Germaine Dulac

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.

An unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.

A young orphan is taken in by a couple whose son, falsely accused of murder, is on the run.

A wealthy theatre owner decides to leave his wife for a dancer.

A Parisian museum director believes his wife is cheating on him and so places a poisoned cigarette in the box on his desk, thus allowing chance to decide the moment of his death.

Carmencita Garcia, a Spanish flamenco dancer, performs two dances.

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.

An unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.

An unhappily married woman devises a scheme to get rid of her husband.

A young orphan is taken in by a couple whose son, falsely accused of murder, is on the run.

A wealthy theatre owner decides to leave his wife for a dancer.

A Parisian museum director believes his wife is cheating on him and so places a poisoned cigarette in the box on his desk, thus allowing chance to decide the moment of his death.

Carmencita Garcia, a Spanish flamenco dancer, performs two dances.

No synopsis available yet.

Adapted from a play by Romain Coolus, whose work Dulac had covered as a theater critic at the turn of the century, this atmospheric and socially inquisitive film tells the tale of an independent, sexually liberated woman (Eve Francis) who is torn between her husband (Gabriel Gabrio) and her lover (Paul Guide). Controversial at the time of its release, Antoinette Sabrier finds Dulac using her bold sense of visual rhythm to achieve a complex portrait of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and a nuanced investigation into human intimacy, with her characters’ emotions expressed through then-innovative cinematic techniques such as slow motion and associative montage.

Adapted from a play by Romain Coolus, whose work Dulac had covered as a theater critic at the turn of the century, this atmospheric and socially inquisitive film tells the tale of an independent, sexually liberated woman (Eve Francis) who is torn between her husband (Gabriel Gabrio) and her lover (Paul Guide). Controversial at the time of its release, Antoinette Sabrier finds Dulac using her bold sense of visual rhythm to achieve a complex portrait of a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage and a nuanced investigation into human intimacy, with her characters’ emotions expressed through then-innovative cinematic techniques such as slow motion and associative montage.

Brazen embrace of fashionable costume and glamour creates a witty celebration of Orientalism and cinema itself.

Popular songs accompany two scenes of happiness: a jovial railway worker and a group of children dancing.

"Taking its title from John Keats’s early 19th-century poem, this highly personal melodrama finds Dulac interrogating the archetype of the femme fatale. La belle dame sans merci follows a famous actress who was once seduced and abandoned by a rich man and subsequently resolved to become a “merciless woman,” forever scheming to hurt others (men in particular) in a ruthless yet captivating manner. Dulac challenges the Romantic archetype embodied in Keats’s poem by way of symbolist mise en scène, self-reflexive narration, and her typically associative approach to editing, locating a modern ambiguity within the stereotypical figures of 19th-century art." - Film Society of Lincoln Center

The Bread Peddler is a 1923 French silent drama film directed by René Le Somptier and starring Suzanne Desprès, Gabriel Signoret and Geneviève Félix. It is based on Xavier de Montépin's novel of the same title.

A woman enters a nightclub and slowly begins to open herself up.

A woman enters a nightclub and slowly begins to open herself up.

A woman enters a nightclub and slowly begins to open herself up.

An orphan falls for the son of her benefactor, and decides to poison her rival for his affections.

An orphan falls for the son of her benefactor, and decides to poison her rival for his affections.

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

Obsessed with a general's wife, a clergyman has strange visions of death and lust, struggling against his own eroticism.

A young doctor is asked by her husband to choose between her profession and her family.

The film’s visual structure is principally composed of variations on the arabesque: arcs of light, water spouts, spider webs, burgeoning trees, flowers and foliage, a woman’s smile, arms stretching, an arm giving rhythm to a rocking chair. It uses natural elements (light, mirrors, water, and wind) and photographic techniques (multiple exposures and lenses) to distort the various elements, or to intensify their design.

A destitute, drunk woman appears to yearn for the life of a streetwalker.

The device is simple and impactful: It opposes excerpts from Adolf Hitler's public speeches to images that show the reality contradicting his words. There is no narration, no verbal analysis, no contextual explanation. Just a montage.

The story is about a superstitious village, where the mayor has sold a tower to an unknown, who is soon suspected of being the devil.

Germaine Dulac shot a film in 1935 that she entitled “Le Cinéma au service de l’histoire” – a panoramic perspective on the history of Europe between 1895 and 1930 and an exhilarating archival montage

An industrialist badly in need of money hopes to marry his daughter off to a rich suitor, but she only has eyes for her penniless childhood sweetheart.

Since 1930, unemployment grows in France. A family, living in the country, is facing economic hardship. The father hesitates to spend his money to invest (i.e. to buy a new cow). On the contrary, her daughter who is unemployed, has another point of view. Against his timidity, she explains to him that the money must be shared in order to change the world. There's so much progress to make in many areas such as health, roads, electricity, school...

Since 1930, unemployment grows in France. A family, living in the country, is facing economic hardship. The father hesitates to spend his money to invest (i.e. to buy a new cow). On the contrary, her daughter who is unemployed, has another point of view. Against his timidity, she explains to him that the money must be shared in order to change the world. There's so much progress to make in many areas such as health, roads, electricity, school...

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Desire brings out the worst in an actress' suitors-- One a well-to-do patron of London's theatre set, the other a lovestruck loner on the verge of penning a play dedicated to her.

Desire brings out the worst in an actress' suitors-- One a well-to-do patron of London's theatre set, the other a lovestruck loner on the verge of penning a play dedicated to her.

I evoke a dancing woman. A woman? No. A bouncing line with harmonious rhythm. I evoke a luminous projection on veils ! Precise matter! No. Fluid rhythms. Why should one disregard, on screen, the pleasure that movement brings us in the theatre? Harmony of lines. Harmony of light. Lines, surfaces, volumes evolving directly, without the artifice of evocation, in the logic of its forms, dispossessed of any overly human sense, allowing an elevation towards the abstract, thus giving more space to sensations and to dreams : integral cinema. —Germaine Dulac

A serial in six episodes: 1) La seconde Marquise de Sombreuse; 2) Le Chateau maudit; 3) Folle; 4) L'Exilee; 5) La Danseuse inconnue; 6) Hallucination et realite. Set in modern day France in a chateau thought to be haunted since the Revolution, a Marquis and his daughter Irene (granddaughter of Marie Antoinette's lady companion) are preyed upon by Latin seductress, Lola, and her brother, Pedro. (Summary by Tami Williams, from the 2018 Il Cinema Ritrovato film program)

A serial in six episodes: 1) La seconde Marquise de Sombreuse; 2) Le Chateau maudit; 3) Folle; 4) L'Exilee; 5) La Danseuse inconnue; 6) Hallucination et realite. Set in modern day France in a chateau thought to be haunted since the Revolution, a Marquis and his daughter Irene (granddaughter of Marie Antoinette's lady companion) are preyed upon by Latin seductress, Lola, and her brother, Pedro. (Summary by Tami Williams, from the 2018 Il Cinema Ritrovato film program)

No synopsis available yet.

Coveted by two different men, a woman turns to a third man instead.

A symbolist portrait of two gypsies in love, this captivating film finds Dulac deconstructing onscreen gender roles and striving to achieve her idea of cinema as a “visual symphony,” emphasizing rhythmic editing over acting to achieve a “cinema of suggestion.”