Pierre Batcheff
1907 - 1932Pierre Batcheff (23 June 1907 – 13 April 1932) was a French actor, whose original name was Piotr Bacev (from Russia), born in Harbin, Manchuria. His best-known film was Un chien andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. He was married to French film editor Denise Piazza.
Both Batcheff and the leading actress in Un chien andalou, Simone Mareuil, committed suicide, Mareuil by setting herself on fire in 1954, Batcheff reportedly by overdosing on Veronal.
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Napoléon
Abel Gance
Albert Dieudonné, Vladimir Roudenko
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. Originally intended to be the first of six films, director Abel Gance realized the full project would be nigh impossible, and never raised the money to complete the other five. The film's legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens.
Napoléon
Feu Mathias Pascal
Marcel L'Herbier
Ivan Mosjoukine, Marcelle Pradot
Mathias Pascal, only son of a once-rich family, marries beautiful Romalinda, who has a terrible mother-in-law. She controls her daughter, and soon his home life becomes a nightmare. His only moments of lights are his mother and baby, but both die on the same day. Shocked, he leaves his hometown and goes to Monte Carlo, where he wins a fortune at the casino. Returning home, he reads his own obituary in a paper. They have found a corpse in a creek and connected it with his disappearance. Mathias, noticing that he is now free from all ties to his old life, decides to start a new one.
The Late Mathias Pascal
La sirène des tropiques
Mario Nalpas, Henri Étiévant
Josephine Baker, Pierre Batcheff
Marquis Sévéro, a rich, lazy Parisian, wants to divorce his wife so that he can marry his own goddaughter Denise. But Denise herself loves André Berval, an engineer employed by the marquis. Filled with jealousy, the marquis sends André to the Antilles, to prospect some land he has just acquired. He promises André that he can marry Denise if he is successful in the tropics, but he then writes to Alvarez, his manager at the site, asking him to prevent André from ever returning to France. The brutal Alvarez forms an instant hatred for André when the engineer breaks up Alvarez's attempt to rape Papitou, a beautiful native girl. Papitou becomes devoted to André, and protects him against Alvarez's schemes. But she faces a crisis herself when she learns that André plans to marry Denise.
Siren of the Tropics
Le double amour
Jean Epstein
Natalya Lisenko, Jean Angelo
Jacques Prémont-Solène is a degenerate gambler and his losses at baccarat have bankrupted his lover, Laure Maresco. When he steals four hundred thousand francs and loses that at the gambling tables, he flees to the United States, and Nathalie takes the blame. Twenty years later, she has a flourishing career as a nightclub singer, but their son is just as inept a gambler as his father had been.
Double Love
