1940s

  • Henri Calef – Les Chouans AKA The Royalists (1947)

    France1941-1950DramaHenri Calef

    Synopsis
    In 1779, the Marquis de Montauran returns to France and becomes the figurehead of a royalist uprising known as the Chouans. Their Republican enemies recruit the aristocrat Marie de Verneuil to capture the Marquis and thereby weaken the resolve of the Chouans. Unfortunately, Marie falls in love with the Marquis and is prepared to do anything so that she can marry him…Read More »

  • Anatole Litvak – Out of the Fog (1941)

    USA1941-1950Anatole LitvakDramaFilm Noir

    SYNOPSIS:
    A Brooklyn pier racketeer bullies boat-owners into paying protection money but two fed-up fishermen decide to eliminate the gangster themselves rather than complain to the police.Read More »

  • Hasse Ekman – Möte i natten AKA Meeting In The Night (1946)

    1941-1950CrimeHasse EkmanNordic NoirSwedenThriller

    Journalist Åke Bergström is sacked from the newspaper he’s working at because of an article he wrote about the condition in Swedish prisons. To show his boss he was right he and his friend, the author Sune Berger, agree to fake the murder of Sune, so that Åke can study the prison from the inside…Read More »

  • Arthur Dreifuss – Boss of Big Town (1942)

    1941-1950Arthur DreifussCrimeDramaUSA

    Diligent City Market official Michael Lynn resists overtures by well-to-do gangster Kenneth Craige to fix produce and dairy prices during wartime. Lynn seems unable to stop the resulting sabotage and violence on the part of the mob to bring the farmers and wholesalers into line and so is fired by city attorney Jeffrey Moore. After Lynn’s assistant Bram Hart is murdered for going to the authorities, Lynn takes responsibility for his daughter and feigns co-operation with Craige in order to discover the real boss of the criminal enterprise. Lynn unmasks Moore as the corrupt head, and the conspiracy is exposed and foiled.Read More »

  • Michael Curtiz – Captains of the Clouds (1942)

    1941-1950ActionDramaMichael CurtizUSA

    CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS (1942). Just as the 1942 Best Picture Oscar winner Mrs. Miniver boosted American support for the British cause during World War II (as was intended), so too did Captains of the Clouds offer its own measure of Hollywood-manufactured propaganda for our Canadian neighbors. A tribute to the Royal Canadian Air Force, this stars James Cagney as Brian MacLean, a bush pilot operating in the Canadian wilds. MacLean’s penchant for trouble leads him to steal business away from the other bush pilots — the noble Johnny Dutton (Dennis Morgan), the British expat Scrounger Harris (Reginald Gardiner), and the comic relief pair of Tiny Murphy (Alan Hale) and Blimp Lebec (George Tobias) — and to steal the fiery Emily Foster (Brenda Marshall) away from her boyfriend Johnny.Read More »

  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz – The Late George Apley (1947)

    1941-1950ClassicsDramaJoseph L. MankiewiczUSA

    synopsis
    It is 1912, and George Apley (Ronald Colman) is a stuffy, self-satisfied member of Boston’s upper class, confident of the superiority of his hometown and his family. He is fond of quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson at every opportunity. For 18 years, he has hosted Thanksgiving dinners at his home, but the dinner that opens the film marks an irrevocable change. His comfortable, predictable world is overturned when he learns, to his horror, that both his son and his daughter have fallen in love with non-Bostonians instead of with the partners he has arranged. Son John, always intended for his cousin Agnes, a shy girl who adores him, has fallen for Myrtle, the daughter of a successful manufacturer who lives in Worcester. Daughter Eleanor is in love with Howard Boulder, a lecturer at Harvard whom George causes to lose his job.

    Will George learn his lessons and become a better person?Read More »

  • Jacques Tourneur – Days of Glory (1944)

    1941-1950DramaJacques TourneurUSAWar

    A heroic guerrilla group fights back against impossible odds during the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union.Read More »

  • Anthony Mann – Dr. Broadway (1942)

    1941-1950Anthony MannCrimeDramaUSA

    Quote:
    Dr. Timothy Kane knows Broadway well. A dying man he once sent to prison asks him to find his daughter and give her his fortune. Shady characters want to get their hands on it.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Pursued [+Commentary] (1947)

    1941-1950DramaRaoul WalshUSAWestern

    Description: After his family is murdered in the 1880s, orphan Jeb Rand (Robert Mitchum) is raised by the Callum family on their nearby horse ranch. He remains haunted by this childhood trauma in a recurring nightmare of flashing spurs and confinement inside a trap door as his family is slaughtered. Widow Callum (Dame Judith Anderson) does her best to make Jeb feel loved as he is growing up, but the young man stubbornly maintains a sense of his own identity. While he has great affection for his foster-sister Thor (Teresa Wright), his relationship with her brother Adam (John Rodney) is tenuous at best, especially when Jeb blames him for shooting a colt that he was riding.Read More »

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