greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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One heaves rocks through windows. The other happens by in the nick of time to offer his services as an expert window repairman. It's a system that works.

So does everything else about this beloved Charlie Chaplin classic whose blend of laughs and pathos changed the notion of what a screen comedy could be. For the first time as a filmmaker, Chaplin stepped into feature-length storytelling with this tale of the down-but-never-out Tramp (Chaplin) and the adorable ragamuffin (6-year-old Jackie Coogan) who, rescued as a foundling and raised in the School of Hard Knocks by the Tramp, is this inseparable sidekick. Memorable scenes include a lesson in table manners, the bully brawl and the Tramp's angelic dream.

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This volume contains seven of Chaplin's legendary early films as follows:

The New Janitor

Charlie becomes a janitor only to be fired when he drops a pail of water on his boss' head. As he departs he hears a secretary's pleas for help...he saves the damsel in distress and thwarts a robbery.
The Rival Mashers (aka Those Love Pangs)
Charlie, intent on getting a girlfriend, finds that other men resent his attempts to steal their sweethearts. He attempts to drown himself but is rescued. He goes to the movies and finally wins the interest of two girls, but when he falls asleep, the girls slip away.
Musical Tramp (aka His Musical Career / Charlie as a Piano Mover)
Charlie is a piano mover assigned to deliver a piano and repossess another, but Charlie mixes them up and delivers the piano to the bad debtor and attempts to remove a piano from a millionaire's home. When this is protested, Charlie pushes the piano into a lake.
A Fair Exchange (aka Getting Acquainted)
Charlie is back in a park, accompanied by his formidable wife, Mrs. Sniffles. Mabel (Normand) is also in the park with her husband Ambrose. Charlie is attracted to Mabel while the jealous Ambrose is attracted to Mrs. Sniffles. It's a fair exchange.
His New Job (aka Charlie's New Job)
Charlie goes to a film studio to get a job. He doesn't get hired but wanders through the studio and is mistaken for a property man and is put to work. Later, he fills in for the lead actor and his blunders ruin the whole film...it will never be finished.
A Night Out (aka Charlie's Drunken Daze)
Charlie and Ben Turpin have been trying to drink the town dry. When Charlie returns to his hotel, he's so drunk that he doesn't know where he is and walks up to the front desk and drinks the ink. Hi-jinks continue as Charlie tries to get to his room.
The Champion (aka Charlie the Champion)
Charlie and his bulldog are very hungry. Out of pure hunger Charlie applies for the job of a sparing partner for a champion prize fighter. He beats the champ, because of a lucky horseshoe in his gloves, but is helped in a real match by his faithful bulldog.

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Garbo Talks!, proclaimed ads when silent star Greta Garbo debuted in talkies. Nine years and 12 classic screen dramas later, the gifted movie legend was ready for another change.

Garbo Laughs!, cheered the publicity for her first comedy, a frothy tale of a dour Russian envoy sublimating her womanhood for Soviet brotherhood until she falls for a suave Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas). Working from a cleverly barbed script written in party by Billy Wilder, director Ernst Lubitsch knew better than anyone how to marry refinement with sublime wit. "At least twice a day the most dignified human being is ridiculous", he explained about his acclaimed Lubitsch Touch. That’s how we see Garbo’s lovestruct Ninotchka: serenely dignified yet endearingly ridiculous. Garbo laughs. So will you.

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Gay Lawrence (George Sanders) is the debonair and ruthless amateur detective known only as The Falcon. He learns that his brother Tom (Tom Conway) has been reported murdered on a ship arriving from South America.

The Falcon swoops to investigate and stalks the would-be murderers before learning that his brother is still alive. His hunt leads him into murky waters with a variety of spies, spivs, and racketeers arriving into New York. The Falcon pursues the gangsters and comes off worse when protecting a diplomat, so the scene is set for the Falcon's mantle to be passed to his brother. When Tom takes over the case, his investigations lead to the doors of a fashion magazine and a ring of Nazi spies...

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Joan Crawford plays Vienna, a saloon owner with a sordid past. Persecuted by the townspeople, Vienna must protect her life and her property when a lynch mob led by her sexually repressed rival, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), attempts to frame her for a string of robberies she did not commit.

Enter Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a guitar-strumming ex-gunfighter who has a history with Vienna.

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Five RAF pilots are shot down over occupied France. Led by their Squadron Leader, Free French hero Paul Lavallier (Paul Henreid), they decide to head for Paris to make contact with the resistance.

Occupied Paris, however, is one of the most dangerous cities in the world - a city filled with spies, collaborators, informants and ruthless Gestapo agents. A city where one wrong word could easily cost you your life. As Paul desperately tries to find the resistance, he becomes involved with Joan (Michele Morgan), an innocent young barmaid who unwittingly gets caught up in his escape plans. Paul knows the Gestapo are already on to him and are playing a deadly cat and mouse game. What he doesn't know is that the Nazis are also watching Joan...As the Germans prepare to spring their trap, Joan is faced with an agonising choice - betray the man she has come to love or face a firing squad...

