Fête Espagnol
(excerpt)
Two important figures of the French avant-garde, Germaine Dulac and Louis Delluc, came together to create this short film about two men who vie for the favors of one woman, who finally chooses a third man. “Nothing has been written in our country that is more cinematic than this tale of blood, voluptuousness and death....” (Leon Moussinac in Sadoul's Dictionary of Films).
• Directed by Germaine Dulac. Written by Louis Delluc. Photographed by P. Parguel. With Gaston Modot, Eve Francis, Jean Toulout. (1919, 8 min. excerpt, Silent with French intertitles and Live English Translation, Live piano accompaniment by Jon Mirsalis)

La Cité Foudroyée
Although this film and its director, Luitz Morat, are missing from English language texts on French avant-garde films of the twenties, Jean Mitry, in his Histoire du Cinema (Volume 3), places Morat on the artistic level of Jean Epstein, Jean Renoir and other pioneers of the French silent film. A former actor with Louis Feuillade and Leonce Perré, Morat starting directing films in 1919. In La Cité Foudroyée (the razed, or destroyed city) which caused a stir in 1922 and was re-released with renewed success in 1924, the city of Paris is destroyed by a catastrophe resulting from the carelessness of one scientist. Monuments are ruined, the Eiffel Tower falls to pieces--and all this is achieved without the use of models, but rather with photographic special effects. Mitry calls the film “a tour-de-force by cameraman Daniaux Johnston,” and adds, “La Cité Foudroyée is not just a curiosity, but a fantastic (i.e. science fiction) film of genuine value, likely the precurser of many science fiction films.”
• Directed by Luitz Morat. Based on an idea by Jean-Louis Bouquet. Photographed by Daniaux Johnston. With Daniel Mendaille, Louis Ghasne. (1922, 12 mins, Silent with English narration read by David Bradley, Print from David Bradley)

En Rade
Cavalcanti began his long, varied and extremely influential career in the cinema as a set designer for L'Herbier. In the late twenties in France, he directed a number of beautifully impressionistic experimental features, among them the rare En Rade, a forerunner of Pagnol's Fanny Trilogy in its treatment of similar material. The De Maupassant story involves a young peasant in a port town who dreams of traveling to far-off islands. His jealous mother prevents him from running off with a waitress. “It is a simple tale, endowed with a curious, feverish unrest by Catherine Hessling (as the waitress), while Nathalie Lissenko as the mother played her role with admirable simplicity” (Bardeche & Brasillach, History of Motion Pictures).
• Directed and Written by Alberto Cavalcanti, based on a story by Guy de Maupassant. Photographed by Jimmy Rogers. With Catherine Hessling, Ica de Lenkeffy, Tommy Bourdelle, Nathalie Lissenko, Walter Butler. (1927, 70 mins, Silent with French intertitles and live English translation, Live piano accompaniment by Jon Mirsalis)