Michel Duran
1900 - 19941940, main basse sur le cinéma français
Pierre-Henri Gibert
Sarah-Jane Sauvegrain, Louis-Émile Galey
Paris, 1940. German occupation forces create a new film production company, Continental, and put Alfred Greven – producer, cinephile, and opportunistic businessman – in charge. During the occupation, under Joseph Goebbels’s orders, Greven hires the best artists and technicians of French cinema to produce successful, highly entertaining films, which are also strategically devoid of propaganda. Simultaneously, he takes advantage of the confiscation of Jewish property to purchase film theaters, studios and laboratories, in order to control the whole production line. His goal: to create a European Hollywood. Among the thirty feature films thus produced under the auspices of Continental, several are, to this day, considered classics of French cinema.
1940: Taking over French Cinema
El Dorado
Marcel L'Herbier
Ève Francis, Jaque Catelain
In Granada in Spain, Sibilla works as a dancer in a squalid cabaret called El Dorado, struggling to earn enough to care for her sick child. The boy's father Estiria, a prominent citizen, refuses them both help and recognition, fearful of jeopardising the engagement of his adult daughter Iliana to a wealthy nobleman. Iliana however slips away from her engagement party to meet her real lover Hedwick, a Swedish painter. Sibilla, in desperation after a further rejection by Estiria, sees an opportunity to blackmail him by locking the lovers overnight in their meeting-place in the Alhambra.
El Dorado
La Galerie des monstres
Jaque Catelain
Jaque Catelain, Lois Moran
Married carnival performers are subjected to the abuses of their employer in this silent film gem that has not received as much attention as it deserves. When the boss' unwanted advances on the wife are refused, he taunts a lion until it nearly kills her. But the other performers assist in a unique plot for revenge. Jaque Catelain directs and stars in this film made for influential French director Marcel L'Herbier's production company. Some sources also list L'Herbier as co-director, as he is credited here. The film boasts some rapid-fire editing techniques that were decades ahead of its time.
The Gallery of Monsters
La Femme de Nulle Part
Louis Delluc
Ève Francis, Gine Avril
A fifty year old woman, scarred by a life of disillusionment and regret, returns to the place where she lived twenty years before, to rekindle happier memories. She meets a young woman, the daughter of the current owners of the property, who is on the point of abandoning her home – just as she did, all those years ago...
The Woman from Nowhere
Alexis gentleman chauffeur
Max de Vaucorbeil, René Guissart
Suzy Prim, André Luguet
Alexis, a former war pilot, attempted the Paris-Tokyo raid and failed. He became a taxi driver. The film actress, Margot Fontane, forgets her bag in the taxi and Alexis thus meets her. He goes to see the great actress shoot, he is hired for a small role as an aviator, and to simulate a take-off, he flies to Tokyo. It is the signal of happiness for the two lovers.
Alexis gentleman chauffeur
Mam'zelle Nitouche
Marc Allégret
Raimu, Janie Marèse
Célestin, the organist of a convent, has written and composed a light operetta under the name of Floridor. One day, the Mother Superior asks him to chaperone one of the boarders, Denise de Flavigny, who is returning home to get married. Now, Denise, for all her goody goody looks, soon proves as saucy as can be. Things get even more complicated when Célestin starts courting Corinne, the star of his operetta, to the great displeasure of a commander of dragons, the young woman's lover. Worse, the latter is none other than the Mother Superior's brother... To say nothing of Lieutenant Fernand de Champlatreux, who happens to fall in love with Denise, his fiancée that he has never seen before...!
Mam'zelle Nitouche
Le chemin du bonheur
Jean Mamy
Simone Alex, Fernand Charpin
Three friends, Fred, singer, Claude, painter and André, extra, live in the same studio and share everything, even their girlfriend. Fred falls in love with a young girl but leaves her when he learns that she is rich. The two friends will try to fix this problem.
Le chemin du bonheur