A contemporary story set in an unnamed African country torn by a rebellion. In a rural province, birthplace of one of the rebel chiefs, Maria, a fierce and fearless white woman, refuses to abandon her coffee crops, or to acknowledge the danger to which she is exposing her family. For Maria, to leave is to surrender: a sign of weakness, of cowardice. On this plantation which has already supported three generations of whites, André - her ex-husband and father of their teenage son - is frightened by her blind, stubborn pride. Without her knowing, he resolves to arrange the family's escape to France. The crops no longer mean anything to him. He has married again, a young African woman with whom he has a son, and for them, he will stop at nothing. Not even at betraying Maria by placing her destiny in the hands of the local mayor, a man he believes to be his friend...

Lovely comedy about two actors who play the front and back legs of a horse and feel their artistry is unappreciated. When the self important barber who funds their show decides to replace them with a real horse, they plan to get even.

The third film that Naruse made in 1950, White Beast (Shiroi yaji, 1950), was described by Kinema Junpo critic Tsumura Hideo three years later as "so indescribably miserable as to haunt me even today." Tsumura represents the bulk of Japanese critics of the time, who felt that Naruse experienced a terrible slump throughout the 1940s and this film seemed to be the "bottom of the ocean." The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and estranged lovers. With its catfights, hysterical tantrums, film noir lighting, and dramatic music, White Beast is indicative of the new influences of the Hollywood psychological thriller on Naruse. Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) initiated a cycle of women's prison movies in the United States that may or may not have been shown in Japan, but the stylistics of White Beast draw on the same paranoid woman's films and film noir conventions that preceded the American cycle.

Gary Cooper and George Raft play a couple of seafaring buddies in this moral adventure saga set during the 1840s, when the slave-trade had been outlawed by the British Empire but was still a reality on the high seas. In its depiction of the friendship between two men, one of questionable character, the film bears some similarities to Hathaway’s Spawn of the North, made the following year.

Stanley Kubrick's second feature film, Killer's Kiss was made on a budget of $40,000, all raised by Kubrick's relatives. The black-and-white drama was shot principally at night in a variety of seedy Manhattan locations. The plot, told in an extended flashback, covers two days in the life of boxer Davy Gordon (Jamie Smith) -- he meets nightclub dancer Gloria Price (Irene Kane); the two fall in love, and decide to make their futures somewhere other than New York City. But Gloria is lusted after by her ex-employer, Vince Rapallo (Frank Silvera), who not only won't take "no" for an answer but has no intention of losing her to a two-bit boxer. His machinations lead to murder, a police manhunt, and revenge in the best film noir fashion -- the very best, in fact, as Kubrick's use of real New York settings (and very ominous and sleazy New York settings at that) gives the action here a startling verisimilitude, as though we're watching a documentary, or the unfolding of actual events...

Art critic and forgery expert George Steele is apprehended by the police as he desperately tries to break into the Manhattan Museum in the opening scene of Crack-Up, a noir mystery directed by Irving Reis. Steele does not understand his own bizarre actions, but explains that he was in a train wreck and had to get back to the museum. Questioned by Lt. Cochrane, who tells him there have been no train wrecks in months, Steele relates, in flashback, the events leading up to the incident. Earlier in the day the head of the museum had suspended him for alienating wealthy patrons by criticizing "art snobs" in a lecture. He then received a phone call informing him that his mother was sick, and caught the train to the hospital, but never got there. Though suspicious of Steele, Cochrane is persuaded by the shadowy Mr. Traybin to release him so he can follow Steele. The next day Steele retraces his steps and discovers that someone had set him up to be discredited, though he knows neither who nor why. Following the murder of a friend who was trying to help him, he discovers that forgeries of some very famous paintings are at the heart of the matter, but getting to the culprit is a more difficult task.

Junta is hated by the people in the village where she lives, especially by the women, who suspect her of being a witch. Only she can climb the nearby mountains to a cave high up, whence a mysterious blue light glows when the moon is full. Many young men of the village have died trying to follow her. She is driven out of town, and takes to living in the mountains. Eventually she shares the secret of the blue light with one man, and he betrays it.

