Barbara Stanwyck plays a wayward mother who returns home to a hostile town, marvellous as the struggling actress who yearns for her old life. Though set in the past, the evocation of rural small-town life - a seeming idyllic little world poisoned with gossip, social prejudice, and double standards - isn't all that far from the modern suburbia of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. 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...

Nothing more can be said about this classic melodrama from the peak of the Hollywood studio-film era. Hardened cynic Bogart softens when he meets old flame Bergman who is now a refugee in neutral wartime Casablanca. Together they outwit the Germans... and of course there's that famous song. Watch this classic or some day you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... find out more...

This comedy drama from Jean Renoir chronicles the revival of Paris' most notorious dance as it tells the story of a theater producer who turns a humble washerwoman into a star at the Moulin Rouge. Jean Renoir's Technicolour masterpiece is a wonderful homage to fin de siecle Paris, drawing from the contemporary cafe culture of 1950s Paris and featuring some of the luminaries from that time including Edith Piaf and Patachou. This remastered version is available on both DVD and Bluray. 

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Fannie Hurst's emotionally charged drama, which chronicles two widows and their troubled daughters as they struggle to find true happiness amidst racial prejudice. Lana Turner plays Lora, a single white mother whose Hollywood starlet ambitions come at the expense of any meaningful relationship with her daughter, Susie. Lora's black housekeeper, Annie, has troubles of her own as she faces the rejection of her own fair-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane, who abandons her heritage for a chance to be acce find out more...

Brilliantly directed story about a psychotic Hollywood scriptwriter, who is suspected of murder but given a false alibi by his gorgeous neighbour. Bogart's character never lets up and you're never sure if he's guilty or not, and nor is his lovestruck neighbour. As the police close in, it develops into a beautifully tense psychological thriller, did he do it and will the girl stand by her man? Awesome, awesome, awesome!!! find out more...

Resnais's controversial attempt at collaboration with avant garde author Alain Robbe-Grillet. The film sets up a puzzle that is never resolved, a man meets a woman in a rambling hotel and believes he may have had an affair with her the previous year at Marienbad - or did he? Or was it somewhere else? Deliberately scrambling chronology to the point where past, present and future become meaningless, Resnais creates a vaguely unsettling mood by means of stylish composition, long, smooth tracking sh find out more...

Originally reviled, Renoir's bleak masterpiece has endured to become a true classic of French cinema. Black and funny, it is the story of a lavish weekend party given by the local Marquis. Renoir manages to capture in intricate detail the antics and drama of a society and class on the brink of extinction. 'We are dancing on the rim of a volcano' said Jean at the time. The Danse Macabre scene is breathtaking and dark. Superb. find out more...

This masterpiece is understandably on many people's all time favourite list. The lives of six Parisians are intertwined against the backdrop of the early-19th Century popular theatre and underworld, with the film a multi-layered meditation on the nature of performance. Flawlessly executed and cast. find out more...

One of the great cinema love stories as a one-night stand leads to a life of yearning for the beautiful Lisa but was just another **** for handsome Stefan. Years later a chance encounter leads to his receiving a letter from Lisa telling her tale. A piercing fable of doomed love. Tear-jerker. find out more...