greatest-ever-made's - Rented List

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Sixteen minutes or so into this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play, 1930 audiences got what they were waiting for when Greta Garbo made her entrance and spoke on camera for the first time in her career: "Gimme a whiskey?.

" Here she made her landmark transition to the new era, playing a former prostitute whose past may ruin her chance for happiness.

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Carole Lombard co-stars with Frederic March, in one of her most delightful movie outings and her only feature in colour. The hilarious screenplay by Ben Hecht and James H. Street has her cast as Hazel Flagg, a small town girl who mistakenly believes that she is dying of radium poisoning.

March plays a newspaper reporter who, in the best tradition of yellow journalism, talks his editor into bringing her to New York for one last fling.

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A woodcutter experiences a horrific series of events - an ambush, rape and murder.

In the telling of the tale however, each of the four participants give different views of what actually happened - is any of them telling the truth? Kurosawa's masterful film plays on the subjective nature of truth while unfurling a riveting tale of violence and greed.

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Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange lead an award-winning cast of stars in a powerful, suspense-filled story where honour and duty collide with the seduction of power and hunger for revenge.

When the victorious Roman general, Titus Andronicus (Hopkins), returns home after a long and brutal war with the Goths, his first act is to sacrifice the eldest son of his prisoner, the Goth Queen Taniora (Lange). But when the corrupt Saturninus (Alan Cumming) is made emperor and surprisingly makes Tamora his queen, a new battle ensues as Tamora...and then Titus...enact a campaign of retribution.

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When man-about-town Saheiji (Frankie Sakai) finds himself unable to pay for a bill at a brothel, he is forced to remain there to work off his debt.

However he finds his wit and resourcefulness enable him to turn this situation to his advantage, as he interacts with a whole range of characters, from rivaling courtesans to political activists.

She loves him when he goes away for months. She loves him when he refuses to marry her. But when callow David Sutton (Van Heflin) chooses to marry someone else, Louise Howell's (Joan Crawford) love for him takes a darker turn. Give her a gun and she'll love him to death.

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The story centers on the O'Leary family, pioneer settlers whose eldest boys achieve notoriety and power in bustling Chicago. After Jack (Don Ameche) gets elected mayor with the help of his popular brother Dion (Tyrone Power), the two lock horns over the future of Chicago's slums.

Using his cabaret singer wife (Alice Faye) as a pawn in their dispute, Dion accelerates their intense rivalry as the whole town takes sides. It is not until a massive fire wipes out all of old Chicago that the O'Learys' lives are changed forever.

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Bearing the burden of her father’s debt and desperate to pay for the completion of her brother’s education, young Ayako (Isuzu Yamada) becomes a mistress to her employer.

Although circumstances seem to conspire against her, Ayako attempts to hide the truth from her family and fiance and preserve her reputation.

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Karl (Tim Holt) and Anna (Bonita Granville) are childhood sweethearts growing up together in pre-war Berlin. As the Nazis increase their stranglehold on power, the couple are torn apart. Karl graduates from the Hitler Youth to become an officer in the dreaded Gestapo.

Anna chooses to rebel against her masters and is given a stark choice breed and have babies for the Third Reich or face enforced sterilisation. Her American colleague Professor Nichols (Kent Smith) battles to get Anna out of Germany, but ultimately her fate - and her life - will depend on the boy she once loved...

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When college nostalgia inspires a group of middle-aged businessmen to match-make for the widow - played with measured dignity by Setsuko Hara (Tokyo Story) - of one of their friends and her daughter, they have no idea of the strife their careless interference will cause.

Late Autumn's examination of familial upheaval moves effortlessly from comedy to pathos and is amongst the finest of legendary director Yasujiro Ozu's post-war films.

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Jean Vigneron's manservant is blackmailing his boss, who is having an affair with Ines de Montalban. The servant is murdered. Everyone accuses Vigneron, who keeps quiet so as not to compromise his lover. His innocence proved, Vigneron flees with Ines.

Montalban, the cheated husband, tries to forget them, but sinks into debauchery. Despite ordeals in an unwelcoming Africa, love conquers all.

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Melsa Manton (Barbara Stanwyck) is a wealthy Manhattan debutante who is notorious for headline grabbing pranks. One night, Melsa notices a man running out of a supposedly deserted house and goes to investigate.

She discovers a body, but when the police eventually arrive the body has disappeared and Lieutenant Brent (Sam Levene) accuses Melsa of playing one of her jokes. High-flying newspaper reporter, Peter Ames (Henry Fonda), picks up the story and prints an article ridiculing the 'Park Avenue Pranksters'. But Melissa knows there is a killer on the loose and drags Ames all over Manhattan to find him...

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The letter of the title is written with a poisonous pen: the three women (portrayed by Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern) receive a note stating that one of their husbands has run off with a woman named Addie Ross - which husband in particular, however, remains unmentioned, though each

husband had their own affinity for Ross. And so amid the women's mounting anxiety commences a series of flashbacks, each telling the story of how the three individual marriages had come in their own way to be so strained at the present...

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To escape the burdens of rule, Sweden's Queen Christina rides into the countryside disguised as a boy. There she meets and secretly falls for a dashing Spanish envoy on his way to the royal court.

Imagine the envoy's delighted surprise when he and the young "nobleman" must share a bed at an overcrowded inn.

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Marlene Dietrich is Agent X-27, the Mata Hari of Austria, in this exciting tale of espionage and romance, also starring Victor McLaglen. A widow forced to turn to prostitution to support herself, Dietrich is solicited by the Austrian Secret Service to become a special agent.

With her ample charms and extraordinary beauty, she ferrets out secrets from the enemy, saving thousands of lives and altering the course of the war. But she meets her mental match in a Russian agent named Kranau (Victor McLaglen), who continually outwits her and proves to be her downfall. Dietrich pays the ultimate price for falling in love with the debonair spy in this Josef von Sternberg hit.