Vent debout

The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"

Annabella, Jean Gabin and Fernand Gravey star as a trio of circus trapeze artists. Both Gabin and Gravey love Annabella, but she has eyes only for Gravey. Seething with jealousy, Gabin plots revenge against his rival. He "accidentally" drops Gravey into a net during rehearsal -- but does he plan to do the same during a performance, when the trio works without a net?

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

Three stories about pleasure. The first one is about a man hiding his age behind a mask to keep going to balls and fancying women - pleasure and youth. Then comes the long tale of Madame Tellier taking her girls (whores) to the country for attending her niece's communion - pleasure and purity. And lastly, Jean the painter falls in love with his model - pleasure and death.

A beautiful and serious woman renounces the love that inspires her Gerard, a man younger than her. Later, Gerard having become blind, she takes the place of the nurse, then confesses her identity to the cripple who opens his arms to her.

This drama about the Carmelite order of nuns is set during the French Revolution. A young woman seeks refuge with the Carmelites because she is terrified of dying during the upheaval. The longer she associates with the nuns the more she is transformed by their faith and devotion. 

The exploits of Chief Police Inspector Chabrier, first before the invasion of France in May 1940 as he fights against spies preparing the coming the Germans, particularly Emmy de Welder, the alleged manager of the Rouen hospital. Later, Chabrier and his men go underground and resist the occupiers whatever the price to pay. When the Liberation comes Chabrier resumes his activities at the French National Police.

During a transvestite ball, a young provincial meets Fanny Legrand. A great love is born between them. Later, the young man learns that Fanny was a great coquette. He leaves her, he comes back, he forgives. But when he embarks for America, Fanny does not follow him.

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...

Luc Froment, a reform-minded engineer, starts working at a steel mill in a small town. There he founds small groups of workers (and their families) under miserable conditions. Under the influence of Fourier's ideas, Froment tries to turn the mill into a workers' co-operative.

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.

In 1917, in a small village in the North, Abbe Gaillard is suspected by the Germans of facilitating the escape of French and Belgian soldiers. A false alibi makes him innocent and he can thus continue his mission, thanks to the devotion of an Alsatian who, in enemy uniform, obscurely serves his country.

This is the story of two sisters: one of them is a semi-whore with her pimp, the other one tries to walk the line, in spite of her sisters’ attempts to debauch her. Enter a not-so-handsome young man the younger sister falls in love with.

Two young doctors, surprised by the storm, take refuge in an inn. A diamond broker joins them and, for lack of space, shares their room. At dawn he is found dead. A few years later justice is done.

Lieutenant Varnière, responsible for discovering the cause of the death of two officers in Algeria, unmasks the assassin in the person of a Russian who lives with three women. He falls in love with one of them and runs away with her while the Russian is killed by a devoted servant.

After the death of her trapeze artist father, a little girl is taken in by two clowns.

Jean Benoît-Lévy & Jean Epstein's inventive documentary about the life of Louis Pasteur, a French chemist and one of the most important figures of medical microbiology, blends biographical drama with scientific recreations of his experiments, using Pasteur's actual instruments.

A father allows himself to be accused of the murder of a blackmailer to save his son who is the real murderer. But he is forced to confess, and commits suicide in his cell.

A young English lord, who has been excavating in Egypt, finds a mummy of a beautiful Egyptian princess, more than 5,000 years old. So well has the Egyptian embalmer done his work that the face is perfect in all its beauty, and the susceptible young man falls deeply in love with this belle of old Egypt, takes the mummy home to his estate in England and there it occupies his whole mind, to the exclusion of all else. Even the proposed visit of a beautiful American girl does not arouse his interest.

In this comedy, a run-down hotel drums up customers by sabotaging passing cars. The stuck motorists are then obliged to stay. Unfortunately, one of the sabotaged cars belongs to a bank robber. The hotel staff wants the robber out, but they also want to keep his ill-gotten money.

Belphégor deals with a series of mysterious appearances by a masked-and-robed figure in the Louvre; a security guard is murdered, and a later police trap is foiled when the phantom—“Belphégor” (the name of a legendary demon)—uses knock-out gas. Journalist Jacques Bellegarde of “Le Petit Parisien” (the real-life newspaper which published the original story in serial installments), investigates, and eventually discovers famous detective Chantecoq and his vivacious daughter Colette are also on the case.

A young girl marries a financier knowing he has only a short time to live, so she can inherit his money.Her lover, who has made a fortune away in America, returns and wants to hasten the financier's death.

Going to take up his post in Moukden, the forest engineer finds in a trainer from the cabaret "the midnight sun" a Russian princess, Armide, whom he once loved. He had met her in 1917 when the princess and her father were driven from their domain. Prince Ireniev is a gambler, a trickster, a matchmaker. Out of love for Armide, Forestier flew, and yet when he finds the two wrecks, he cannot resist. Abandoning everything, his position and his honor, he leaves with the woman of his destiny.

Line, Annette's daughter, is about to marry a man she's not in love with. At the engagement party three ghosts revisit their disastrous relationships with Annette and decide to take action to help Line.

Between the feelings of the man who believes himself to be deceived and of the surgeon's instinct, it is the latter which triumphs in Doctor Bernon, who saves the man presumed to be his wife's lover. He then realizes that this is not the case and that she is still worthy of him.

The turkey keeper, Bettina, brings good luck to those who make her work. She becomes the mascot of the good King Laurent XVII whose finances are in bad shape. In order for her to retain her beneficial power, an attempt is made to separate her from her lover, but in vain.

An untiring lady social worker, Émilienne, has as one of her charges a stableman who was wounded by his mistress. Unfortunately, Émilienne's young sister who was helping her at work decides to go away with the stableman.

Yasmina, a rich Tunisian Princess, daughter of a French lady and a Muslim gentleman, is betrothed by a father to a rich fifty year old man named Afsen. She reluctantly accept the marriage but soon becomes ill from boredom and she falls in love with the French doctor called from Tunis to take care of her, Hector Grandier, who also happens to be a childhood friend. Her husband finds out and Yasmina sticks a knife in her own bosom in a middle of a fight. The Princess's maid, Athima, accuses the old husband of attempting to kill the girl and he is sentenced to death. Hector rescues him from his fate and the two lovers are free to love each other in the eyes of the law.

Young sailor Edmond Dantès is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes, finds treasure, and reinvents himself as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo to exact revenge on those who betrayed him.

After his engagement party with beautiful Aline, Claude, a struggling writer, meets his two closest friends. The trio sets up a daring publicity stunt, involving a fake murder. The scheme backfires as the fake victim gets really dead.