Société Française des Films Éclair

Émile Durand, an insecticide manufacturer, is appalled to learn that his son Gérard has fallen in love with Suzy, the daughter of a travelling theatre company. Realising his father will never favour the union, Gérard joins the company on their next tour. In an attempt to heal the rift, Durand’s wife goes after Gérard and ends up performing in their next play…

Protéa is the last film directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, one of the early film pioneers in France. The hero of this film is a female spy, an acrobatic Mata-Hari, played by his favorite actress, Josette Andriot, who wore a characteristic costume of a close-fitting black jersey, two years before Musidora achieved cult status with her similar appearance as Irma Vep. This final masterpiece reflects Jasset's popular style: rhythmic action, fantastic realism, rich visuals, an anarchistic philosophy, a disdain for psychology, and an attention to lighting that earned him the nickname “the Rembrandt of the cinema". Although Jasset died shortly after completion, the film had considerable success and Andriot went on to make four more films in the series with other directors.

The story of "Jack" is well-known. It is a beautiful story of a natural child. His mother, Ida de Borancy, worships the dear little nameless and fatherless being whom she decides, as he is getting on in years, to place in a boarding school. The child's professor of literature is a certain Amaury D'Argenton, a failure of the faculty, and an uninspired poet. During one of her visits to the institution, Mme. de Borancy is attracted by D'Argenton, and falls in love with him. The "Ne'er-do-Well" soon gives up his starving position and makes his abode with her, exercising over her absolute control. He soon learns to hate little Jack and forces her to leave him permanently at school. The poor child, unaccustomed to the separation, runs away, only to find, when he arrives at his former home, that his mother has moved and is now living thirty miles away. He undertakes the journey on foot, and reaches his mother's house completely exhausted. Here he meets Dr. Rivals and his daughter, Cecil.

A man dreams he loses his hat at sea, drowns and gets swallowed by a huge fish.

Eugenie Grandet has discovered where her father, a miserable old miser, keeps his treasure. Eugenie's cousin, Charles, is the bearer of a letter from his father to his uncle, Eugenie's father. The letter informs the miser that Charles' father, his only brother, is reduced to a state of utter ruin, and unless he can obtain immediate help, he contemplates suicide.

Drama in which the love between Claude and Germaine is tested when Claude is falsely accused and Germaine's father doesn't approve of their relationship.

The film based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Duma, is concerned with fraternal royal strife at the court of Henri III. Tragically caught between the millstones of history are the gallant Count de Bussy and the woman he adores, la Dame de Monsoreau.

The stick man Fantoche is looking for a home, but there doesn't seem to be any room anywhere, not even in Hell.

No plot available. The director Maurice Tourneur perceived this film to be indicative of the advances French cinema could have taken had it not been derailed by World War I.

Early adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story

Nick Carter, the famous detective, is ordered to prosecute the gang of Zigomar. Carter gets into various thorny situations but manages to escape every time, helped by Olga, a former girlfriend of Zigomar. Carter finally manages to trap Zigomar and Zigomar is arrested. However, Zigomar avoids going to court by apparently poisoning himself.

Silent mystery

Macbeth is a French 1915 film adaptation of the William Shakespeare play Macbeth. It was released on December 31, 1915, in France. It is a silent black-and-white film with French intertitles.

Based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas.

An old surgeon shows kindness to a tramp.

In 1912 Jasset turned from fantasy and spectacle to realism in making the first of two Zola adaptations, as part of Éclair's new series of social dramas. For Au pays des ténèbres, based on Germinal, he took his crew to Charleroi in Belgium to film in authentic locations, and although he updated the story to the present, he went to great lengths to recreate in the studio the detail of the actual mining galleries, exploiting the ability of film to be a recorder of contemporary reality.

Short melodrama. Two former lovers meet twenty years later when the man has to compete with the son of the woman.

An ape, turned near human by Dr. Coriolis and given the name 'Balaoo', is smitten by the beauty of Coriolis' niece, Madeleine. Being inquisitive, though, he runs off, getting into mischief, and falls in with a poacher who saves his life. Acting now as his slave Balaoo kills a man for the poacher, but balks on his orders to kidnap Madeleine, deciding instead to set a trap for the poacher.

A mother loses first her son and then her husband in the trenches of France during the First World War. She devotes herself to the French cause and to helping those wounded in the war.