greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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James Cagney is at his best as Terry Rooney, a Manhattan bandleader who journeys to Hollywood, where he is offered a lucrative film contract, but he is determined to do things his way and not theirs. Mr.

Regan (Gene Lockhart), the head of the studio, believes that Rooney's true lack of desire for stardom is arrogance on the band leaders part. When his first film is huge success and hit for the studio, Regan tries to hide the truth from Rooney. Feeling a need to get away from Hollywood, Rooney takes his wife on a South Seas cruise, only to return to the real truth of his fame.

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Humphrey Bogart plays one of his rare comedy roles in this jaunty excursion about three convicts - Joseph (Bogart), Albert (Aldo Ray) and Jules (Peter Ustinov) - who are plotting their escape from Devil's Island. Fate intervenes when they hide out with the kindly but inept Felix Ducotel (Leo G.

Carroll) and his family. Felix manages a store for his demanding, arrogant cousin Andre (Basil Rathbone), who decides to make the fatal mistake of stealing Albert's beloved pet, a poisonous snake! For the Ducotels, it will be a Christmas to remember - shared with a trio of rogues who turn out to be three "wise men" after all!

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Off-screen pals James Cagney and Pat O'Brien teamed for the sixth time in this enduring gangster classic. Cagney's Rocky Sullivan is a charismatic ghetto tough whose underworld rise makes him a hero to a gang of slum punks.

O'Brien is Father Connolly, the boyhood chum-turned-priest who vows to end Rocky's influence. Other ace talents join them: Humphrey Bogart as a scheming lawyer, Ann Sheridan as Rocky's hard-edged girlfriend and the Dead End Kids as worshipful street urchins, all ably directed by Michael Curtiz.

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Gene Tierney, Bruce Cabot and George Sanders star in this classic war film set in a small African outpost during the Second World War. As the British fight to control East Africa word reaches them that a vicious local tribe are being smuggled guns from a unknown source.

When the soldiers encounter the exotic and beautiful Zia, the leader of attaining trader caravan, she is assumed to be the supplier of the illicit firearms. But in this thrilling drama the African desert hides many secrets beneath its ancient sands.

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A band of Italian strolling players has come to perform, seeking fame and wealth. Lusty Camilla, the troupe's fiery prima donna, soon turns the heads of the Spanish viceroy, a soldier and a famous bullfighter.

To prepare for an impending war the viceroy demands great financial sacrifices from the local aristocrats, but when he then gives his official gilded coach to Camilla in order to win her love, the noblemen rebel. Camilla is pursued by the three infatuated men, but her first love is always the stage.

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South Africa, 1976. The police ruled Gordan Ngubene's death a suicide. But when Afrikaans schoolteacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland) saw the body he knew his friend of 15 years was the victim of police torture.

Seeking justice, Ben hires barrister Ian McKenzie (Marlon Brando) to represent the Ngubene family at the inquest, but the judge ignores the evidence and exonerates the police. Refusing to "give it up", Ben risks his family and career as he takes on a system run by racists, thugs and murderers. For if you're not with the Afrikaners, you're against them. And choosing the wrong side could get you killed.

Jean Renoir's intoxicating first colour feature - shot entirely on location in India - is a lyrical adaptation of Rumer Godden's autobiographical coming-of-age tale of an adolescent girl living with her English family on the banks of West Bengal during the waning years of British colonial life.

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Disillusioned with life, celebrated artist Bradley Morahan (James Mason) retreats to the solitude of a tropical island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The island, however, turns out to be far from uninhabited.

Bradley soon stumbles upon Cora, played by Helen Mirren, a beautiful, highly spirited teenage girl who lives with her alcoholic grandmother. Cora dreams of escaping the island and running away to the bright lights of Brisbane. Inspired by the young girl, Bradley starts to paint naked portraits of her. To Cora, it's an innocent way to earn money and finally escape the island. To him, Cora is a fresh source of artistic inspiration. Others, though, may see their relationship differently...

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Libby (Bette Davis) and Sarah (Lillian Gish) arc widowed siblings who have vacationed since children at the seaside cottage in Maine.

Now in their eighties and with their husbands and what children they had behind them, they have only each other; Libby blind and resistantly dependent on her sister; Sarah still looking for new ways to see the world. Their relationship with their old friend Tisha (Ann Sothern) and the arrival of a charming Russian gentleman will bring storms to the already turbulent ocean between them - an ocean which nevertheless runs deep.

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Discover a lost masterpiece from acclaimed director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Peeping Tom) with this stunning adaptation of Bela Bartok's expressionist opera.

Starring Norman Foster as the murderous Bluebeard and Ana Raquel Satre as his doomed wife Judith, this boldly original production was made for West German television in 1963. It combines outstanding performances with spectacular production designs (by the awardwinning Hein Heckroth) as Powell concocts a daring and inventive interpretation of a haunting work, equal to the creative innovation of his iconic 'The Tales of Hoffmann'. Unavailable for many years, 'Bluebeard's Castle' (Herzog Blaubarts Burg) has been painstakingly restored by the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation, and is presented here - on its 60th anniversary - in both its original broadcast format and its revised 1978 edition, featuring selected English subtitles added by Powell.

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John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) was a simple slow man who became a dentist after working at the Big Dipper Gold Mine. He is now being hunted in Death Valley by his ex-best friend Marcus (Jean Hersholt) and the law.

His lot was cast the day that he meet his future wife Trina (Zasu Pitts) in his office. She was with Marcus and she bought a lottery ticket. Well Mac fell for her and Marcus stepped aside. When Mac and Trina married, she won the Lottery for $5000 and became obsessive about the money in gold. Marcus is steamed as he stepped aside and now she is rich so he has the law shut down Mac as he has no official schooling for his dentistry. Trina fearful that they will take her gold away sells everything and takes all Mac earns when he is working. She adds to her stash of gold as they both live as paupers. When Mac has no job and no money, he leaves and Trina moves. Driven to desperation at being poor and hungry he finds Trina and demands the gold.

At a local carnival in a small German town, hypnotist Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) presents the somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt), who can purportedly predict the future of curious fairgoers. But at night, the doctor wakes Cesare from his sleep to enact his evil bidding...

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Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, 'Pandora's Box' tells the story of sex worker Lulu (Louise Brooks), a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu's latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr.

Ludwig Schdn (Fritz Kortner), announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon's son, Aiwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu seduces Schon once more - only to have their tryst exposed, and Schon's plans for a more socially acceptable marriage shattered. Left with no choice but to marry Lulu, Schon meets with tragedy on their wedding night. Lulu stands trial for the incident, facing years of imprisonment. With the aid of her former pimp (Carl Goetz), an infatuated lesbian countess (Alice Roberts) and Aiwa, she flees toward a fate of increasing squalor and peril, finally crossing paths one Christmas Eve with Jack the Ripper.

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This extraordinary comic version of the historic 1910 London-to-Paris air race features the greatest aviators from around the world.

They all come together when a stuffy, but very rich, newspaper publisher decides to sponsor an airplane race across the English Channel, offering 10,000 pounds to the winner. The escapades between the American, British, French, German, Italian and Japanese teams result in the most daring and hilarious in-flight acrobatic stunts ever caught on film.

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After saving the lives of his platoon during the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is hailed as a bona fide American hero.

This couldn't have come at a better time for his mother (Angela Lansbury) who is hell-bent on boosting the career of his stepfather, a senator straight from the McCarthyite wing of the US political spectrum with designs on the Presidency. So far so familiar - but why does Shaw's former captain (Frank Sinatra) have recurring nightmares that suggest that his distinguished comrade-in-arms might not be all that he seems?