greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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The 'Masters of Cinema' Series is proud to present three early silent features from Universal Pictures, all fully restored as part of the studio's ongoing restoration program.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Allen Holubar stars as the domineering Captain Nemo, who rescues the passengers of an American naval vessel after ramming them with his iron-clad, steampunk submarine, 'The Nautilus'. Incorporating material from Verne's 'Mysterious Island', the film also follows the adventures of a group of Civil War soldiers whose hot-air balloon crash lands on an exotic island, where they encounter the untamed "Child of Nature" (Jane Gail).
The Calgary Stampede (1925)
Real life rodeo champion Hoot Gibson plays Dan Malloy, an expert rider who wins the big one, 'The Calgary Stampede'. When the father of his new French-Canadian girlfriend (Virginia Browne Faire) turns up dead, Malloy is the only suspect!
What Happened to Jones? (1926)
Reginald Denny plays a wealthy young bachelor on the night before his wedding. He is convinced to attend a poker party which is promptly raided, sending him on the run in a series of increasingly hilarious disguises.

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Charles Boyer (Gaslight) gives an enthralling performance as Georges Iscovescu, a Romanian-born gigolo who arrives at a Mexican border town seeking entry to the US.

Faced with a waiting period of eight years, George is encouraged by his former dancing partner Anita (Pauline Goddard) to marry an American girl and desert her once safely across the border. He successfully targets visiting school teacher Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland), but his plan is compromised by a pursuing immigration officer, and blossoming feelings of genuine love for Emmy.

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Screen siren Mae West sparkles in this famous musical comedy featuring a heat wave of beautiful girls, gags, rhythm and romance. Mae West is cast as famous Broadway actress Fay Lawrence, who is starring in a dud play produced by chiseler Tony Ferris (William Gaxton).

Swept up in the hype and fame of it all, West betrays her producer who truly loves her for more glitzy opportunities, but will this turn out to be a hoax and will she ever find her feet again in the world of stardom?

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In the sinister mystery 'Schloß Vogelöd', terrible secrets from the past threaten a group of aristocrats' gathering at a country manor. In the delirious 'Phantom', an aspiring poet's chance encounter with a beautiful woman leads into obsession and deception.

The delightful 'Die Finanzen des Großherzogs' sees a rakish-but-impoverished duke setting out to rebuild his fortune via blissfully comic high adventure on the Mediterranean coast. In 'Der Letzte Mann', one of the undisputed masterpieces of the silent era, Emil Jannings gives an overwhelming performance as a hotel porter with dreams of a higher station in life, and was a stylistic breakthrough for both Murnau and cinema in general. Finally, the slyly satiric 'Tartuffe' features Jannings as Molière's iconic creation in a morality tale film-within-a-film as only Murnau could conceive.

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Soon after solid leads come to light about a communist spy ring infiltrating the Lakeview Laboratory of Nuclear Physics, a Southern California atomic research center, FBI Agent Dan O'Hara (Dennis O'Keefe) teams up with Scotland Yard Detective Philip Grayson (Louis Hayward) to hunt down the

perpetrators responsible for the leak, and at least one of the scientists at the nuclear lab is suspected to be involved in the clandestine, espionage operation.

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Voted the greatest documentary of all time in the 2014 'Sight and Sound' poll, Vertov's groundbreaking 'Man with a Movie Camera' uses an array of dazzling cinematic techniques to record the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going.

Presented with Michael Nyman's celebrated score, this classic film is accompanied by an exciting selection of new extras, including Vertov's 'Three Songs of Lenin' and two of his radical mid-1920s documentary films, both of which feature equally radical new soundtracks by electronic experimentalists Mordant Music.

An ex-military accountant (Dennis O'Keefe) is recruited by the FBI to infiltrate the mob in Chicago in an attempt to break open the rackets. To complicate his job, two women stand in his way, each with their own agenda.