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Melville's most personal film, rooted in his wartime experiences in the French Resistance, Army Of Shadows is a hard, tense drama, depicting man's capacity for both bravery and evil. In the winter of 1942-1943, as France exist s under German occupation, an underground cell operates in the shadows.

In the clandestine world of the Resistance, the freedom fighters work against their enemies under the constant risk of betrayal, ordinary men and women in an extraordinary situation. Suffused throughout with a mood of foreboding, the suspense, heightened with directorial mastery, reaches its peak as the Resistance attempt to free a prisoner from the Gestapo headquarters, in one of Melville's trademark set-pieces of iconic action.

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When Harvard Law School graduate P. Cadwallader Jones (Dennis O'Keefe) bungles his first assignment in the D.A.'s office, he is next assigned the tedious job of reviewing the closed case of a crooked city official (Peter Lorre) who vanished with $100,000. of the taxpayer's money.

The cold case suddenly gets hot when the money begins to reappear, and a series of brutal murders ensues. There's plenty of fast-moving action in this crime drama laced with good old-fashioned Hollywood humour.

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Whilst on holiday, young timid ladies companion (Joan Fontaine) meets handsome and wealthy widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) whose wife Rebecca has recently died in a boating accident. The two fall in love and marry.

However, her joy is short lived when she returns to the de Winter estate and soon discovers that Rebecca still has a strange, unearthly hold over everyone there.

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Returning to 1870's London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny (Phyllis Calvert) witnesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke (James Mason). She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home.

When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young adviser Harry Somerford (Stewart Granger) leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. Periodically the scoundrel of a Lord crosses her path, always to tragic effect.

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Triple bill of American classics.

It Happened in Hollywood (1937)
While hospitalized young Billy (Bill Burrud) meets his silent movie idol Tim Bart (Richard Dix) but then the talkies came, destroying Bart's career. Now Bart must convince his young friend he is still a star.

Adventure in Sahara (1938)
Agadez is a lonely French outpost baking under the desert sun and commanded by the cruel and oppressive Captain Savatt (C. Henry Gordon). To it comes, at his own request, Legionnaire Jim Wilson (Paul Kelly) soon followed by his fiancée, Carla Preston (Lorna Gray), who has been tracing him from post to post. Legionnaires seize the fort and turn Savitt loose in the Arab-haunted desert with only a fraction of the water and food needed to get back to civilization. But Savitt gets through and returns to the fort at the head of an avenging troop of men. But Arabs surround Savitt and his men, and the mutineers, knowing that to leave the fort and aid them means their own death...
Power of the Press (1943)
During WWII, the publisher of the isolationist New York Gazette is murdered just as he was about to change the paper's policy and support the US war effort. His friend, a small town patriotic editor, is brought in to find the culprits.

Intrigue and espionage abound when a young woman travelling aboard a transcontinental express train strikes up an acquaintance with a charming elderly English governess, who then disappears without a trace. Is the young woman hallucinating, or is something altogether more sinister afoot...?

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Poor fisherman Pete (Carl Brisson) falls in love with Kate (Anny Ondra), the daughter of a landlord on Man island. Pete decides to leave on his ship to earn some money and then to marry the girl.

Before leaving, Pete asks his friend Philip (Malcolm Keen) to take care of Kate, but the young man is in love with her too. There comes the tragic news: Pete's ship is wrecked. Philip and Kate have to hide no more and they plan to marry; however, Pete is not dead.

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This wild Stephen Sondheim musical about a raucous gaggle of ancient Romans is a flip, glib and sophisticated, yet rump-slappingly bawdy and fast-paced look at the seamy underside of classical Rome through hipster's shades.

When a wily, witty, lying, lazy, cheating slave discovers that his master's son is in love with the girl-next-door - a virgin courtesan - he promises to help win her heart in exchange for his freedom. But the road to romance is blocked with stunning surprises, cunning disguises - and the wildest chariot race ever!

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Set against a backdrop of the dangerous and often brutal days of the early Western pioneers, David Harvey (William Holden) is a widower with a young son, living on an isolated Ohio farm.

David wants his son to be raised the way his wife wanted, with schooling, Bible study and proper manners, so he consults the preacher at a nearby settlement who recommends that a bonded servant Rachel (Loretta Young) would make him a suitable wife. David takes Rachel on to cook and clean for him as a marriage of convenience, and although he treats her well, there is no affection between them, until his smooth-talking friend, Jim Fairways (Robert Mitchum) arrives. When Jim shows an obvious interest in Rachel, David begins to realise that there is a woman in his house.