Jean Grémillon

Produced for television by Claude-Jean Philippe, the « Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma », recounts the history of French cinema from its birth to the beginning of the 1960s. With commentary read by Jean Rochefort.

A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship.

After a society lady abandons him for a cad, a sensitive young painter becomes a monk. But when his former beloved is later destitute with an illegitimate child, will he now be able to help her?

Lucien Bourrache, a good looking non-commissioned officer at the Spahis, is used to charm many women. He met Madeleine Courtois at Cannes. She is beautiful and lives in luxury. He lends her a large amount of money, which she loses gambling. Then she drops him. But Lucien is now in love, and once demobilized, he goes to Paris to find her again. But he's not so sexy without his uniform, and Madeleine and him do not belong to the same milieu.

An eccentric man endangers himself when he makes advances toward the girlfriend of a saloon keeper.

A subtle reflection on the creative process of painter André Masson, and on creativity in general. It is at the crossroads of the documentary and the poem. It exalts the work of Masson and demonstrates lucidity, dedication and patience necessary for any creator. It superimposes the image a text inspired by the work of Masson, divided into eight parts, directs the eye to the heart of the artist's creative work.

A captivating short film, showing the various processes in the production of a tapestry in the workshop of the famed Gobelins Manufactory.

Maldone is a canal worker, happy with his life after running away from his family estate. He falls in love with Zita, a young gypsy girl, during a local fete. However, after his brother dies, Maldone is called back to manage the estate. There, he takes up the life of a landowner and marries a neighbor's daughter. Years later Maldone is still restless on the estate, and becomes obsessed with Zita, after meeting her by chance one evening.

Irène is the unhappy wife of a wealthy publisher, Jacques Voisin-Larive, who cares about her no more than a beautiful piece of furniture. Her meeting with Étienne, a young cabinetmaker with whom she falls in love, turns her dismal existence upside down. Not wanting to reveal her condition to her lover, she pretends to be a modest maid, employed by the Voisin-Larive. At the end of a weekend spent with her lover, Irène discovers that she is pregnant. The fragile balance of their existence is suddenly broken. Taking the initiative, she reveals her affair to Jacques and tells him about her desire to divorce. But her husband has no intention of giving her back her freedom...

A shimmering glass hotel at the top of a remote Provençal mountain provides the setting for a tragicomic tapestry about an obsessive love pentangle, whose principals range from an artist to a hotel manager to a dam worker.

The film starts by a visit to bucolic Normandy before the events. This peaceful atmosphere is shattered by Operation Overlord, minutely described in the second part of the documentary. The landing on D-Day and the ensuing battles and bombings martyr the peaceful area giving the earth thousands of body instead of seeds. In the last part, the dreadful aftermath of the steel storm is shown both with sympathy for the victims and hope for the future, since all these sacrifices, whether military or civilians, have not been in vain.

The film is a short documentary about alchemical engravings.

Marie, a young doctor, settles down on the Ouessant Island. She will be able to win the diffidence of the local population but she will have to fight for her independence after falling in love with an Italian engineer.

Outwardly, Monsieur Victor would appear to be the model citizen. A respectable Toulon shopkeeper, he has a devoted wife and is courteous and considerate to all who know him. However, beneath this veneer of respectability hides a notorious receiver of stolen goods, who trades with hardened criminals. Victor manages to keep up his double life without any difficulty until the fateful day when one of his partners in crime threatens to expose him. Fearing a scandal, Victor kills the crook in a moment of panic, using a shoemaker's tool. Naturally, the murder is blamed on a local shoemaker, who is sentenced to ten years' hard labour. Seven years later, the former shoemaker reappears in Toulon, having escaped from prison. The first person to recognise him is Monsieur Victor...

The strength of a couple's fascination with airplanes and flight is to the detriment of their family.

In a lighthouse off the coast of Brittany, a young man slowly goes mad following a bite by a rabid dog while his father looks on helplessly. Thwarted by a raging sea, they are prisoners of the lighthouse. In a rustic Brittany village, a young bride waits, unaware of the tragedy.

After three weeks and a long, hot voyage across the Pacific, an ocean liner finally arrives at its destination, Ecuador. That evening, the event is marked by a masked ball and a magic show.

An incisive exploration of the dubious beauty of "official" art.

The young Candelas, seduced and abandoned by Arturo, an unscrupulous womanizer, meets two soldiers, Tiburcio and Angelillo, who, in order to help the girl out of her predicament, organize a musical recital to raise money.

During the same mid 1920s period that future feature director Gremillon began his career making industrial and tourism short subjects, he also made this experimental short which displays the then popular avant garde technique of montage.