greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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Ordinary man-in-the-street Arthur Ferguson Jones (Edward G. Robinson) leads a very straightforward life. He's never late for work and nothing interesting ever happens to him.

One day everything changes: he oversleeps and is fired as an example, he's then mistaken for evil criminal Killer Mannion (also Edward G. Robinson) and is arrested. The resemblance is so striking that the police give him a special pass to avoid a similar mistake. The real Mannion sees the opportunity to steal the pass and move around freely and chaos results.

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Two cinematic legends, John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, team up to seize a small fortune in gold in this action-packed western classic.

Wayne plays Taw Jackson, a range-hardened rancher who's hell-bent on capturing the infamous War Wagon, an ironclad stagecoach protected by a small army of men and owned by a thieving cattle baron who robbed Taw of his gold and good name years before. To get even, Jackson recruits Lomax (Douglas), a brash gunslinger, and a raucous crew of misfits and readies them to pull off one of the most impossible heists of all time.

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When Bo (Don Murray), a naive rodeo rider, meets saloon performer Cherie (Marilyn Monroe), he falls head over boots in love. After he literally lassoes Cherie onto a bus headed for Montana, where he plans to marry her, Cherie escapes off the bus - smack in the middle of a snowstorm.

But if Bo can learn to rein in his emotions, he might convince Cherie to warm up to him...

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The first pairing of legendary Western director John Ford with star Jimmy Stewart, 'Two Rode Together' is a taut, suspenseful story of two lawmen who invade Comanche Indian territory to rescue the white captives of the tribe.

As in all of his seven previous Westerns, Jimmy Stewart rode his lucky horse and wore his lucky, sweat-stained Stetson. But unlike earlier Westerns where the outcome was sure to be a happy one, Two Rode Together is a dramatic and unsentimental depiction of hostages confronted by the savagery of "civilised" society. Stewart stars as a U.S. Marshal assigned to trade guns for hostages with the fearsome Comanche. Cynical and corrupt, the character was a striking departure from Stewart's usual roles as stalwart do-gooder. Paired with Richard Widmark, Stewart locates the hostages but argues against bringing them home, knowing they will be unable to readapt to settler life. But Widmark prevails, and the party's triumphant return results in tragedy.

Fugitive bank robbers Robert , William and Pedro stand at a desert grave. Caring for the newborn infant of the woman they just buried will ruin any chance of escape. But they won't go back on their promise to her. They won't abandon little Robert William Pedro.

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When young David Balfour (Lawrence Douglas) arrives at his uncle's bleak Scottish house to claim his inheritance, his relative first tries to murder him, then has him shipped off to be sold as a slave in the colonies.

Fortunately, David strikes up a friendship with Alan Breck (Michael Caine), who is escaping from Bonnie Prince Charlie's defeat at Culloden. When the ship's captain tries to kill Breck for his money the two manage to get to land and set out for Edinburgh, dodging the ruthless Redcoats.

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‘City Lights’ begins with an uproarious skewering of pomp and formality, ends with one of the most famous last shots in movie history and, from start to finish, so completely touches the heart and tickles the funny bone that in 1998 it was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American

Films. Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this forever classic that’s silent except for music and sound effects. The story, involving the Tramp’s attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl, provides a star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The tramp is variously a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich 0poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken, but universally understood: love is blind.

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In 1962, Francois Truffaut persuaded Alfred Hitchcock to sit with him for a week-long interview in which the great British auteur would share with his young admirer the secrets of his cinema.

Based on the original recordings of this meeting—used to produce the seminal book "Hitchcock/Truffaut"—this film illustrates the greatest cinema lesson of all time and plunges us into the world of the creator of Psycho, The Birds and Vertigo. Hitchcock's singular vision is elucidated and brought vividly to life by today's leading filmmakers: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, and Paul Schrader.

When a Polish prostitute is brutally murdered in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, her killer is identified only as a German general. For years the crime remains unsolved, until the killer strikes again, bring this mesmerising mystery to its unforgettable finish.

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Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play, this well cast film is enhanced by Spencer Tracy's portrayal of an idealistic industrialist come self-made millionaire, Grant Matthews who runs for the presidency.

