1950s

Gangster Big Tim Channing raises young newsboy Dan Mason as his own son.Read More »

Crime film about a man who becomes a murder suspect out of the blue.Read More »

A pretty young Mexican girl returns to her hometown to make funeral arrangements for her beloved aunt, who has just died. Soon she begins to hear disturbing stories about the town being infested by vampires, and she eventually begins to suspect that her remaining aunt and the mysterious next door neighbor may be involved.Read More »

The story of a young, wild woman who doesn’t want to compromise and settle down. Stella is a restless, rebellious Greek woman who plays with men and enjoys her life as much as she can. But when she meets a young football player, things get mixed up. She loves him but she loves her freedom too. So it’s about time she made an important choice (imdb)
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Jacques Becker’s (Le Trou) Touchez Pas Au Grisbi occupies a significant part in French cinema history; it exerted a huge influence on subsequent directors such as Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Doulos), Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian Clan) and Claude Sautet (Classe Tous Risques). Max (Jean Gabin, Port of Shadows) is an aging gangster who manages to pull off his final heist, a spectacular gold bullion robbery at Orly airport. All is well until Max’s former girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau, Viva Maria!) tips off a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura, Razzia Sur La Chnouf). Angelo kidnaps Max’s partner and best friend and threatens to kill him unless Max hands over the loot from his robbery. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi was the birth the French policier, a European transposition of the fantastic American gangster films and film noirs of the 1940s. Based on a book by Albert Simonin (Cold Sweat) and beautifully shot in striking black-and-white by Pierre Montazel (Hi-Jack Highway).Read More »

Doctors Scott and Bach inject the dying Kyra Zelas with a formula which saves her life – but also renders her almost immortal and wickedly evil.Read More »

From Carol Reed, the renowned director of Night Train to Munich, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, The Man Between, Trapeze and Oliver!, comes this thrilling drama starring Ralph Richardson (The Sound Barrier), Trevor Howard (The Offence), Robert Morley (When Eight Bells Toll), Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables), Kerima (The Devil Is a Woman), George Coulouris (Citizen Kane), Wilfrid Hyde-White (The Browning Version) and James Kenney (The Slasher). When the immoral Peter Willems (Howard) is accused of stealing in his position at a Dutch East Indies port, he persuades the man who gave him his start in life, the merchant ship captain Lingard (Richardson), to take him up-river to a secret trading post on a remote Indonesian island. There, he falls in love with the beautiful native woman Aissa (Kerima), as the cunning Babalatchi (Coulouris) tries to trick and blackmail him into disclosing the entrance of the secret trading route. Beautifully shot in black-and-white by John Wilcox (The Last Valley) and Edward Scaife (An Inspector Calls), Outcast of the Islands is a compelling adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel.Read More »

Quote:
The first light of dawn. The sound of a boat and the screech of birds fill the wide expanse of sea. Black rocks emerge from the water, the “sciara” – the volcanic scoria – of Stromboli, the underwater sulfurous emanations, the layers of reddish rock eroded by the sea. The roar of the volcano can be heard, the flames and the liquid lava are thrown skyward. As nature unleashes itself, the fishermen row toward the shore, the sheep stray and the women return home.Read More »

A short anthropological documentary from 1954. Director De Seta was fortunate enough to document swordfish fishing; by 1956 it no longer existed.Read More »