Napoléon is a 1927 French silent epic historical film, produced, and directed by Abel Gance that tells the story of Napoleon's early years. On screen, the title is Napoléon vu par Abel Gance, meaning "Napoleon as seen by Abel Gance". The film is recognised as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects. A revival of Napoléon in the mid-1950s influenced the filmmakers of the French New Wave. The film used the Keller-Dorian cinematography for its color sequences.
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideas that led to the development of the auteur theory.
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse (1919), La Roue (1923), and Napoléon (1927).
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker and writer. He first established his reputation in the 1920s as a director of silent films in which comedy was often mingled with fantasy. He went on to make some of the most innovative early sound films in France, before going abroad to work in the UK and USA for more than a decade. Returning to France after World War II, he continued to make films that were characterised by their elegance and wit, often presenting a nostalgic view of French life in earlier years. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960. Clair's best known films include Un chapeau de paille d'Italie, Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million (1931), À nous la liberté (1931), I Married a Witch (1942), and And Then There Were None (1945).
Jean-René Pierre Goetgheluck Le Rouge Tillard des Acres de Presfontaines, whose pseudonym was Jean Mitry, was a French film theorist, critic and filmmaker, a co-founder of France's first film society, and, in 1938, of the Cinémathèque Française.
Jacques Feyder was a Belgian actor, screenwriter and film director who worked principally in France, but also in the US, Britain and Germany. He was a director of silent films during the 1920s, and in the 1930s he became associated with the style of poetic realism in French cinema. He adopted French nationality in 1928.
Françoise Rosay was a French opera singer, diseuse, and actress who enjoyed a film career of over sixty years and who became a legendary figure in French cinema. She went on to appear in over 100 movies in her career.
Lazare Meerson (1900–1938) was a Russian-born cinema art director. After emigrating to France in the early 1920s, he worked on French films of the late silent cinema and the early 1930s, particularly those directed by René Clair and Jacques Feyder. He worked in England during the last two years of his life. He had great influence on film set design in France in the years before World War II.
Philippe Hériat was a multi-talented French novelist, playwright and actor.
Carnival in Flanders is a 1935 French historical romantic comedy film directed by Jacques Feyder. It is also widely known under its original title in French, La Kermesse héroïque. A German-language version of the film was made simultaneously and was released under the title Die klugen Frauen, featuring Ernst Schiffner in one of his early film roles.
Charles-Marie Vanel was a French actor and director. During his 76-year film career, which began in 1912, he appeared in more than 200 films and worked with many prominent directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Jacques Feyder, and Henri-Georges Clouzot. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as a desperate truck driver in Clouzot's The Wages of Fear for which he received a Special Mention at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953.
Gina Manès was a French film actress and a major star of French silent cinema. After an early appearance in a Louis Feuillade film, she had significant roles in films of Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein, including Cœur fidèle.
J'accuse is a 1919 French silent film directed by Abel Gance. It juxtaposes a romantic drama with the background of the horrors of World War I, and it is sometimes described as a pacifist or anti-war film. Work on the film began in 1918, and some scenes were filmed on real battlefields. The film's powerful depiction of wartime suffering, and particularly its climactic sequence of the "return of the dead", made it an international success, and confirmed Gance as one of the most important directors in Europe.
Le Grand Jeu is a 1934 French film directed by Jacques Feyder. It is a romantic drama set against the background of the French Foreign Legion, and the film was an example of poetic realism in the French cinema. The title Le Grand Jeu refers to the practice of reading the cards. Blanche asks whether her client wants the 'full works', the whole story: "Alors... je te fais le grand jeu?"
Pension Mimosas is a 1935 French drama film directed by Jacques Feyder. Based on an original scenario by Feyder and Charles Spaak, it is a psychological drama set largely in a small hotel on the Côte d'Azur, and it provided Françoise Rosay with one of the most substantial acting roles of her career. It was produced by the French subsidiary of the German company Tobis Film.
Marie Epstein was an actress, scenarist, film director, and film preservationist. Her career is distinguished by three important collaborations. Throughout the 1920s, she acted in and wrote scenarios for films directed by her brother, Jean Epstein. From the 1920s through the early 1950s, she collaborated with the director Jean Benoît-Lévy on sixteen films, serving variously as a writer, assistant director, and co-director. From the early 1950s to her retirement in 1977, Epstein served as a film preservationist at the Cinémathèque française.
Back Streets of Paris is a 1946 French drama film directed by Marcel Blistène. Jacques Feyder also contributed to the film in the role of artistic director.
Léonce-Henri Burel was a French cinematographer whose career extended from the silent era until the early 1970s. He was the director of photography on more than 120 films, working almost exclusively in black-and-white.
Gribiche is a 1926 French silent film directed by Jacques Feyder based on the eponymous short story by writer Frédéric Boutet.
Le Brasier ardent is a 1923 French film directed by Ivan Mosjoukine. It combines elements of comedy, mystery, romance and psychological drama. The title has been variously translated into English as The Blazing Inferno, The Burning Crucible, The Burning Brazier, The Burning Cauldron, and Burning Embers.
