Au Bonheur Des Dames Film with Live Accompaniment

A 1920s French silent film with live music by Frame Ensemble

A young woman comes to Paris to work at her uncle’s haberdashery shop only to find that the family business is being crushed by the huge department store opposite. Adapted from Emile Zola’s novel, Au Bonheur des Dames is both a stunning evocation of late-1920s Parisian style and a comment on the consumerism of the age. With gliding camerawork and beautiful  Paris settings, Julien Duvivier’s elegiac film was shot in the Autumn of 1929, just as the silent film era was being replaced by the talkies.

Frame Ensemble’s acclaimed improvised scores bring silent cinema into vivid life, each performance a unique and unrepeatable spontaneous musical response to the film. Frame Ensemble returns to The Stoller Hall following their performance ofPandora’s Boxin 2023.