A social drama set in the milieu of the arts.
This one is modelled on the painting by Paul Delaroche and is an extension of the stage act known as “tableau vivant”.
Pastor Talnoх furiously urges the flock to fight temptations, but he himself becomes a victim of temptation. In his house appears Satan, pushing the hero to theft and spiritual fall.
Marianna advertises for work as a reader and is employed by the reclusive millionaire Dymov. Appreciative of her sensitive, artistic nature, and of her youthful innocence and purity, Dymov is protective of Marianna and shields her from the attentions of his philandering playboy son. Marianna confesses to her fiancé Sergei that, at times, she feels deeply conflicted, drawn by the seductive lure of wealth and luxury. When her protector Dymov dies, his son begins to pursue her. Can Marianna resist her attraction to the opulent lifestyle that Dymov's son offers?
Alice Guy's version of Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum. This film is partially lost.
The picture tells the story of Maria, a devoted wife of a bank employee. The couple has a cozy life; they have a baby but he is cared for by their maid so Maria can spend her time doing terrific things like going shopping. During one of these consumer afternoons, Maria meets by chance an old friend, Lidia, who will introduce her to exclusive idle class social circles. Soon Maria's beauty attracts the interest of Lebedev, a rich old libertine. From that point on Maria suffers continual sexual harassment (worthy of inclusion in any silent film encyclopedia article on beleaguered heroines) which she resists for a time. In the end, however, she falls into his bourgeois claws.
In "Menschen Untereinander" ("The Folk Upstairs"), director Gerhard Lamprecht sketches a cross-section of Germany's new post-war society, with its winners, social climbers, and losers, represented by the social microcosm of an apartment building. The gossip-mad Frau Mierig (Lydia Potechina) from the rear building gives the newly-arrived Frau Kaminski (Käthe Haack), the janitor's wife, a lively initiation into the tenants and their peculiarities.
In New York City, a relationship is threatened when a young man discovers he's caught syphilis from a tryst with a waitress named Ellie. This threatens his relationship with a new girl. Film critic Amy Taubin co-stars as the new girl who gets the bad news. The director is apparently the same man who edited Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
Hardly one of French filmmaker Abel Gance's masterpieces, The Torture of Silence nevertheless has more dramatic and psychological value than your average romantic-triangle tale. Simply put, the film concerns a doctor, his wife, and his brother. The doctor, a specialist in pediatrics, has no time for his wife Marthe. She seeks solace in the arms of his brother. Unable to keep up the charade, Marthe attempts to shoot herself, but it is her lover who is mortally wounded.
An ant colony finds that the strange new food source they've discovered may be something more of a curse than a boon.
In English known informally as "The Half of a Boy" and "Stepmother". Based on the novel by Kálmán Mikszáth. After his wife's death Gáthy Lörinc (in Serbian version: Mr. Wickfield) remarries and in secret he takes his son born from this second marriage to the same foster parents who take care his first son born from his first marriage and left without mother. Five years later, when both boys return home, his wife does not know which is her own child, and which is the child of the previous wife, so the husband's desire is fulfilled, his orphaned son doesn't have step-mother, because his wife loves both boys equally, as her sweet children.
A railroad worker accepts a colleague's offer to stay in his home, but when his friend is called out one night to stop a runaway train, he makes a play for the man's wife.
The daughter of a wealthy man secretly marries a man below her station— one whom her father violently disapproves of. The father, in an excess of parental concern, separates the lovers by sending his daughter away so that she might forget her lover, unaware of their married state. During this time, she gives birth to a daughter. After some months, the young mother returns to her family manor and presents her father with his new granddaughter, which causes a most unfortunate scene. Unbeknownst to the young woman, her enraged father falsely accuses his son-in-law of theft and has him incarcerated in order to separate the lovers in an irrational attempt to force his daughter to forget this "unworthy" young man.
A love triangle set against the turn-of-the-century gold rush.
A gin bottle is personified with a spirit. As the gin bottle changes hands the spirit of the bottle tempts the various possessors to take a drink. A pro-prohibition movie, the story exemplifies the tragedies of drinking.
Aaron is a 19 year-old with a close relationship with his family. His grandmother Pilar has dementia and wants to return to Salcedillo, the village where she was born and lived until they decided to move to Barcelona, but her husband and daughter refuse. Unable to accept his grandmother’s condition, Aaron wants to take her there to hopefully postpone the inevitable loss.
A docudrama aimed at propagandizing the prevention of venereal disease
German silent film
Old Captain Bill and his wife have an only son, whom they idolize. He loses all his money at gambling and drinking, and determines to do better in the city. After a short absence he writes his people that he has secured a good position, is saving money, and will be home before long. A year or two later he arrives in town and on his way to his home passes the old saloon he used to patronize. He cannot resist the temptation, and goes in. He falls in with a lot of bad fellows and is robbed. Ashamed to go home, he ships on board a sailing vessel.
A man covers his head with several headscarfs, one by one... .