Katharine Hepburn's flawless performance as Grant's estranged wife adds excitement to this drama meets comedy flick. The tension builds and the party machine begins to worry as Grant and Mary begin to speak for themselves. Mary condemns corrupt politicians and Grant learns to speak out even more boldly. In order to enhance his image and win the voters, Grant convinces Mary to return to him after a big break-up so they can provide a united front to the public. But as the campaign roars along, the liberal candidate becomes increasingly disillusioned with the strain of the political world.

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Arts patron Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) intends to pay pompous opera star Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) $1,000 per performance.

Hey, maybe that's why they call it grand opera! Grand comedy, too, as Groucho, Chico and Harpo cram a ship's stateroom and more than wall-to-wall gags, one-liners, musical riffs and two hard-boiled eggs - all while skewering Lassparri's schemes and helping two young hopefuls Rosa and Riccardo (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones) get a break. To save the opera, our heroes must first destroy it. And they must also gain ocean passage as stowaways, pull the wool (if not the beards) over the eyes of City Hall, shred legal mumbo-jumbo into a Sanity Clause, pester dowager Claypool and unleash so much glee that many say this is the best Marx Brothers movie. Seeing is believing.

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Waxworks (Das Wachsfignrenkabinett) was the final film Paul Leni directed in Germany before striking out for Hollywood and making such classic works of genre filmmaking as 'The Cat and the Canary', 'The Man Who Laughs', and 'The Last Warning'.

Its sophisticated melding of genres was in fact what inspired Universal's Carl Laemmle to invite Leni to come to Hollywood in the first place, as Laemmle was hoping to capitalise on the emerging comedy-horror craze of the 1920's. Yet 'Waxworks' is, at heart, a pure example of German expressionism. Its stylised sets (designed by Leni), fantastical costumes, chiaroscuro lighting, and startlingly bold performances are paragons of the cinematic movement, and contribute heavily to the film's lasting appeal. The three separate episodes of 'Waxworks' are united by the character of a young poet (William Dieterle), who is hired by the owner of a wax museum to create backstories for a trio of the museum's figures: Caliph Harun al-Rashid (Emil Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt), and Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss). The stories are depicted in succession, the poet casting himself - as well as the daughter of the wax museum's owner - at the centre of each tale. Though the poet and the daughter play different characters in the corresponding plots, they are always lovers whose relationship is threatened by the personages of the wax figures.

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When cattle rancher Shep Horgan (Ernest Borgnine) finds Jubal Troop (Glenn Ford) half-dead in a mountain pass, he rescues the drifter and offers him good honest work on his ranch. Shep is a good man - but his beautiful young bride Mae (Valerie French) is pure poison.

She's been catting around with ranch hand Pinky (Rod Steiger) - and now she's got eyes only for Jubal. When Jubal is appointed ranch foreman, Pinky swears revenge. He convinces Shep that Jubal is sleeping with his wife. For a proud man like Shep, there's only one thing to do - pick up his Winchester and sort things out man-to-man...

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The Little Tramp punches in and wigs out inside a factory where gizmos like an employee feeding machine may someday make the lunch hour last just 15 minutes.

Bounced into the ranks of the unemployed, he teams with a street waif (Paulette Goddard) to pursue bliss and a paycheck, finding misadventures as a roller-skating night watchman, a singing waiter whose hilarious song is gibberish, a jailbird and more. In the end, as tramp and waif walk arm in arm into an insecure future we know they've found neither bliss nor a paycheck but, more importantly, each other. The times and satire remain timeless in 'Modern Times'.

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Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum star in Hollywood's classic tale of revenge and murder. Robert Mitchum is unforgettable as Max Cady, an ex-con determined to exact a terrible revenge on Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) and his family.

Sam is a small-town lawyer whose worst nightmare comes true when the criminal he helped put away returns to stalk his beautiful young wife (Polly Bergen) and teenage daughter (Lori Martin). Despite help from the local police chief (Martin Balsam) and a private detective (Telly Savalas), Sam is legally powerless to keep Max from playing his sadistic game of cat and mouse. Finally, Sam must put his family's lives at stake in a deadly trap that leads to one of the most suspenseful and heart-pounding confrontations ever committed to film.