1940s

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
Though entirely based on “authentic” newsreel materials, this is a splendidly distorted “record” of the Nazi Blitzkrieg against Poland, designed to terrorize (particularly foreign) viewers into accepting the Nazis’ god-like military superiority. Kracauer’s profound analysis stresses the magic, irrational core of the film, its reliance on graceful over-simplifications, clever amalgams, a pseudo-narration that professes to inform, and insidious comparisons. Particularly frightening are its terrifying maps of encirclement and destruction from above. Strength and decisiveness are constantly stressed; suffering is, at most, cartographic, and death entirely absent.Read More »

Set at a factory that makes aircraft for World War II, Roma and Brad Maple’s marriage begins to show signs of difficulty. Their problems get worse when Brad’s friend Corky, who wants to work at the factory to avoid being drafted, arrives to stay with them and makes a move for Roma.Read More »

Police detective Mary Ryan is given an assignment to break up a gang of jewel thieves and fences. She, using an alias as a convict, is placed in the cell with a suspected member of the gang. Upon release she becomes a gang member but the gang leader is suspicious of her.Read More »

IMDB:
When a reporter helps his girlfriend murder her rich husband, an innocent man gets the blame and faces execution.Read More »

Story:
In this mystery, a private detective is falsely accused of murder by his secretary who wants to protect her little sister who has been formally charged with the crime. The detective must solve the crime before it is too late. To do so, he gathers all the suspects at a radio student and reenacts the crime. The killer is revealed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie GuideRead More »

Review

(Some spoilers) This madcap “giallo” farce, directed by Giacomo Gentilomo, suggests an Italianized Howard Hawks film, complete with spitfire dialog and outrageous wacko characters. Two doctors have been mysteriously murdered. A famous mystery writer is suspected because his stories bear an uncanny resemblance to the facts of the murders. His wife is perhaps more astute than he is and is able to vindicate her husband by uncovering evidence leading to a demented woman in the clinic.

This pleasant escapist pap was a fairly successful film when it came out in wartime Italy and was an antidote to the grim reality outside the theatre for 80 minutes or so.Read More »

Synopsis:
It’s World War II, and British soldier John Bramble (Franchot Tone) is the lone survivor of a brutal battle in Egypt. After wandering through the desert, Bramble finds a remote hotel. There, in order to stay alive, he assumes a false identity. When the famed German general Rommel (Erich von Stroheim), aka the Desert Fox, arrives at the hotel, Bramble realizes he’s being taken for a German spy. Can this lowly British soldier turn the tide in the war and foil Germany’s plans in North Africa?Read More »

Story
Reformed racketeer “Lucky” Leeds flees from the police when he thinks they are about to arrest him for a murder he didn’t commit.Read More »

Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle is broken out of prison by an old associate who wants him to help with an upcoming robbery. When the robbery goes wrong and a man is shot and killed Earle is forced to go on the run, and with the police and an angry press hot on his tail he eventually takes refuge among the peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, where a tense siege ensues. But will the Police make him regret the attachments he formed with two women during the brief planning of the robbery.Read More »