
Catherine Hessling
Acting
Biography
Catherine Hessling, born Andrée Madeleine Heuschling, was a French stage and screen actress and the first wife of film director Jean Renoir. Hessling appeared in 15, mostly silent, films before retiring from the acting profession and withdrawing from public life in the mid-1930s.
Known For
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.
Encyclopédie audiovisuelle du cinéma

Count Moffat becomes infatuated with Nana, a presumptuous stage actress, vulgar, hypocritical and promiscuous, willing to do anything to succeed.
Nana

An impoverished girl tries to sell matches on New Year's Eve. Shivering with cold and unable to sell her wares, she sits in a sheltered nook. Striking a match to keep warm, the flame shows her what's beyond.
The Little Match Girl
Paris 1883. Yvette is the daughter of a courtesan who serves men of wealth and status. She is unaware of how her mother makes money and why they are always in the presence of princes, dukes and barons. Only when Yvette goes away on a holiday she realizes that the Banker Saval is engaging her mother in such activities, she suddenly feels dirty.
Yvette

The intersecting lives of neighbors in a courtyard apartment building in Vienna,including a football player related to the concierge,a new blonde maid hired by the wife of a baron,whom both the athlete and a baron flirt with,and a deadbeat tenant who fakes his suicide.
High and Low

La P’tite Lili is a silent short drama depicting the fate of a young orphaned girl in the working-class districts of Paris. The film follows Lili, a teenage girl marked by innocence and vulnerability, as she is drawn into the city’s underworld after encountering a man who exploits her circumstances. Told through impressionistic visual style rather than dialogue, the film presents a tragic portrait of social marginalization and moral collapse within an urban environment.
La P’tite Lili

Orphan Virginia is left destitute following her father's death and her uncle's alcoholism; she finds refuge with bohemians but is forced to flee, eventually finding romance and a life-altering experience that triggers surreal dreams.
Whirlpool of Fate

This is 1929: the little red riding hood is still with us and her life is more complicated than ever. She still has to go through the forest and she once again comes up against a wolf. This time around the big bad wolf has become a lecherous tramp who keeps stalking the girl trying to wolf her down ... in his own way of course.
Little Red Riding Hood

Former student Raskolnikov is pushed to murder when struggling to pay the rent on his apartment. When the murder is being investigated by the police, Raskolnikov struggles between trying to hide his guilt and the pressure to confess.
Crime and Punishment

The tale of a rich, flaky poet and his servant who both join the army and wind up in the same barracks.
The Sad Sack

The ill-fated romance of a brow-beaten seaport slum café waitress and a young man with a possessive mother, who dreams of going out to sea.
Sea Fever

About the conflict between social classes through the life of the unhappy Catherine Ferrand, an orphan girl, who is a victim of the jealousy of women and the greed of men.
Backbiters

No description available.
The Pursuit of Happiness

Shot in three days, this surreal, erotic silent short shows a native white girl teaching a futuristic African airman the Charleston dance.
Charleston Parade

A young couple goes through a plot unscathed in the welcoming salons of a large fashion house.