Dr. Cordelier, living in a suburb of Paris, withdraws from society to pursue research into the functioning of the human brain. His lifelong friend, Maître Joly, becomes concerned when Cordelier draws up a will that bequeaths his entire estate to a stranger, Monsieur Opale; he cannot understand why Cordelier defends him, considering Opale attacks women and children. After a colleague is killed, Joly confronts Cordelier and discovers the truth behind his friend's behavior.
Nineteenth-century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir’s exhilarating tale of the opening of the world-renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women—an Egyptian belly-dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star.
In Pompeii in the year 79, Lycias and Helen fall in love. Helen's guardian, the high priest of Isis, wants to separate them. To do so, he tries to make Lycias drink a love potion, but a young slave threatens to reveal everything. The high priest, unable to silence her, kills her and arranges to have Lycias accused...
The accountant of an insurance company, rather eccentric and quick to push the song, is responsible for monitoring the actions of an alluring South American whose suicide would mean the collapse of the company. Finally, the accountant discovers an attempted insurance scam and marries the surly and charming interpreter who was the liaison between the South American and himself.
The film depicts events between the Fashoda crisis in 1898 and the 1904 signing of the Entente Cordiale creating an alliance between Britain and France and ending their historic rivalry. It was based on the book King Edward VII and His Times by André Maurois. It was made with an eye to its propaganda value, following the Munich Agreement of September 1938 and in anticipation of the outbreak of a Second World War which would test the bonds between Britain and France in a conflict with Nazi Germany.
Adrienne Lecouvreur is an acclaimed actress who falls in love with Polish prince Maurice de Saxe, only to be poisoned by a jealous rival while Maurice is away at war. The film was a co-production between the two countries, and was made at UFA's Berlin Studios. It was based on the 1849 play Adrienne Lecouvreur by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé about the life of the eighteenth century actress Adrienne Lecouvreur.
The eponymous garçonne or flapper is Monique Lerbier, an emancipated French woman who leaves home to escape a marriage of convenience to a man she does not love which her parents have forced on her. She then falls into all sorts of carnal temptations and artificial pleasures previously unknown to her. These include her being seduced into a lesbian love affair by a chanteuse.
Philippe Lutcher, an anarchist, fires a shot at Clara Stuart, a famous stage and screen actress, but only wounds her. The star, through affectation and curiosity to know his motives, pleads in his favour at his trial, but he rebuffs her pity. After he has served 18 months in prison, they meet and fall in love.
The film opens with the overthrow of the Czar during the 1917 Russian revolution. The family of General Count Svirsky (Roger Karl) cower in their home, certain that the mobs of angry peasants will tear them apart. But even in this moment of crisis, Svirsky can find time to murder the young officer who has been having an affair with Countess Svirska (Emmy Lynn). The Countess knows what has happened, but she loyally remains with her husband as they escape to the safety of the French Riviera. It is here that the Countess meets Henri de Cassel (Jaque Catelain), the “living image” of her dead lover.
A famous singer Claire Lescot, who lives on the outskirts of Paris, is courted by many men, including a maharajah, Djorah de Nopur, and a young Swedish scientist, Einar Norsen. At her lavish parties she enjoys their amorous attentions but she remains emotionally aloof and heartlessly taunts them. When she is told that Norsen has killed himself because of her, she shows no feelings. At her next concert she is booed by an audience outraged at her coldness and she decides to visit the vault in which Norsen's body lies.
In Granada in Spain, Sibilla works as a dancer in a squalid cabaret called El Dorado, struggling to earn enough to care for her sick child. The boy's father Estiria, a prominent citizen, refuses them both help and recognition, fearful of jeopardising the engagement of his adult daughter Iliana to a wealthy nobleman. Iliana however slips away from her engagement party to meet her real lover Hedwick, a Swedish painter. Sibilla, in desperation after a further rejection by Estiria, sees an opportunity to blackmail him by locking the lovers overnight in their meeting-place in the Alhambra.