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

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When "The Jazz Singer" was released in theatres, the future of Hollywood changed. For the first time in a feature film, an actor spoke on screen, stunning audiences and leaving the silent era behind.

Al Jolson was the history-making actor, playing the son of a Jewish cantor who must defy his rabbi father in order to pursue his dream of being in show business.

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Marking a new chapter in the history of one of the world's greatest films, the release of Abel Gance's "Napoleon" is the culmination of a project spanning 50 years.

Digitally restored by the BFI National Archive and Academy Award-winning film historian Kevin Brownlow, this cinematic triumph is available to experience on video for the very first time. Originally conceived by Gance as the first of six films about Napoleon, this five-and-a-half-hour epic features full-scale historical recreations of episodes from his personal and political life, that see Bonaparte overcome fierce rivals and political machinations to seal his imperial destiny. Utilising a number of groundbreaking cinematic techniques, 'Napoleon' is accompanied by Carl Davis' monumental score, and offers one of the most thrilling experiences in the entire the history of film.

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The Hickorys are a respected family in Hickoryville. Sheriff Jim (Walter James) and his big, strong sons Leo (Leo Willis) and Olin (Olin Francis) have little respect for the youngest son, Harold (Harold Lloyd), who does not have their muscles.

When Jim, Leo and Olin go to an important town meeting to discuss a dam, Harold is left behind. He puts on his father's gun and badge and is mistaken for the sheriff by "Flash" Farrell (Eddie Boland), who runs a travelling medicine show for Mary (Jobyna Ralston) after the death of her father. Farrell talks Harold into signing a permit to let him, strongman Sandoni (Constantine Romanoff) and dancer Mary perform. Later, Mary tries to avoid the unwanted attentions of Sandoni and encounters Harold. They are attracted to each other...

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Young John Sims (James Murray) weathers the death of his father and travels to New York City in search of success. Instead, he becomes a low-level worker in an enormous office of a nameless corporation.

After he meets a beautiful young woman (Eleanor Boardman), things seem to be looking up, but before long the newlyweds are sullen and bickering, and the arrival of their children leaves John feeling trapped in a dead-end existence. Then tragedy strikes, causing him to reassess his life.

Un Chien Andalou is Bunuel's first film and collaboration with Salvador Dali, a surreal exploration of desire and passion. L'Age D'or is another collaboration with Dali, a surrealist dissection of civilised values.

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One of the most emotional film experiences of any era, Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' is a miracle of the cinema, an enigmatic and profoundly moving work that merges the worlds of the viewer and of saintly loan herself into one shared experience of hushed delirium.

Drever's film charts the final days of Joan of Arc as she undergoes the debasement that accompanies her trial for charges of heresy - through her imprisonment and execution at the stake.

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A city-educated student returns to his home-town and his cantankerous father's Mississippi river boat, where he's an embarrassment to dad. But they bond together to ward off the owner of a rival boat, whose daughter Keaton falls for.

When his father is arrested, Willie decides to get him out of Jail.

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It is 1918. An elderly Mongol lies gravely ill in his yurt while a lama says prayers in an attempt to aid his recovery. His son prepares to go the market in his place to sell his father's season's trapping, including a very valuable silver fox pelt.

On leaving, the avaricious lama tries to take the valuable skin and, in the resulting scuffle, drops a talisman. This is found by the superstitious mother who gives it to her son as a lucky charm as he leaves to trade the furs. The western fur traders at the market are protected by the British troops who are occupying the area to protect foreign interests during the disturbances caused by the post-revolutionary civil war. Taking advantage of the inhabitants' near-poverty, the capitalist fur trader offers only a pittance for the silver fox and a brawl ensues which leads to the son having to escape across llie steppe to the mountains where he encounters and joins the partisans. Two years later he is caught and forced to surrender his belongings. On recognising the word 'Moscow' he is summarily sentenced to be shot. While being taken to his death, a missionary translates the characters found on the silk in which the talisman is wrapped; this confirms the young man as a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. Although severely wounded he is still alive after the 'execution' which had been carried out reluctantly. The general decides that, as Genghis Khan is still held in high esteem in the area, his 'descendant' should be saved and made the puppet ruler. This is a political blunder of major proportions as the local chiefs not only offer him their veneration but also the services of their fighting men. With his new position of power he transforms into a revolutionary and, with the aid of these forces, clears the landscape of both the exploiters and occupiers in a breathtaking climax.

