greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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A spectacular account of Attila the Hun's final attack on Christian Rome. Jack Palance is in full swagger as 'Scourge of God' Attila the Hun, who seeks to conquer the Roman Empire's 5th century power bases of Rome and Constantinople.

Centurion Marcian (Jeff Chandler) is captured by Attila on his way to Constantinople to warn the Eastern Emperor Theodosius of an attack by the barbarian tribes. Attila, impressed by his enemy's wiliness, honesty and courage, is powerless to prevent his escape. The two men meet again at the court of Theodosius (George Dolenz), where they fall under the spell of the Emperor's scheming sister Pulcheria (Ludmilla Tcherina). At a feast for the barbarian kings, Theodosius and Attila strike a deal that Constantinople will not be sacked - so Attila turns his attentions to Rome. As Attila prepares his assault, he is wracked by foreboding as he recalls a childhood vision of his death beneath the shadow of a cross. When he learns of a betrayal by his daughter Kubra (Rita Gam), it seems his fate is sealed. Douglas Sirk's first foray in Cinemascope is both lavish and savvy, with Palance's Hun a fine balance of ferocity, vulnerability and doubt.

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Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen, a former nightclub entertainer married to an American scientist, Edward Faraday (Herbert Marshall), who has been diagnosed with radium poisoning.

To earn money for her husband's European cure, Helen returns to the stage billed as "The Blonde Venus" and is an overnight success. She also finds herself powerfully attracted to a dashing politician named Nick Townsend (Cary Grant) who is captivated by her and offers financial support. Townsend moves Helen and her son into a beautiful apartment, and when Edward returns unexpectedly from Europe to find his child and unfaithful wife gone, he demands she relinquish the boy to him. As a woman torn between her husband, her lover, her career and her child, Dietrich turns in a dazzling performance that makes this one of the screen goddess's most popular films.

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Elegant French criminal, François Eugène Vidocq (George Sanders) takes his name from a tombstone and pursues a career of stealing rich women's hearts...and their jewellery! We follow the career of Vidocq, from his birth in a French jail in 1775 to his appointment as the chief of police for Paris.

An appointment that gives Vidocq the opportunity to deprive Parisian's of their money by robbing their bank! Assisted by his partner in crime Emile (Akim Tamiroff), Vidocq poses as a lieutenant to rob a showgirl of her ruby garter and steals the jewels of a marquise who invited him to stay in her home as a guest. When the marquise's granddaughter falls in love with Vidocq, the French Raffles has to decide whether to choose her and a life without blemish, the vivacious showgirl, or the beckoning bank vault!

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Tormented for years by a sense of guilt after inadvertently bombing a German orphanage during World War Two, Parson Dean Hess (Rock Hudson) leaves his pulpit and wife (Martha Hyer) to return to the Air Force as a training officer during the Korean War.

Posted near the remote village of Yungsan in South Korea, Col. Hess is tasked with instructing the inexperienced Korean pilots but his mission takes a personal twist when he stumbles upon an opportunity to help local orphans. Between his battle against an evil foe and his determination to save the children, Hess may just find the redemption he so desperately seeks.

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It's full steam ahead with Marlene Dietrich as the mesmerising Shanghai Lilly in this exotic high drama directed by Josef Von Sternberg. After being jilted by Captain Donal Harvey (Clive Brook), Lily gains a reputation as notorious adventuress.

Things heat up when the former lovers are reunited on a train en route to Shanghai. They share accommodation with a motley group of international passengers, including a dubious merchant who unsuccessfully propositions Lily. When the train is overtaken by Chinese rebels, Captain Harvey is held hostage and the merchant turns out to be the rebels' leader. So Lily strikes a tantalising bargain in order to save the man she never stopped loving.

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When Waring Hudsucker, head of hugely successful Hudsucker Industries, commits suicide, his board of directors, lead by Sidney Mussberger (Paul Newman), comes up with a brilliant plan to make a lot of money: appoint a moron to run the company.

When the stock falls low enough, Sidney and friends can buy it up for pennies on the dollar, take over the company, and restore its fortunes. They choose idealistic Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), who just started in the mail room. Norville is whacky enough to drive any company to ruin, but soon, tough reporter Amy Archer smells a rat and begins an undercover investigation of Hudsucker Industries.

