Sold by her impoverished mother to Zampano (Anthony Quinn), a brutish fairground wrestler, waif-like Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina) lives a life of drudgery as his assistant. After taking to the road with a travelling circus, a budding relationship with II Matto/The Fool (Richard Basehart), a gentle-natured, tightrope walking clown, offers a potential refuge from her master's clutches. Trapped by her own servile nature, Gelsomina waivers, and Zampano's volcanic temper erupts with tragic consequences. Characteristically mingling elements of biography with metaphor and symbolism, 'La Strada' also combines an easygoing charm with a far harder edged realism in the form of domestic violence and decaying, desolate towns. Masina - Fellini's wife - is astonishing in the central role and what with the evocative Nino Rota score and Otello Martelli's ravishing photography, it's little wonder that 'La Strada' was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
A pre-code film that sneaked onto screens just as the censorious Hays Office began cracking down on Hollywood's racier propositions, Cleopatra is a libertine paean to decadence and depravity that can still send a viewer's mind reeling and pulse thumping - all courtesy of the Golden Age's swampiest psychosexual auteur, Cecil B. DeMille. Claudette Colbert presides over the most outrageous spectacle this side of The Scarlet Empress as the eponymous pharaoh queen who speeds from Julius Caesar (Warren William) to Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon), from Egypt to Rome, from war-room to bedroom...The whiff of incense permeates every scene, with each connected to the next in a veritable matrix of whips, blindfolds, and bindings - the crazed arrangement laying bare all the fetish inklings of the moving-picture dream. Lavishly produced with some of the most inspired waxing-moon photography and unwholesome set-design to come out of the studio system, DeMille's film is an erotic tour-de-force that obliges us to re-examine the appeal of this most popular of Hollywood directors.
In one of the most powerhouse performances in American screen-acting, the great Kirk Douglas stars as Chuck Tatum, a newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a potentially career-making story in Albuquerque, New Mexico. When Tatum begins to influence the story's outcome, a descent begins that finds more than one man caught between a rock and a hard place. An electric narrative that stands as one of Wilder's tautest and most (melo)dramatic plots (penned with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman), 'Ace in the Hole' plays today as both a prescient examination of the modern media landscape, and the public appetite for the disastrous news-story that leads to toxic wish-fulfillment.
Visionary director Guillermo del Toro creates a unique, richly imagined epic with Pan's Labyrinth, a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar era of Fanco's Spain. Pan's Labyrinth unfolds throught the eyes of Ofelia, a young girl uprooted to a remote military outpost commanded by her new stepfather. Powerless and lonely in a place of great danger, Ofelia lives out her own dark fable as she confronts monsters both otherworldly and human after she discovers a neglected labyrith behind the family home. There she meets Pan, a fantastical creature who challenges her with three tasts which he claims will reveal her true identity.
From time to time four extraordinary actresses meet up to gossip, to laugh and to remember. For once they let the cameras in... 'Nothing Like a Dame' is a unique celebration of the lives and careers of four of our most iconic actresses; Dame Eileen Atkins, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Joan Plowright and Dame Maggie Smith. All four have gone from being fledgling actresses in the 1950's to acting royalty. They've watched each other's careers grow and bloom and have celebrated life's ups and downs together. 'Nothing Like a Dame' invites you to spend time with these acting legends as they talk about their lives and their professional experiences across theatre, television and film. Directed by Roger Michell (My Cousin Rachel, NottingHill), the film also includes a range of astonishing archive material. Candid, funny, caustic, irreverent, poignant and utteijy engrossing, this unmissable film is proof that there is truly nothing like a Dame...
"Molly's Game" is based on the incredible true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a former Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested by armed FBI agents. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. Her only ally was her criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.
Set in the glamour of 1950's post-war London, renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sister Cyril (Lesley Manville) are at the centre of British fashion, dressing royalty, movie stars, heiresses, socialites, debutants and dames with the distinct style of The House of Woodcock. Women come and go through Woodcock's life until he comes across a young, strong-willed woman, Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a fixture in his life as his muse and lover. Once controlled and planned, he finds his carefully tailored life disrupted by the scariest curse of all...love. And so begins a Gothic Romance of twists, turns and power struggles of "pure, delicious pleasure" that is "devilishly funny and luxuriantly sensuous".
When Lady Sandra Abbott (Imelda Staunton) discovers that her husband is having an affair, she seeks refuge with her estranged, bohemian sister Bif (Celia Imrie). As a fish out of water, Sandra is at odds with her sister's free-spirited lifestyle, until she is persuaded to join Bif's dance class. Here, Bif and her friends Charlie (Timothy Spall), Jackie (Joanna Lumley) and Ted (David Hayman) show Sandra that retirement is in fact only the beginning, and that divorce might just give her a whole new lease of life and love.
From master storyteller, Guillermo del Toro, comes 'The Shape of Water', an otherworldly fairy tale set against the backdrop of Cold War-era America circa 1962. In the hidden, high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.
Hugh Jackman leads an all-star cast in this bold and original musical filled with infectious showstopping performances that will bring you to your feet time and time again. Inspired by the story of P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) and celebrating the birth of show business, the film follows the visionary who rose from nothing to create a mesmerising spectacle.
The life of two brothers is shattered by the sudden appearance of their father, whom they know only from a 10 year old photograph. Is he really their father? Why has he come back after so many years? The boys find some answers on a remote and desolate island travelling with this man who turned their lives upside down.
Ranked at No. 30 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 all-time greatest American films, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' is a genuine masterpiece that went on to win 3 Academy Awards. Bogart gives a tremendous performance as a vicious down-and-out wage worker who stakes his meagre earnings on a gold-prospecting expedition.
Classic romantic comedy starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart. Wealthy Philadelphia socialite Tracy Lord (Hepburn) is set to marry the politician and businessman George Kittredge (John Howard), but her wedding plans are complicated by the arrival of her irresponsible ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant), with magazine reporter Macauley Connor (Stewart) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) in tow. Tracy resolves to give them a story they will never forget but finds herself re-evaluating her life choices in the process.
A murdered girl's defiant mother (Frances McDormand) boldly paints three local billboards, each with a controversial message, igniting a furious battle with a volatile cop (Sam Rockwell) and the town's revered chief of police (Woody Harrelson).
When her father threatens to annul her marriage to a fortune-hunting playboy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) hops on a cross-country bus to New York, where she plans to live happily ever after with her handsome new hubby. Romantic complications however, when she's befriended by fellow passenger Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a brash and breezy reporter who offers his help in exchange for her exclusive story.
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