films's - Rented List

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Combining elegance and wit, Lubitsch's last film, set in 1938 London, is one of his most engaging romantic comedies.

Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer are well teamed as the plumber's niece (later housemaid) and the intellectual Czech refugee, who throw English society into disarray with their disregard for conventions. This charming satire, aided by a wonderful script taking in snobbery upstairs, downstairs and in the middle classes, is given a jolly run around by a cast comprising most of Hollywood's British stalwarts from Sir C Aubrey Smith and Peter Lawford to Sara Allgood and Una O'Connor.

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Comedy director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) decides to give up his life of luxury and sets off on the road to research how the other half live. He plans to make "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?", a somber, social conscious movie inspired by his experiences of poverty and desperation.

A chance encounter with failed starlet (Veronica Lake) enables him to escape the studio publicity machine and learn at first hand the true value of entertainment.

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The feature-film debut from acclaimed writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 'Dragonwyck' is a sumptuous tale starring Gene Tierney, horror-maestro Vincent Price and Walter Huston.

Miranda Wells (Tierney) is an ambitious young woman invited by her cousin Nicholas Van Ryn (Price) to stay at Dragonwyck castle. After her arrival, Van Ryn's wife suddenly dies and Miranda finds herself the new object of her cousin's affections. Charming and mysterious, Van Ryn marries the newcomer but soon the new bride learns that her husband is slowly descending into a strange madness. With luscious costumes and eerie black and white photography, 'Dragonwyck' is a sinister treat, ripe for rediscovery.

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Marlene Dietrich is Domini, a young heiress who journeys to the Sahara in search of a new life after her father's death. There she meets and marries Boris Androvsky (Charles Boyer), unaware of the bitter secret he is hiding.

Boris is really Brother Antonio, a monk who has fled a nearby monastery, breaking his vows and causing shock and dismay among his brethren. What will happen to them when Domini finally uncovers the truth behind her lovers deceit?

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When concert pianist Lissa Campbell (Margaret Lockwood) learns that she has a serious heart problem. She vows to enjoy what time she has left.

On taking her first holiday, she meets Kit Firth (Stewart Granger), a pilot on leave, because his future vision may disappear due to a bomb explosion while he was in active service. Kit Firth is searching for a rare mineral Britian needs in the war effort. When there is an explosion at the local tin mine, Kit and several others are trapped, but due to his knowledge of the mine workings, he leads the others to safety. But his greatest challenge is to come, when he has to undergo an operation, that hopefully may keep him from going blind. This operation has a slim chance of being successful.

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Errol Flynn shot to stardom as Peter Blood, a 17th-century physician turned pirate after escaping unjust political imprisonment. It was a role the handsome, sea-loving Tasmanian was born to play, and he shaped it into Hollywood's archetypal image of the adventurous hero.

That he also became a romantic idol and a vision of gallantry in love is due in large part to his ideally cast co-star: radiant Olivia de Havilland in the first of their eight films together.

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"Whirlpool" is an intriguing blend of film noir and women's picture, Gene Tierney, the star of 'Laura', Preminger's first big success, here plays the well-dressed wife of a successful psychoanalyst, played with chilling remoteness by Richard Conte.

When arrested for shoplifting, she is saved from inevitable scandal by the intervention of a suave but lightly sinister hypnotist. However, the salvation proves deceptive and she soon finds herself enmeshed in a web of blackmail and murder. The script is by Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's most brilliant screenwriters, who according to Hitchcock, was 'in constant touch with prominent psychoanalysts'. Preminger turns the story into an examination of people - and a marriage - under stress, and the conventional ending does little to dispel his somewhat bleak vision. The film may have a noirish theme, but the plot unfolds in a sumptuously photographed world of glossy interiors, luxurious decor and expensive clothes.

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Laurence Oliver delivers one of his greatest Shakespearean performances as Hamlet. Seldom has the tragic story of the Danish prince tortured by his duty to his murdered father and by the guilt and fear he feels at the prospect of revenge, been so brilliantly portrayed.

It is the tragedy of a man who thinks but fails to act. For as long as Shakespeare is performed this film will stand as a definitive production.

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When young Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby) arrives to join the congregation at an old established church, things get complicated. St. Dominic's, crusty old Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) doesn't think much of O'Malley or his ideas. These two priests simply can't agree.

But when O'Malley's fresh methods succeed in reaching out to the neighbourhood's toughest kids the community start to change. The neighbourhood becomes closer as the church's meaning grows dearer to their souls.

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Despite being offered an impressive job when he returns from World War I, Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) instead opts for the Paris bohemian lifestyle, followed by a soul-searching trip to the Far East.

After his beautiful fiancee (Gene Tierney) loses patience with the spiritual seeker and marries a wealthy man, Larry finds himself drawn to Sophie (Anne Baxter), an old friend. Newly widowed, Sophie has descended into alcoholism, a state from which Larry hopes to save her...

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When Helene (Maria Casares) discovers her love for Jean (Paul Bernard) has become unrequited, she carefully hatches her revenge by willingly inflaming a relationship between Jean and dancer Agnes (Elina Labourdette).

However, Jean is unaware of certain aspects of Agnes' life which Helene hopes will ruin his reputation as their passions for each other grows.

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Sofia Coppola brings to life a fresh interpretation of the life of France's legendary teenage Queen Marie Antoinette.

Kirsten Dunst plays the naive and beautiful Marie Antoinette, who is betrothed to King Louis XVI at the tender age of 14, entering an opulent French court which is steeped in conspiracy and scandal. Without guidance and adrift in a dangerous world, the young girl rebels against the isolated atmosphere of Versailles and becomes France's most misunderstood monarch.

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After falling in love with Alexei Vronsky, a Russian army officer, Anna (Vivien Leigh) scandalises Moscow by leaving her husband and child to live with him.

But when her forbidden lover's ardour cools, she finds herself outcast by an unforgiving society and she must make a desperate decision about her own lovelorn fate.

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Melodrama casts noirish shadows in this portrait of maternal sacrifice from Hollywood master Michael Curtiz.

Its iconic performance by Joan Crawford as Mildred, a single mother hell-bent on freeing her children from the stigma of economic hardship, solidified Crawford's career comeback and gave the actor her only Oscar. But as Mildred pulls herself up by the bootstraps, first as an unflappable waitress and eventually as the well-heeled owner of a successful restaurant chain, the ingratitude of her materialistic firstborn (a diabolical Ann Blyth) becomes a venomous serpent's tooth, setting in motion an endless cycle of desperate overtures and heartless recriminations. Recasting James M. Cain's rich psychological novel as a murder mystery, this bitter cocktail of blind parental love and all-American ambition is both unremittingly hard-boiled and sumptuously emotional.

Peasant girl Lily (Marlene Dietrich) moves to Berlin, where she falls in love with sculptor Richard (Brian Aherne), for whom she poses. When Richard gets cold feet, Lily enters into an unhappy marriage with a wealthy Baron (Lionel Atwill), but longs to return to her true love.