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

Hired to work on a yacht belonging to the disabled husband of femme fatale Rita Hayworth, Welles plays an innocent man drawn into a dangerous web of intrigue and murder.

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Soon after architect Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave) marries Celia (Joan Bennett), she gradually begins to suspect that he has a past life that he's been keeping from her.

But she doesn't know the half of it, and when he leaves on a business trip, she starts to uncover the sinister secret of his purpose-designed house and its apparent surplus of rooms, the seventh of which is kept firmly locked. What lies beyond its door?

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Ranked at No. 30 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time greatest American films, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' is a genuine masterpiece that went on to win 3 Academy Awards.

Bogart gives a tremendous performance as a vicious down-and-out wage worker who stakes his meagre earnings on a gold-prospecting expedition.

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Regarded as the finest work from the first great era of Chinese filmmaking, Fei Mu's quiet, piercingly poignant study of adulterous desire and guilt-ridden despair is a remarkable rediscovery, often compared to David Lean's Brief Encounter.

After eight years of marriage to Liyan - once rich but now a shadow of his former self following a long, ruinous war - Yuwen does little except deliver his daily medication. A surprise visit from Liyan's friend Zhang re-energises the household, but also stirs up dangerously suppressed longings and resentments. Director Fei Mu's deft use of locations, dissolves and camera movements makes for a fraught, febrile mood of hesitant passion, entrapment and ennui.

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James Stewart stars with Farley Granger and John Dall in a highly-charged thriller inspired by the real-life Leopold-Loeb murder case.

Granger and Dall give riveting performances as two friends who strangle a classmate for intellectual thrills, then proceed to throw a party for the victim's family and friends - with the body stuffed inside the trunk they use for a buffet table. As the killers turn the conversation to committing the "perfect murder", their former teacher (Stewart) becomes increasingly suspicious. Before the night is over, the professor will discover how brutally his students have turned his academic theories into chilling reality in Hitchcock's spellbinding excursion into the macabre.

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Philandering concert pianist Stefan arrives home to find a letter which begins 'by the time you read this I may be dead'. So unfolds the story of Lisa, one of many woman with whom he had shared a brief encounter over the years and swiftly forgotten.

Her life has been spent loving him unfalteringly and now he would learn the truth about his past.

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'Bicycle Thieves' tells the story of Antonio (Lamberto Maggiorani), a long unemployed man who finally finds employment putting up cinema posters for which he needs a bicycle.

His wife pawns all the family linen to redeem their already pawned bicycle and for Antonio salvation has come, until it is stolen. Antonio and his son take to the streets in a desperate search to find the bicycle which is so crucial to his livelihood.

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This Powell and Pressburger classic is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

Vicky Page (Moira Shearer), a young ballerina, becomes torn between her love for composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring) and artistic devotion to her profession, which is dominated by impresario Lermontov.

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Robert J. Flaherty’s last masterpiece is a visually stunning, lyrical tribute to a land and its people. Known as the ‘Father of the Documentary,’ Flaherty’s poetic vision of nature and the human spirit fills every frame of this amazing film.

Through the eyes of a young Cajun boy living on the Bayou, Flaherty tells a story of disruption and change when an oil rig brings industry into his pristine world. Listed on the National Film Registry as a national treasure, Louisiana Story has finally been restored to its original glory.

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After the Civil War, ranch owner Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) leads a drive of ten thousand cattle out of an impoverished Texas to the richer markets of Missouri, alongside his adopted son Matthew Garth (Montgomery Clift) and a team of ranch hands.

As the conditions worsen, and Dunson's control over his cattlemen gets ever more merciless, a rebellion begins to grow within the travelling party.

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Adapted from Mary Jane Ward's autobiographical novel, Anatole Litvak's 'The Snake Pit' is a vital precursor to Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor in its concern with issues relating to mental illness.

An Oscar nominated Olivia de Havilland stars as Virginia, an outwardly normal woman whose marriage to a caring husband (Mark Stevens) unravels when her behaviour becomes erratic. On professional advice Virginia is committed to an overcrowded state hospital where she encounters the bullying antics of the resentful matrons and the threat of the fearsome snake pit, an open room where the most deranged cases are held.

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Bob Hope stars in this laugh-packed wild west spoof co-starring Jane Russell as a sexy Calamity Jane. Hope is a meek frontier dentist 'Painless' Peter Potter, who finds himself gun-slinging alongside the fearless Calamity as she fights off outlaws and Indians.

So get ready to hitch up your funny bone, because wherever Hope roams,hilarity is sure to follow!

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An ambitious but unscrupulous lawyer (John Garfield) works for the mob, and scents the prospect of a personal fortune when he helps concoct a plan that will merge all of New York City's numbers rackets into a single powerful and unbreakable operation.

But one of them is run by his own brother (Thomas Gomez), who is much happier as an independent, mainly because it allows him to apply his own ethical standards to prevent innocent people from being corrupted by his shady activities. And it's the Cain-and-Abel clash between them that gives the film its tragic dimension.

When a ship carrying 50,000 cases of whiskey runs aground, the inhabitants of a Scottish island cannot resist the temptation to replenish their depleted supplies. Only an English Home Guard captain stands in their way.

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Louis Mazzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family D'Ascoyne, but she ran away with an opera singer. Therefore, she and Louis (Dennis Price) were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and him, by becoming the next Duke (Alec Guinness) of the family.

Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieve his goal.