1930s

imdb:
To regain the trust of his girlfriend, an unscrupulous lawyer decides to mend his ways and follow a straighter path.Read More »

An excellent little suspense thriller with an air of the occult, filmed on location in Morocco by Julien Duvivier. Two versions were made: a German version with Anton Walbrook, and this French version with René Lefèvre and Harry Baur.

One by one, a group of five travellers starts to die, apparently the result of a sorcerer’s curse…Read More »

Synopsis:
Less ambitious than his previous Golgotha, Julien Duvivier’s La Bandera is nonetheless more entertaining. A Foreign Legion yarn, La Bandera downplays spectacular battle scenes in favor of a romantic triangle. Accused of murder, Pierre (Jean Gabin) joins the Legion, with detective Lucas (Robert Le Vigan) hot on his trail. Both Pierre and Lucas fall in love with beautiful Bedouin girl Aischa (Annabella), which only intensifies their hatred of one another. The two antagonists are eventually forced to bury the hatchet when fighting shoulder to shoulder against uprising natives. The ending is rather startling, inasmuch as the audience was expected the actor with the best screen billing to get the girl.
— Hal Erickson (New York Times).Read More »

Quote:
Featuring an all-star Shochiku cast, including the legendary Kinuyo Tanaka, Youth, Why Do You Cry? represents the high-water mark of Kiyohiko Ushihara’s silent period, packing its fast-paced plot, which involves the sudden intrusion of a “modern girl” into a widower’s family home, into a truly breezy three hours. A specialist of coming-of-age stories, Ushihara would leave Shochiku Kamata studios to learn more about a revolutionary new development in sound film, known as the “talkies,” in France, Great Britain, and the United States. Nobuhiko Obayashi (House) considered the film a masterpiece, observing that “even though it’s a three-hour-long silent film, I was moved into thinking that I had just watched a musical work of art.”Read More »

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In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking.Read More »

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Reportage showing views of old and new Jerusalem and the modern buildings of Tel-Aviv. It is one of two (along with ‘Tel Aviv’) reportages made in the late 1930s by Romuald Gantkowski in what was then Palestine.Read More »

‘Courrier sud’ dramatizes the exploits of a French commercial airline, making the treacherous run from Paris to Africa and back. Pilot Jacques tries to rekindle a romance with old flame Genevieve, now married to a prominent foreign ambassador…Read More »

Synopsis:
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d’Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.Read More »

When her father files bankruptcy and then dies, Rose’s fiancé jilts her; she takes a job as a maid in a Montmartre kindergarten with 150 poor children. Rose gives each child loving attention, and soon she’s their favorite. An especially needy child is Marie, a prostitute’s daughter. Rose and she bond, and Marie is jealous of all attentions paid Rose, especially those of Dr. Libois, the school’s physician. When Rose inadvertently guides the children through the educational experiment of a visiting scholar, and then discloses she has a college degree and is working beneath her station, the principal wants to fire her. Is there any way she can stay? And what will happen to Marie?Read More »