greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

In Let's Make Love, an uproarious comedy of backstage conniving and romantic intrigue, Marilyn is marvellous as a show-stopping star who teaches an international tycoon that money can't buy you love. Featuring cameos by movie legends Milton Berle, Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly.

Jean Arthur stars as Alice Sycamore, the stable family member of an offbeat clan of free spirits who fall for Tony Kirby (James Stewart), the down-to-earth son of a snooty, wealthy family. Amidst a backdrop of confusion, the two very different families rediscover the simple joys of life.

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Madadayo follows the last two decades in the life of Hyakken Uchida (Tetsuo Matsumura), a writer and teacher who retires in the war years of the early 1940's.

Beginning in the 1943 (the year Kurosawa made his first feature), the beloved teacher is joined by his students and colleagues each yeah for a birthday celebration, toasting "Mahda-kai? (Are you ready?)" to which his answer is always "Madadayo!" which means "Not yet!", acknowledging that death may be near but life goes on - it is both a triumphant denial of death and a gentle plea for more time.

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Marilyn Monroe makes a cameo appearance in a charming spoof on marriage! A still gorgeous grandmother (Claudette Colbert) divorces her husband Hugh (Macdonald Carey) because he's a compulsive gambler.

Their daughter (Barbara Bates) does all she can to get them back together, but problems arise when Victor (Zachary Scott), Mum's high school sweetheart-turned-millionaire, suddenly arrives in town. Even though a breathtaking beauty (Marilyn Monroe) is hot on his trail, Vic only has eyes for "Grandma" - driving ex-husband Hugh to the brink of comic insanity as he wages a wild and unforgettable battle to win his wife back.

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Jacques d'Athys (René Cresté), a French adventurer, returns to his home in Nice after an expedition to Indochina where he has picked up a Eurasian fiancée and a book that, unbeknownst to him, contains a coded message revealing the whereabouts of both secret treasures and sensitive government

intelligence. This makes him the target of foreign spies, including a Marquise of mysterious Latin origin, a Hindu hypnotist and an evil German doctor, who will stop at nothing to obtain the book

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Claudette Colbert and John Wayne star in this charming romantic comedy from celebrated Director Mervyn LeRoy. Kit (Claudette Colbert) is a bestselling author travelling by train to Hollywood, where they plan to turn her latest book into a blockbuster.

On the train, she meets Rusty Thomas (John Wayne), a Marine pilot who just happens to hate her book - and tells her so - not realising who she is! Kit, however, is convinced that Rusty is just the man to star in the Hollywood adaptation - and won't take no for an answer! She pursues him across the country by rail and by road, all the while keeping her identity secret. But the path to Hollywood - or true love - never runs smooth and the couple must endure seemingly endless complications as they travel together...

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The fraudulent banker receives a Favraux (Louis Leubas) with Judex (René Cresté), signed request to replace his victims the damage, otherwise he would not survive the day. Favraux ignored the message and is then poisoned promptly on the evening held engagement party for his daughter.

This is a message from Judex and donates after she learned of her father's secretary Vallières that the banker was a criminal, the whole legacy of welfare. It later turns out that Favraux is not really dead, Judex has him rather dazed and kidnapped to make him pay in the cellars of Château rouge in life-long imprisonment for his crimes. When the criminals pair Diana Monti (Musidora) and Robert Morales (Jean Devalde) learn this, they try to get Favraux in their hands to reclaim the worn out by his daughter assets. The following are involved kidnapping and blackmail, in the course of Judex multiple Jacqueline (Yvette Andréyor) Favraux must save, where he falls in love and comes with its mission as an avenger in conflict.

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From director Vincent Sherman (Affair in Trinidad) comes the classic drama Harriet Craig, starring Joan Crawford (Strait-Jacket) and Wendell Corey (Rear Window).

