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

When a travelling kabuki troupe brings their show to a seaside port, Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura), an ageing actor, is reunited with his former lover, sake bar owner Oyoshi (Haruki Sugimura), and his illegitimate son Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), to the distress of his current mistress Sumiko (Machiko Kyo).

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A tight-knit family moves from Italy's rural south to metropolitan Milan. The shock of the new is violent and immediate. A mother meddles. A whore beguiles. Brother faces brother. Blood-ties come undone.

We pity beatific Rocco (played by the immortal Alain Delon in a role specially written for him) and Nadia the harlot (Annie Girardot, capricious and scintillating) - the modern condition has shattered their lives.

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Perhaps his most famous film, La Dolce Vita slices into the decadent amoral core of Roman society with Fellini's trademark attention to detail and spectacular photography.

Marcello Mastroianni plays a gossip columnist (the term 'paparazzi' derives from the in a film) who aspires to be a more serious writer but knows he never will be, because like society, he is fascinated by the decadent hedonist pursuits which are seemingly everywhere. The Vatican was appalled by the film, but the public adored it, relishing the images Fellini fed them, most notably the now infamous scene of Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain.

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A key film of the British New Wave, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was a great box-office success-audiences were thrilled by its anti-establishment energy, the gritty realism of its setting, and most of all by a working-class hero of a fresh and outspoken kind.

Based on Alan Silletoe's largely autobiographical novel, the film is set in the grim industrial streets and factories of Nottingham, where Arthur Seaton spends his days at a factory bench, his Saturday nights with Brenda (Rachel Roberts), wife of a fellow factory worker. Played by Albert Finney with an irresistible animal vitality, Arthur is anti-authority and unashamedly amoral. With powerful central performances, crackling dialogue by Sillitoe and a superb jazz score by Johnny Dankwroth, the film stands as a vibrant modern classic.

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Having left behind his life as a gifted concert pianist, Charlie (Charles Aznavour) sees out his downcast days tinkling the ivories in a dingy Parisian jazz bar. One day his brother Chico (Albert Rémy) arrives, searching for sanctuary from a gang of crooks that he's double-crossed.

Charlie offers to help but soon finds his murky past catching up with him and before long is embroiled in an affair that he can no longer control.

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The plot concerns a yachting trip by a small group of jaded socialites, including Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), an aging architect who sold out for easy money long ago, his mistress Anna (Lea Massari), and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who doesn't fit in with the wealthy jet-setters' dissolute

ethics. When Anna disappears during a tour of a volcanic island, Claudia initially blames Sandro's emotionally barren behavior toward her. As they search the island, however, Claudia and Sandro grow closer and - when it is apparent that Anna is gone forever - become lovers. Unfortunately, Sandro cannot find anything decent inside himself and betrays Claudia with a local prostitute. Caught in the act, Sandro has a heartrending breakdown on a desolate beach, but Claudia silently forgives him.

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Miller is a middle-aged handyman on a small island off the Carolina coast. His neighbours are a 13-year-old girl, Evalyn (Key Meersman) and her grandfather.

After her grandfather dies, Miller looks after the young girl, and they are the only two on the island until the arrival of Traver, a black man fleeing a lynch mob that suspects him of rape. Miller wants to turn him in and remove him from the tryst, but Evalyn likes Traver and protects him. A preacher arrives from the mainland to rescue Evalyn from her situation, and Traver's presence is discovered. Miller is now forced to decide whether to turn him over to the mob and lose standing in the girl's eyes.

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Arguably Ghatak's finniest work, The Cloud-Capped Star is dark melodrama set in late Fifties Calcutta about a refugee family and the struggle of Nita, the oldest daughter, to keep them afloat and together.

It is a bitter critique of the family as institution and also of the harsh social and economic conditions arising from Partition - the trauma that defined Ghatak as an artist. With its sparse script, audacious expressionist soundtrack and a startling cinematic elegance, The Cloud-Capped Start is undoubtedly a modern masterpiece – infinitely compassionate and human while remaining resolutely unsentimental.

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The film is a domestic horror thriller telling of a family's destruction by the introduction of a sexually predatory femme fatale into the household. A composer, Dong-sik Kim has just moved into a two-story house with his wife and two children.

When his pregnant wife becomes exhausted from working at a sewing machine to support the family, the composer hires a housemaid, Myung-sook to help with the work around the house. The new housemaid behaves strangely, catching rats with her hands, spying on the composer, seducing him and eventually becoming pregnant by him. The composer's wife convinces the housemaid to induce a miscarriage by falling down a flight of stairs. After this incident, the housemaid's behaviour becomes increasingly more erratic. She tricks the composer's son Chang-soon into believing that he has ingested poisoned water and in a panic he falls to his death down a flight of stairs. She threatens to kill the composer's newborn son, and actually does kill the composer's crippled daughter Ae-soon by force-feeding her poisoned rice. Myung-sook persuades the composer to commit suicide with her by swallowing rat poison. The film ends with the composer reading the story from a newspaper with his wife. The narrative of the film has apparently been told by the composer, who then all smiles warns the film audience that this is just the sort of thing could happen to anyone.

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Alfred Hitchcock's landmark masterpiece of the macabre stars Anthony Perkins as the troubled Norman Bates, whose old dark house and adjoining motel are not the place to spend a quiet evening.

No one knows that better than Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the ill-fated traveller whose journey ends in the notorious "shower scene". First a private detective, then Marion's sister (Vera Miles) searches for her, the horror and the suspense mount to a terrifying climax where the mysterious killer is finally revealed.

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A beautiful witch is sentenced to death for her evil deeds by her own brother, condemned to die by having a metal mask hammered onto her face before being burnt at the stake. As she passes, she puts a terrible curse on all her future descendants as the spikes of the death mask pierce her flesh...

But when two unwitting travellers discover her final resting place and worse, drip blood on her resting corpse, they unleash her once again in all her stunningly beautiful, terrifying glory....

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Mark (Carl Boehm), a focus puller at the local film studio, supplements his wages by taking glamour photographs in a seedy studio above a newsagent.

By night he is a sadistic killer, stalking his victims with his camera forever in his hand trying to capture the look of genuine, unadulterated fear - an obsession that stems from his disturbing and terrifying childhood at the hands of his scientist father. Mark slowly becomes enamoured with Helen (Anna Massey), who lives with her blind mother (Maxine Audley) in the flat downstairs, but how long before he turns the deadly gaze of his camera towards her?

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C.C. "Bud" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) knows the way to success in business...it's through the door of his apartment! By providing a perfect hideaway for philandering bosses, the ambitious young employee reaps a series of underserved promotions. But when Bud lends the key to big boss J.D.

Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), he not only advances his career, but his own love life as well. For Sheldrake's mistress is the lovely Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), elevator girl and angel of Bud's dreams. Convinced that he is the only man for Fran, Bud must make the most important executive decision of his career: lose the girl... or his job.

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This presentation of the powerful film classic features an additional five minutes of footage cut from the film's original release, plus the original overture and extended soundtrack.

Director Stanley Kubrick tells the tale of Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), the bold gladiator slave and Varinia (Jean Simmons), the woman who believed in his cause. Challenged by the power-hungry General Crassus (Laurence Olivier), Spartacus is forced to face his convictions and the power of the Roman Empire at its glorious height.

Deanie (Natalie Wood) is a teenager eager to do what's right in her 1920s Kansas town. But the emotions she shares with boyfriend Bud (Warren Beatty) are too strong. Soon the conflict between respectable behavior and human desire will push Bud to physical collapse. And Deanie to madness.