1941-1950

Synopsis:
‘His criminal activities exposed, a crooked financier named Géraudy takes flight and intends to make his escape across the alpine border with the help of a young smuggler, Manu. When his wife Florence declines to join him, Géraudy hangs himself, thus depriving her of his life insurance. Florence persuades Inspecteur Nansen that Géraudy’s death was murder not suicide, and Manu is soon arrested as the obvious suspect. Manu’s only hope is a suicide note written by Géraudy just before he killed himself, but this he has entrusted to his girlfriend. The latter cannot forgive Manu when she sees him with Florence and so it appears that an innocent young man will be condemned for Géraudy’s supposed murder…’
– James TraversRead More »

Synopsis:
Shortly after a violent encounter with magician Maximilian (Vincent Price), Joe Adams (Henry Fonda) is shot by police. As he lies dying in his apartment, he reflects on his past. The flashbacks follow Joe as he falls in love with young Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes), who is also being courted by Maximilian. Jo Ann begins to favor the compassionate Joe over the possessive magician, and Maximilian heads to Joe’s apartment intending to kill him, resulting in a dramatic standoff.Read More »

Todd Wiener writes:
In 1947, novelist and B-movie screenwriter Jo Pagano published his third novel titled The Condemned. The novel was based upon the 1933 kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart in San Jose, California, and the subsequent lynching of two suspects by a hysterical mob fueled by a frenzied media. Considered the only public lynching covered with such media scrutiny, The New York Times stated the event “was an outburst characterized by hysteria and ribaldry.” Pagano would adapt his novel into the screenplay The Sound of Fury (Fritz Lang’s film Fury (1936) is based on the same shocking event).Read More »

Quote:
Phantom Lady (1944) is one of the high points of ’40s film noir, the title alone evoking a potent mythology of this era. At the center of its narrative is the seemingly hopeless search for the title character who potentially serves as the only reliable witness in the murder trial for Scott Henderson (Alan Curtis), falsely accused of killing his wife. But the search is frustrated by Henderson’s inability to remember any details about the woman outside of a flamboyant hat she wore during the night they spent together, an unlikely memory lapse that only intensifies his apparent guilt. Furthermore, no one else who saw Henderson and the woman together will admit to the police that they had seen her.Read More »

The pastor of a mountain village adopts a small blind girl, Gertrude. As Gertrude grows up into an attractive young woman the pastor, now middle-aged, realises that he is in love with her. To his chagrin, his adopted son, Jean, is also in love with Gertrude, even though he is shortly to be married to another woman. Jean’s fiancée is jealous of Gertrude and arranges for her to see a doctor in the hope that she might be cured and to enable Jean to choose equally between the two women. Miraculously, Gertrude’s sight is restored and she returns to the village a changed woman. Unable to accept Jean’s love and disappointed by the pastor’s affections for her, she realises that her former happiness has been lost forever. (Films de France)Read More »

Aurelio Rodríguez is released from jail, and tries to start a new life marrying Paloma and working his land. But the local landowners, the brothers González, interfere with his plans.Read More »

Mats Ersson is engaged to Marit and they plan to get married in the spring. But when the plague comes, the people accuse Marit of witchcraft. She is sentenced to death. Mats can not understand the divine justice and decides to go to paradise and ask God himself. It becomes a journey where he meets the prophets, king Solomon and finally God himself.Read More »

Synopsis:
A U.S. Marine major tries to keep his captain on the right track through combat on Guadalcanal, training new recruits in San Diego, and a relationship with a WAAAF while on leave in Australia.Read More »

The rival of a worker on a Cossack stud farm exposes him during the war as a Nazi and rescues the owner’s daughter from a train about to be blown up by partisans.Read More »