Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director, 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). He was born in Paris in 1889. In 1909, he acted in his... Read full bio →
Cyrano et d'Artagnan
Duelist and poet Cyrano de Bergerac and musketeer d'Artagnan meet and team up to stop the conspiracy against King Louis XIII of France.
Austerlitz
The first half of this film covers Napoleon's coronation as Emperor and political manoeuvrings while the second half covers the actual battle.
La tour de Nesle
Under the reign of Louis X, the Tower of Nesle is the scene of murderous bacchanals, of which passing gentlemen are victims. The valiant Captain Buridan escapes the assassins and unmasks the instigator of these crimes.
Le capitaine Fracasse
Par amour pour une comédienne, Isabelle, le baron de Sigognac se joint à une troupe ambulante en route pour Paris. Quand un acteur décède, il reprend son rôle : celui du capitaine Fracasse.
Vénus aveugle
Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus) is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation. Although the film is not set in any specified period, Gance wanted it to be seen as relevant to the contemporary situation in France. He wrote, "...La Vénus aveugle is at the cro...
Paradis perdu
Before World War I in Paris, a budding artist, Pierre Leblanc, falls in love and marries Janine, a dressmaker's assistant. Pierre has a flair for designing clothes, and he and his bride live in a blissful paradise, until war breaks out and he becomes a soldier. Janine dies in childbirth and, no longer desiring to live, Pierre volunteers for a da...
J'accuse
After serving in the trenches of World War I, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war. He thinks he has succeeded, but the government subverts his discovery, and Europe slides with seeming inevitability toward World War II. In desp...
Le roman d'un jeune homme pauvre
Maxime de Champcey, a bankrupt marquis, is hired by the wealthy Laroque and falls for his daughter Marguerite. She loves him too but rejects him under the belief he's a fortune hunter.
Lucrèce Borgia
French silent film pioneer Abel Gance directs this 1935 classic about Lucrezia Borgia, her brother, Cesare. and her father, Pope Alexander VI -- one of history's most ruthless and ambitious crime families.
La fin du monde
The plot concerns a comet hurling toward Earth on a collision course and the different reactions to people on the impending disaster.
Napoléon vu par Abel Gance
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.
La roue
Sisif, a railwayman, and his son Elie fall in love with the beautiful Norma (whom Sisif rescued from a train crash when a baby and raised as his daughter), with tragic results. Originally running over nine hours, its recent editions have been cut to about four hours.
J'accuse!
The story of two men, one married, the other the lover of the other's wife, who meet in the trenches of the First World War, and how their tale becomes a microcosm for the horrors of war.