
Maurice Tourneur
Directing
Biography
Maurice Félix Thomas (1876 – 1961), known as Maurice Tourneur, was a French film director and screenwriter. His son, Jacques (1904–1977), would follow his father into the film industry, establishing his own reputation as a director of American films in the 1940s and 1950s.
Known For

Volpone, an elderly Venetian, connives with his money-crazed servant to convince his greedy friends that he is dying, knowing that each will try to curry favor with him in order to be named his heir. He is inundated with valuable gifts, and soon finds himself entangled deeper and deeper in a web of lies.
Volpone

Koenigsmark is a 1935 British-French drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur and starring Elissa Landi, John Lodge and Pierre Fresnay. The film is based on the novel Koenigsmark by Pierre Benoît. It's sets were designed by the art director Lucien Aguettand. The film was known in the United States as Crimson Dynasty.
Crimson Dynasty

In 17th-century England, an outlaw clan kidnaps a young girl, who grows up among them. The farm boy who met her just before the kidnapping eventually rescues her, and they fall in love.
Lorna Doone

The reign of Tsar Paul I and the intrigues of his friend, Governor Pahlen, to rid the country of the mad despot by plotting to have him murdered.
The Patriot

On a volcanic island near the Kingdom of Hetvia rules Count Dakkar, a benevolent leader and scientist who has eliminated class distinction among the island's inhabitants. Dakkar, his sister Sonia and her fiance, engineer Nicolai Roget have designed a submarine which Roget pilots on its initial voyage just before the island is overrun by Baron Falon, despotic ruler of Hetvia. Falon sets out after Roget in a second submarine and the two craft, diving to the ocean's floor, discover a strange land populated by dragons, giant squid and an eerie undiscovered humanoid race.
The Mysterious Island
Maurice Tourneur's first American made film is a silent drama about a mother's love and sacrifice starring Emma Dunn, who also starred in the 1910 Broadway play version of the story.
Mother

Cecile, a young girl who goes to the offices of the Judicial Police several times in a row to complain about nightly visits to the apartment she occupies with her aunt, is not taken seriously by the police until she the day she is found murdered.
Cecile Is Dead

A one-night stand with an entertainer threatens to destroy a woman's marriage after she gives birth to a black child.
Black and White

When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.
Prunella

Torment is a 1924 American silent film crime drama produced and directed by Maurice Tourneur and distributed by Associated First National. This film stars Bessie Love, Owen Moore, and Jean Hersholt.
Torment

A struggling artist buys a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a severed left hand, and it works perfectly, in fact, magically. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due.
Carnival of Sinners

A restless young girl yearns to leave her rural environment and "get away from it all". One day she stumbles upon a film crew shooting a western near her home. She makes friends with the film's leading man, who encourages her to try her luck as an actress. So she leaves her small town and goes to the big city to break into the picture business. However, things don't turn out quite the way she planned.
A Girl's Folly

Peasant children Mytyl and Tyltyl are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the fairy Berylune. On their journey, they're accompanied by the anthropomorphized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, and Bread, among other entities.
The Blue Bird

A young British nobleman, impoverished and desperate, clings to the hope that either a prizefighter or a racehorse in which he holds interests can save his fortunes.
Sporting Life

The hypnotic Svengali controls the singing voice of a young starlet, but he cannot control her heart.
Trilby

First adaptation of Joseph Kessel World War I novel, in which an aviator falls in love with a woman who turns out to be the wife of one of his flying comrades.
The Crew

Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.
The Poor Little Rich Girl

Adaptation of Joseph Conrad novel about lust and violence on a South Seas Island.
Victory

Mary's kid brother needs an operation and, in order to pay for it, Mary goes to a Hollywood studio and applies for a job as an actress. Mary is given a job as a waitress in the commissary, and gets to meet 40 actors, actresses and directors, none of whom tip big enough to enable Mary to earn enough money to pay for an operation. Will Mary become an actress and make some big money?
Mary of the Movies

Horace Ventimore, a young London architect, stumbles across an old brass bottle. When he picks it up a genie suddenly appears and promises Horace that he will grant every wish Horace wants in exchange for his freedom. Horace accepts the genie's offer but finds out that things aren't working out quite as well as he thought they would.