fmj's - Rented List

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Double bill of American classic.

Gunga Din (1939)

In 19th century India, Sgt. Archibald Cutter (Cary Grant) with his group of soldiers and a native waterbearer, must stop a secret mass revival of the murderous Thuggee cult before it can rampage across the land in this epic war adventure.
The Toast of New York (1937)
Just before the Civil War, Nick Boyd (Cary Grant) and his chums decide to con the Southern townsfolk into buying bars of soap that might have a $10 gold piece inside. However, they soon get found out and are chased out of town and escape across the border just as the war starts in this riotous comedy.

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Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein Il's immortal musical adaptation of Edna Ferber's sprawling novel receives its most faithful and enduring cinematic treatment under the elegant direction of James Whale.

A rich portrait of changing American entertainment traditions and race relations, 'Show Boat' spans five decades and three generations as it follows the fortunes of the stage struck Magnolia (Irene Dunne), an aspiring actor whose journey takes her from her family's humble floating playhouse in the 1880's South to the bright footlights of the 1930's North. The cast of show-business legends includes Helen Morgan, Hattie McDaniel, Charles Winninger, and the great Paul Robeson, whose iconic, soul-shaking rendition of "Ol' Man River" is one of the crowning glories of the American stage and screen.

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When her best friend Elizabeth (Maggie Steed) goes missing, Maud (Glenda Jackson) is convinced something terrible has happened. But her search to find Elizabeth unearths an altogether darker unsolved mystery: her sister's disappearance, long buried in the recesses of her memory.

Can Maud discover the fate of both missing women before her dementia erases the clues and the answers are lost to her forever?

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As jaded cabaret Mademoiselle Amy Jolly (Marlene Dietrich) falls for Tom Brown (Gary Cooper), a devil-may-care private in the French Foreign Legion.

In spite of the clamor of other suitors, including man-of-the-world Kennington (Adolphe Menjou), Amy arranges a rendezvous with Tom Brown when their aloof attraction turns to love. But when Tom overhears the wealthy Kennington propose to Amy, he accepts a dangerous assignment, convinced that only Kennington can give the beautiful chanteuse the life she wants. All proves fair in love and war, however, when on the eve of the engagement to Kennington, Amy steals away to find the man she truly loves.

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Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) a naive writer of pulp westerns, arrives in Vienna to meet his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) but finds that Lime has apparently been killed in a suspicious accident.

Martins, too, curious for his own good, hears contradictory stories about the circumstances of Limes' death and as witnesses disappear he finds himself chased by unknown assailants. Complicating matters are the sardonic Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), head of the British forces, and Limes' stage actress mistress, Anna (Alida Valli). Will Martin's curiosity lead him to discover things about his old friend that he'd rather not know?

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Set in the German prison camps of WW1, the film stars Jean Gabin as Marechal, and Marcel Dalio as Rosenthal.

Like the charming aristocrat Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay), these two French aviators were shot down and now spend most of their time escaping from German prison camps before inevitably being recaptured. Between escapes, they do what they can to amuse themselves, but after a tunnel they've dug is discovered, the three are sent to Wintersborn, a forbidding fortress of a prison commanded by former ace pilot Von Rauffenstein (Erich Von Stroheim). Von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with Captain de Boeldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility.

Laced with Doris Day's vibrant performances of songs from the era, this 1955 Academy Award winner (Best Motion Picture Story) is based on the tough-minded tale of Etting's life with the man who boosted her career with strong-arm tactics and smothered her in an obsessive grip she escaped at great peril.

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Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen, a former nightclub entertainer married to an American scientist, Edward Faraday (Herbert Marshall), who has been diagnosed with radium poisoning.

To earn money for her husband's European cure, Helen returns to the stage billed as "The Blonde Venus" and is an overnight success. She also finds herself powerfully attracted to a dashing politician named Nick Townsend (Cary Grant) who is captivated by her and offers financial support. Townsend moves Helen and her son into a beautiful apartment, and when Edward returns unexpectedly from Europe to find his child and unfaithful wife gone, he demands she relinquish the boy to him. As a woman torn between her husband, her lover, her career and her child, Dietrich turns in a dazzling performance that makes this one of the screen goddess's most popular films.

Based on ancient Norse mythology, a young boy must discover the origins of his extraordinary powers before hell-bent authorities condemn him for an accidental murder. A breath-taking and thrilling origins adventure story about one boy's journey to uncover who, or what, he really is.

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Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) runs a dairy farm with her husband in a remote valley of Iceland where they work long hours for a tight income due to their buyers, a money-grubbing monopoly known as the co-op.

However, when Inga's husband tragically dies she learns her debts are even greater than she thought and takes it upon herself not to repay them but to expose the co-op's greed and corruption by any means necessary.

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Arts patron Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont) intends to pay pompous opera star Lassparri (Walter Woolf King) $1,000 per performance.

Hey, maybe that's why they call it grand opera! Grand comedy, too, as Groucho, Chico and Harpo cram a ship's stateroom and more than wall-to-wall gags, one-liners, musical riffs and two hard-boiled eggs - all while skewering Lassparri's schemes and helping two young hopefuls Rosa and Riccardo (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones) get a break. To save the opera, our heroes must first destroy it. And they must also gain ocean passage as stowaways, pull the wool (if not the beards) over the eyes of City Hall, shred legal mumbo-jumbo into a Sanity Clause, pester dowager Claypool and unleash so much glee that many say this is the best Marx Brothers movie. Seeing is believing.

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When career thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets glamorous pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), their love soon takes on a professional dimension as they initiate a plot to rob beautiful perfume magnate Mariette Colet (Kay Francis).

But as Gaston gets ever closer to his intended prey, his romantic confusion, as well as the threat that his past will catch up with him, throws their plan into jeopardy.

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Unlike most "message" films which date themselves almost immediately, Lewis Milestone's low-key unpolished and deeply-felt screen adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque anti-war novel has lost little of its original impact.

Years after its release it was still being banned in countries mobilizing for war.
The plot follows a group of young German recruits in World War I through their passage from idealism to disillusionment. As the central character Paul Baumer declares, "We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to be killed - that's all". All Quiet is an anthology of now famous scenes: Ayres trapped in a shell crater with a man he has killed; the first meeting of the recruits and the veterans; infantrymen being mowed down to machine-gun visual rhythms; a moonlight swim with French farm girls; Ayres' pacifist speech to his astonished schoolmates; and the final shot of the soldier's hand reaching for a fatal butterfly.

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On an island in the Canaries there is a language spoken only through whistling... Using the whistling language, a gang of criminals are planning the perfect crime, they will communicate across the rooftops and the police will simply think the birds are singing.

Cristi is a police officer who has been sent to infiltrate their operation. But when he falls for the glorious femme fatale Gilda who suggests other plans will this cop with a history of playing both sides of the law choose justice or self-service?

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It's New Year's Eve, Nick and Nora Charles have returned to the West Coast, and the philandering hubby of Nora's cousin has gone missing. Round up the unusual suspects. The stars (plus the four-footed one!), writers and director of The Thin Man reunite for a giddy second comedy whodunit.

Myrna Loy is Nora, who by all accounts doesn't scold, doesn't nag and looks far too pretty in the morning. William Powell is Nick, retired from sleuthing but hardly retiring when it comes to a case more scrambled than the 3 A.M. eggs he whips up. And rising star James Stewart leads a tip-top supporting cast. "This is a fine way to start the New Year," Nick says as he springs Nora from lockup. Indeed, it is.