified period, Gance wanted it to be seen as relevant to the contemporary situation in France. He wrote, "...La Vénus aveugle is at the crossroads of reality and legend... The heroine ... gradually sinks deeper and deeper into despair. Only when she has reached the bottom of the abyss does she encounter the smile of Providence that life reserves for those who have faith in it, and she can then go serenely back up the slope towards happiness. If I have been able to show in this film that elevated feelings are the only force that can triumph over Fate, then my efforts will not have been in vain."

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In pre-World Ward I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre LeBlanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant. Pierre has a flair for designing clothes, and he and his bride live in a blissful paradise, until the war breaks out and he becomes a soldier. Janine dies in childbirth and, no longer desiring to live, Pierre volunteers for a dangerous patrol behind German lines. While recuperating in the hospital from a wound he received on the mission, Pierre spends his time drawing sketches of dresses. He becomes rich and famous after the war. Years later, after devoting himself to his daughter, Pierre seeks a marriage with a girl no older than his daughter. A conflict develops and to ensure his daughter's happiness, Pierre sacrifices his own plans.

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After serving in the trenches of World War I, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war. He thinks he has succeeded, but the government subverts his discovery, and Europe slides with seeming inevitability toward World War II. In desperation, Diaz summons the ghosts of the war dead from the graves and fields of France to give silent, accusing protest.

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Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.

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Maxime de Champcey, a bankrupt marquis, is hired by the wealthy Laroque and falls for his daughter Marguerite. She loves him too but rejects him under the belief he's a fortune hunter.

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French silent film pioneer Abel Gance directs this 1935 classic about Lucrezia Borgia, her brother, Cesare. and her father, Pope Alexander VI -- one of history's most ruthless and ambitious crime families.

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A hero of the Paris streets is recruited for a conspiracy against Mazarin in the court of the King, but he reveals the subversive plot to Anne of Austria.

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A second version of Gance's Napoléon, with sound.

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Alexandre Dumas' romantic novel Lady of the Camelias (more popularly known as Camille) was filmed twice in 1953, first in Argentina, then in France. The Argentine film was heavily modernized, while the French version returns to Dumas' 19th-century milieu. Micheline Presle is excellent as Marguerite, the gorgeous courtesan who flits from man to man until she finds true love in the form of the much-younger Armand (Rolande Alexandre). Though he is willing to marry her despite her past, she is persuaded to forsake him, lest his reputation be ruined. The story then wends its way towards its famous tragic finale, as the consumptive Marguerite is permitted a few brief moments of happiness before her flame is permanently extinguished. Advertised as the seventh version of the Dumas classic, La Dame aux Camelias was certainly not the last.

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A young noblewoman is unhappy about needing to marry the village ironmaster for financial reasons, but later comes to appreciate her husband.

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One of the most popular melodrama films directed by Abel Gance. A paranoide, fanatical and obsessively jealous husband obducts his own son to bully his wife.

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The plot concerns a comet hurling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions to people on the impending disaster.

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Napoleon at Saint Helena (German: Napoleon auf Sankt Helena) is a 1929 German silent historical film directed by Lupu Pick and starring Werner Krauss, Hanna Ralph and Albert Bassermann. The film depicts the final years of Napoleon between 1815 and 1821 during his period of exile on the British Atlantic island of Saint Helena following his defeat at Waterloo.

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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.

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Max accepts a wager that he cannot remain in a haunted castle for one hour (11 PM to midnight) without crying for help. As soon as he arrives he encounters strange and nightmarish visions, but he is nevertheless on the verge of winning the bet when a phone-call brings startling news.

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Sisif, a railwayman, saves a young girl named Norma orphaned by a train crash and raises her as his own daughter alongside his son, Elie. As she becomes an adult, Sisif grapples with whether to tell Norma the truth about her parentage.

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One of two peasant brothers in love with the same woman escapes his grim country life and pursues a career as a Parisian sculptor.

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The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.

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Composer Enrid Damor knows nothing of the past life of his new wife Eve Dinant : she lived as a debauchee with an adventurer, Fred Ryce. Fred Ryce meets Damor's daughter, Claire, and tries to marries her. He blackmails Eve. Enric learns something about her and Fred and composes a symphony to express his pain... The Tenth Symphony is considered the first major film of the Impressionist movement.

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French silent film by Abel Gance. Considered lost.

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A journalist attempt to stop a mysterious criminal : "Barbe rousse".

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A doctor, specialist in pediatrics, has no time for his wife Marthe. She seeks solace in the arms of his brother. Unable to keep up the charade, Marthe attempts to shoot herself, but it is her lover who is mortally wounded.

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A young girl marries a financier knowing he has only a short time to live, so she can inherit his money.Her lover, who has made a fortune away in America, returns and wants to hasten the financier's death.

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Hopson, a prestigious scientist, studies the effect of snake venom to cure many diseases of mankind. His son enlists in the army when the Great War breaks out. A series of circumstances will lead the scientist to change his way of thinking about values ​​and principles that until then he had as immovable.

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Le périscope is a 1928 film

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Le fou de la falaise is a 1916 silent film

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Un drame au château d'Acre is a 1915 silent short

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L'héroïsme de Paddy is a 1915 silent film

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A wacky scientist develops a powder that he believes will have the effect of distorting reality for those who take it. To test its effect, he tries it out on his boy assistant, his pets, his nieces, and their beaus. But, chaos ensues as his nieces don't find their appearances as funny as the rest, so Doctor Tube tries to find a way to make things right.

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