films's - Rented List

Show moreShow less

Featuring Marilyn Monroe's legendary rendition of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", this fun musical comedy is a knockout. Marilyn and Jane Russell star as two showgirls who set sail on a luxury liner bound for France.

Hijinks on the high seas ensue as Lorelei (Monroe) and Dorothy (Russell) discover they're being tailed by a private detective hired by the father of Lorelei's landlocked boyfriend. By the time the ship reaches Paris, a missing diamond tiara lands the girls in hot water, but by following their hearts, they'll get out of trouble and on to the altar.

What Stanley Timberlake wants, she takes. So, on the eve of her marriage to another, she runs off with her sister's husband, the first of many betrayals that lead to disaster...and to a compulsively watchable brew of deceit, racial bigotry, latent incest and violent death.

During the filming of The Seven Year Itch, while Hollywood censors kept a careful eye on the notoriously racy production, Marilyn was pure perfection as a sexy, yet innocent, starlet living upstairs from a married man who had just sent his wife and son away for the summer.

Show moreShow less

Josephine Norris (Olivia de Havilland) volunteers for a fire watch with Lord Desham (Ronald Culver) on the rooftops of London during the Blitz. When Lord Desham is nearly killed during the air raid, the ageing pair reminisce over the lost loves of their youth.

Josephine recalls her first and only love affair with World War I fighter pilot Captain Bart Cosgrove (John Lund). Their whirlwind romance during a fundraising tour for the American war effort lasts only a few days, but when Captain Cosgrove returns to the front, Josephine finds herself pregnant with an illegitimate child in an American backwater town. When she learns of Captain Cosgrove's death in action Josephine realises that she can never marry the father of her child, so she decides to contrive an adoption of the child to herself. But fate plays its own hand...

In one of the finest comedic performances of her career Marilyn plays a delicious, yet decidedly vision-impaired, young model, who, along with her two equally scheming friends, rents out a Manhattan penthouse in the hope of hooking a rich husband.

Show moreShow less

The film that launched Brigitte Bardot on an unsuspecting world and changed the face of movies forever. Roger Vadim's directorial debut broke box office records the world over and showed St.Tropez to be the coolest place on the planet.

It featured a voluptuous and kitten-like Bardot with her pout, her curves and her stunning beauty to a very receptive audience. Bardot is Juliette, a young, gorgeous woman who is prone to nude sunbathing and flirting. She fancies fisherman Antoine (Christian Marquand) is being pursued by rich widower Eric (Curd Jurgens) but intstead she marries Antoine's younger brother Michel (Jean-Louis Trintignant). She tries to be good and faithful but gives in to her (now) brother-in-law's advances setting off fraternal conflict and tragic consequences. Full of zest and sex, mambo dancing and teasing glimpses of one of the worlds great beauties, this film is so cool it sizzles!

Show moreShow less

Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd) is a missionary's widow who meets Mark Bellis (Ray Milland), a charming artist and rogue, on the ship taking them back to Victorian London. When Olivia opens a boarding house, Mark becomes her lodger, but then quickly graduates to become her lover.

Soon Olivia falls completely under the spell of Mark and casts aside her religious scruples to fall in with Mark's ambitious and immoral schemes of theft and blackmail. But perhaps his schemes are too ambitious when he attempts to swindle their own friends, leaving Olivia to decide whether to completely fall in with the devil - or redeem herself by betraying the man she loves...

Show moreShow less

In 1890's Brighton the young son of a puritanical chemist longs to escape the repressive environment of his family life and the overbearing restraints of his cruel, pious father.

Eventually finding refuge in a local tavern he is immediately attracted to the sordid glamour of the drinking classes and the gritty world that they inhabit. He also finds himself becoming infatuated with the tavern's landlady, which will inadvertently lead to him being drawn into a plot to kill her abusive husband.

Show moreShow less

In the mid 18th century, a wedding gown is found floating down the Mississippi River. Only three people know the secret of its damp origin, and the ripples of love lost and love found, rising and receding in its wake.

The impoverished Countess Claire Ledoux (Marlene Dietrich) arrived in New Orleans with one thing on her mind -to marry a man of means. And with her engagement to gentleman Charles Giraud (Roland Young), it appeared to be smooth seas ahead...until Captain Robert Latour (Bruce Cabot) stormed into town, took the wind out of her sails and replaced it with a flutter in her heart. Though it would take fainting spells and double identities to delay and disguise the truth, the Countess would discover that the greatest treasure of all - a heart of gold - is worth more than a pot of it.

