French Masterworks
Russian Emigres In Paris 1923 - 1929

5 Disc DVD Deluxe Edition

1923 - 1929 / France / 635 minutes B&W / Silent Classic / 1.33 FA 6765 Deluxe 5 Disc DVD UPC: 617311676598 ISBN: 1-893967-65-4 Available: April 16, 2013 For each film, the original French titles are retained with optional English subtitles. BONUS FEATURES: In acknowledgment to on-going, serious archival restoration, a scene from Gribiche not in the set’s current restoration but only in the foreign negative, is presented as a bonus feature. Also presented is a new essay on Films Albatros and notes on each film by historian Lenny Borger.

The five exciting features in this collection, each restored toexcellent condition by the Cinematheque Francaise, are all U.S. home video premieres, accompanied by outstanding new music scores by Timothy Brock, Robert Israel, Neil Brand, Antonio Coppola and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. Three of the films showcase the multi-faceted talents of Ivan Mosjoukine, who left a starring career in Russia for even greater glory in France. He wrote and directed The Burning Crucible (Le Brasier ardent, 1923) in which he also plays eleven parts. Of this film Jean Renoir said “I was ecstatic … I decided to abandon my trade, ceramics, to try to make films.” Mosjoukine also collaborated on the script and plays the title role in Alexandre Volkoff’s lavish Kean (1924), dramatizing the later life of Edmund Kean, the greatest Shakespearian of the early 19th century. In The Late Mathias Pascal (Feu Mathias Pascal, 1926) -a nearly three-hour super-production based upon a Pirandello Novel and brilliantly directed by Marcel L’Herbier — Mosjoukine inhabits the dual lives of the eponymous main character. To see him in action is to be mesmerized; hcombines the theatrical skill of John Barrymore with the élan of Valentino or John Gilbert. Alexander Kamenka, the head of Albatros, thought Jacques Feyder the greatest French filmmaker, and secured his talent for the dazzling comedy-dramas Gribiche (1925) and The New Gentlemen (Les Nouveaux messieur, 1929). Jean Forest (Faces of Children, Crainquebille) is Gribiche, a working-class youth who allows himself to be adopted in the hope that his widowed mother can marry a man unwilling to take on a step-son. The New Gentlemen, one of the wittiest, most sophisticated comedies ever to come out of France, describes a tug-of-war over a pretty young actress between an aging aristocrat and a young left-wing union organizer.