greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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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?

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On the last day of World War Two in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland.

In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier Maciek Chelmicki (Zbigniew Cybulski), who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar. But a mistake stalls his progress and leads him to Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), a beautiful barmaid who gives him a glimpse of what his life could be. Gorgeously photographed and brilliantly performed, 'Ashes and Diamonds' masterfully interweaves the fate of a nation with that of one man, resulting in one of the most important Polish films of all time.

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In a bravura performance, Broderick Crawford won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Actor with his stunning portrayal of bullheaded backwoods lawyer Willie Stark in the powerful drama about political and personal corruption.

A somber but realistic chronicle of raw , brutal power in force, 'All The King's Men' is based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It was brought to the screen in 1949 by producer Robert Rossen, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film. The story was inspired by the rise and fall of southern bigwig Huey Pierce Long - the infamous 'Kingfish' who was Louisiana's governor and one-time senator. 'All The King's Men' remains a hallmark political film with superb performances throughout.

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The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go.

Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (Dominic Sessa) — and with the school's head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph).

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High among idiosyncratic auteur Robert Aldrich's most powerful and intense dramas, 'Twilight's Last Gleaming' is a thunderous political thriller and race-against-time doomsday classic.

Burt Lancaster stars as the Air Force general Lawrence Dell who seizes control of a stockpile of nuclear missiles to force the US President (Charles Durning) to tell the truth about the Vietnam war. As negotiations get ever more desperate, General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark) leads an elite fighting team into the complex to disable Dell and his team directly.

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During the last days of the Warsaw Uprising against Poland's Nazi occupiers, a ravaged band of Resistance fighters retreat into the city sewers to avoid capture. In this pit of darkness, engulfed by filth, they desperately strive to hang onto their lives, their hopes and their sanity.

Controversial for undermining a national myth of heroic sacrifice, Wajda's second feature is a nightmarish descent into a visceral, claustrophobic struggle for survival. Full of haunting images, 'Kanal' is a harrowing and unforgettable depiction of the horrors of war.

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Paul Leni (The Man Who Laughs) directs one of the most important and influential films in the early history of American genre cinema, which perfected the 'old dark house' formula and set the stage for the Universal horror cycle of the 1930s.

Twenty years after the death of millionaire Cyrus West, his surviving relatives are called together in a decaying mansion on the Hudson River. There, they gather to hear West's lawyer Roger Crosby (Tully Marshall) read his last will and testament and discover that West has left everything to his niece Annabelle (Laura La Plante). That is, at least, on the condition that she is judged to be legally sane. As the family settles in for the evening, tensions rise when they are informed that a murderer nicknamed the Cat has escaped from a nearby asylum and is suspected to be somewhere on the grounds. Crosby soon disappears in mysterious circumstances, which proves to be just the first in a series of horrifying events that will punctuate a long, dark night of terror - during which Annabelle's sanity will be called into question again and again. Based upon the 1922 stage production by John Willard, 'The Cat and the Canary' is a perfect blend of horror and black comedy and stands at the apex of a cycle of films adapted from mystery plays throughout the 1920s. It later inspired James Whale's 'The Old Dark House' and has been remade several times - but never bettered.

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Stach (Tadeusz Lomnicki) is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance - and to the beautiful Dorota (Urszula Modrzynska).

Soon he is engaged in a dangerous effort to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for other's lives. A coming-of-age story of survival and shattering loss, 'A Generation' delivers a brutal portrait of the human cost of war.

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Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) and Johnny Marshall (George Raft) work on a road crew for the power company. In a freak accident Hank is injured and is promoted to foreman of the gang.

One night Hank and Johnny meet Fay Duval (Marlene Dietrich) in a clip joint, but tensions start to show in the road crew as rivally between Hank and Johnny increases.