1940s

Quote:
A newspaper obit writer, impatient to move ahead at his job, wishes he could know the news before it happens. One night, Old Pop Benson grants him that power, in the form of the next day’s newspaper. At first it only gets him in trouble, but also brings him closer to the pretty girl in a fortune-telling routine. By the third tomorrow’s paper, he’s sure he’s got this whole future business in the bag — reporting advance scoops, picking sure winners at the race track — when he reads a very final headline: the news of his own death.Read More »

FULL SYNOPSIS
In the desert resort town of Glorietta Springs, near Los Angeles, farm laborer Brad Clifton arrives at the Webb Ranch, looking for work. Mrs. Webb, the farmer’s wife, directs Clifton to the lemon groves, but there, he encounters Nick Foster and Pete Kimmel with Webb’s body. They order him to claim that he saw a drunken Webb fall off the tractor. When Clifton tries to get away, they shove money at him and threaten to tell the police that he murdered the man. Clifton does as he is told, and a coroner’s jury determines that Webb died as the result of an accident.Read More »

Quote:
A wordless film, save for a voice-over introducing us to the imagery of dreams. A shirtless young man dreams of awakening to finds photographs of a muscular sailor carrying him in his arms. He goes to a bar where the sailor from his dream displays his muscular upper torso. A gang of sailors, swinging chains, enters menacingly. He watches, smoking. They surround him and an assault begins. Surreal touches accent the dream-like qualities. A phallic firework, a flaming Christmas tree, and the burning photographs provide climax and closure as the young man, back in bed, is beside the sailor.Read More »

The Stranger is often considered Orson Welles’ most “traditional” Hollywood-style directorial effort. Welles plays a college professor named Charles Rankin, who lives in a pastoral Connecticut town with his lovely wife Mary (Loretta Young). One afternoon, an extremely nervous German gentleman named Meineke (Konstantin Shayne) arrives in town. Professor Rankin seems disturbed–but not unduly so–by Meineke’s presence. He invites the stranger for a walk in the woods, and as they journey farther and farther away from the center of town, we learn that kindly professor Rankin is actually notorious Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler.Read More »

A contingent of Italian prisoners of war arrive on a train from Germany after World War II to Turin. The city where Ernesto lives has been bombed, his mother is dead and his sister has gone missing.Read More »

Plot: This is the sixth movie in the Boston Blackie series. An ex-thief helps some fellow ex-cons adjust to life as defense workers, only to get involved with a robbery investigation.Read More »

Synopsis:
Susan Applegate, tired of New York after one year and 25 jobs, decides to return to Iowa. Trouble is, when she saved money for the train fare home, she didn’t allow for inflation. So the audacious Susan disguises herself as a 12-year-old (!) and travels for half fare. Found out by the conductors, she hides out in the compartment of Major Philip Kirby, a military school instructor. The growing attraction between Susan and Kirby is complicated by his conniving fiancee…and by the myopic Kirby continuing to think “Su-Su” is only 12!Read More »

From Steve Schneider’s book, That’s Not All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation (1988):

The one cartoon that best sums up the Clampett sensibility – and, for that matter, the new braziness of the entire [Leon Schlesinger] studio – is Warner’s first release of 1943, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. Notorious now, the cartoon is virtually a scene-by-scene, character-by-character send-up of the fabled Disney feature, as enacted by an all-black cast. (The film’s regrettable ethnic element, it must be added, is indicative of some of the conventions of the time.Read More »

Synopsis:
Absorbing period melodrama set in 1890s Brighton about an autocratic chemist and public analyst who rules his wife, daughters and son David with iron discipline. David, whose attempts at romance are thwarted by his father, seeks solace in a pub where he becomes dangerously infatuated with landlord’s wife.Read More »