Gina Manès Movies
Charismatic French actress Gina Manès was one of the biggest stars in Europe during the 1920s. Born in Paris, she made her screen debut in 1919 in Feuillade's L' Homme San Visage. She was subsequently typecast as a femme fatale. Manès is best remembered for portraying Josephine in Gance's Napoleon (1927) and Therese Raquin in Feyder's film of the same name. Other noted directors with whom she worked include Jean Epstein and Julien Duvivier. By the mid-'30s, her bright star had begun to fade and she basically disappeared from films until the early '60s when she again began taking movie roles. Manès also worked steadily in a Toulouse theater company until the early '70s. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1929
Latin Quarter (Quartier Latin) was director Augusto Genina's sole cinematic contribution for 1928. Ivan Petrovitch is cast as Ralph, a wealthy young man who is invited to the artists' ball in Paris' Latin Quarter. Here he meets lovely aspiring painter Louise (Carmen Boni), with whom he instantly falls in love. Pretending to be an artist himself, Ralph leads Louise to believe that he is as poor as she, hoping that she'll love him for himself rather than his money. The truth comes out when Ralph is briefly distracted by a vampish young model (Gina Manes). Convinced that Ralph has gone off to Italy with his new "conquest," Louise falls seriously ill but immediately recovers when her sweetheart rushes back to her bedside. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Carmen Boni, Gina Manès, (more)
- 1929
S.O.S was the last of six films directed in 1927 by Carmine Gallone. The story gets off to a lively start with a spectacular collision at sea between two enormous ocean liners. As the ship sinks, philandering husband Alfrons Fryland and his new bride Liane Haid are rescued separately, each believing that the other has drowned. Heading to Africa to forget his troubles, Fryland proves easy prey for vampish Gina Manes. Meanwhile, the grief-stricken Haid accepts a job as a female clown with a travelling circus. During a native insurrection, Fryland and Haid are reunited -- but Fryland doesn't recognize his heavily made-up spouse. Wounded in the fray, the husband is rescued by his "lost" wife, at which point everything is explained. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1928
Jacques Feyder's 1928 adaptation of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin was also released in Germany as Du Sollst Nicht Ehe Brechen and in the U.S. as Shadows of Fear. Produced in Berlin, with Gina Manes in the title role, the film is regarded by many cineastes as Feyder's best effort. The director perfectly captured the bourgeois stuffiness of the Raquin household and the unspoken passions of the faithless Therese, who despises her small-minded husband and wishes him dead. In concert with her lover, Therese arranges for Raquin to "accidentally" drown in a boating accident. Subsequently, Therese marries her paramour, but their union is forever blighted by the memory of their horrible deed. Upon stumbling onto the truth, Therese's mother is shocked into muteness, but the couple knows that she knows. And in the end, it is the mother who is the sole and silent witness to the couple's downfall. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gina Manès, Hans Adalbert von Schlettow, (more)
- 1927
The chef d'ouevre of legendary French filmmaker Abel Gance, the 235-minute Napoleon was supposed to have been the first installment in a multipart film study of the French military hero. Each of the film's set pieces is treated like a movie in itself: the opening pillow fights and snowball battles, staged while Napoleon is still a schoolboy (played by Russian youth Vladimir Roudenko), are choreographed on a scale worthy of D.W. Griffith. The plot proper begins with Napoleon's adult years. From home island of Corsica, Lt. Napoleon (played as an adult by Albert Dieudonné, and old friend of Gance's) decides to side with the Republic during the French Revolution. He quickly proves his mettle in a preliminary skirmish with the British. Offered the office of commander of Paris, Napoleon declines: he does not subscribe to Reign of Terror, nor does he believe in doing battle against Frenchmen. He is thrown in prison, where he meets his wife-to-be Josephine; thanks to a series of governmental upheavals, both are set free. For the next few years, France's bureaucratic bean-counters and pencil-pushers constantly thwart Napoleon's dreams of glory. The film's climax is Napoleon's rallying of the dispirited French troops and his subsequent advance into Italy.
Beyond its patriotic content, Napoléon was largely designed as a showcase for the revolutionary "Polyvision" process. Simply put, Polyvision utilized multiple images for dramatic effect. Sometimes this was accomplished in a fragmentary manner similar to the multiscreen techniques utilized in such 1960s films as The Thomas Crown Affair and The Boston Strangler. Polyvision could also manifest itself into a Cinerama-like "triptych": three screens, side by side, sometimes offering a panorama, sometimes displaying three separate but thematically linked images. Napoleon's spectacular triptych finale was the crowning touch to the remarkable camera pyrotechnics seen throughout the film; Gance hated static scenes, so he mounted his camera on pendulums, horses, gyroscopes, et al., masterfully placing the spectator in the thick of the action. The film also boasts some of the silent era's best color tinting, with special emphasis on the red, white, and blue of the French flag. Except for limited European showings, Napoleon has not been displayed in its original form since its 1927 Paris premiere. At least 19 different versions of the film exist, some horribly mutilated (cut from 17 reels to eight) and scrambled, others haphazardly reedited by Gance himself. Filmmaker/historian Kevin Brownlow's 1968 book The Parade's Gone By renewed public interest in Gance's lost masterpiece, sparking a 15-year campaign to restore Napoleon, spearheaded by Brownlow and American director Francis Ford Coppola. The resultant restoration job is not perfect -- the triptych scenes had to be reduced to postage-stamp size because no existing screen can accommodate them -- but this Napoleon is probably the closest we'll get ever get to the original. The music for the restored version was composed by Francis Ford Coppola's father Carmine Coppola. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Beyond its patriotic content, Napoléon was largely designed as a showcase for the revolutionary "Polyvision" process. Simply put, Polyvision utilized multiple images for dramatic effect. Sometimes this was accomplished in a fragmentary manner similar to the multiscreen techniques utilized in such 1960s films as The Thomas Crown Affair and The Boston Strangler. Polyvision could also manifest itself into a Cinerama-like "triptych": three screens, side by side, sometimes offering a panorama, sometimes displaying three separate but thematically linked images. Napoleon's spectacular triptych finale was the crowning touch to the remarkable camera pyrotechnics seen throughout the film; Gance hated static scenes, so he mounted his camera on pendulums, horses, gyroscopes, et al., masterfully placing the spectator in the thick of the action. The film also boasts some of the silent era's best color tinting, with special emphasis on the red, white, and blue of the French flag. Except for limited European showings, Napoleon has not been displayed in its original form since its 1927 Paris premiere. At least 19 different versions of the film exist, some horribly mutilated (cut from 17 reels to eight) and scrambled, others haphazardly reedited by Gance himself. Filmmaker/historian Kevin Brownlow's 1968 book The Parade's Gone By renewed public interest in Gance's lost masterpiece, sparking a 15-year campaign to restore Napoleon, spearheaded by Brownlow and American director Francis Ford Coppola. The resultant restoration job is not perfect -- the triptych scenes had to be reduced to postage-stamp size because no existing screen can accommodate them -- but this Napoleon is probably the closest we'll get ever get to the original. The music for the restored version was composed by Francis Ford Coppola's father Carmine Coppola. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Albert Dieudonné, Abel Gance, (more)
