Classics

  • Raymond Rouleau – Les sorcières de Salem AKA The Crucible (1957)

    1951-1960ClassicsDramaFranceRaymond Rouleau

    Salem, 1692. Industrious farmer, John Proctor, has twice made love to 17-year-old Abigail, a youth he and his wife have taken in. (His wife Elisabeth has rebuffed him for seven months; she is puritanical and cold.) When she finds John and Abigail embracing, she sends the lass from her home and John, feeling damned, agrees. Abigail vows revenge. Her chance comes when she accuses Elisabeth of witchcraft and manipulates younger girls to support her claims of seeing spirits. The town’s minister and politicians want a cause: ridding the town of witchcraft is the ideal repression. John too, is accused; Abigail offers him a way to avoid hanging. Elisabeth has her own confession.Read More »

  • Nicholas Ray – The True Story of Jesse James (1957)

    1951-1960ClassicsNicholas RayUSAWestern

    Synopsis:
    The last eighteen years in the life of Jesse James, showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill’s raiders, his career of banditry with his brother Frank and the Younger brothers, and his attempt to lead a peaceful life after the disastrous attempt to rob the bank at Northfield, Minn.Read More »

  • Edward Buzzell – At the Circus (1939)

    1931-1940ClassicsComedyEdward BuzzellUSA

    Synopsis:
    Jeff Wilson, the owner of a small circus, owes his partner Carter $10000. Before Jeff can pay, Carter lets his accomplices steal the money, so he can take over the circus. Antonio Pirelli and Punchy, who work at the circus, together with lawyer Loophole try to find the thief and get the money backRead More »

  • Francesco Stefani – Das singende, klingende Bäumchen AKA The Singing, Ringing Tree (1957)

    1951-1960ClassicsFantasyFrancesco StefaniGermany

    Review by EastGermanCinema.com:
    Many Britons of a certain age share a collective memory so firmly etched in their psyches that the very mention of it brings back childhood nightmares. In 1964, BBC television serialized a film about a haughty princess, a prince that turns into a bear, a giant goldfish, and a really, really evil dwarf. So powerful are the memories of this film, that thirty-eight years later BBC Radio 4 did a program on the film’s effect on an entire generation. The film was called The Singing Ringing Tree, and none of those children could have known that they were watching a film that was the product of East Germany.Read More »

  • Charles Crichton – The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

    1951-1960Charles CrichtonClassicsComedyUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    The first Ealing Studios comedy shot in color, Titfield Thunderbolt takes place in a tiny British village serviced by a branch railway line. When the government plans to close the line down, the locals are in a panic—except for a group intending to set up an expensive bus service. The local vicar (George Relph) concocts a scheme with the town’s wealthiest man (Stanley Holloway) for the villagers to run the rail line themselves; in this way they hope to prove to the railway inspectors that their branch is still worth keeping. When the bus interests attempt to sabotage this undertaking, the villagers respond by stealing a stray locomotive—and when this proves cumbersome, they reactivate a 19th century train engine from the local museum.Read More »

  • Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast – Topaze (1933)

    1931-1940ClassicsDramaHarry d'Abbadie d'ArrastScrewball ComedyUSA

    Synopsis:
    An honest and naive schoolteacher gets a lesson in how the world works outside the classroom, when a rich Baron and his mistress use the teacher’s name and outstanding reputation in a crooked business scheme.Read More »

  • Lew Landers – The Raven (1935)

    1931-1940ClassicsHorrorLew LandersUSA

    Synopsis:
    A wealthy judge coaxes the brilliant but eccentric neurological surgeon Dr. Vollin (Lugosi), who also has an obsessive penchant for Edgar Allen Poe, out of retirement to save the life of his daughter, a dancer crippled and brain damaged in an auto wreck. Vollin restores her completely, but also envisions her as his “Lenore,” and cooks up a scheme to kidnap the woman and torture and kill her fiance’ and father in his Poe-inspired dungeon. To do his dirty work, Vollin recruits a wanted criminal (Karloff), and turns him into a hideous monster to guarantee his subservience.Read More »

  • Alexandre Astruc – Une vie AKA One Life (1958)

    1951-1960Alexandre AstrucArthouseClassicsFrance

    Not much one can say other than providing Godard’s review of the film:

    I don’t give a damn about the merry-go-round decorated by Walt Disney, he lunch on the grass with imitation plastic clothes, the chewing-gum green of a ball of wool. I don’t give a damn about any of the lapses in taste piled up by Astruc, Claude Renoir and Mayo.Or about Roman Vlad’s saxophone either. Actually it isn’t bad. But anyhow, the real beauty of Une Vie lies elsewhere.
    In Pascale Petit’s yellow dress shimmering amid the Velazquez grey dunes of Normandy. That’s wrong! Not Velasquez grey? Not even Delacroix grey, howl the connoisseurs.Read More »

  • Alexander Mackendrick – The Man in the White Suit (1951)

    1951-1960Alexander MackendrickClassicsComedyUSA

    Synopsis:
    An altruistic chemist invents a fabric which resists wear and stain as a boon to humanity, but both big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons.Read More »

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