monsieurk's - Rented List

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A veritable masterpiece of French cinema, Henri-Georges Clouzot's 'Le Corbeau' is a dark and subversive study of human nature. A wave of hysteria sweeps the small provincial town of St.

Robin when a series of poison-pen letters signed "Le Corbeau" appear, denouncing several prominent members of society. Starting with the village doctor, the slow trickle of sinister letters soon becomes a flood and no one is safe from their mysterious accusations. Condemned by the political left and right and the church upon its release in 1943, Clouzot was banned from filmmaking for two years after making the film.

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Jones plays a housewife from Pennsylvania having an affair with a handsome Italian while taking a holiday in Rome. As she prepares to return to her family, her lover begs her to stay.

Can she bear to leave? will she abandon her respectable home and family to remain with him? Will they have a last minute fling? When in Rome, do as the Romans do!

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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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A proud woman in red draws leers and admiration. A bosomy tobacconist sparks the fantasies of adolescent boys. A mentally challenged uncle takes refuge in a tree and announces: "I want a woman!" They are among moments and events knit by memory...and a legendary filmmaker in peak form.

'Amarcord', which means "I Remember", is Federico Fellini's lusty, often funny look at growing-up perhaps not unlike his own. The setting is a village in 1930's Italy. Teen hormones are surging. Family, church and friendship are proving grounds of love and loyalty. Fascism's rise is just down the street. Sex is around any corner. And life viewed in the local cinema is a touchstone for life lived. The memories, big and small, endure.

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In 2016 Nobuhiko Obayashi, director of the cult film 'House' was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live.

With not much time left he realised his ultimate passion project, adapting Kazuo Dan's novella 'Hanagatami', which he had originally planned as his debut film! Obayashi returns us to 1941, a pivotal time for Japan, as the unstoppable momentum of war forcibly seized the lives of youth away to battlefields where they disappeared forever. Forty years in the making, Nobuhiko Obayashi's boundary-breaking, tradition-al-yet-experimental film celebrates the clamorous heart of youth and the indomitable will to live. The culmination of his life as a filmmaker now explodes in "Hanagatami", drawing us to journey beyond time and imagination.

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A couple floats over a war-town Cologne; on the way to a birthday party, a father stops to tie his daughter's shoelaces in the pouring rain; teenage girls dance outside a cafe, 'About Endlessness' is a beautiful work which Andersson presents as his final film, a kaleidoscope of all that is

eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

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1947. A young man, Gaspard Claude (Marc Michel), is convicted for the attempted murder of his wife, although he is innocent of the crime. He is sent to the notorious Sante Prison in Paris and is placed in a cell with four hardened criminals.

The latter have decided to escape from the prison by digging their way out of their cell. Reluctantly, they take Gaspard into their confidence and labour digging their way out of their cell. Then, just when escape appears certain, Gaspard is called away to see the prison governor...

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The first of Pasolini's colourful and highly erotic Trilogy of Life films based on famous story circles (to be followed by 'The Canterbury Tales' and 'Arabian Nights'), 'The Decameron' contains ten stories based on the fourteenth century works of Giovanni Boccaccio.

Capturing the bawdy, earthy spirit of the original, the film romps through its tales of sex and death - of lusty nuns and priests, cuckolded husbands, murdered lovers and grave-robbers, with five of the stories linked by an artist, 'Giotto's pupil', played by Pasolini himself.

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France 1774. Expelled from the puritanical court of Louis XVI, a group of aristocratic libertines pursue an ideal of enlightenment through the rejection of conventional morality.

At a time when hypocrisy and false virtue reign, they seek a place to indulge their quest for pleasure, inhabiting a libidinous twilight world dedicated to realising unfulfilled desires. Albert Serra's explicit and opulent exploration of the limits of the erotic imagination is one of the most radical and subversive works of recent times, making 'Liberte' a singular cinematic experience.

Following the accidental death of her daughter's lowlife boyfriend, respectable mother Lucia Harper instinctively hides the body to protect her family. Before long a stranger calls, sent by his partner to blackmail her. The comfort and security of Lucia's world appears to be in danger of collapsing.

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Luigi Pistilli plays writer Oliviero, an abrasive drunk who amuses himself by holding drunken orgies at his grand country manor much to the displeasure of his long-suffering wife (Anita Strindberg).

But this decadence is soon rocked by a series of grisly murders, in which Oliviero finds himself implicated.

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Following on from the success of 'Les Parapluies de Cherbourg' comes 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort' - Jacques Demy's large-scale tribute to the Hollywood musical featuring screen legend Gene Kelly The story centres on twin sisters Delphine and Solange (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve

and Frangoise Dorleac) who, tired of their humdrum existence, dream of finding success and romance in Paris. The superb ensemble, also featuring Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, George Chakiris and Grover Dale, weave and wander around the town, looking for and just missing the love of their lives.

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The wife of a modern artist discovers the perverse and inclinations of the director of the gallery her husband's work in exhibited in. She witnesses the scenes of sexual submission he photographs, placing women in humiliating poses.

Fascinated by this man she too becomes his model and prisoner of his fantasies, trapped in a depraved world with no way of escaping.

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Georges Manda (Serge Reggiani), an honest woodworker, falls in love with Marie (Simone Signoret), the moll of minor crook Roland (William Sabatier). Gangster boss Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin) orders Georges and Roland to fight a duel to the death over the girl.

Felix then pins the blame for Roland's death on Georges' boyhood chum, Raymond (Raymond Bussieres), knowing that the woodworker will nobly accept the blame; this will leave Marie alone, which is what lustful Felix has wanted all along. When Georges learns he's been set up as a dupe, he plots his revenge. Based on the true-life Leca-Manda scandal, 'Casque D'Or' brilliantly mixes violence with tenderness to capture the brutality of the French underworld and the tragedy of doomed love.

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A restless wife, Giovanna (Clara Calamai), meets Gino (Massimo Girotti), a rough and handsome vagabond. Their passionate affair leads to the murder of Giovanna's boorish husband. Can a strong and sensual affair survive the guilt? Adapted from the James M.

Cain's classic novel 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', 'Ossessione' is a dark and provocative drama of sexual tension. It heralded a new era of Italian cinema, establishing Luchino Visconti as a leading and controversial exponent of 'neo-realism'.