promessi's - Rented List

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In the summer of 1960 anthropologist filmmaker Jean Rouch (Moi, un noir, Lcs maitres fous) and sociologist Edgar Morin set out to chronicle the everyday lives of Parisians using a mixture of intimate interviews, debates and observation.

Artists, factory workers, office employees, students and others open up to the camera to share their experiences, fears and aspirations. The result became one of the most influential films of the sixties, and redefined the documentary form.
Rouch, whose work inspired the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Roberto Rossellini, trained his ethnographic lens on the metropolis, recording a series of extraordinary sequences, including a French survivor's Holocaust testimony, to reveal the political underlying the personal in a society struggling into the post-colonial era.

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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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Venice. 1866. After a night walking the empty streets of the ancient city together, a countess (Alida Valli) falls in love with an Austrian officer (Farley Granger) and becomes his mistress.

War breaks out and separates them until she eventually finds him again in the throes of battle against the Italians. Betraying both her principles and her cause, she tries to reform him with cruel and tragic consequences for them both.

Al Roberts (Tom Neal) decides to hitchhike to California to follow his girlfriend Sue (Claudia Drake). After discovering one of the drivers who has given him a lift dead, Al assumes his identity for fear of being charged with his murder. This leads him into trouble and blackmail along the way.

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Mariagrazia's two favoured sons have emigrated to America and lost contact with her, whereas she refuses to acknowledge the one who stayed. On the first full moon after her wedding, Sidora (Enrica Maria Modugno) discovers the horrific truth about a husband that she barely knows.

A large olive jar is broken, with awkward consequences for owner and repairer alike. A tiny village's inhabitants petition their landowner for the right to bury their dead respectfully. And Pirandello himself (Omero Antonutti) has a conversation with his long-dead mother.

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A ship sails into the Pool of London, and for the few days it is loading or discharging, it becomes as much a part of the Pool as the wharves and warehouses, as the buildings of the city itself. To the tugmen, the watermen, the customs, the river police, it's just another job -usually.

However, everything changes for two sailors on shore leave when they inadvertently become caught up in a crime as murky as the great river itself. For one of them, Johnny, life is further complicated when he falls in love with Pat, a local ticket seller, forming one of the first inter-racial relationships in British film. Produced by Ealing Studios on location in the City of London itself. 'Pool of London' was filmed on the River Thames and it's wharves, on London Bridge and in the blitzed streets around St. Paul's, and is an authentic and unmissable slice of film history.

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When the sleepy rural village of Accendura is rocked by a series of murders of young boys, the superstitious locals are quick to apportion blame, with the suspects including the local "witch", Maciara (Florinda Bolkan).

With the bodies piling up and the community gripped by panic and a thirst for bloody vengeance, two outsiders - city journalist Andrea (Tomas Milian) and spoilt rich girl Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet) - team up to crack the case. But before the mystery is solved, more blood will have been spilled, and not all of it belonging to innocents...

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One night, musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), looking up from the street below, witnesses the brutal axe murder of a woman in her apartment. Racing to the scene, Marcus just manages to miss the perpetrator...

or does he? As he takes on the role of amateur sleuth, Marcus finds himself ensnared in a bizarre web of murder and mystery where nothing is what it seems...

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Shot in the summer of 1975 as General Franco lay dying, Saura's masterpiece takes its title from a sinister Spanish proverb: 'Raise ravens and they'll pluck out your eyes'.

A subtle yet unmistakable indictment of the family as a repressive force in Spanish society, 'Cria cuervos' centres on an eight-year-old orphan (the spellbinding Ana Torrent) who believes herself to have poisoned her cold, authoritarian father (Hector Alterio), a high-ranking military man whom she blames for the death of her adored mother (Geraldine Chaplin).

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Max Renn (James Woods) is looking for fresh new content for his TV channel when he happens across some illegal S&M-style broadcasts called "Videodrome".

Embroiling his girlfriend Nick (Deborah Harry) in his search for the source, his journey begins to blur the lines between reality and fantasy as he works his way through sadomasochistic games, shady organisations and body transformations stunningly realised by Oscar-winning makeup effects artist Rick Baker.

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Even more compelling today than when it was first released, Sidney Lumet's 'Network' is a wickedly funny, spot - on indictment of the TV news media.

Winner of four Academy Awards including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay (Paddy Chayefsky), this searing satire stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Robert Duvall. When longtime news anchor Howard Beale (Finch) is fired, he suffers a violent, on - air breakdown. Ironically, his angry rantings boost his sagging ratings - much to the surprise and delight of the UBS brass. Subsequently rehired and reinvented as the "mad prophet of the airwaves", he soon becomes a pawn of ruthless programming executives who milk his madness for every share point it's worth. Of course, when the "prophet" ceases to be profitable, something has to be done about Beale, preferably on camera, before a live studio audience...

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Pasolini's most unconventional movie sees a man and his son set out on life's journey, accompanied by a Marxist crow which comments on the passing landscape. Amongst their many encounters is St. Francis, who is determined to convert them.

A surreal fable, with a touch of Don Quixote, it sets two innocents in a world dominated by the Church and Marxism. In casting one of Italy's top clowns - Toto - in the lead role, the sense of tragi-comedy is enhanced.

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Co-written by a young Federico Fellini and directed by Alberto Lattuada, this awardwinning film from the earlier years of Italian Neo-realist cinema stars John Kitzmiller as a black G.l. who vows to escape both the chaos of post-War Italy and an enforced return to a racially segregated U.S.

after falling in love with an impoverished local girl. While its groundbreaking theme of inter-racial love made 'Without Pity' one of the most significant and daring films of the immediate post-War period, it was banned in the United States and, as such, has never received wider recognition for its frank, sensitive handling of a subject that for many years was still controversial.

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Based on a true story 'King of Devil's Island' tells the unsettling tale of a group of young delinquents banished to the remote prison of Bastoy. Under the guise of rehabilitation the boys' daily regime is dictated by mental and physical abuse at the hands of their wardens.

The arrival of new boys Erling (Benjamin Helstad) and Ivar (Magnus Langlete) spark a chain of events that ultimately ignite rebellion. Feature explores a sinister moment in Norwegian history that won't be forgotten.

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It's the story of a shop-clerk named Clara (Lucia Bose) who finds a chance casting in a small movie role develop into a full-blown career as screen-siren.

Tension erupts when her husband can no longer tolerate watching her frivolous cinema escapades, and pushes her into a "serious, artistic" production of the life of Joan of Arc... whereupon she is castigated by the critical establishment.