cinemadiso's - Mid-20th-Century Best Films Vol. 2 List

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Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom) travels with his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin) to receive an honorary doctorate for his lifelong contribution to medicine.

Soon his journey becomes one of introspection, as the people he meets - from a hitch-hiking girl to a quarrelling married couple - remind him of past relationships and cause him to contemplate his own failings. Victor Sjostrom, a celebrated film director in his own right, best know for his silent work including the Hollywood masterpiece The Wind, gives a remarkably moving performance as the aged academic. Bergman's smiles and tears on a summer's day make for his most overtly symbolic work, shifting skillfully between the past and the present, dream and reality. Filled with richly observed characters and a real feeling for the joys of nature and youth, 'Wild Strawberries' is one of Bergman's warmest and finest films.

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As the Black Death continues to wipe out the population of Europe, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns from the Crusades, disillusioned and worn. When suddenly Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears before him, he asks for the chance to live, proposing a game of chess to decide his fate.

The knight takes his squire, a troupe of traveling players and a deaf and dumb girl under his protection as the game is played out. One by one Death exacts his toll, and it is up to Block to stall his opponent for as long as possible if he is to help save the lives of those he is trying to protect. All the while, the villages and towns about them fall further into ruin and religion takes a stranglehold on those desperate for a means of survival.

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Part road movie, part suspense thriller, the plot is high-tension simplicity itself. In the South American jungle, supplies of nitro-glycerine are urgently needed at a remote oil field.

The unscrupulous American oil company pays four out-of-work men (Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Folco Lulli and Peter Van Eyck) to deliver the supplies in two sets of drivers: a tension magnified thousand fold by the unforgiving heat, the lure of filthy lucre and the rough and rocky roads where the slightest jolt can result in agonising death. Which of the disparate, desperate desperadoes will survive the white-knuckle journey and claim the loot and the glory?

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Opening with a shot of an x-ray, showing the main character's stomach, 'Ikiru' tells the tale of a dedicated, downtrodden civil servant who, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, learns to change his dull, unfulfilled existence, and suddenly discovers a zest for life.

Plunging first into self-pity, then a bout of hedonistic pleasure-seeking on the frenetic streets of post-war Tokyo, Watanable (Takashi Shimura) - the film's hero - finally finds satisfaction through building a children's playground.

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Experience Orson Welles' timeless masterpiece, 'Touch of Evil', complete and uncut with restored footage for the first time ever! This exceptional film noir portrait of corruption and morally-compromised obsessions stars Welles as Hank Quinlan, a crooked police chief who frames a Mexican youth as

part of an intricate criminal plot. Charlton Heston plays an honorable Mexican narcotics investigator who clashes with the bigoted Quinlan after probing into his dark past. A memorable supporting cast including Janet Leigh as Heston's inquisitive wife, Akim Tamiroff as a seedy underworld leader, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Marlene Dietrich as an enigmatic gypsy complete this fascinating drama engulfed in haunting cinematography and a magnificently eerie score by Henry Mancini.

Italy, 1916. Oreste Jacovacci (Alberto Sordi) and Giovanni Busacca (Vittorio Gassman) are called, as all the Italian youths, to serve the army in the WWI. They both try in every way to avoid serving the army.

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A constant fixture in critics' polls, Yasujiro Ozu's most enduring masterpiece, 'Tokyo Story', is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret.

From the simple tale of an elderly husband and wife's visit to Tokyo to see their grown-up children, Ozu draws a compelling contrast between the measured dignity of age and the hurried insensitivity of a younger generation.

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A tyrant schoolteacher - Delasalle (Paul Meurisse) in a seedy boarding school has both his wife (Vera Clouzot) and his mistress (Simone Signoret) looking for a way out as he maltreats them both. They decide to work together to murder their tormentor.

The two women drown Delasalle in the bath then dump the body in a swimming pool. When the pool is drained and no body found they start to worry. When his suit is returned, cleaned, they start to panic. Is he alive? Does someone else know? A spiral of perfectly crafted tension hurtles you to an unparalleled conclusion and an ending you will never forget!

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Tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) half-jokingly muses about killing his wife with a stranger he meets on a train, unhinged playboy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), who'd prefer his father be deceased. In theory, each could murder the other's victim. Crisscross. No motive. No clues. No problem...

except: Bruno takes the idea seriously, with deadly consequences.

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On the day Lawman Will Kane (Gary Cooper) trades in his tin star for his beautiful bride (Gracy Kelly), news arrives that a killer he helped send to jail is returning on the noon train to seek revenge.

At the behest of his friends and concerned for his new bride's safety, they quickly leave town to avoid a confrontation. But Cooper release they'll never run far enough away, and heads back to town to face the killer. But when Kane tries to drum up support, one by one the townspeople he had protected turn their backs on him...until Kane stands alone to face four killers on the deserted streets of town in one of the most famous showdowns ever!

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When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually wrenched apart by vicious slave traders.

Under Kenji Mizoguchi's dazzling direction, this classic Japanese story became one of cinema's greatest masterpieces, a monumental, empathetic expression of human resilience in the face of evil.

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Welcome to a bittersweet world of episodic adventures and strange encounters. Welcome to a sordid, nocturnal world of ruthless, callous boyfriends and stray movie stars looking for seedy kicks.

Welcome to the harsh, unforgiving streets of a crumbling Rome where hope can still prevail and dreams cradle the lost. Welcome to the world of Cabiria, a feisty, loud, outspoken and somewhat naïve prostitute waiting for a miracle, and one of the most unforgettable and endearing characters of European cinema. Eventually remade in Hollywood as 'Sweet Charity', 'Nights of Cabiria' is a often humorous, poignant, unflinching and vivid portrait of one woman's picaresque existence and her perseverance through adversity. Starring Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, as the irrepressible protagonist, 'Nights of Cabiria' marked Fellini's last foray into gritty neo-realism before venturing into the surreal satire and dream logic of 'La Dolce Vita' and 'Eight and a Half'.

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In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment.

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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, who fights to turn his life around against the circumstances of extreme poverty and the sinister influence of an older boy, El Jaibo.

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Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant.

After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with II Matto/The Fool (Richard Basehart), a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master's clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano's volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences. Characteristically mingling elements of biography with metaphor and symbolism, 'La Strada' also combines an easygoing charm with a far harder edged realism in the form of domestic violence and decaying, desolate towns. Masina - Fellini's wife - is astonishing in the central role and what with the evocative Nino Rota score and Otello Martelli's ravishing photography, it's little wonder that 'La Strada' was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.