griggs's - Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time 2022 List

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Set amidst the glittering theatre world of 19th century Paris, the story revoles around the beautiful and free-spirted courtesan, Garanace, and the four men who compete for her affections; a mime-artist, an actor, an aristocrat and a criminal.

As the melodrama unfolds, we are treated to one of cinema's greatest love stories, a captivating tale of passion, deception and murder.

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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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By any standard, director Sam Peckinpah's film The Wild Bunch, a powerful tale of hangdog desperadoes bound by a code of honour, rates as one of the all-time greatest Westerns, perhaps one of the greatest of all films.

This original Director's Cut restores it to a complete, pristine condition unseen since its July 1969 theatrical debut. The image is letterboxed, the color renewed, the stereo soundtrack remixed and reintegrated - all to blood-and-thunder effect. Watch William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan and more great stars saddle up for the roles of a lifetime.
This video also features the home video debut of The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage, the Academy Award nominated 1996 documentary by Paul Seydor and Nick Redman. It includes long-unseen footage of the on-set shooting, and reminiscences by principals connected with the film.

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Mecha (Graciela Borges), the family matriarch, lives in a dilapidated country retreat near La Cienaga (the Swamp) with her husband Gregorio (Martin Adjemian) and her teenage children. The humidity is stifling and the only leisure the adults can think of is to drink - constantly.

One drinking session by the pool leads to a trip to the hospital, leaving the children - with no adult supervision - to their own devices; sunbathing, hunting, dancing, driving illegally and diving in the stagnant pool. The only adults who seem to care at all are the Indian servants who are constantly being harassed by Mecha for allegedly stealing towels. What unfolds is a subtle and sly look at intimacies of a midldle class family in crisis, with Mattel's microscope artfully observing the infidelities, alliances, prejudices and secret infatuations.

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'Gertrud' is the story of a woman's search for a romantic ideal of total and perfect love. A once famous singer now in her early forties, Gertrud makes the decision to leave her lawyer husband for her lover, a young composer.

Discovering the next day that her lover has betrayed her, and is unable to give her his total love, Gertrud rejects both husband and lover, choosing a life of solitude and study over the compromise of love that is merely half-measure.

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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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Domingos (Domingos de Oliveira) is a member of an African liberation movement, arrested by the Portuguese secret police, after bloody events in Angola.

He does not betray his companions, but is beaten to death in prison, and not knowing he is dead, his wife goes from a prison station to another, trying in vain to know where he is.

Jia's acutely observed debut feature follows the exploits of petty thief, Xiao Wu, who operates as a pickpocket in a ramshackle provincial town. But in a rapidly changing China, Xiao Wu finds he is out of step with the times and his inability to adapt marks the beginning of his downfall.

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Soon after the huge success of 'Magnificent Obsession', Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson again teamed up with director Douglas Sirk for this heartwarming story of an attractive, wealthy New England widow who defies social constraints when she falls in love for a much younger man.

When Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) falls in love with her sexy gardener, Ron Kirby (Rock Hudson), she becomes the target of small town gossip, while at the time incurring the wrath of her own children Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). The children and the town want Cary to lead a more conventional lifestyle than that offered by Ron. They would prefer that she spend the rest of her life in front of her new TV set, wed to Harvey (Conrad Nagel), a highly respected, wealthy - and boring - bachelor. Will she choose love or "respectability"?

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When the crew of the space-tug Nostromo answers a distress signal from a desolate planet, they discover a deadly life form that breeds within a human host. And soothe horror begins – a horror which will end the lives of six crew members and alter the life of the seventh forever.

Sigourney Weaver stars as Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in one of the most suspenseful and powerful science fiction films of all time.

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The Watermelon Woman was the name given to the mythical Fae Richards, a beautiful yet elusive black actress from the 1930's. In all her films it was her only billing. Why should that be? It is a mystery that perplexes Cheryl , a young black film maker.

She sets out to solve the mystery by making a documentary about this forgotten star. Her research takes her from the depths of a terrifying "lesbian archive", to the heights of academia, with the irrepressible Camille Paglia giving an impromptu lecture on the hidden meaning of "watermelons". Cheryl has a full time job that supports her aspiring film making career, working in a local video store. There she meets and falls deeply in love with Diana , one of her customers. A sizzling affair ensues and while Cheryl's research answers many secrets about the actress's life, each answer opens a Pandora's box of questions; about Fae and also about Cheryl, her relationship with Diana and her future.

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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.

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The first sound-film by one of the greatest of all filmmaker's, Vampyr offers a sensual immediacy that few, if any, works of cinema can claim to match.

Legendary director Carl Theodor Dreyer leads the viewer, as though guided in a trance, through a realm akin to a wakingdream, a zone positioned somewhere between reality and the supernatural.

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Anne-Marie Stretter (Delphine Seyrig) is the wife of the French ambassador in India in the 1930s. Growing bored with the oppressive lifestyle she leads, she begins to compulsively sleep with other men to alleviate her situation.

The Vice-Consul of Lahore (Michael Lonsdale) fails in his attempts to begin a love affair with her. Her husband knows of her indiscretions, but is tolerant of her promiscuity.

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A landmark movie in the film noir tradition, Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' stands as a true screen classic. Jack Nicholson is private eye Jake Gittes, living off the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-war Southern California.

Hired by a beautiful socialite (Faye Dunaway) to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together for one, unforgettable night in...Chinatown.