12 Films & TV Shows Set In France During The 1850s
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The Sower
🇫🇷 France The 1850sIn 1852, the mountain village in Provence where Violette lives is brutally deprived of all its men after the repression of the republicans ordered by Napoleon III. Women spend months in total isolation, desperate to see their men again. In this situation, they make an oath in case a man arrives in the village.
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Cezanne and I
🇫🇷 France The 1890s The 1880s The 1870s The 1850s The 1860s The 1900sThey loved each other with the ardor of thirteen-year-old boys. Rebellion and curiosity, hopes and doubts, girls and dreams of glory – they shared it all. Paul was rich, Emile poor. They went skinny-dipping, drank absinthe, starved, only to overeat. Sketched models by day, caressed them by night... Now, Paul is a painter and Emile a writer. Glory has passed Paul by. But Emile has it all: fame, money, the perfect wife, whom Paul once loved. They judge each other, admire each other, confront each other. They lose touch, meet up again, like a couple who cannot stop loving each other.
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The Sword of Monte Cristo
🇫🇷 France The 1850sIn 1858 France, Emperor Louis Napoleon sends Captain Renault of the Royal Dragoons, Minister La Roche and Major Nicolet to Normandy in search of the members of a group of rebels. A Masked Cavalier, the niece, Lady Christianne, of the Marquis De Montableau, announces at a secret meeting of the Normandy underground leaders that the fabled treasure of Monte Cristo was willed to her and she will use it to finance their cause. Her uncle, the only one who can decipher the symbols on the sword of Monte Cristo, the key to the treasure, derides her stand against the Emperor. La Roche takes possession of the sword and has the Marquis put into the dungeon. Christianne, as the Masked Cavalier, regains the sword from La Roche, but Captain Renault apprehends her and returns to sword to La Roche.
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La valse de Paris
🇫🇷 France The 1860s The 1850sA fictitious biography of Jacques Offenbach and Hortense Schneider.
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Fanny by Gaslight
England 🇫🇷 France The 1880s The 1870s The 1860s The 1850sReturning to 1870's London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny winesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke. She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home. When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young advisor Harry Somerford leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. Periodically the scoundrel of a Lord crosses her path, always to tragic effect.
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The Song of Bernadette
🇫🇷 France The 1870s The 1860s The 1850sHere is greatness... wonder... and majesty... no human words can describe! — In 1858 France, Bernadette, an adolescent peasant girl, has a vision of "a beautiful lady" in the city dump. She never claims it to be anything other than this, but the townspeople all assume it to be the virgin Mary. The pompous government officials think she is nuts, and do their best to suppress the girl and her followers, and the church wants nothing to do with the whole matter. But as Bernadette attracts wider and wider attention, the phenomenon overtakes everyone in the the town, and transforms their lives.
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A Dispatch from Reuters
England 🇧🇪 Belgium 🇫🇷 France 🇩🇪 Germany The 1860s The 1850s The 1840sGerman Julius Reuter (Edward G. Robinson) sends 19th-century news by carrier pigeon and then by wire, founding a news agency.
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Suez
🇫🇷 France 🇪🇬 Egypt The 1860s The 1850sHE CHANGED THE MAP of the World! — Ferdinand de Lesseps, disappointed in love, is sent as a junior diplomat to the Isthmus of Suez, and realizes it's just the place for a canal.
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Violettes impériales
🇫🇷 France 🇪🇸 Spain The 1850sThis historical melodrama (later remade by Henry Roussel himself in 1932 and Richard Pottier in 1952) set during the reign of Napoleon III of France. Here, Raquel Meller plays a Spanish flower girl who saves the life of the French empress Eugenie de Montijo (played by Suzanne Blanchetti), by taking her place in her carriage. When the carriage is overthrown by the anarchist's bomb, the girl survives because of the masses of violets in the imperial carriage, the empress' favorite flowers.