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"The Black Pirate" is a 1926 adventure film which tells the story of a young nobleman who infiltrates a ship full of pirates to avenge his father's death. In one long, dramatic scene, Fairbanks acting alone seizes a merchant ship.

In another famous scene, he sticks his dagger into the mainsail and rides it all the way down from top to bottom, cutting the sail in half as he goes. The film features many special effects, including some spectacular models of sailing ships

Based on the story of The Man In The Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas, where the man in the mask is the twin brother of Louis XIV, this was Douglas Fairbanks last silent film, although subsequent reissues have featured narration by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

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Like a brand, the letter M has made it's mark on film history; it's disturbing theme having lost none of its impact or relevance. Sinister, dark and foreboding, M tells the story of Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre) - child molester and murderer. Tension builds - a child late home - another child missing.

Posters reveal the fate of earlier victims, and the Police seem to have few clues as to the perpetrator of the crimes. Gangsters, beggars and petty criminals, incensed by both the crimes and the Police crackdown, track the killer themselves. Cornered, caught and dragged off to face an equally barbaric form of justice, Beckert endures his own personal torment.

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F. W. Murnau made this film adaptation of Moliere's satire for UFA in 1925 and it was released in 1926, prior to Faust.

By presenting the play as a film-within-a-film, Murnau takes the opportunity to place the material in a contemporary setting, sandwiched inside a morality lesson about greed and hypocrisy. A devious housekeeper convinces her master to cut his worthy grandson out of his will and to leave the riches to her instead. The grandson, disguised as the projectionist of a travelling cinema show, flatters his way into the home to project a film of Tartuffe in an attempt to open his grandfather's eyes. Emil Jannings plays Tartuffe with creepy panache in a tour-de-force turn alongside Lil Dagover and Werner Krauss. Unjustly neglected for decades, perhaps because of its low-key nature compared with Murnau's more grand masterpieces, this delightful curiosity is more than a mere trifle. Tartuffe affirms Murnau as a master of multifarious cinematic disciplines: from the set-based dreams of Faust and Sunrise, to the naturalist landscapes of Nosferatu, City Girl, and Tabu. In Tartuffe we find an intimate Murnau, relying on close-ups and the performances of his actors to create magic. Tartuffe was first released in the UK in 1928.

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It's Christmas 1940 and the people of Everytown, unprepared and ill-equipped, find themselves at war against an enemy who has been planning such a conflict for years.

The land is devastated by the horrors of aerial bombardment as the war drags on for thirty years, causing a period of despair, with feudal tyrants ruling a downtrodden populace suffering famine and pestilence. Can the human race rise above its desperate circumstances and build a scientific utopia?

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A thief and killer stalks the streets of Paris, leaving a calling card from "Monsieur Durand" at the scene of each crime.

But after a cache of these macabre identifications is discovered by a tradesman in the boarding house at 21 avenue Junot, Inspector Wens (Pierre Fresnay) takes lodging at the infamous address in an undercover bid to solve the crime, with unexpected help from his struggling-actress girlfriend Mila Malou (Suzy Delair).

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Academy Award-winners Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn star as a team of Allied military specialists recruited for a dangerous but imperative mission: to infiltrate a Nazi-occupied fortress and disable two long-range field guns so that 2,000 trapped British soldiers may be rescued.

Faced with an unforgiving sea voyage, hazardous terrain, and the possibility of a traitor among them, the team must overcome the impossible without losing their own lives.

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Fascinated by the mysteries of the East and shunned by the establishment of Thirteen Century England, Walter of Gurnie (Power) embarks on a journey to the exotic Land of Cathay. Soon he joins the caravan of Bayan (Wells), a notorious warrior transporting gifts to Kubla Kahn in Mongolia.

Walter slowly earns Bayan's respect, but then risks everything - including his life - when a beautiful woman, the Black Rose, enlists him in a perilous mission: to save her from becoming Kubla Khan's concubine and return her to her native England.