1941-1950

Plot: David Langham, the youngest son of a hot-rod hating father, Judge Langham, buys an old jalopy but, out of respect for his father, doesn’t convert it. He changes his mind when Jack Blodgett, the local speed demon, impresses David’s girl, Janie Pitts, and David makes his car the fastest in town. Jack steals David’s hot rod, and flees the scene of an accident he causes. The car is traced back to David, but the truth comes out in court, although David’s father is still unhappy about the car… until David and his friend, Swifty Johnson, use it to apprehend some escaping robbers. The Judge decides to back a movement for building a hot-rod race track for the town. Written by Les AdamsRead More »

Brief Synopsis:
An actor, Paul Orman, is accidentally told that his new, custom made tail coat has been cursed and it will bring misfortune to all who wear it. As the 4 succeeding wearers of the coat discover, misfortune can often lead to truth.Read More »

Quote
Begins with a three beat announcement drawn out in time which thereafter serves as a figure to divide the four sections. Each return of this figure is more condensed, and finally used in reverse to conclude the film.

The brothers John & James Whitney created their remarkable series of Film Exercises between 1943 and 1944. These films are visually based on modernist composition theory, the carefully varied permutations of form are manipulated with cut-out masks so that the image photographed is pure direct light shaped, rather than the light reflected from drawings as in traditional animation. Read More »

BRUCE GENTRY, based on a short-lived but well-done post-World War Two adventure comic strip, begins in South America, where Bruce Gentry (Tom Neal), pilot and adventurer, is recruited by a US government agent (Dale Van Sickel) who needs to fly to the States in a hurry. After fighting off some thugs pursuing the agent, Bruce takes to the air with his passenger, who explains that he’s been gathering information on a plot engineered by an unnamed foreign power (it’s those Russians again!) and traitorous American fifth columnists that has as its goal the conquest of the nations of the Americas–North, Central, and South. The weapon the would-be-conquerors intend to use shortly after comes on the scene: a sinister flying saucer that heads for Bruce’s plane at an incredible rate of speed.Read More »

16 year old orphan Tomi (played by Hideko Takamine) was a wild and unsettled girl. The juvenile court punishes her to be sent into the mountains of Aoyama for reeducation. Here she is taken care of by the teacher Miss Yamada, which is kind but has troubles getting along with the girls that are sent to her…
The director Aoyagi, wo directed a number of entertainment films during the war, deals with the topic of punishment and problematic youngsters. The film is very different and much more dramatic from films by Hiroshi Shimizu or Hiroshi Inagaki dealing with similar topic. The film depicts the roughness of the young girls and the brutality amongst them in a more realistic way. He takes a rare approach by not having Tomi say anything at all during the first half of the film. The film is also interesting from a historical point of view in putting the focus on the attitude of the Japanese state towards problematic young people during the war.Read More »

In Mexican Revolution times, a guerrilla general and his troops take the conservative town of Cholula, near by Mexico City. As the revolutionaries mistreat the town’s riches, Armendáriz falls for beautiful and wild Beatriz Peñafiel, the daughter of one of the town’s richest men.Read More »

IMDB:
A brief look at The Hollywood Ten, a group of screenwriters and directors charged of contempt of court after challenging the House of Anti-American Activities and their controversial and self-incriminatory questions during the red scare. With that act of defiance, they were sentenced to one year in prison simply for speaking their minds and exercising their constitutional rights as concerned citizens. This is their story, their version of the facts and their opinions.Read More »

Quote:
A young Englishwoman goes to the Hebrides to marry her older, wealthier fiancé. When the weather keeps them separated on different islands, she begins to have second thoughts.Read More »

Theresienstadt (1944)

Quote:
The Führer Gives a City to the Jews is the only film known to be made by the Nazis inside an operating concentration camp. Germany’s Ministry of Propaganda produced this 1944 film about Theresienstadt, the “model” ghetto established by the Nazis in 1941 in Terezin, a town in the former Czechoslovakia.Read More »