Santa (1943)
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Melodrama about two girls whose fortunes run on very different paths.
Scott Calvin is an ordinary man, who accidentally causes Santa Claus to fall from his roof on Christmas Eve and is knocked unconscious. When he and his young son finish Santa's trip and deliveries, they go to the North Pole, where Scott learns he must become the new Santa and convince those he loves that he is indeed, Father Christmas.
The fourth of seven films that Raffaello Matarazzo made with Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson in the starring roles during the fifties. These films were the epitome of operatic melodrama, and were hugely successful with the Italian public.
Melodrama about a woman who marries a bigamist, then a drunk, and falls in love with another man, all while working at a carnival.
Based on the 1932 play of the same name by Phillip Dunning and George Abbott. Lilly Turner is a very precode character in a very precode film. She starts out with all the best intentions and does nothing wrong, only to find herself in a highly unfortunate situation that society of the time couldn't approve of: an unmarried mother to be. She then gets out of it through the kindness of another, becoming half of an open marriage, very progressive for the times. Lilly Turner would have needed to be completely rewritten to have been made during the code years.
The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman.
When bored courtesan Zelie de Chaumet begs her lover, the corrupt and powerful Stetz, to take her slumming, the pair encounter Pierre Boucheron, alias 'The Rat' , boy-king of the Paris underworld, and the innocent Odile. Love, life and jewels are risked and lost in this powerful romantic melodrama as the four characters' lives are changed by this chance encounter for ever.
Glossy melodrama starring Lana Turner as a young woman from Kansas who moves to New York, becomes highly successful at a prestigious modeling agency, and falls in love with a married man.
A miserable conman and his partner pose as Santa and his Little Helper to rob department stores on Christmas Eve. But they run into problems when the conman befriends a troubled kid, and the security boss discovers the plot.
Melodrama about the professional and romantic problems of an aspiring singer.
Crystal, a rich party girl, finds a little girl's letter to Santa asking for a new mother, and she vows to win over the father and daughter before the holidays.
In this tearful crime melodrama, a waitress becomes so taken with her dream of living in posh luxury and comfort that she leaves her honest boyfriend the district attorney to take up with a notorious gangster who lavishes her with stolen furs and fabulous diamonds. She has no idea that the crook is only using her as a pawn in his scheme to learn the DA's secrets. When she finally does learn the truth, she gives up her life for truth, justice and love.
Davis and Rains shine in a romantic melodrama set in the world of concert music. Davis is a pianist torn between her wealthy, jealous patron and her cellist husband.
A prominent New York doctor (Kay Francis), unable to have a child, discovers her philandering husband (Warren William) has impregnated her best friend (Jean Muir). Director William Keighley's 1934 melodrama also stars Verree Teasdale, Emma Dunn, Phillip Reed, Louise Beavers and Ann Shoemaker.
Melodrama set in Victorian Brighton. Scheming pub landlady uses the timorous son of a domineering pharmacist to assist in the poisoning of her drunkard husband. (The title is from the way pharmacists used to wrap parcels containing poison).
Linda Darnell plays a beautiful Russian peasant in this moody Sirk melodrama, based on Chekhov's "The Shooting Party." Trying to pull herself out of serf-ish poverty, she works her charms on an engaged aristocrat (George Sanders) with tragic results.
Santa (Tovar) is a beautiful and very humble young girl living in Chimalistac, a small and quiet spot south of the 1930's Mexico City. After Santa is cheated by arrogant soldier Marcelino (Reed), she's rejected by her family and friends and expelled of Chimalistac. Santa finds shelter in a whorehouse and becomes a cinic and bitter woman, mistreated by bullfighter "Jarameno" (Martinez Casado) and silently loved by blind pianist Hipolito (Orellana).
George Sanders stars in this engrossing melodrama about a very domineering sister who holds a tight grip on her brother -- especially when he shows signs of falling in love.
An elderly businessman (Frank Morgan) plans what he thinks is an innocent night on the town while his wife is away. Instead, he finds himself involved in a showgirl's murder.
action melodrama
The film features the leading actress Greta Garbo as Yvonne, an artist's model. Other stars include Robert Montgomery, Lewis Stone, Marjorie Rambeau and Judith Vosselli. It is a romantic melodrama, portraying a Parisian belle with a past returning to haunt her. The film is the only one where Montgomery played opposite Garbo.
