1940s

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Melody Time (working title All in Fun), a 1948 film, is the 10th theatrically released animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia (an ambitious film that proved to be a commercial disappointment upon its original theatrical release). Melody Time, while not meeting the artistic accomplishments of Fantasia, was mildly successful. It is the tenth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the fifth package film following Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free.Read More »

John, an American pilot crashes in France and must get to the underground before the Nazis can capture him. He is helped by a naive young nun Sister Clothilde who, despite her calling to the Lord and the fact that John is happily married, falls in love with the stranded pilot. Once they hook up with the underground, she agrees to pose as his “wife” so that he may transport secret documents from the French freedom fighters to London. In the end, Sister Clothilde sacrifices herself to save John and is captured by the Nazis, who plan to ship her off to a German whorehouse for active duty. Rather than see her suffer a fate worse than death, French Mayor Vitrey kills Sister Clothilde.Read More »

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Lost for 70 years until 2022, Shimizu’s second postwar film recalls Mr. Thank You as he frames the narrative in a familiar setting, tracking an autumnal bus ride from a hot spring town through a mountain pass. When the jaunty bus unceremoniously breaks down, a bittersweet sadness overcomes the passengers as unexpected reunions take place, but nothing can be what it was before the war.Read More »

In the jungles of the Amazon, a group of Western adventurers and two local native guides try to locate a lost treasure buried beneath an ancient Incan city.Read More »

Chérie is a beautiful young woman who works as an escort girl. She meets a young and wealthy man who propose her to be his fictional wife so that his mother won’t bother him anymore with this other girl, a rich one, she wants to see her son married to.Read More »

In this interesting Italian WW II comedy-drama, the residents of a remote Italian village find their lives forever changed when two American GIs break out of a German prison camp and hide out in their town. The fugitives are harbored by a local family. This divides the town into those wanting to protect them and those fearing German retribution. When a young German officer arrives to watch the town, tension mounts. One of the GIs is an African American and one night he gets terribly drunk and stumbles into the officer who is also rip-roaring drunk. The two end up continuing their bender together and no fighting erupts.Read More »

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From 1945 comes one of the best adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Remarkably we get a dry and witty George Sanders (Addison DeWitt in All About Eve), a 20-year-old Angela Lansbury (Murder, She Wrote), an equally young Donna Reed (The Donna Reed Show), and fabulous Oscar-winning photography mixing black and white with a little splash of color for effect when they show the painting. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a unique fantasy horror film that could easily slip into your collection next to the moody Universal monster classics, but containing more subtlety and wit to write it off as merely a creature feature. Read More »

A guideless old tour proprietor trumps his new-fangled rival by offering a genuine mystery trip. The takers are a crowd of eccentrics and dropouts from all backgrounds.Read More »

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Bank robber Steve hides out in a small town, working as a cab driver. He meets Julie who is caring for her ill aunt. Steve courts her and they eventually marry because he needs a legitmate front with which to launder the loot money.Read More »