A wonderfully adapted film based round the exploits of Cicero, aka Elyesa Bazna, the Albanian born valet (Mason at his best) of the British ambassador to Turkey, who sold secrets to the Germans during 1944. The valet's gentlemanly pretensions are put to the test in this tale of espionage and romantic intrigue. Ace.
find out more...As a young pilot returns home in May 1945, a relationship is formed as he desperately contacts a radio operator before bailing out of the sky. He lives, evading his celestial escort, meets the aforementioned operator and falls in love. But he must face a heavenly court to decide if he should live or die. Amazing.
find out more...A successful actress employs a woman in exchange for her flattery, only to find her employee is scheming her way to the top at her own expense. An intelligent, bitchy script complements the fine acting, making this one of Time Out's top 100 films of all time. Won Best Picture at 1950 Academy Awards.
find out more...The classic anti-war film of the classic anti-war book. The story follows a group of naive young patriots from school in Germany through the horrors of WW1 and their gradual annihilation in the trenches. As the angry, bewildered boys witness death and mutilation all around them, all ideas about "the enemy" and the "rights and wrongs" of the conflict disappear. This is highlighted in the scene where Paul mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life whi find out more...
Cary Scott (Jane Wyman) is a well-to-do widow gradually re-entering a social life amongst her mostly dull country club peers. Her only apparent enjoyment in life comes from weekend visits from her college-age children. Cary then meets a handsome younger man, Ron (Rock Hudson), who owns a small landscaping business. Ron is a follower of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, and "hears a different drummer", enjoying a life focused on nature; he is deliberately uninterested in the gossipy opinions of ot find out more...
Ava Gardner is superb in this glitzy Hollywood reprise of the Cinderella story. She is Maria, the Hollywood starlet who rises from poverty and spends all her time trying to deny and forget her past, much to her own unhappiness. Touching glamorous and superbly directed by Mankiewicz.
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