Pitch, the mean-spirited devil, is trying to ruin Christmas. Santa Claus teams up with Merlin the Magician and the children of the world in order to save the day!
In this morbid Nazi sanctioned pro-euthanasia melodrama, a successful doctor is forced to make a heart wrenching decision after his beautiful young wife is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Vénus aveugle (Blind Venus) is a 1941 French film melodrama, directed by Abel Gance, and one of the first films to be undertaken in France during the German occupation. Although the film is not set in any specified period, Gance wanted it to be seen as relevant to the contemporary situation in France. He wrote, "...La Vénus aveugle is at the crossroads of reality and legend... The heroine ... gradually sinks deeper and deeper into despair. Only when she has reached the bottom of the abyss does she encounter the smile of Providence that life reserves for those who have faith in it, and she can then go serenely back up the slope towards happiness. If I have been able to show in this film that elevated feelings are the only force that can triumph over Fate, then my efforts will not have been in vain."
Kris Kringle, seemingly the embodiment of Santa Claus, is asked to portray the jolly old fellow at Macy's following his performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade. His portrayal is so complete many begin to question if he truly is Santa Claus while others question his sanity.
Hoda is a famous dancer who gives up the spotlight to marry and start a family with Mamdouh, a handsome young doctor who is just beginning his career. When Mamdouh's scheming Italian head nurse Yolanda sets her sights on Mamdouh, Hoda's jealousy drives her to drink, ultimately endangering everything she holds dear. An enchanting example of Egyptian melodrama at its finest.
In this crime melodrama, a Swiss woman finds herself unwittingly involved in a plot to steal from her employer, a London diamond merchant. Her boyfriend is behind the scheme. First he sends two accomplices disguised as German jewelers to see the boss. He is not fooled by their ruse and is killed while the woman is knocked unconscious. She awakens with amnesia and begins aimlessly wandering the London streets. Thinking that his girl has squealed to the police, her boy friend begins scouring the town to find her. Meanwhile, she is taken in by a boxer who returns to the ring to win the money needed to get her out of the country. Trouble ensues when her lover finally finds her after the match and begins beating on the exhausted fighter.
A little girl discovers dreams can come true if you really believe. Six-year-old Susan Walker has doubts about childhood's most enduring miracle - Santa Claus. Her mother told her the 'secret' about Santa a long time ago. But after meeting a special department store Santa who's convinced he's the real thing, Susan is given the most precious gift of all something to believe in.
Fred Claus (Vince Vaughn) and Santa Claus (Paul Giamatti) have been estranged brothers for many years. Now Fred must reconcile his differences with his brother whom he believes over shadows him. When an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) asseses the workings at the North Pole and threatens to shut Santa down, Fred must help his brother to save Christmas.
This is a bizarre film, almost completely melodramatic. The screenplay by Howard Koch is based on the 1941 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title by Ellen Glasgow.Completed in 1942 after the US had joined the war, the film was disapproved in 1943 for foreign release by the wartime Office of Censorship, because it dealt truthfully with racial discrimination as part of its plot. It was Huston's second movie and as he put it: âIt was the first time [in an American film], I believe, that a black character was presented as anything other than a good and faithful servant or comic relief.â.
Cahiers du cinéma critic Serge Daney asks whether The Kingdom of Naples is "leftist fiction, kitschy melodrama, photo-roman, a decadent chronicle of a city, opera in a minor key, or simply the first realistic narrative film by Schroeter?" It is all of these and more: an epic chronicle of proletarian family life in Naples from 1943 to 1972 that brilliantly captures the wretched poverty, overwrought passions, and political, religious and economic upheavals of Sicily across two generations. Schroeter assimilates neorealist aesthetics and class sympathies with the tempestuous excesses of popular melodrama, borrowing freely from Rossellini, Pasolini, Visconti, Brecht, and Rossini. (Facets)
A hip and happenin' all girl rock group head to LA to claim lead-singer Kelly's inheritance and make it (and make it) in LA. Soon the girls fall into a morass of drugs and deceit as their recording success soars. It takes several tragedies to make them stop and think... but is it too late?
During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.
When a hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he is seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.
