1941-1950

Quote:
Farmer Knut Borg (Victor Sjöström) and his family live an ascetic, Chartuan Christian life. Knut is the obvious head of the family but has a hard time getting the three sons to go the right way. Knut Jr. saddened by the strict religiosity and leaves the farm, Anders falls in love with a girl from a free church family and when Anders, who is studying to be a priest, loses his wife, life collapses. The wife was the unifying link in the family. In his despair, Anders loses his mind and thinks he is the savior.Read More »

A ferry operator accused of a murder he did not commit is executed for the crime. Now his ghost walks the marshlands he once called home, seeking vengeance against those who wronged him. The village’s new ferry operator, the beautiful Maria, must find a way to save her boyfriend from becoming the ghost’s next victim.Read More »

An American ballistics expert in Turkey finds himself targeted by German agents. Safe passage home by ship is arranged for him, but he soon discovers that his pursuers are also on board.Read More »

Folks in Walsburg may want to pay heed to the brace of pistols holstered onto Josiah Gray’s hips. In time, they may want to pay even more heed to the Bible in his hand. Gray (Joel McCrea) is the newly arrived parson in the woodsy post-Civil War Tennessee town. And the true test of his strength will come when, during his greatest and most dangerous challenge, he sets aside his six-shooters and relies on his faith. McCrea brings a quiet resolve to this touching tale burnished through the recall of the pastor’s impressionable nephew (Dean Stockwell). Based on the novel by Joe David Brown (who would later provide the source novel for Paper Moon), Stars in My Crown shines with a powerful, simple dignity.Read More »

Synopsis:
A falsely convicted man’s wife, Catherine (June Vincent), and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin (Dan Duryea), team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling), who had been Martin’s wife. Their investigation leads them to face-to-face confrontations with a determined policeman, Captain Flood (Broderick Crawford), and a shifty nightclub owner, Mr. Marko (Peter Lorre), who Catherine and Martin suspect may be the real killer.Read More »

This groundbreaking, long-suppressed look at the effects of war on returning veterans was among the first films to tackle the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder (or as it was then called, “shell shock” or “battle fatigue”). Shot at Mason General Hospital in Brentwood, Long Island, at the end of World War II, LET THERE BE LIGHT follows seventy-five former soldiers suffering debilitating psychological trauma who, in the film’s most dramatic scenes, are given sodium pentothal to recall their horrific experiences in the war. Considered too disturbing and controversial for exhibition, this landmark documentary was suppressed by the military for decades until it finally premiered in New York in 1980.Read More »

Small-time crook Nick Bianco gets caught in a jewel heist and despite urgings from well-meaning district attorney D’Angelo, refuses to rat on his partners and goes to jail, assured that his wife and children will be taken care of. Learning that his depressed wife has killed herself, Nick informs on his ex-pals and is paroled. Nick remarries, gets a job and begins leading a happy life when he learns one of the men he informed on, psychopathic killer Tommy Udo, has been released from custody and is out for revenge against Nick and his family.Read More »

Is it man, beast or both behind a string of savage maulings and murders? An escaped leopard provides the catalyst for a foray into fear in which a cemetery is the rendezvous for death and love, and a closed door heightens rather than hides the horror of a young girl’s fate. The Leopard Man once again teams producer Val Lewton with director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People). This thriller stars Dennis O’Keefe (T-Men, Raw Deal), Margo (Lost Horizon) and Jean Brooks (The Seventh Victim).Read More »

“Death is good” is how producer Val Lewton summarized the message of his films, a credo that received its most explicit expression in this strikingly nihilistic shocker, the first film directed by regular Lewton editor Mark Robson. Kim Hunter makes her film debut as a young boarding-school student who, in search of her missing sister (proto-goth icon Jean Brooks), travels to New York’s bohemian Greenwich Village, where she uncovers a sinister shadow world of devil-worshippers and murder. And what about that mysterious room furnished with nothing but a chair and a hangman’s noose? With its daring treatment of depression and queerness, The Seventh Victim has haunted the margins of cinema for decades, its radical bleakness undiminished by time.Read More »