Show moreShow less

"The Magic Bow" is a fictionalized costumer about the life and loves of 19th century violin virtuoso and composer Niccolo Paganini as played by Stewart Granger. Granger looks the part and plays it well. Basically, 'The Magic Bow' is a well-acted, beautifully scored, rags to riches love story.

On a technical level, Stuart Granger impressively does all the violin finger movements and bow strokes himself, all in synchronization with the musical selections, which were actually played by the great Yehudi Menuhin. Phyllis Calvert has the thankless role of the woman who redeems him by arranging for him to play for the Pope.

Show moreShow less

Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America's outcasts and underdogs.

When the wide-eyed fugitive Bowie (Farley Granger), having broken out of prison with some bank robbers, meets the innocent Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell), each recognizes something in the other that no one else ever has. The young lovers envision a new, decent life together, but as they flee the cops and contend with Bowie's fellow outlaws, who aren't about to let him go straight, they realize there's nowhere left to run. Ray brought an outsider's sensibility honed in the theater to this debut, using revolutionary camera techniques and naturalistic performances to craft a profoundly romantic crime drama that paved the way for decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come.

Show moreShow less

Deanna Durbin is on sparkling form as Patricia, the daughter of an impoverished, out-of-work musician.

When she discovers that her daddy (Adolphe Menjou) has been lying about having a job with a famous orchestra and - indeed - has been reduced to stealing money from a purse he found, she decides to take matters into her own hands! A wealthy patron of the arts agrees to sponsor an entire orchestra of unemployed musicians including her father - but only if they can find a famous conductor to lead them. Undaunted, young Patricia sets out to convince the world-famous conductor Leopold Stokowski that he's just the man for the job!

Show moreShow less

Ernest Hemingway s spare, laconic short story about two professional killers and their encounter with a mysteriously unresisting victim was significantly expanded into this all-time film noir classic, which Hemingway said was the first adaptation of his work that he really admired.

As washed-up boxer turned hitman victim Ole 'Swede' Andreson, Burt Lancaster made his screen debut, and was catapulted to instant stardom, not least for the screen chemistry that he showed opposite sultry Ava Gardner, whose Kitty Collins is the very personification of the femme fatale. German émigré Robert Siodmak was one of the filmmakers who helped create film noir, and Elwood Bredell s high-contrast cinematography, all harsh lighting and long shadows, elevates the film far above a conventional crime drama. But even on that level it s a first-rate demonstration of how to maintain narrative tension, with the flashback structure withholding crucial details until almost the very end.

Show moreShow less

Sent to the city by his stuffy father to reign in the womanising ways of his cousin Keith (James Ellison), young university professor Peter Morgan (James Stewart) falls in love with nightclub performer Francey Brent (Ginger Rogers) and marries her after a whirlwind romance.

When he goes back home, he can't bring himself to tell his conservative, ultra-respected family or his bitchy ex-fiancee Helen, about it. To avoid revealing the news abruptly to his ailing mother (Beulah Bondi), Peter passes her off as Keith's girl, and stashes her at his cousin's apartment. At a college dance where the professor intends to introduce Francey to all, Helen (Frances Mercer), who's sniffed out the truth, initiates a vicious cat fight, and anarchy reigns. Stewart and Rogers make an appealing couple, and the supporting cast is outstanding, with amusing turns by Bondi and Grady Sutton.

Show moreShow less

After being wounded covering the Spanish Civil War, dashing newspaper reporter Vincent Bullit (Melvyn Douglas) convalesces at his boss's guesthouse. Unfortunately, the boss's daughter Alice (Deanna Durbin) and her teenage friends were using the house to rehearse their play.

They decide to make life unbearable for the hapless Bullit - hoping he'll take the hint and go away! Bullit agrees to go. He'd much rather enjoy the bright lights of New York City anyway. However, there's just one snag. Alice has now developed a huge crush on the reporter and is determined to do everything in her power to make him stay.
'That Certain Age' is one of Deanna Durbin's most outstanding musicals, featuring fine songs including "Be a Good Scout", "Les Filles de Cadiz", "You're as Pretty as a Picture", "Juliet's Waltz Song" and "That Certain Age" - as well as the Oscar-nominated "My Own".