1941-1950

Quote:
A corrupt small town sheriff manipulates local candidates to the state legislature but he eventually comes into conflict with a visiting carnival dancer.Read More »

Synopsis:
In a remote village, a family of hard-working country folk known as the ’Goupis’ live at an inn, proud of their history and distrusting of all outsiders. The youngest member of the Goupi clan, Goupi-Monsieur, now lives in Paris, but he is summoned to the Goupi’s home by his father, who is planning to marry him to the young Goupi-Mugeut. Soon after Goupi-Monsieur arrives in the village, the elderly Goupi-L’Empereur is found unconscious and the imperious housekeeper Goupi-Tisane is discovered dead in the forest. When a wad of money goes missing, the Goupis fear that their ancestral treasure has also been stolen. Only Goupi-L’Empereur knows the whereabouts of the teasure but he is unable to speak. The finger of suspicion points squarely at the new arrival, Goupi-Monsieur. However, the wisest of the Goupis, Goupi mains rouges, has another theoryRead More »

A handsome, suave Toshiro Mifune lights up the screen as painter Ichiro, whose circumstantial meeting with a famous singer (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) is twisted by the tabloid press into a torrid affair. Ichiro files a lawsuit against the seedy gossip magazine, but his lawyer, Hiruta (Kurosawa stalwart Takashi Shimura), is playing both sides. A portrait of cultural moral decline, Scandal is also a compelling courtroom drama and a moving tale of human redemption.Read More »

Synopsis:
One of the most admired Danish films of all time, Bjarne Henning-Jensen’s Ditte Menneskebarn is the story of a poor girl born out of wedlock (Jette Kehlet plays the child Ditte, then Tove Maës) whose mother (Karen Lykkehus) is an abusive adulterer who nearly kills her eldest daughter. Ditte grows up with her grandmother (wonderfully played by Karen Poulsen), but is ill equipped to later fend for herself as a maid on a large farm. Impregnated and abandoned by the weak-willed son of the house (Preben Neergaard), Ditte, just like her mother, will have to face the future as a social outcast. The original novel was by Martin Andersen Nexø (Pelle the Conqueror), a writer who used a very broad pencil indeed. The American reviewers (who saw the film in 1950 sans several scenes of a nude Maës) certainly thought so, dismissing the film as mere melodrama. Some of the performances are difficult to take for a modern audience, but, overall, the film still has the power to move.
— Hans J. Wollstein (allmovie.com)Read More »

Burt Lancaster’s megawatt grin and acrobatic athleticism light up this grandly entertaining swashbuckler. He tumbles, vaults, and swings his way through the role of a Robin Hood-esque rogue who executes dazzling feats of derring-do as he and his rough-and-ready band of mountain men launch a rebellion against the occupying German gentry in 12th-century Italy. The filmmaker’s powers as an aesthetician are on full display in the exquisite Technicolor compositions, including one particularly striking moment of Tourneurian shadow play: a climactic duel in the dark wrought in finely shaded chiaroscuro.Read More »

Two clubmen discuss the occult, introducing three weird tales: 1) Plain, bitter Henrietta secretly loves law student Michael. Then on Mardi Gras night, a mysterious stranger gives her a mask of beauty that she must return at midnight. 2) At a party, palmist Podgers makes uncannily accurate predictions, later telling skeptic Marshal Tyler that he will murder someone. The notion obsesses Tyler, with ironic consequences. 3) High wire artist Gaspar dreams of falling, then loses his nerve. He recognizes Joan from his dreams, and falls for her. Will any of his dreams, involving Joan and disaster, come true?Read More »

Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson travel to Washington D.C. in order to prevent a secret document from falling into enemy hands.Read More »

Plot
Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes fakes his own death in Scotland in order to investigate a number of bizarre apparent suicides that he is convinced are part of an elaborate plot by “a female Moriarty”. Returning to his assistant Watson in secret, Holmes notes that all the victims were wealthy gamblers, so disguised as “Rajni Singh”, a distinguished Indian officer, he stalks London’s gaming clubs.Read More »

A 1945 American Sherlock Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, with Hillary Brooke as the woman of the title and Henry Daniell as Professor Moriarty. The film is not credited as an adaptation of any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes tales, but several of its scenes are taken from “The Final Problem” and “The Adventure of the Empty House.” The Woman in Green is the eleventh film of the Rathbone/Bruce series.Read More »