griggs's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List

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Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) gains notoriety when her father, a Nazi spy is convinced of treason against the US following World War II. At a party thrown soon after, Alice meets a handsome stranger named Devlin (Cary Grant) who reveals after a clash of wits and temperament that he is a U.S.

Intelligence Agent. Because she has fallen in love with the dashing FBI Agent, Alicia is persuaded into helping Devlin trap and catch Nazi mastermind Alex Sebastian. The more she gets involved in her work, the more at risk she becomes...

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L.A. private eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) takes on a blackmail case...and follows a trail peopled with murderers, pornographers, nightclub rogues, the spoiled rich and more.

But Raymond Chandler's legendary gumshoe solves it in hard-boiled style - and style is what 'The Big Sleep' is all about.

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Ernest Hemingway s spare, laconic short story about two professional killers and their encounter with a mysteriously unresisting victim was significantly expanded into this all-time film noir classic, which Hemingway said was the first adaptation of his work that he really admired.

As washed-up boxer turned hitman victim Ole 'Swede' Andreson, Burt Lancaster made his screen debut, and was catapulted to instant stardom, not least for the screen chemistry that he showed opposite sultry Ava Gardner, whose Kitty Collins is the very personification of the femme fatale. German émigré Robert Siodmak was one of the filmmakers who helped create film noir, and Elwood Bredell s high-contrast cinematography, all harsh lighting and long shadows, elevates the film far above a conventional crime drama. But even on that level it s a first-rate demonstration of how to maintain narrative tension, with the flashback structure withholding crucial details until almost the very end.

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Made in the aftermath of the Second World War, 'Paisa' is constructed as a series of six encounters which take place during the liberation of Italy as Allied troops advance through the country from Sicily to the northern Po Valley, via Rome and Florence.

Shot on location using a non-professional cast alongside actors, the semi-documentary aesthetic and epic sweep of Paisa is both charming and devastating in its portrayal of the final days of war and the confusion that follows in its wake.

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Finally released in 1946, ten years after it was shot, Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne was hailed as an 'unfinished masterpiece'. Since then, his masterly adaptation on a Maupassant story has grown in reputation to the point where it has become Renoir's best-loved film.

On an idyllic country picnic, a young girl leaves her family and fiancé for a while, and succumbs to an all-too-brief romance. Shot on location on the banks of two small tributaries of the Seine, Renoir's sensuous tribute to the countryside - and to the river - has seldom been surpassed. In its bitter-sweet lyricism, its tenderness and poetic feel for nature, its tolerant satire of bourgeois conventions and its poignant sense of the transience of innocence and love, 'Partie De Campagne' seems to distil the essence of all that is most personal of Renoir's art.

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"Beauty and the Beast " is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire and death that have never been equalled.

Josette Day is luminous yet feisty as Beauty, and Jean Marais gives one of his best performances as the Beast, at once brutal and gentle, rapacious and vulnerable, shamed and repelled by his own bloodlust. Henri Alekan's subtle black and white cinematography combine with Christian Berard's masterly costumes and set designs to create a magical piece of cinema, a children's fairytale refashioned into a stylised and highly sophisticated dream.

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After Wyatt Earp's (Henry Fonda) brother James is murdered by cattle rustlers, the frontier legend becomes Tombstone's marshal and sets out to avenge the younger man's death.

Torn between his badge and his fury, Earp confronts the likely killers, the notoriously lawless family of Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan), setting the stage for the famed shoot-out at the O.K. Corral. Along the way, Earp falls in love with a schoolteacher named Clementine (Cathy Downs), which pits him against the cantankerous Doc Holliday. While 'My Darling Clementine' never loses its dynamism as a hard-hitting western, it is also a tender love story.

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It's night over Europe, the night of 2nd of May 1945. A crippled Lancaster Bomber struggles home across the English Channel, all crew dead save for the young pilot desperately scanning the radio for signs of life.

His prayers are answered, June (Kim Hunter), a young radio operator, picks up his signal, and in the final moments of the young flyer's life, a special bond is formed. The next morning washed up on an English beach, Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) is alive. He finds June, and the two fall in love. Somehow he survived. It's a miracle...or is it? Peter Carter should have died that night; a heavenly escort missed him in the fog above the Channel, and now he must face the celestial court of appeal for his right to live.

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It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.

Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) is returning to a loveless marriage; Sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is a stranger to a family that's grown up without him; and young sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell) is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past?

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George Bailey (James Stewart) has spent his entire life in the small town of Bedford Falls.

Despite his yearning to see the world, George has always sacrificed his personal ambitions for the sake of his family and the local community, settling down to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mary (Donna Reed), and raise a family. However, when a huge amount of money goes missing from the savings and loans company he panics and finds himself preparing to commit suicide. However, he is shown the error of this idea by Clarence (Henry Travers), an angel who has been sent to Earth in order to earn his wings. To this end, Clarence shows George just how badly Bedford Falls and its residents would have turned out had he never been born.

David Lean directed this stylish film presentation of Charles Dickens' heart warming story of a young man befriending an escaped convict who becomes his unknown benefactor, and of the consequences for the young man as he establishes himself in the world.

James Mason is Johnny McQueen, the idealistic leader of an illegal organisation in Northern Ireland. Shot during an armed raid he is badly wounded. Stumbling through the back streets of Belfast his friends, enemies and the police begin to close in as he tries to find a place to hide...

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Henri Verdoux (Charles Chaplin) is a man who lures wealthy women by promising them love and sweet happy-ever-afters. But once the wedding bells have chimed he murders them for their fortunes. As ever, this isn't just a simple, dark comedy.

Whilst invoking the usual fits of laughter, Chaplin also encourages his audience to ask many questions, this time on the nature of evil.

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Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote Himalayan range of mountains, there to set up a mission in an abandoned harem.

This is her first position of authority and she finds both her physical and her spiritual limits being taxed as she has to maintain order and discipline in a claustrophobically hostile environment. Slowly but surely, however, the privations and hardship they must endure, the extremes of climate and the peculiar amorality of the local natives all combine to slowly corrupt the women's faith, pushing them further into jealousy, anger and madness...

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Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas star in this quintessential film noir which catapulted Mitchum into superstardom and set the standard for the genre for years to come.

When Kathie Moffett (Greer) shoots her admirer, Whit Sterling (Douglas), a big-time gambler, and absconds with $40,000 of his money, Starling hires private detective Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) to find her. Bailey leaves New York and catches up with Kathie in Mexico. Kathie denies taking the money and after falling for her charms, Bailey notifies Sterling that he could not find her.