greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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Dan Ballard (John Payne), a respected citizen in the western town of Silver Lode, has his wedding interrupted by four men led by US Marshal, Fred McCarty (Dan Duryea), an old acquaintance, who arrests Ballard for the murder of his brother and the theft of $20,000.

Ballard seeks to stall McCarty while tracking down evidence that will prove his innocence, but the townspeople's loyalty to him gradually begins to waver under McCarty's accusations.

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Berlin, 1923. Out-of-work circus performer Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) is living in poverty.

When his brother commits suicide, he moves into the apartment of his cabaret singer sister-in-law (Liv Ullmann), but the pair soon attract the attentions of both the police and a professor with a terrifying area of research when they start to make enquiries about Abel's brother's mysterious death.

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Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance.

Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck's conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda's nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts - and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote and directed as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling humor with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak.

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Academy Award-Winner Humphrey Bogart stars in one of his most memorable performances as Eddie Willis, a sportswriter who joins forces with a corrupt boxing promoter named Benko (Rod Steiger).

Together, they scheme to deceive Toro Moreno (Mike Lane), a clumsy, seven-foot giant, and the public into believing Moreno has a shot at the heavyweight title. Through a carefully arranged series of fixed fights, Toro is duped into believing that he is a capable contender, only to have his dreams - and his huge body - shattered when he is brutally beaten in a genuine fight with the heavyweight champion.

Jennifer Jones plays Hazel Woods, a beautiful young English Gypsy girl who loves animals and in particular her pet fox. She is hotly desired by Jack Reddin (David Farrar) a fox-hunting squire who vies for her affection and pursues her even after her marriage to the local pastor.

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Buster Keaton is at the peak of his slapstick powers in 'The Cameraman' - the first film that the silent-screen legend made after signing with MGM, and his last great masterpiece.

The final work over which he maintained creative control, this clever farce is the culmination of an extraordinary, decade-long run that produced some of the most innovative and enduring comedies of all time. Keaton plays a hapless newsreel cameraman desperate to impress both his new employer and his winsome office crush as he zigzags up and down Manhattan hustling for a scoop. Along the way, he goes for a swim (and winds up soaked), mimes every position of a baseball game in an empty Yankee Stadium, and teams up with a memorable monkey sidekick (the famous Josephine). The marvelously inventive film-within-a-film setup allows Keaton's imagination to run wild, yielding both sly insights into the travails of moviemaking and an emotional payoff of disarming poignancy.

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An Englishman (Rex Harrison) wakes up in an unfamiliar hotel bedroom with amnesia. A specialist at the local hospital tells him it was brought on by some kind of upset and they both set out to unearth the patient's past.

What they find is shocking - not just to themselves but also to the man's seven wives!

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Musical superstar Julie Andrews plays Lili Smith, the singing sweetheart who the troops adore. But she has a secret... she's really an enemy agent! And she's just been assigned a new mission: seduce heroic pilot Major William Larrabee (Rock Hudson). The Major can't resist her womanly wiles...

but when Lili realises that he has secrets of his own, she begins to wonder which one of them is the true deceiver.

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"Professor Marston and the Wonder Women" is based on the extraordinary true story of the creator of one of the most iconic super heroes ever conceived, and the seductive secret life he kept from his fans. Harvard psychologist Dr.

William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) was roundly criticized for the creation of his feminist superhero, but it was his personal life, with his polyamorous relationship with his wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) and their lover, Olive (Bella Heathcote), that was more provocative than any adventure he had ever written.

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Doris Day plays Patricia Fowler, a spy hired to work undercover at a cosmetics company to discover a new formula that the firm is planning to market. But it soon transpires make up is not the only product they're selling.

The company is involved in an international drug-smuggling ring and Patricia finds herself doing battle with ruthless agents. Joining forces with fellow spy Christopher White, the pair take on evil genius Stuart Clancy.

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Shot in glorious Technicolor, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gives a dashing performance as the romantic treasure seeker and adventurer, Sinbad.

Ably assisted by his comic sidekick Abbu (George Tobias) and the inscrutable Chinese sage Milek (Walter Slezak), Sinbad learns that he is a prince and goes in search of his birthright: the lost treasure of Alexander the Great. But as he prepares to set sail, the evil Emir (Anthony Quinn) enlists the help of the beautiful but calculating Shireen (Maureen O'Hara) to lure Sinbad into believing that she loves him, and thereby leading the Emir to Alexander's buried treasure...

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Bounty hunter Ben Brigade (tall-in-the saddle Western hero Randolph Scott) is a man of action and honour. He ventures to California with prisoner Billy John (James Best), but has a mind to use him to lure an even bigger fish - Billy John's evil brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef).

But at a frontier post the two find themselves in the middle of a Native American assault and are joined by the alluring Widow Lane (Karen Steele) who decides to accompany them on their perilous journey to Santa Cruz...

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Most of the young, unsuspecting girls who enroll at the...institute, run by gangster King Peterson (Philip Van Zandt), end up as prostitutes in other cities.

Some even end up dead! It is now up to the young Assistant District Attorney James Horton (John Archer) and the veteran police officer Captain McVeigh (H.B. Warner) to stop the spate of crimes in the city. Nora Thompson (Astrid Allwyn), an over-zealous reporter for a local news paper has a crush on Horton and puts her life in jeopardy to help him nab the prime suspect, King Peterson. Will her guts and the guiles of Captain McVeigh be enough to save Horton and nab Peterson? Witness this fast-paced drama that will keep you entertained till the end!

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Set in the 1920s, "The Quiet Man" stars John Wayne as Sean Thornton, an Irish-born American who has travelled to his birthplace of Inisfree to lay claim to his family farm.

Although warmly embraced by the denizens of the village, Thornton's outsider status is thrown into relief when the abrasive landowner Squire Will Danahan (Victor McLaglen) objects both to the turnover of the land, and to the handing over of his sister Mary Kate's (Maureen O'Hara) dowry to the man whose community stature now threatens to show up his own. What follows is a confrontation with custom and with the personal past, all before an unforgettable extended brawl sprawing the entire countryside whereupon nothing less hinges than the peace of Inisfree itself.

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Based on Jacques Offenbach's opera of the stories of romantic poet E.T.A. Hoffmann. "The Tales of Hoffmann" gave close collaborators Michael Powell and Emeric Bressburger another opportunity to eschew realism and celebrate artifice and creativity.

In "Black Narcissus", Powell had worked closely with composer Brian Easdale to create an extended sequence in which sound and image were intimately intert wined. The ballet sequences of "The Red Shoes" offered an obvious arena into which to continue this experiment, culminating in "The Tales of Hoffmann", in which the entire film is shaped by Offenbach's score, given a rousing rendition by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of the legendary Sir Thomas Beecham. The choreography, courtesy of Jane Ashton is equally inspired, resulting in a charming fantasy that's a triumph of design and a sumptuous feast for the senses.