Nights of Cabiria (1957)
Similar movies
A look at a few chapters in the life of Poppy, a cheery, colorful, North London schoolteacher whose optimism tends to exasperate those around her.
Su-ho is a plain high school boy, and Su- is a bright and beautiful girl in the same school. For some unknown reason, Su-eun has a crush on the boy, and for equally mysterious reasons she rescues Su-ho in the sea (though he doesnât know who actually saved him).
Taxi dancer Charity continues to have Faith in the human race despite apparently endless disappointments at its hands, and Hope that she will finally meet the nice young man to romance her away from her sleazy life. Maybe, just maybe, handsome Oscar will be the one to do it.
1983. Tom Highway is a well-decorated career military man in the United States Marine Corps, he who has seen action in Korea and Vietnam. His current rank is Gunnery Sergeant. His experiences have led him to become an opinionated, no nonsense man, who is prone to bursts of violence, especially when he's drunk, if the situation does not suit him, regardless of the specifics or people involved. Because of these actions, he has spent his fair share of overnighters behind bars. Close to retirement, one of his last assignments, one he requested, is back at his old unit at Cherry Point, North Carolina, from where he was transferred for insubordination. He is to train a reconnaissance platoon. His superior officer, the much younger and combat inexperienced Major Malcolm Powers, sees Highway as a relic of an old styled military. Highway's commanding officer, Lieutenant Ring, the platoon leader...
Mercedes is a taxi dancer who wants to be an actress. She's involved with the married Harry, who considers himself a respected actor. Ernesto is in love with Mercedes, but he doesn't dance or have money.
Out of jail for a crime she did not commit, Madelon turns to prostitution and thievery to send her illegitimate son to medical school.
Christina (Claudia Karvan) is a school teacher from a wealthy Greek-Australian background, engaged to a lawyer and content with the traditional course of her life. She begins teaching at an inner-city working-class school and she finds her ideas challenged by the students. Involving herself in a campaign by a group of non-anglo students to form a soccer club in a school where the racist PE teacher only supports Australian Rules Football, Christina starts falling in love with aspiring soccer player, 17 year old Nick (Alex Dimitriades). The ensuing affair forces Christina to challenge herself, her family and the culture she lives in. Managing to effectively combine comedy with a refreshing examination of contemporary ethnic relationships in Australia, beautifully acted by a young cast, and insightfully scripted.
During the Civil War five survivors escape from a prison camp in Richmond, Virginia by hot air balloon and find themselves on an uncharted island in the Pacific. Far from any kind of known civilization, the island is inhabited with carnivorous monsters, bloodthirsty pirates, and mad genius Captain Nemo (Patrick Stewart), who lives on the island for his own secretive ends.
Isabelle, a 17-year-old student, loses her virginity during a quick holiday romance. When she returns home, she begins a secret life as a prostitute for a year.
A fictional story within the historical context of the disastrous flood that engulfed the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland in 1953. When their farmhouse is destroyed by the flood, teenage mother Julia gets separated from her baby boy, whom she kept hidden in a box. She is saved from drowning by a young air force lieutenant, who agrees to go help looking for Julia's little son.
Based on an astonishing true incident that took place on the frigid seas off Iceland in 1984, The Deep fashions a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero.
A journalist tries to balance the duties of marriage and motherhood while researching a piece on college women who work as prostitutes to pay their tuition.
A middle-aged artist (Ben Gazarra) sketching on the beach witnesses a young woman (Ornella Muti) being rescued from drowning. He loans her a blanket. Later she returns the blanket and they have sex several times, but she always leaves right afterward, leaving the man to wonder who she is and where she goes. Things become more complicated as he begins to fall in love with her, and after his regular girlfriend (Mimsy Farmer), with whom he has a curiously open relationship, returns. He eventually begins to realize his mysterious new lover may be very much insane.
In the 1950s, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.
Two very different women, both in their 40s with grown-up children, are ready to go on with their lives and find love again.
Swedish efficiency researchers come to Norway for a study of Norwegian men, to optimize their use of their kitchen. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norström) is assigned to study the habits of Isak Bjørvik (Joachim Calmeyer). By the rules of the research institute, Folke has to sit on an umpire's chair in Isak's kitchen and observe him from there, but never talk to him. Isak stops using his kitchen and observes Folke through a hole in the ceiling instead. However, the two lonely men slowly overcome the initial post-war Norwegian-Swede distrust and become friends.
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
Two Southern California volleyball teams determined to prove their superiority on the court find out that they're not as different as they previously thought after tragedy strikes close to home in director Neema Barnette's affectionate sports drama. The Madonnas and the Phantoms are two volleyball teams with a longstanding grudge. With a bitter rivalry that frequently spills off of the court and into the streets, the Madonnas and the Phantoms appear to have nothing in common until fate forces them to break down the social and cultural barriers that bind them. Now determined to keep it together on the court as they make their way to the championships, these former rivals are about to find out what true sportsmanship is really all about.
