Sylvie Gance

BBC documentary on the long and flamboyant career of French filmmaker Abel Gance.

Out of love for an actress, Isabelle, the Baron de Sigognac joins a traveling troupe en route to Paris. When an actor dies, he takes over his role: that of Captain Fracasse.

A father falls in love with his son's mistress whom he has forced to emigrate to force him to break up. More carefree than a schoolboy, he ruins himself for the beauty who soon chases him away. The family will soon be reunited permanently.

A young student on vacation falls in love with the daughter of his hostess. The father, who has come to put an end to the beginning idyll, falls in love with the young girl's mother, but she refuses to marry him. He will end up, despite his disappointment, giving his consent to his son's marriage.

An epic dramatisation that opens in 1801 Vienna, two of Beethoven's young pupils fall in love with him, before focusing on his unrequited and tragic romances, particularly with Juliette Guicciardi and Thérèse de Brunswick. He suffers deep depression and embarks on resilience at a mill in Heiligenstadt upon realising he's losing his hearing.

After serving in the trenches of the Great War, Jean Diaz recoils with such horror that he renounces love and personal pleasure to immerse himself in scientific research, seeking a machine to prevent war. He thinks he's succeeded, but the government subverts his discovery, and Europe slides with seeming inevitability toward World War II. In desperation, Diaz summons the ghosts of the war dead from the graves and fields of France to give silent, accusing protest.

The woman thief evades a young lady who is onto his game, but then tries his wiles elsewhere on a married woman by attempting to compromise and ruin the husband she is happy with.

The Novalic brothers, Jean and Martial, are both in love with Genevieve. Jean, an impoverished actor and an idealistic dreamer, does not want Genevieve to share in his suffering. Martial, an internationally-respected astronomer, discovers the return of Lexell's Comet, on a collision course for Earth.