Hand-Picked Alternatives Movies That Echo the Spirit of Le pied qui étreint: Cult Guide

Dir: Jacques Feyder

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Crainquebille perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

A sincere working-class 13-year old in France is adopted by a well-meaning philanthropic millionairess from America -- who promises his doting mother that the boy will have the finest education -- but things are not so simple.

Dir: Jacques Feyder

A poor vegetable peddler in Paris runs afoul of the law and finds himself ground up in the cogs of the corrupt French judicial system.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Das Bildnis perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Jacques Feyder

3 men fall in love with a woman from a window photograph .When they find her living as a recluse in an isolated Hungarian mansion, they decide against a visit because she wouldn't live up to their idealized images of her.

Dir: Jacques Feyder

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Thérèse Raquin perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Thérèse Raquin (Gina Manès), an unhappily married woman , aided by her lover Laurent (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), drowns her husband Michaud (Charles Barrois) only to find the guilt of her sin is intolerable.

Dir: Jacques Feyder

Two men, lost in the desert, meet Queen Antinea, ruler of Atlantis.

A visual fragment from the archive: The thematic resonance of Missing Husbands perfectly mirrors the editorial trajectory of our deep dive.

Dir: Jacques Feyder

A man whose wife has died remarries, and his new wife has a daughter of her own from a previous marriage. The man's young son, however, who loved his mother deeply and misses her terribly, resents his father's new wife, not wanting her to take the place of his beloved mother, and makes life miserable for his new stepsister..

Dir: Jacques Feyder

Carmen has neither a past nor a future. She lives only in the present. For her love is of no importance, just a passing whim. Love's essence is precisely the variability that Don José hate most of all. This version is filmed in Spain, far from picturesque style, instead dry and tragic.