trh's - Rented List
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Featuring Hay directing alongside the estimable Basil Dearden, Tthe Black Sheep of Whitehall is amongst the comedian's finest pictures. Hay stars as William Davis, the head of a correspondence college who becomes embroiled with the Nazis as they try to prevent the signing of a trade agreement. On learning that a Nazi agent has breached security and is posing as the economics expert responsible for lining out the international agreement, the good professor tries to find the real expert, who has been kidnapped and hidden. In a plot centring on mistaken identities, Hay appears in six different disguises, and twice as a woman. The superb supporting cast includes Sir John Mills and Thora Hird. - Director:
- Basil Dearden
- Cast:
- Will Hay, John Mills, Basil Sydney
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It has always been recognised as one of Charles Dickens' literary masterworks, but this Bleak House is now fast-moving, daring, gripping television, Here is the murder mystery, the love story, the comic genius and the tantalising scandal of the novel but, stripped of its sentimentality, we find ourselves swept along by a pulsating and edgy drama. Out of an interminable court case spin three young people each searching for their place in the world. Their story moves fast - swirling through an incredible array of characters from passionate young lovers to ruthless lawyers, from an ice-cold aristocratic beauty to a shrewd, relentless detective - until the final thrilling climax. - Director:
- Justin Chadwick
- Cast:
- Anna Maxwell Martin, Denis Lawson, Carey Mulligan
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One of the most famous blunders in military history, which sent the Light Brigade to its doom at the Crimea, provides the climax to a passionately felt and provocative British film. Tony Richardson creates a sweeping panorama of mid-Victorian England in all its complacency and callousness, and a biting screenplay by Charles Wood brings wit as well as anger to dramatising the gulf between the leaders and the led. The film affords memorable roles for Trevor Howard and John Gielgud as the incompetent Lords Cardigan and Raglan who drive the men to their death, and stars David Hemmings at the height of his career. - Director:
- Tony Richardson
- Cast:
- Trevor Howard, Vanessa Redgrave, John Gielgud
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In this Academy Award-nominated Best Picture, two widowed mothers - one white, Beatrice Pullman (Claudette Colbert), and one black, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) - decide to pool their talents and go into business together, opening a waffle shop. A surprising financial success, their business is quickly franchised into a chain of coffee shops that market their unique product line - Delilah's waffle recipe and Bea's maple sugar-candy hearts. But their success is a mixed blessing because it complicates their relationships with their own daughters. Ashamed of her mother, Peola seeks a new life by passing for white. Bea's love for her daughter is tested when she and Jessie fall for the same man. - Director:
- John M. Stahl
- Cast:
- Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson
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Written by Academy Award winners Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, 'Midnight' has been hailed as 'just about the best comedy ever caught by the camera from the Golden Age of Hollywood!' Academy Award winners Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche and John Barrymore simply light up the screen. The fun begins when a penniless showgirl (Colbert) impersonates a Hungarian Countess and, with the help of an aristocrat (Barrymore), quickly adapts herself to her new lifestyle. But can she stop herself from falling in love with yet another poor man (Ameche)? - Director:
- Mitchell Leisen
- Cast:
- Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore
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Fury (1936)Mob Rule / The Mob
Joe Wilson, a wrongly jailed man thought to have died in a blaze started by a bloodthirsty lynch mob, is somehow alive. And dead to all he ever stood for and perhaps ever will be. Because Joe aims to ensure his would-be executioners meet the fate Joe miraculously escaped. Spencer Tracy is Joe, Sylvia Sidney is his bride-to-be and "Fury" lives up to its volatile name with its searing indictment of mob justice and lynching. - Director:
- Fritz Lang
- Cast:
- Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel
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The peculiar antics of Laurel (Hayley Mills), an emotionally troubled young girl, are the focus of 'The Chalk Garden', a stately household drama set on the cliffs of the English south-coast. Edith Evans plays a matriarchal grandmother who, in raising her granddaughter, has neglected her other love - a barren chalk garden. Mayhem ensues as Laurel's behaviour frightens away a succession of governesses until the enigmatic Miss Madrigal (Deborah Kerr) is hired - in spite of her mysterious references. Madrigal sets about tending to the girl's reckless emotions and the pitifully failed garden, whilst Maitland (John Mills) plays the compassionate butler working overtime to maintain order in this unpredictable environment. - Director:
- Ronald Neame
- Cast:
- Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills, John Mills
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Nick and Nora Charles cordially invite you to bring your own alibi to The Thin Man, the jaunty whodunit that made William Powell and Myrna Loy the champagne elite of sleuthing, Bantering in the boudoir, enjoying walks with beloved dog Asta or matching each other highball for highball and clue for clue, they combined screwball romance with mystery. The resulting triumph nabbed four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and spawned five sequels. Credit W.S. " Woody" Van Dyke for recognizing that Powell and Loy were ideal together and for getting the studio's okay by promising to shoot this splendid adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel in three weeks. He took 12 days. They didn't call him "One-Take Woody" for nothing. - Director:
