greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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An ex-con, a corrupt cop, a reformed alcoholic, a wrestler, a sharpshooter and a pair of inside men: these seven men intent on executing the perfect robbery and taking a racetrack for two million dollars. But this is the world of film noir, a tough, sour place where nothing quite goes as planned...

For his third feature Stanley Kubrick adapted Lionel White's 'Clean Break' with a little help from hard-boiled specialist Jim Thompson (The Killer Inside Me), and in doing so created a heist movie classic, one to rank alongside John Huston's 'The Asphalt Jungle' and Quentin Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs'. The robbery itself is one of cinema's great set-pieces, as taut a piece of filmmaking as you'll ever find, expertly controlled by Kubrick, who called 'The Killing' his first mature work . Starring Sterling Hayden, perennial fall guy Elisha Cook Jr. and Marie Windsor as his duplicitous wife, 'The Killing' is quintessential film noir, still as brutal, thrilling and audacious as it was almost six decades ago.

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Proud, eccentric, and antisocial, Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) has always kept to himself.

But after a woman turns up dead in the Paris suburb where he lives, he feels drawn to a pretty young newcomer to town (Viviane Romance), discovers that his neighbors are only too ready to suspect the worst of him, and is framed for the murder. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon, Julien Duvivier's first film after his return to France from Hollywood finds the acclaimed poetic realist applying his consummate craft to darker, moodier ends. Propelled by its two deeply nuanced lead performances, the tensely noirish 'Panique' exposes the dangers of the knives-out mob mentality, delivering as well a pointed allegory for the behavior of Duvivier's countrymen during the war.

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A gallery of high-living lowlifes will stop at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon. Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) wants to find out why - and who'll take the fall for his partner's murder.

An all-star cast (including Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr.) joins Bogart in this cracking mystery masterwork written for the screen (from Dashiell Hammett's novel) and directed by John Huston.

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Donald Glourie (Robert Donat) shares his run-down home with the eighteenth-century ghost of Murdoch Glourie (also Robert Donat), who has been condemned to haunt the castle until he avenges an ancient insult by the rival clan MacLaggan.

In order to clear his debts, Donald sells the castle to an American businessman, Mr. Martin (Eugene Pallette), who then has the castle - complete with ghost - transported to Florida where its rebuilt. In the meantime, Martin's daughter Peggy (Jean Parker), is falling in love with both Donald and Murdoch Glourie, thinking them one and the same...

An all-star cast and jazzy score highlight this charming comedy, a deft satire of classic caper films like Rififi. Big Deal On Madonna Street hilariously details the plight of a sad-sack group of bumbling thieves and their desperate attempts to pull off the perfect heist.

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Bette Davis delivers a powerhouse performance as Charlotte Hollis, a reclusive spinster still mourning the savage murder of the man she loved some 37 years ago.

When the state wants her property in order to construct a new highway, to help her resist Charlotte turns to her worldly cousin, Miriam (Olivia de Havilland), and an old friend, Drew (Joseph Cotten). That's when the scares and shocks start in this expertly paced chiller.

An aspiring poet on the verge of what he takes for a big break experiences a chance encounter with a beautiful woman in the street — and falls headlong into love and fantasy.

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Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), an aged former playboy, has died and gone to hell. But the ruler of the realm of darkness, His Excellency, isn't convinced Van Cleve's come to the right place.

Henry proceeds to recount his life story, from his first real stirrings of passion with a French governess, to the wooing and winning of his beautiful wife, Martha (Gene Tierney). Yet, though deeply in love, he found it impossible to remain completely faithful, and is convinced his punishment will be an eternity of damnation. As his story unfolds, and a lifetime of love fills the screen, it's up to His Excellency to pass final judgement on Henry. Set in a beautifully rendered turn-of-the-century world of high society, the timeless theme of love vs. lust is handled with wit, taste and sophistication.

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Overworked true crime magazine editor George Stroud (Ray Milland) has been planning a vacation for months.

However, when his boss, the tyrannical media tycoon Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton), insists he skips his hols, Stroud resigns in disgust before embarking on an impromptu drunken night out with his boss's mistress, Pauline York (Rita Johnson). When Janoth kills Pauline in a fit of rage, Stroud finds himself to have been the wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time: his staff have been tasked with finding a suspect with an all too familiar description...Stroud's very own!

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Deborah Kerr (in the performance of her career) plays the emotionally repressed vicar's daughter who takes up a job as a governess to two seemingly angelic orphans.

Gradually coming to believe that the children are possessed by the perverse spirits of their former governess and her sadistic lover, she begins to see manifestations of the ghosts prowling the huge gothic mansion of Bly House. Director Jack Clayton sustains a superbly haunting atmosphere throughout the film, and like James' original work, cleverly retains the ambiguity of wether the ghosts are real or the products of the governess's fevered imagination. Aided by Freddie Francis's exquisitely inventive and atmospheric CinemaScope photography, we, like the governess, are never quite sure what unspoken horrors are lurking beyond the edge of the frame and are kept guessing until the film's tragic conclusion.

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This rare Hitchcock costume drama unfolds in 1831 Sydney, Australia and concerns Irish noblewoman Lady Henrietta Flusky (Ingrid Bergman) and her working-class husband Sam (Joseph Cotten) whom are escaping a secret and tragic past.

Sam has become a man of wealth but is not accepted socially and Lady Henrietta is a raging alcoholic and verging on madness, enter Hon. Charles Adare (Michael Wilding) whom she had known in Ireland an a passionate love triangle ensues as their tragic past is revealed. 'Under Capricorn' had a troubled production due to Bergman's infamous love affair with the Italian director Robert Rossellini which resulted in her exile from Hollywood, but nevertheless it is an underrated masterpiece that is surely on of the best 'costume' films of the 1940's.

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This triumphant BAFTA and Academy Award winning production of Shakespeare's "Henry V" is a classic story of conflict, courage, honour and heroism.

Kenneth Branagh is electrifying as Henry V, a king whose inspired leadership and full-blooded courage rouses his bewildered and bedraggled men to arms against a French army five times greater than their own. Henry V is an epic explosion of bloody battles and powerful performances from the cream of British acting talent, including Brian Blessed, Judi Dench, Ian Holm, Derek Jacobi, Paul Scofield and Emma Thompson.

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Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons star in this compelling thriller set in the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian London. As he buries his wife in a rain-soaked London churchyard, Stephen Lowry thinks he has committed the perfect murder. He's wrong.

His quick-witted young maid Lily knows that he secretly poisoned his wife - and she has the proof. Now, as the price of her silence, she wants her mistresses' jewels, her mistresses' fine dresses and - most of all - her master himself. Can Stephen give Lily the love she craves? Can she trust a man who has already murdered once? As Stephen begins to court another woman, the thick London fog suddenly echoes to the cries of 'murder!' Featuring real life husband and wife Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons at the height of their international stardom, 'Footsteps in the Fog' is a first rate murder thriller with shocking twists that will keep you guessing until the very last moments.

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Luis Bunuel's visceral depiction of life in Mexico's slums stunned audiences at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951, winning Best Director and relaunching the filmmaker's career after a twenty-year hiatus.

The film tells the story of an unloved teenage boy, Pedro (Alfonso Mejía), who fights to turn his life around against the circumstances of extreme poverty and the sinister influence of an older boy, El Jaibo (Roberto Cobo).

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Set in the glamour of 1950's post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the centre of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of

Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock's life until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by the scariest curse of all...love. And so begins a Gothic Romance of twists, turns and power struggles of "pure, delicious pleasure" that is "devilishly funny and luxuriantly sensuous".