Capellani’s last years back in France were lonely and aimless. He tried unsuccessfully to go back to filmmaking. His health was failing, and he suffered a stroke. By the time of his death, at age fifty-seven, he was already forgotten. His legacy remained unknown, as all family archives disappeared, leaving no trace of his former glory. His grandson started to research his career about twenty years ago, and prints of Germinal and Les Misérables were restored in the 1980s. Capellani was restored to the place he deserves in film history in 2010, when the Bologna Film Festival organized a retrospective of his films.