Manipulative and possessive Harriet (Crawford) controls every aspect of the lives of her husband Walter (Corey) and cousin Clare (K T Stevens, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice), and schemes to destroy their chances of happiness. However, when they become aware of her treachery, her world begins to fall apart...Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife by George Kelly (The Show-Off), 'Harriet Craig' boasts one of Joan Crawford's most devastating performances.

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The Most Beautiful (1944)
(Ichiban Utsukushiku)
An artful propaganda film that provides a fascinating portrait of female volunteers in the Japanese war effort.

They Who Step On The Tiger's Tail (1945)
(Tora no o ofumu otofeotachi)

A lord and his bodyguard disguise themselves as monks in this classic tale of deception.

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Assistant District Attorney, Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) loves his wife Amanda (Katharine Hepburn), but doesn't care much for his opposing counsel in a sensational attempted-murder trial - an opponent who happens to be Amanda.

Spencer Tracey and Katharine Hepburn were never more evenly matched than when they brought their sharpened wits and prickly affection to this George Cukor-directed comedy written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. Judy Holliday co-stars as the woman whose shooting of her philandering spouse becomes a feminist cause for Amanda. Hepburn generously saw Holliday's' work as a screen test for casting the film of Holliday's stage vehicle Born Yesterday. Hepburn's ploy worked. So does this fine, funny movie.

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A masterful mix of film noir and police thriller set on the sweltering mean streets of occupied Tokyo.

When rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) has his pistol stolen from his pocket while on a bus, his frantic attempts to track down the thief lead him to an illegal weapons market in the Tokyo Underworld. But the gun has already passed from the pickpocket to a young gangster, and Murakami's gun is identified as the weapon in the shooting of a woman. Murakami, overwhelmed with remorse, turns for help to his older and more experienced senior, Sato (a superb performance by Takashi Shimura). The race is on to find the shooter before he can strike again...

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Based on the Ed McBain novel, 'High and Low' is a gripping police thriller starring Toshiro Mifune.

Wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising choice when a ruthless kidnapper, aiming to snatch his young son, takes the chauffeur's boy by mistake - but still demands the ransom, leaving Gondo facing ruin if he pays up. An anatomy of the inequalities in modern Japanese society, High and Low is a complex film noir, where the intense police hunt for the kidnapper is accompanied by penetrating insight into the kidnappers state of mind. Kurosawa's virtuoso direction provides no easy answers, and in short, intense sequences, he portrays the businessman, the police and the criminal as equally brutal but nonetheless human.

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A legendary early masterpiece of French cinema, 'Les Vampires' follows the exploits of a nefarious band of master criminals led by the seductive femme fatale Irma Vep, alluringly played by Musidora.

Holding Paris in the grip of terror, the underworld gang are pursued across the city by heroic journalist Philippe Guerande and his sidekick Mazamatte. Reflecting the mood of fear and anxiety in World War I era France, this meticulously restored ten-part silent serial from film pioneer Louis Feuillade - creator the acclaimed Fantomas serials - is a hugely influential and engrossing crime drama from cinema's golden age.

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Joe Wilson, a wrongly jailed man thought to have died in a blaze started by a bloodthirsty lynch mob, is somehow alive. And dead to all he ever stood for and perhaps ever will be. Because Joe aims to ensure his would-be executioners meet the fate Joe miraculously escaped.

Spencer Tracy is Joe, Sylvia Sidney is his bride-to-be and "Fury" lives up to its volatile name with its searing indictment of mob justice and lynching.

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Rex Black (Laurence Harvey) has successfully faked his death in a plane crash and escaped to sunny Málaga under a new identity, waiting for his wife Stella (Lee Remick) to arrive with £50,000 of life insurance money.

It's the start of a blissful, trouble-free new life for the couple - until Stephen (Alan Bates), the insurance agent in charge of investigating Rex's death, suddenly arrives in town. Is he just holidaying in Spain, as he claims, or is he on assignment to foil Rex's scheme?