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Alice White (Anny Ondra) is frustrated with her police officer boyfriend Frank (John Longden) as he neglects her in favour of his work. To spite him, she arranges to meet another man. When he tries to rape her, she ends up killing him in defence.

The case gets assigned to Frank who realises that Alice is the murderer, but it seems someone else knows too as Alice begins to receive threats of blackmail from an anonymous source.

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Voted the greatest documentary of all time in the 2014 'Sight and Sound' poll, Vertov's groundbreaking 'Man with a Movie Camera' uses an array of dazzling cinematic techniques to record the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going.

Presented with Michael Nyman's celebrated score, this classic film is accompanied by an exciting selection of new extras, including Vertov's 'Three Songs of Lenin' and two of his radical mid-1920s documentary films, both of which feature equally radical new soundtracks by electronic experimentalists Mordant Music.

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Adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, 'Pandora's Box' tells the story of sex worker Lulu (Louise Brooks), a free spirit whose open sexuality breeds chaos in its wake. When Lulu's latest lover, the newspaper editor Dr.

Ludwig Schdn (Fritz Kortner), announces plans to leave her to marry a more respectable woman, Lulu is devastated. Cast in a musical revue written by Schon's son, Aiwa (Francis Lederer), Lulu seduces Schon once more - only to have their tryst exposed, and Schon's plans for a more socially acceptable marriage shattered. Left with no choice but to marry Lulu, Schon meets with tragedy on their wedding night. Lulu stands trial for the incident, facing years of imprisonment. With the aid of her former pimp (Carl Goetz), an infatuated lesbian countess (Alice Roberts) and Aiwa, she flees toward a fate of increasing squalor and peril, finally crossing paths one Christmas Eve with Jack the Ripper.

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Emil Jennings, the quintessential German expressionist actor, stars as Professor Immanuel Rath, the sexually-repressed instructor of a boys prep school.

After learning of the pupils' infatuation with French postcards depicting a local nightclub songstress, he decides to personally investigate the source of such indecency. But as soon as he enters the shadowy Blue Angel nightclub and steals one glimpse of the smoldering Lola-Lola (Marlene Dietrich), commanding the stage in a top hot, stockings and bare thighs, Rath's self-righteous piety is crushed. He finds himself fatefully seduced by the throaty voice of the vulgar siren, singing, "Falling in Love Again". Consumed by desire and tormented by his rigid propriety, Professor Rath allows himself to be dragged down a path of personal degradation. Lola's unrestrained sexuality was a revelation to turn-of-the-decade moviegoers, thrusting Dietrich to the forefront of the sultry international leading ladies, such as Greta Garbo, who were challenging the limits of screen sexuality.

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Dovzhenko's landmark 'film poem' style brings to life the collective experience of life for the Ukranian workers, examining natural cycles through his epic montage. He explores life, death, violence, sex and other issues as they relate to the collective farms.

An idealistic vision of the possibilities of communism made just before Stalinism set in and the Kulack class was liquidated, 'Earth' was viewed negatively by many soviets because of its portrayal of death and other dark issues that come with revolution.

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"Little Caesar" is the tale of pugnacious Caesar Enrico Bandello (Edward G. Robinson), a hoodlum with a Chicago-sized chip on his shoulder, few attachments, fewer friends and no sense of underworld diplomacy.

And Robinson - a genteel art collector who disdained guns (in the movie, his eyelids were taped to keep them from blinking when he fired a pistol) - was forever associated with the screen's archetypal gangster.

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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.