1940s

Bowery at Midnight casts Bela Lugosi as Professor Brenner, a psychology instructor at New York University (which looks a lot like Berkeley in the exterior shots!). When not enlightening his students — most of them buxom Monogram starlets — Brenner is engaged in charitable work, running a mission in the Bowery. In truth, however, the kindly professor is a fiend in human form, who uses his mission as a front for a vast criminal empire. When Judy (Wanda McKay), one of Brenner’s students, stumbles onto the truth, she’s targeted for extermination by the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde prof.Read More »

Plot Synopsis:
Eleanor Powell is an ambitious dancer who decides to teach her publicity agents a thing or two about publicity by running their firm herself. Among the “clients” who perform are W.C. Fields, Cab Calloway, Woody Herman, Sophie Tucker, and, of course, Eleanor Powell.Read More »

Matsugoro is a poor rickshaw driver whose animated spirit and optimistic demeanor make him a favorite of the town. Matsu helps an injured boy, Toshio, and is hired by the boy’s parents, Kotaro and Yoshioko, to transport the boy to and from doctor appointments. Matsu comes to love the boy and his parents. When Toshio’s father dies, Matsu becomes a surrogate father, helping to raise the boy and secretly falling in love with Toshio’s mother Yoshioko. But Matsu knows there is a great gulf between their classes and there seems no hope that Matsu can ever be more than the rickshaw man to the mother and son.Read More »

Bela Lugosi rises from the crypt in this blood-curdling horror classic! In 1918, Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi), a 200-year-old Hungarian Vampire, prowls the English countryside, feeding from the jugulars of the villagers. But Tesla’s reign of terror is interrupted when a pair of scientists, Lady Jane (Frieda Inescort) and Sir John Ainsley (Roland Varno), drive a railroad spike through his heart. The “un-dead” Tesla remains safely entombed for two decades until the impact from a stray Nazi bomb accidentally releases him. Along with his werewolf servant Andreas Obry (Matt Willis), the resurrected vampire now plots vengeance on the family that put a halt to his nocturnal feasting.Read More »

Tom Cochrane has no memory of the murder. What he remembers is a party, a few unusually powerful drinks, a blonde songstress, and then waking up woozy in an unfamiliar room where there’s a bloody knife and a blonde stuffed lifeless in a closet. Held by the police, Tom escapes, beginning his desperate attempt to find out what happened and clear his name. The frequent noir theme of an innocent man trapped by circumstance plays out in the snappy Fall Guy, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window). Clifford (aka Leo) Penn, who would later have a prolific career as a TV director, portrays Cochrane. Robert Armstrong offers robust support as a cop who suspects Cochrane has been set up and helps him piece together clues. And Elisha Cook, Jr., whose career of playing seething weaklings includes the role of Wilmer in The Maltese Falcon, plays the elevator operator who may have vital information Cochrane needs.Read More »

Synopsis
In Unfinished Business, a light romantic comedy directed by Gregory La Cava, Irene Dunne plays a young woman worried she’s “going to seed” after spending her life in small-town Messina Ohio caring for her sister and father and having no love or adventure for herself. After her sister marries, she spontaneously takes the train ride to New York she’s always fantasized about to seek a career as a singer. On the train she meets a womanizer (Preston Foster) who sweeps her off her feet and leaves her flat at the station. She marries on the rebound (Robert Montgomery) but remains torn between two lovers — who happen to be brothers.Read More »

Quote:
This winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 is a social drama directed by Karel Steklý, whose style has much in common with Italian Neorealism. The main themes of Steklý’s post-war film output were social inequality, oppression, and the exploitation of the proletariat. The film’s story, which was inspired by two chapters of Marie Majerová’s novel of the same name, follows this very thematic line. Siréna depicts industrial Kladno at the end of the 19th century when a miners’ strike over low wages was uncompromisingly suppressed by the gendarmerie. The film’s impressiveness is partly rooted in the convincing depiction of the mining milieu as well as in the sombre music of E. F. Burian. The film focuses on the Hudec family, whose young daughter Emča (Pavla Suchá) serves as a symbol for the suffering of the working class in the heroic struggle against capitalism.Read More »

Synopsis
The first film made up of sketches made by different directors. All deal with the return of prisoners in their native France after WW2.Read More »

It Happened in the Donbass (Russian: Это было в Донбассе; translit. Eto bylo v Donbasse) is a 1945 Soviet black-and-white film directed by Leonid Lukov based on a screenplay by Sergei Antonov and Mikhail Blajman.
The film tells the story of Soviet youth, bravely fought in the Great Patriotic War against the fascist invaders in the Donbass region occupied by the Germans.Read More »