François Roland Truffaut was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more than 25 years, he remains an icon of the French film industry, having worked on over 25 films.
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.
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).
J'Accuse…! is an 1898 open letter by Émile Zola concerning the Dreyfus affair.
Victor Francen was a Belgian-born actor with a long career in French cinema and in Hollywood.
Elvira Popescu was a Romanian-French stage and film actress and theatre director. During the 1930s and 1940s, she starred in a number of French comedy films.
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.
End of the World is a 1931 French science fiction film directed by Abel Gance based on the novel Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion. The film stars Victor Francen as Martial Novalic, Colette Darfeuil as Genevieve de Murcie, Abel Gance as Jean Novalic, and Jeanne Brindau as Madame Novalic. The plot concerns a comet hurtling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions people have to the impending disaster. Scientist Martial Novalic who discovers the comet, seeks a solution to the problem and becomes a fugitive after skeptical authorities blame him for starting a mass panic.
Annie Ducaux was a French actress, who appeared in 40 film and television productions between 1932 and 1980. Ducaux was a shareholder in the state theater Comédie-Française from 1948, and played in numerous stage productions there. She is possibly best-remembered for her roles in such films as Abel Gance's Beethoven's Great Love (1937), Conflict and Les grandes familles.
Entente cordiale is a 1939 French drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Gaby Morlay, Victor Francen and Pierre Richard-Willm. The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.
Jean-Louis Richard was a French actor, film director and scriptwriter.
Georges Douking was a French stage, film, and television actor. He also directed stage plays such as the premier presentation of Jean Giraudoux's Sodom and Gomorrah at the Théâtre Hébertot in 1943. He is perhaps best known for his role in the surreal 1972 comedy The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. He was one of the favorite actors of the French filmmaker Pierre Chenal.
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.
Walter Percy Day O.B.E. (1878–1965) was a British painter best remembered for his work as a matte artist and special effects technician in the film industry. Professional names include W. Percy Day; Percy Day; "Pop" or "Poppa" Day, owing to his collaboration with sons Arthur George Day (1909–1952) draughtsman, Thomas Sydney Day (1912–1985), stills photographer and cameraman, and stepson, Peter Ellenshaw, who also worked in this field.
Romuald Charles Eugène Gaudens Jean Sylve Joubé was a French stage and film actor whose career on the stage and in films lasted approximately thirty years.
Nelly Kaplan was an Argentine-born French writer and film director who focused on the arts, film, and filmmakers. She studied economics at the University of Buenos Aires. Passionate about cinema, she abruptly put her studies on hold to go to Paris to represent the new Argentine film archive at an international convention and later became a correspondent for different Argentine newspapers. She met Abel Gance in 1954, who gave her the opportunity to work on the film La tour de Nesle.
Daniel Mendaille was a French stage and film actor whose career spanned nearly sixty years.
Steve Passeur, pen name of Étienne Morin, was a French dramatist and screenwriter. His plays with scathing replicas often depicted cynical characters.
A Skin So Soft is a 2017 documentary film, directed by Canadian director Denis Côté. A Canadian, French and Swiss coproduction, the film chronicles the daily monotonous routines of a select few men whose lives revolve around extreme bodybuilding.
Chantecoq A.K.A. L'espionne de Guillaume(Wilhelm's Spy) is a 1916 French spy film directed by Henri Pouctal, starring Claude Mérelle, Gaston Michel and Julien Clément. It is about an amateur detective unmasking a group of German spies in France on the eve of World War I. The scenario of the film is based on the novel L'espionne de Guillaume by Arthur Bernède.