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Douglas Sirk directed thriller in which several people harbour a secret that could stop an innocent woman from being hanged. Convicted murderess, Valerie Cams (Ann Blyth), is being transported to Norwich to be executed when a flash flood strands her and her guards at a convent hospital.

As Nurse Sister Mary (Claudette Colbert) grows to know Valerie, she becomes convinced of her innocence and sets out to find the real killer...

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James Cagney is C.R. "Mac" MacNamara, a top soft drinks executive shipped off to (then West) Berlin and told to keep an eye on his boss' 17-year-old Atlanta socialite daughter Scarlett (Pamela Tiffin) while she visits Germany.

Scarlett's tour seems endless, and Mac discovers she's fallen for a (then East) Berlin communist agitator and the young couple are bound for Moscow! Mac has to bust up the burgeoning romance before his boss learns the truth, all the while dealing with his wife Phyllis (Arlene Francis) and her own impatience with German living.

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Frederique is a cool, rich predatory lesbian who picks up a young student, Why, taking her back to her elegant villa in St. Tropez. They lived happily together for some time, annoyed only by the lunatic pranks of the two resident camp buffoons.

At the party, Why is attracted to a young architect who readily seduces her. Frederique is rather amused by her young campions budding romance; but she later visits Paul and allows him to seduce her as well. Slowly and initially reluctantly he enters their lives and an uncertain, unsettling menage-a-trois is formed.

It's a tale of power and passions when a Russian siren (Linda Darnell), who wants the finer things in life, sinks her hooks into a judge (George Sanders), a decadent aristocrat (Edward Everett Horton) and an estate superintendent (Hugo Haas), with surprising results.

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When career thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets glamorous pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), their love soon takes on a professional dimension as they initiate a plot to rob beautiful perfume magnate Mariette Colet (Kay Francis).

But as Gaston gets ever closer to his intended prey, his romantic confusion, as well as the threat that his past will catch up with him, throws their plan into jeopardy.

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In a film that stirred up the censors, Marlene Dietrich plays a lusty gypsy named Lydia, whose caravan makes a romantic refuge for British agent .Ray Milland. Escaping from the Nazis, Agent Ralph Denistoun (Milland) and his partner arrange to meet in Stuttgart to purloin Hitler's poison gas formula.

On the journey, Denistoun meets Lydia, whose uncanny knowledge of the Black Forest keeps him out of harm's way. Disguised as a gypsy, complete with glistening golden earrings, Denistoun arrives at the designated meeting place, which is glutted with Nazi soldiers. Only with the help of the extraordinary gypsy woman can he finish the mission that will make him a hero.

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Meet Gillian Holroyd (Kim Novak), Greenwich Village's most seductive sorceress. Powerful, glamrous, and a wee bit bored, Gillian knows that witches can't fall in love. But they can have fun...

especially if their lover belongs to another woman! So when Gillian discovers handsome new neighbor Shep Henderson (James Stewart) is the fiance of an old college nemesis (Janice Rule), she promptly puts the befuddled publisher under her spell. But while her sex may have heated up Shep's heart, it has also unthawed her own, leading to a romantic compilation that not even Pyewacket -- Gillian's mind-reading cat -- could have foreseen.

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In this Academy Award-nominated Best Picture, two widowed mothers - one white, Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and one black, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) - decide to pool their talents and go into business together, opening a waffle shop.

A surprising financial success, their business is quickly franchised into a chain of coffee shops that market their unique product line - Delilah's waffle recipe and Bea's maple sugar-candy hearts. But their success is a mixed blessing because it complicates their relationships with their own daughters. Ashamed of her mother, Peola seeks a new life by passing for white. Bea's love for her daughter is tested when she and Jessie fall for the same man.

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Shirley MacLaine is Irma, a popular Parisian prostitute who has just hired a new pimp, Nestor (Jack Lemmon), a former honest cop who was fired and framed by his boss after Nestor inadvertently had him arrested in a raid.

However, Nestor's love for Irma is making his newfound vocation impossible, so he poses as a phoney British lord who insists on being Irma's one and only "client". But when "Lord X" (Jack Lemmon) appears to have become the victim of foul play...further comedic complications ensue!