Classics

  • Leigh Jason – The Bride Walks Out (1936)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyLeigh JasonScrewball ComedyUSA

    A model marries a struggling engineer; but he won’t let her keep her job, and they can’t pay the bills, while she is wooed by a wealthy drinker.
    Michael Martin (Gene Raymond) tells Paul Dodson (Ned Sparks) he knows of a better job, and they get fired. Michael asks modeling Carolyn (Barbara Stanwyck) to marry, but she wants to keep her job. After work they go dancing. Michael now earns $35 a week; but Carolyn makes $50. They get married during his lunch hour. Carolyn cries and quarrels with Michael. He hits an officer and is put in jail. In court the drunk Hugh McKenzie (Robert Young) is fined and meets Carolyn. She pleads for Michael, and he gets 30 days or $50. Hugh loans them the money. Michael’s electricity is off. Hugh is paid and reluctantly leaves.Read More »

  • Josef von Sternberg – The Saga of Anatahan [1958 version] (1953)

    1951-1960ClassicsDramaJapanJosef von Sternberg

    Quote:
    In June 1944, twelve Japanese seaman are stranded on an abandoned-and-forgotten island called An-ta-han for seven years. The island’s only inhabitants are the overseer of the abandoned plantation and an attractive young Japanese woman. Discipline is represented by a former warrant officer but ends when he suffers a loss-of-face catastrophe. Soon, discipline and rationality are replaced by a struggle for power and the woman. Power is represented by a pair of pistols found in the wreckage of an American airplane, so important that five men pay for their lives in a bid for supremacy.Read More »

  • Alfred Hitchcock – The Paradine Case (1947)

    Drama1941-1950Alfred HitchcockClassicsUSA

    Synopsis:
    Highly successful London barrister Anthony Keane takes on the case of Italian Maddalena Paradine who is accused of poisoning her blind military hero husband. Keane comes increasingly under her spell, threatening both his marriage and his career.Read More »

  • Jean Negulesco – Three Strangers (1946)

    1941-1950ClassicsDramaJean NegulescoUSA

    Synopsis:
    According to a legend, if three strangers gather before an idol of Kwan Yin (the Chinese goddess of fortune and destiny) on the night of the Chinese New Year and make a common wish, Kwan Yin will open her eyes and her heart and grant the wish. In London 1938 on the Chinese New Year, Crystal Shackleford has such an idol and decides to put the legend to the test. She picks two random strangers off the street, and puts the proposition to them. They decide that an ideal wish would be for a sweepstakes ticket they buy equal shares in to be a winner. After all, everyone needs money and a pot is very easy to divide equally, right?Read More »

  • John Ford – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

    USA1961-1970ClassicsJohn FordWestern

    Quote:
    There are arguably no bigger cinematic icons of America than John Wayne – the right wing side of America steeped in violence and guns, and James Stewart – the left wing side of America rooted in humanity, understanding and intelligence. And there is arguably no finer chronicler of America’s mythology and past than John Ford. Put them together and you get one of the finest westerns ever made.Read More »

  • Med Hondo – Soleil Ô AKA Oh, Sun (1967)

    1961-1970African CinemaClassicsDramaMauritaniaMed Hondo

    Quote:
    The Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s bitterly insightful, artistically freewheeling 1970 film begins with an antic sketch of the European colonization that subjugated and impoverished Africans. It depicts, with sardonic fury, the adventures of an unnamed young African man (Robert Liensol) who arrives in Paris and, with naïve optimism, seeks his fortune among his colonizers. He considers himself at home in France, but soon discovers the extent of his exclusion from French society. Facing blatant discrimination in employment and housing, he and other African workers organize a union, to little effect; seeking help from African officials in Paris, he finds them utterly corrupt and unsympathetic.Read More »

  • Bahram Beizai – Ragbar AKA Downpour (1972)

    1971-1980ArthouseBahram BeizaiClassicsIran

    A major figure in both pre- and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Bahram Beyza’i burst onto the scene with Downpour, his remarkable debut feature that won a Special Jury Prize at the First Tehran International Film Festival. Mr. Hekmati (Parviz Fanizadeh) arrives in the poor southern part of Tehran to take up a teaching post. When his students misbehave, he expels one of them. The next day, the boy’s older sister Atefeh comes to the school to plead her brother’s case. Smitten by her beauty, Mr. Hekmati is nevertheless reluctant to approach her, especially after he learns that her hand has already been promised to the local butcher. Beyza’i creates a powerful sense of a closed community still ruled by tradition, where custom always trumps individual desire. Thanks to its restoration by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, this key Iranian classic can now be discovered by new generations of filmgoers.
    — Film at Lincoln CentreRead More »

  • Leo McCarey & Ray McCarey & Norman Z. McLeod – The Milky Way (1936)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyLeo McCareyNorman Z. McLeodRay McCareyUSA

    Harold Lloyd’s most critically successful talkie. Timid milkman, Burleigh Sullivan, somehow knocks out a boxing champ in a brawl. The fighter’s manager decides to build up the milkman’s reputation in a series of fixed fights and then have the champ beat him to regain his title.Read More »

  • Rangel Vulchanov – Slantzeto i syankata AKA Sun and shadow (1962)

    1961-1970BulgariaClassicsDramaRangel Vulchanov

    IMDb wrote:
    A Bulgarian youth and a foreign girl meet at a Bulgarian seaside resort. They like each other and joking begin first a word game, and then another game called ‘The Pope Is Ill’. It turns out, however, that it is not the Pope who is really ill, but the girl’s father, an eminent western nuclear physicist who is terminally ill with cancer. His daughter is scared to death of the possible nuclear Armageddon, which has repeatedly been discussed in her presence. Gradually the carefree beach side mood is replaced by a serious conversation rich in implied meanings. A series of ‘visions’ reveals the view of each of two young people, which turn out to be very different. The girl imagines the apocalyptic end of the world, while the boy thinks of the evolution of life from its origins to the colonization of other space.Read More »

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