A group of men are on safari. One of the party refuses to give a gift to a tribe they encounter. The tribe is offended, seizes the party, and one-by-one, kills all but one of the safari members in various creative and horrifying ways. The last surviving member is given "The Lion's Chance" by the tribal leader to be hunted down by a party of tribal warriors.
The early life of Walt Disney is explored in this family film with an art house twist. Though his reality was often dark, it was skewed by his ever growing imagination and eternal optimism.
Roberta is a bored suburban housewife who is fascinated with a woman, Susan, she only knows about by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of the newspaper. This fascination reaches a peak when an ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" proposes a rendezvous. Roberta goes too, and in a series of events involving amnesia and mistaken identity, steps into Susan's life.
Heartbreak affects us all. Oscar-nominated director Christian Frei teams with famed anthropologist Helen Fisher to examine the power and resilience of love despite it all.
A young journalist interviews an elderly woman about being forced into prostitution in Borneo at a brothel called Sandakan No. 8.
Hye-rim, a 35-year-old woman, finds a job at a hospital as a caregiver assigned to a quadriplegic VIP patient who practically owns the hospital. For the past 10 years, the VIP patientâs son Sang-woo has been desperately keeping him alive for money, ordering the doctors to perform several heart transplants despite recurrent heart failures. In need of another one, Sang-woo takes a brain dead unidentified woman as a donor and asks Hye-rim to look into her background. She discovers that the woman was once a prostitute known as âMadonnaâ who has experienced a lifetime of abuse, and that she is pregnant. In an attempt to save Madonnaâs unborn child, Hye-rim goes against Sang-wooâs orders and searches for the babyâs father.
A fragile Kansas girl's unrequited and forbidden love for a handsome young man from the town's most powerful family drives her to heartbreak and madness.
Danny Foster doesn't have much: an apartment as small as his paychecks, no family, and a struggling music career. Yet for him, "every day is a great day to be alive," an attitude he gained from his mother's unwavering optimism during her losing battle with cancer. It's love at first sight when Danny meets Ariana, a wealthy girl from Greenwich, CT who tragically cannot hear the music she inspires him to write. Ariana, hearing impaired since childhood, is torn between hanging onto the shelter her controlling mother provides and fighting for a love that, if given the chance, might just change her life
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
This drama is an updated version of Ulmer's 1944 film Bluebeard. It is set in New York and follows the exploits of an eccentric Parisian painter who has come to New York to escape a controversy surrounding his work. The trouble stems when the model he has used in all his work is found floating dead in the Seine.
In Hoyt City, a statue of founder Ethan Hoyt is dedicated, and 100 year old Hannah Sempler Hoyt (who lives in the last residence among skyscrapers) is at last persuaded to tell her story to a 'girl biographer'. Flashback: in 1848, teenage Hannah meets and flirts with pioneer Ethan; on a sudden impulse, they elope. We follow their struggle to found a city in the wilderness, hampered by the Gold Rush, star-crossed love, peril, and heartbreak. The star "ages" 80 years.
A jeweled Madonna, property of rancher Joe Salinas, attracts two crooks to his ranch, Monica Dell, a smooth operator, and ruthless Nick Julian. Joe believe that the statue has a miraculous power to ward off evil, and Monica, after a narrow escape from injury while trying to steal the statue, is converted to Joe's faith and refuses to go through with the robbery. Nick has no such intentions.
A middle aged man, Tom, walks out one day on his wife and baby boy and his seemingly happy life with no explanation. He opts to live on the streets of London. Alone in a park at night he is set upon by a gang of violent thugs, in his bid to escape he accidentally runs into a tree. In A&E Tom meets an extremely happy, fast-talking individual, Aidan, the complete opposite of Tom. Too polite, or too weak to ask him to leave him alone Tom tries to get away from him but to no avail, Aidan sticks to Tom like glue. Tom reluctantly becomes involved in Aidan's life and he quickly realizes that this child like man clearly has his own problems, except Aidan can't see them, his shiny optimism blinds him at every turn, even from his 'girlfriend' the dangerous and volatile Linda.
Willie Dynamite is a pimp who operates in New York City. Willie was a big success as a pimp, but now, just as fast as he rose to the top, he has hit bottom. A former prostitute who has become a social worker tries to get Willie to clean up his life while it is still possible.