To say that this obscure, old, Italian adventure epic has a little of everything would be an understatement to stand in suitable proportion to the length of its title. In the course of little over one hour, the hero (Saturnino Farandola) becomes orphaned in a shipwreck, and is raised by a tribe of ape(men) on an exotic island. In a flash, he has grown to manhood, and he sets out on a series of adventures that take him across (most of) the seven seas and continents, to the floor of the ocean, and the clouds far above. He battles pirates, orientals, American Indians, villains and mad scientists. He falls in love, and lives to see his beloved swallowed by a whale (himself being trapped in a giant oyster at the time), and eventually coughed up again.

Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly render the very spirit of Franciscan teaching in this extraordinarily fresh and simple film which was unappreciated at the time of its release, but now regarded as one of his greatest. Shot in a neorealist manner with non-professional actors (including thirteen real Franciscan monks from the convent of Nocere Inferiore) it avoids the pious clichés of hallowed movie saints with an economy of expression and a touching, human quality.

A man opens fire on the statue of the Virgin during the 15th August procession. Barricaded in his home with his wife and daughter, he continues to shoot wildly. He refuses to open the door to the carabinieri and he refuses everything he needs, including water.

Inspired partly by King Vidor's The Champ, this silent 1933 masterpiece by Yasujiro Ozu takes place in a Tokyo slum, where a slow-witted, good-hearted, heavy-drinking day laborer (Takeshi Sakamoto) tries to deal with his rebellious son (Tokkan Kozo). It opens with one of the funniest stretches of slapstick Ozu ever filmed, though the remainder is colored by Chaplinesque pathos. As the loving and lovable father, Sakamoto creates one of the most complex characters in Japanese cinema, and Kozo (who played the younger brother in I Was Born, But...) isn't far behind. The milieu they inhabit is perfectly realized, making this a pinnacle in Ozu's career. (Jonathan Rosenbaum)

The theme of Limite is stated in its title - the limits faced by man in the struggle for existence. The narrative concerns three shipwrecked people, two women and a man adrift in a small boat on the open sea. In a series of flashbacks, they reveal to each other their stories and what they were trying to escape when they took flight on the ship. The first woman (Olga Breno) escaped from prison with the help of her jailer but her life remained unhappy in the new town where she was trapped in a monotonous job as a seamstress. The second woman (Taciana Rey) was unhappily married to a drunken silent film pianist (Brutus Pedreira), who is shown accompanying Chaplin’s The Adventurer in the town’s small theatre. The man (Raul Schnoor) was a widower who had a love affair with a married woman. When he visited his wife’s grave, he encountered his lover’s husband (played by Peixoto himself) who told him that she had leprosy. The life boat in which they have taken refuge begins leaking...

Poetic realism reaches sublime heights with Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four different men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th-century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers...

An eccentric playwright (Kalfon) enlists the services of two international actresses (Chaplin and Birkin) to perform in a production to be staged within the confines of his mansion. Life begins to imitate art as the play’s scripted love triangle is transposed onto the relationship between the three leads. Rivette received criticism upon the release of the film for its similarities to his earlier success, Céline and Julie Go Boating. While it uses many of the same stylistic elements as its predecessor, Love on the Ground continues to raise provocative questions as Rivette explores the thin line between performance and reality.

Zachary Scott made his screen debut in this clever bit of film noir that has gained a cult reputation in recent years. Dutch mystery novelist Cornelius Leyden (Peter Lorre) is travelling through Istanbul when he meets Col. Haki (Kurt Katch), head of the secret police and a big fan of Leyden's work. He offers to tell Leyden about Dimitrios Makropoulos (Zachary Scott), a notorious criminal whose body was just found washed up on the beach. It seems that Makropoulos was involved in nearly every sort of lawless act imaginable, from murder and blackmail to espionage and political assassination. Fascinated, Leyden decides that Makropoulos would be a fine subject for his next book...