Known for Acting
1920, in a small village in Provence. Monsieur Pascal, a young schoolteacher, is faced with a lack of interest from his pupils. He decides to radically change the methods employed by his predecessor. He listens to the children, draws inspiration from their discoveries and takes them out into nature. The pupils will rediscover the pleasure of learning, and he will rediscover the pleasure of teaching. But some parents and notables don't take kindly to this little revolution.
Madame Millois, an ambitious mother, thinks she has found the perfect match for her daughter Arlette, Count de Tremblay-Matour. Alas, the ideal husband happens to be a crook. On the night of the wedding, the fake nobleman robs his wife and abandons her. While the outraged Madame Millois looks for the real Count de Tremblay, Arlette seeks consolation with Maxime, a childhood friend. At last, the real count is found. Unsurprisingly, he is furious to learn that, legally, he is Arlette's husband. After a while though, he mellows and accepts to "remain" Arlette's husband.
On the very day of his wedding, Valentin Le Barroyer sees the one he was to marry fly away. Hélène has always loved her cousin André, to the great displeasure of her aunt who had combined the failed marriage. The two lovers take refuge in the Dordogne at the home of Hélène's grandmother who believes them to be really husband and wife. Valentin finds the young couple too late, he only has to console himself with a friend of Hélène's.
Two modest young employees, Jean and Madeleine, dream of leading the way, but the experience turns out badly. Madeleine marries a German aristocrat who turns out to be a spy, and finds Jean who had joined the Legion.
Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus) is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation. Although the film is not set in any specified period, Gance wanted it to be seen as relevant to the contemporary situation in France. He wrote, "...La Vénus aveugle is at the crossroads of reality and legend... The heroine ... gradually sinks deeper and deeper into despair. Only when she has reached the bottom of the abyss does she encounter the smile of Providence that life reserves for those who have faith in it, and she can then go serenely back up the slope towards happiness. If I have been able to show in this film that elevated feelings are the only force that can triumph over Fate, then my efforts will not have been in vain."
A couple of refugees arrives in a village: he is a cabinet maker, she's pregnant and the innkeeper refuses to give them a room; they wind up in the cowshed of a farm where she gives birth to her baby, the very night of Christmas.
Siamese twins, separated at birth, maintain a psychic knowledge of each other's dire fates.
The sentimental adventure of an old bachelor, mayor of his village and owner of a mill, who suddenly falls in love with a 20-year-old Parisian girl. This madness puts his whole house in disarray. Soon the fiancée lets herself be taken in by the charm of the mayor's nephew. The latter, who learns of it, conceives an appalling spite and wants to kill the lovers.
Somewhat reminiscent of 'Mädchen in Uniform' (1931), the story is set in a private girl's school, populated almost exclusively by children from broken homes. Among the few students who can claim family stability is Micheline Presle, but even her happiness is threatened when her lawyer father Andre Luguet inaugurates an affair with stage actress Jacqueline Debulac. With the help of Debulac's daughter Louisa Carletti, Presle is able to break up her father's romance and deliver him into the open arms of her mother Marcelle Chantal.
Ramuntcho is a young man who has fallen in with a gang of smugglers, led by Itchoua, who carry their contraband across the border into Spain. He is in love with Gracieuse whose mother, Dolorès, bitterly dislikes Ramuntcho because he was born an illegitimate child. His smuggling activities force him to join the army and he is sent to Saigon and, because of her mother's desire to marry her off to someone else, Gracieuse joins a convent.
Claire and Jean are lovers, but Claire's father opposes this union, because Jean is the son of a woman he once knew. Jean becomes a great singer, but doesn't forget Claire.
A film about the early part of the French Revolution, shown from the eyes of the citizens of Marseille, counts in German exile and, of course, the king Louis XVI, each showing their own small problems.