Life is a Miracle (Serbian: Život je Äudo) is a Serbian drama film. It was entered into the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Luka has moved to Bosnia from Belgrade with his mentally unstable wife and his football-playing son, MiloÅ¡, to run a railway station and act as caretaker. Utterly engrossed in his work and blinded by natural optimism, Luka remains deaf to the increasingly persistent rumblings of war, which has broken out in Croatia and threatens to spread. When the conflict explodes, MiloÅ¡ is denied his place on the football field when he must join the Serbian army, and his wife disappears on the arm of a Hungarian musician. Eventually, he receives news that MiloÅ¡ has been taken prisoner of war. Luka considers suicide, but a profiteering acquaintance presents him with Sabaha, a Bosnian Muslim whom he has taken hostage. Luka intends to exchange Sabaha for MiloÅ¡, but the two fall in love after they are forced to flee deeper into Serb-controlled territory...
A group of 20-something blue-collar workers in Pittsburgh cook up a scheme to make extra money that involves prostitution. Their business takes off, then gets way out of hand.
Small-town girl Angie King leaves the church and her home to pursue a dream of singing stardom. Luckett plays Angie, the daughter of a stern but loving bishop, whose attraction to the hunky star (Tank) of a traveling gospel show takes her on the roadâ¦and into romance, heartbreak and the realization that happiness may lie in the home she left behind.
Yuzo and his fiancée Masako spend their Sunday afternoon together, trying to have a good time on just thirty-five yen. They manage to have many small adventures, especially because Masako's optimism and belief in dreams is able to lift Yuzo from his realistic despair.
Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.
El Camino de la Vida was released in English-speaking regions of The Road of Life. Filmed almost entirely on location, the story focuses in on three young boys who, arrested by the authorities, await sentencing in Mexico City's Juvenile Court. One boy has killed his stepfather to protect his mother; the second boy has been goaded into blinding his chief tormentor; and the third resorts to stealing to support his family. Since none of the protagonists is a "born criminal" (if there is such a thing), compassionate lawyer Enrique Lucero sets about to rehabilitate the trio so that they can re-enter society's mainstream. While there are several repellantly brutal moments in El Camion de la Vida, there is also a surfeit of optimism and humor.
Based on true events, Lakshmi is a story of heroism and untold courage. Lakshmi, a 13 year old girl is kidnapped and sold into prostitution. Thrown into this horrific, inhuman world where she is raped and brutally beaten she barely survives with the help of the other girls and her own will to never give in. Finally she is rescued in a police raid. Against all odds, Lakshmi shows courage where everybody else fails. Resisting all pressure - violent threats, coercion and bribes, she stands up in court and in a landmark case in India, succeeds in putting the traffickers behind bars.
Mady Celliers, an attractive housewife of 60, he spends his life speaking ill of her two daughters and her husband, a man who shows a strange behavior since has retired. Antoine, the eldest son, company director, is unable to make a success of a business: out of a bankruptcy to get into another, her sister Alice madonnas obsessively paints sad. Annabelle, a nurse in an intensive care unit, tries desperately to save his family pronosticándole the future. When Alice meets by chance Jacques, a lonely police pessimistic explode all family neurosis.
A group of dancers congregate on the stage of a Broadway theatre to audition for a new musical production directed by Zach (Michael Douglas). After the initial eliminations, seventeen hopefuls remain, among them Cassie (Alyson Reed), who once had a tempestuous romantic relationship with Zach. She is desperate enough for work to humble herself and audition for him; whether he's willing to let professionalism overcome his personal feelings about their past remains to be seen.As the film unfolds, the backstory of each of the dancers is revealed. Some are funny, some ironic, some heartbreaking. No matter what their background, however, they all have one thing in common - a passion for dance.
Combining fictional and documentary modes, Kluge's In Danger and Dire Distress... takes a critical stance toward Frankfurt's public sphere and urban redevelopment. Despite the serious formal and political concerns of the film, Kluge's heightened sense of the absurd safeguards a reserve of utopian optimism.
A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages. 1) "The Prehistoric Era": A caveman discovers that a cavewoman is more attractive when cave paint is applied to her face. And she can earn more seashells that way. 2) "Roman Nights": The Emperor goes out seeking a little nocturnal amusement, only to find that the high-priced, Oriental courtesan he hires is his wife, the Empress. 3) "Mademoiselle Mimi": In revolutionary France, Mimi finds that her client, the nephew of a marquis, is more interested in watching the guillotinings out her window than he is in going to bed. 4) "The Gay Nineties": When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! 5) "Paris Today": Two girls pick up clients by driving around in a car...
Funny adventures about a priceless icon stolen by Kurt for a Russian criminal Igor.
The friendship between two friends is put to the test when they suddenly become preoccupied with their own ambitions.
