frankie's - 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List
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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. - Director:
- Max Ophüls
- Cast:
- Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians
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Secret Beyond the Door (1947)Secret Beyond the Door...
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? - Director:
- Fritz Lang
- Cast:
- Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere
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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. - Director:
- Abraham Polonsky
- Cast:
- John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor
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Spring in a Small Town (1948)Xiao cheng zhi chun
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. - Director:
- Mu Fei
- Cast:
- Chaoming Cui, Wei Li, Yu Shi
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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. - Director:
- Howard Hawks
- Cast:
- John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru
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Rope (1948)Alfred Hitchcock's Rope
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. - Director:
- Alfred Hitchcock
- Cast:
- James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger
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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. - Director:
- Anatole Litvak
- Cast:
- Olivia De Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn
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The Lady from Shanghai (1947)Take This Woman / Black Irish
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.- Director:
- Orson Welles
- Cast:
- Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane
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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! - Director:
- Norman Z. McLeod
- Cast:
- Bob Hope, Jane Russell, Robert Armstrong
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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. - Director:
- Michael Powell
- Cast:
- Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer
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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. - Director:
- John Huston
- Cast:
- Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt
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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. - Director:
- Robert J. Flaherty
- Cast:
- Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, E. Bienvenu
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When shy, emotionally fragile Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), the daughter of a wealthy New York doctor, begins to receive calls from the handsome spendthrift Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), she becomes possessed by the promise of romance. Are his smoldering professions of love sincere, as she believes they are? Or is Catherines calculating father (Ralph Richardson) correct in judging Morris a venal fortune seeker? - Director:
- William Wyler
- Cast:
- Olivia De Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson
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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. - Director:
- Robert Hamer
- Cast:
- Dennis Price, Alec Guinness, Valerie Hobson
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Gun Crazy (1949)Deadly Is the Female
When gun fancier Bart Tare sees Annie Laurie Starr's sideshow sharpshooting act, he's a dead-bang goner. He and she go together, as Bart ultimately says, 'like guns and ammunition'. The two become bank robbers on the run, eluding roadblocks and roaring into movie history as one of the benchmark film-noir works. Joseph H. Lewis directs this ferocious thriller, selected for the National Film Registry and often cited as a forerunner to 'Bonnie and Clyde'. Peggy Cummins and John Dall star, meeting in a sexually charged carny shooting contest and soon driven by impulses of violence and arousal they don't fully understand. They're young, foolish, doomed - and point blank in Gun Crazy's unforgiving sights. - Director:
- Joseph H. Lewis
- Cast:
- John Dall, Peggy Cummins, Berry Kroeger
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