- W.S. Van Dyke
- Cast:
- William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan
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Later adapted as 'My Fair Lady' George Bernard Shaw's wonderful comedy of manners is given its finest screen outing in this 1938 production. Nominated for four Oscars, Shaw himself was one of the recipients of the award for best screenplay. Snobbish Professor Higgins has a wager with his friend Colonel Pickering that with the right instruction he can pass off cockney 'gutter-snipe' Eliza Doolittle as a 'lady' among high society. Taken under his wing Eliza is given rigorous coaching in elocution and manners in preparation for the ultimate test, her appearance at an ambassador's reception. - Director:
- Anthony Asquith
- Cast:
- Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson
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Ginger Rogers stars as a young lady determined to shake up polite society! Ginger plays Mary Grey, cheerful but unemployed. Wandering in central park, she meets and befriends Alfred Borden (Walter Connolly). Alfred's a millionaire but money can't buy him happiness - his family all ignore him. Wanting to spice things up, he hires Mary to pose as his mistress but even he isn't prepared for the hilarious consequences that will ensue! - Director:
- Gregory La Cava
- Cast:
- Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Verree Teasdale
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Meet Tony Soprano: your average, middle-aged businessman. Tony's got a dutiful wife. A not-so-dutiful daughter. A son named Anthony Jr. A mother he's trying to coax into a retirement home. A hot headed uncle. A not-too-secret mistress. And a shrink to tell all his secrets, except the one she already knows: Tony's a mob boss. These days, it's getting tougher and tougher to make a killing in the killing business. Just because you're made ...doesn't mean you've got it made. - Director:
- David Chase
- Cast:
- James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco
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Film Director Preston Sturges applied his talents to a dramatic, but not without some humour, biography of an American dental surgeon, WTG Morton (Joel McCrea) who was one of the pioneers in the use of anaesthetics in dentistry, but who gained little reward for his endeavours. McCrea, by now a Sturges regular, again demonstrates the quality of his acting, which enabled him to remain at the top of his profession until well into the 1970s. The doctor's great contributions to humanity and later tribulations as he shares his knowledge rather than hording it for monetary reward, are laced with typical Preston Sturges humour and insight. - Director:
- Preston Sturges
- Cast:
- Joel McCrea, Betty Field, Harry Carey
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Deanna Durbin demonstrated her fine comedic skills as well as her unique singing talents in this charming story of a small town girl seeking fame and fortune in the big city. Louise Ginglebusher (Deanna Durbin) leaves small town America behind and heads for the bright lights of New York City. She's soon working as a theatre usherette - not quite the same as having her name in lights on Broadway, but at least she's in showbusiness!
Enter the rich and connected J. Conrad Nelson (Adolphe Menjou). He can make her a star - if only she'll succumb to his amorous advances. Naturally, Louise resists him, by pretending she's married to a casual friend of hers. What starts as a simple white lie soon spins completely out of Louise's control, with hilarious consequences for everyone around her.
A cracking romantic comedy musical, I'LL BE YOURS features Deanna Durbin singing "Cobbleskill High School Song", "Love's Old Sweet Song", "Granada", "Brahm's Lullaby" and an enthralling rendition of "It's Dreamtime"- Director:
- William A. Seiter
- Cast:
- Deanna Durbin, Tom Drake, William Bendix
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Green for Danger (1946)The Mad Killer
At the height of the 1944 Doodlebug offensive, a local postman is brought to an emergency hospital near London. His wounds aren't severe but he mysteriously dies on the operating table. The theatre sister, one of six hospital staff in attendance, stumbles across evidence that the man was murdered... but she is stabbed to death before she can tell the police what she knows. Called in from Scotland Yard to investigate the crime, Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim) finds that each of the remaining suspects has an excellent motive for committing both murders. By staging a mock operation, with the five suspects in attendance, he reconstructs the circumstances of the postman's death and dramatically unmasks the killer... - Director:
- Sidney Gilliat
- Cast:
- Hattie Jacques, Alastair Sim, Sally Gray
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When fleeing Paris after the German invasion, Georg (Franz Rogowski) escapes to Marseille assuming the identity of a dead author whose papers he possesses. With nowhere to turn, he is confined to the corridors of a small hotel, the consulates, cafes and bars that line the harbour. Everything changes when Georg falls in love with the mysterious Marie (Paula Beer) who is desperate to find her missing husband. Based on the eponymous novel by Anna Seghers, film tells the story of a nearly impossible love amid escape, exile and a longing for a place to call home. - Director:
- Christian Petzold
- Cast:
- Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer, Godehard Giese
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