After spending three years doing field installation work in West Africa, Fred returns home to his old neighbourhood, an industrial region on the outskirts of a major city. He is filled with confidence and optimism for a new start. He has brought home with him a pile of money that he made in Africa. But he never wrote to his wife Rita. He only wired her a money transfer every month. In the meantime, Rita has a new life that she now shares with a GI. Fred rents a room in the "Royal", a sleazy hotel. There, he meets Alma, who takes care of the rooms and the guests and who is being kept by her sugar daddy - the aging hotel director. A passionate encounter with his old girlfriend Vera, who had high hopes for the two of them at some earlier time, dissipates into a brief carnal episode
A call girl goes to a priest to confess a sin she hasn't committed yet: she plans to kill herself on her next birthday. Then she disappears and he goes looking for her, enlisting the help of an ad hoc congregation of troubled souls along the way. A story about forgiveness.
A comedy-drama about best friends - one a straight woman, Abbie, the other a gay man, Robert - who decide to have a child together. Five years later, Abbie falls in love with a straight man and wants to move away with her and Robert's little boy Sam, and a nasty custody battle ensues.
Pulling up stakes for a fresh start in Las Vegas, aspiring singer Reese (Karen Allen) and daughter Emily (Brittany Murphy) are looking forward to the future with optimism. But mom's problem drinking and her struggles to pay the bills threaten the pair's plans for a better life. Frequently cast in the role of mothering her own mother, teenage Emily must learn to hold on to hope in this poignant coming-of-age drama.
Aileen Wuornos is an emotionally scarred highway hooker who shoots a sadistic trick who rapes her and ultimately becomes America's first female serial killer. The film, based on a true story, centers more on the surrounding circumstances than on the murders.
Five scenarios in which people have trouble distinguishing truth from illusions. Each segment reflects the motto of Voltaire's Candide: "Optimism is insisting everything is good, when everything is bad."
This melodrama investigates the life of a prostitute in a pseudo-documentary style.
Objectively, Odette Toulemonde has nothing to be happy about, but is. Balthazar Balsan has everything to be happy about, but isnât. Odette, awkwardly forty, with a delightful hairdresser son and a daughter bogged down in adolescence, spends her days behind the cosmeticâs counter in a department store and her nights sewing feathers on costumes for Parisian variety shows. She dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite author, to whom â she believes â she owes her optimism. The rich and charming Parisian writer then turns up in her life in an unexpected way.
A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing movies for decades when he made The Life of Oharu in 1952. But this epic portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, starring the astounding Kinuyo Tanaka as an imperial lady-in-waiting who gradually descends to street prostitution, was the movie that gained the director international attention, ushering in a new golden period for him.
In 1998, an auction of the estate of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor causes great excitement. For one woman, Wally Winthrop, it has much more meaning. Wally becomes obsessed by their historic love story. As she learns more about the sacrifices involved, Wally gains her own courage to find happiness.
Based on the New York Times # 1 bestseller from renowned author Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers finally comes to the screen in an epic as grand as the novel that inspired it. Penelope Keeling, a sixty-four-year-old daughter of a famous artist, reflects on her life, and the fate and choices that defined it, when she arrives in the Mediterranean to stay with her headstrong daughter. Shifting through time, and falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw, the truth of Penelope's rich, heartbreaking and surprising life unfolds. Starring Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe winners Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, The Shell Seekers is an uncommon love story of one family's three generations of hope, heartbreak, forgiveness and renewal.
Inga is a mother with the soul of a poet at a crossroads. Her estranged husband Hermann is bereft of emotional support for her in the wake of her recovery from breast cancer, let alone her passion for buying and restoring and house that reminds her of her childhood home. She shares a close bond with her eight-year-old daughter, and though she is troubled by her decaying marriage, she retains a strong spirit of optimism, as expressed in her own writing.
This is the story of Samantha Horton, a former Texas homecoming queen and physical therapist. When both she and her husband, Rex, are laid off from their jobs, Samantha accepts an offer to work at a massage studio in a nearby town, not realizing that the other staff members are actually prostitutes who service a clientele of wealthy and powerful businessmen. Eventually realizing what goes on behind closed doors, but desperate to provide for her family, Samantha goes along for the ride. But when the police raid the business and Samantha is arrested, she ends up as a key witness in the case â putting high-profile johns in handcuffs and bringing a small Texas town to its knees.
Small-town sisters Dottie and Kit join an all-female baseball league formed after World War II brings pro baseball to a standstill. When their team hits the road with its drunken coach, the siblings find troubles and triumphs on and off the field.
Teachers in a rural school, happy couple Fiona and Dom have a common passion: Latin Dancing. One night, after a glorious dance competition, they have a car accident and see their lives turn upside down. Rumba or how optimism and humour can overcome fatality!
© Valossa 2015–2024