Cécile Guyon

Germinal

Albert Capellani

Mévisto, Jean Jacquinet

Based on Emile Zola's novel, an uncompromisingly harsh and realistic story of a coalminers' strike in northern France in the 1860s.

Au pays des ténèbres

Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset

Charles Krauss, André Liabel

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.

Pour le pays

Cécile Guyon

Short World War I film.

Gribiche

Jacques Feyder

Jean Forest, Françoise Rosay

Gribiche, a young boy whose mother is a war widow, gets adopted by a rich woman. She wants to turn him into a perfect gentleman, but soon he feels unhappy.

L'anglais tel que Max le parle

Max Linder

Max Linder, Cécile Guyon

"Scene, a first-class railway carriage. Max and delightful girl alone. "May I smoke?" breaks the ice, and then Max brings all the arts of fascination to bear on the lady, who is by no means shy. Max calls next day. Her father is in the enamel bath and geyser line. Max is making love; a customer enters. Girlie hides Max in portable shower bath. Enter father, who is a good salesman. He turns on the shower - and Max. What a delightful comedian Linder is." (The Bioscope, Nov. 22, 1917)

La Glu

Albert Capellani

Mistinguett, Paul Capellani

La Glu tells the story of a woman, separated from her husband, and of evil reputation, who at a summer resort tries to capture the fortune of a wealthy aristocrat whose nephew had been in love with her, and is herself caught in the toils of her interest in a poor and primitive Breton lobster-fisherman. His simple soul discovering the past career and the heartlessness of the Parisian woman, in despair he tries to kill himself by throwing him-self on the rocks. When the Glu, the name given to the woman in question, tries to see the youth, his mother kills her with a mallet on the steps leading to the room of the invalid.

Aux feux de la rampe

Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset

Josette Andriot, Cécile Guyon

Short melodrama. Two former lovers meet twenty years later when the man has to compete with the son of the woman.

L'enfant prodigue

Michel Carré

Cécile Guyon, Jane Renouardt

Cécile Guyon is young Pierrot. He has fallen in love with the laundress, pretty Jane Renouardt. However, she wants more than a lover whose poor fashion sense impels him to dress as a stage clown. She wants jewelry, pretty clothes, and probably a string of poloponies, so Guyon robs his parents' safe and steals their life savings so he can run off with Mlle Renouardt.

Le Moulin tragique

Georges Lainé

Léon Mathot, Cécile Guyon

Propaganda spy-movie, Belgian-French production, directed by Honoré and Georges Lainé. A village girl repels the advances of the miller's son, who cowardly leaves for the German army. During the war he transforms into a ruthless soldier seeking for revenge on his village. A melodramatic story as alibi for anti-German propaganda.

Le passeur de l'Yser

M. Honoré

Gilbert Dalleu, Cécile Guyon

Gevaërt and his daughter Marie show the latter's fiancé, Sergeant Tressignies, the system that opens or closes the swing bridge connecting the banks of the Yser. The Germans having taken this key position, the sergeant receives the order to reoccupy the house of the smuggler.