1940s

Synopsis:
A film crew is shooting an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Venice. Bettina Verdi, the leading actress, visits a glass factory in Murano with her guide Raffaele. One of the glassblowers, Angelo, is mesmerized by Bettina, so much so that he joins the cast as Romeo’s double just so that he can see her again. On the film set, Angelo meets Georgia, who is Juliet’s double. Georgia lives in a Venetian palace with her father Ettore and brother Amedeo. Both are hiding from justice after the fall of Fascism. Raffaele is in love with Georgia and does what he can to help her family. But when he realises that Georgia loves Angelo, Raffaele is outraged and decides to have his revenge. He will choose his moment carefully…Read More »

This is a Vichy-sponsored propaganda film proposing to expose the occult power of the Freemasons.Read More »

PLOT: In this drama, a trucker’s business is nearly destroyed after he is wrongfully accused of killing a policeman with whom he recently quarreled.Read More »

PLOT: A private detective is hired to find a young heiress but finds himself accused of murder.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Blacklisted in Hollywood, director Edward Dmytryk managed to find work in England. Dmytryk’s Obsession is based on Alec Coppel’s suspense play A Man About a Dog. Ignoring such niceties as subtlety and restraint, Robert Newton stars as Dr. Clive Riordan, the insanely jealous husband of Storm Riordan (Sally Gray). Not content with merely murdering Storm’s American lover Bill Kronin (Phil Brown), Riordan chains up the poor fellow in a deserted building. His reasoning: should the police accuse Riordan of Kronin’s murder, the doctor can always produce the live victim, who is blindfolded and has no idea who his captor is. Once the investigation into the man’s disappearance has subsided, Riordan intends to kill his victim and dispose of the body in an acid bath (something like this actually did take place in London in the postwar years). But the doctor is unaware that his wife’s pet dog has also been locked up with the helpless Kronin. Obsession was released in the U.S. as The Hidden Room.Read More »

The first science fiction film of the DEFA: Futuristic comedy about a revolutionary invention.

Synopsis:
In the country “Kapitalia” Dr. Alland has made a breakthrough invention.
The profit-hungry industrialist Da Costa tries to get to it by sending a series of alluring women towards him.Read More »

PLOT: A depressed man hires an assassin to kill him when he least expects it, but when his life takes an upward turn, he finds he now wishes to live.Read More »

PLOT: A drifter’s (Richard Dix) claim to a dead bank account interests a newswoman (Janis Carter), storekeeper (Porter Hall) and two brothers.Read More »

Quote:
A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst’s visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory. With this film, director Slatan Dudow (1903-1963) continued the traditions of proletarian German film from the Weimar Republic. As with his first feature film Kuhle Wampe, from a screenplay by Bertolt Brecht, Dudow wanted an art that “cultivates the viewer’s psyche.” His postwar films were intended to make the viewers realize the importance of supporting the “new order” in East Germany. Our Daily Bread became known as a premiere film of its day under the rubric of “socialist realism.” Slatan Dudow’s work was convincing mainly through his detailed descriptions of socialist everyday life. Music by Hanns Eisler was the centerpiece of contemporary review. After coming back from his exile in America, the composer created a score that challenged, thrilled, and focused. Berlin’s world of ruins is captured in almost documentary fashion.Read More »