Set in 1870's New York, a spinster heiress is courted by a much younger, penniless man, much to the chagrin of her over-protective father, and must decide whether to spend the rest of her life alone, or marry a man who is interested in her only because of her inheritence.
A modern day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, in a tribute to 1960s pulp novels and Technicolor melodramas.
Deemed "the D.W. Griffith of Turkish Cinema," Omer Lutfi Akad directs this 1952 film based upon real events that took place in Ä°stanbul, in the following years of World war II. It is about a love triangle that led to homicide. It was a stylistic departure of what otherwise had been typical of Turkish melodramas of the time.
Nesibe lives with her parents on the outskirts of Istanbul; the family is poor, and her consistently unemployed father often takes out his frustration on the rest of the family. Nesbibe knows that there has to be something more to life, and she finds itâat the movies. As she recalls her childhood and adolescence, her own memories merge with scenes from the dozens of musicals, melodramas and romances she saw to fill her days and to escape the desperation of her home life. But as she moves into adulthood, the contradiction between Nesbibeâs cinematic dream life and everyday reality starts to affect her in unexpected ways. Based on a novel by co-director Füruzan, My Cinemas avoids sentimentality and movie nostalgia to show how, in its own way, the cinema can become a kind of trap.
Cousins James and Robert are in love with Susanna. When Robert and Susanna announce their engagement, James vows to ruin their happiness.
This silent melodrama is set against the 1840s westward migration of the Mormons. Dora, a young woman, and her family are saved from an Indian attack by a Mormon community traveling to Utah. They join the wagon train. Dora is pursued by two men, one a recent convert, the other a scheming elder with a stable of wives. The Mormon elder wants her in his harem. When the mother kills herself from revulsion toward polygamy, the daughter must consider her own future and the man she loves. One of Mae Murray's few surviving films, this was intended by Robert Leonard to be a thoughtful drama about the goods and evils of Mormonism, but today it is generally considered pure anti-Mormon propaganda.
Melodrama about a bomber on board an airplane, an airport almost closed by snow, and various personal problems of the people involved.
After three years, Nick's estranged daughter Holly returns home to find the spirit of Christmas in Santaville has dwindled, taking the family business with it. What starts out as an attempt to bail out her dad, ends up rekindling Holly's belief in Christmas all over again.
Lana Turner stars as an American news correspondent working in England during WWII. Her affair with a married British correspondent (Sean Connery) ends tragically when he is killed in action. Fearing a nervous breakdown as a result of his death, she travels to Cornwall to mourn with his family without any intention of revealing her relationship with him.
Edward J. Olmos made his directorial bow with the powerhouse crime saga American Me. Olmos stars as street-gang leader Santana, who during his 18 years in Folsom Prison rules over all the drug-and-murder activities behind bars. Upon his release, Santana goes back to his old neighborhood, intending to lead a peaceful, crime-free life. But his old gang buddies force him back into his old habits. The
On a cruise to Cuba, Lulu Smith falls in love with Bob Grover. Back home, she breaks off the romance when he tells her he is married. Lulu has a baby, but doesn't tell Bob, who turns out to be a rising politician. She passes herself off as the baby's nanny. When Bob learns what is going on, he adopts the little girl, not telling his wife or anyone else where she came from. Lulu gets a job at a newspaper. Things get complicated when the editor gets the dirt on Grover, but also wants to marry Lulu
Booky does everything she can to make an enjoyable Christmas, for her family, during the depression as her father is out of work.
Everyone thinks of Santa Claus as a magical figure without flaws, but the men who keep his legend alive, real-bearded professional Santas, are nothing like the jolly ol' Saint Nick we've all grown up knowing. In reality, the mall Santa in your cherished children's photo has problems just like the rest of us. Even the jolliest of men fall victim to divorce, job loss, insecurity and even the occasional hangover. 'I Am Santa Claus' is a documentary that follows the lives of five real-bearded professional Santa Clauses as they anticipate and prepare the coming holiday season while showing them for who they actually are flawed, flesh and blood men who feel an overbearing responsibility to protect the integrity of the spotless, untarnished reputation of the "Red Suit."
A young reindeer who suffers from vertigo learns to overcome his fear, takes flying lessons from a clumsy flying squirrel and heads to the North pole to save a troubled Santa and his fleet of flying reindeer.
A young girl turns to a department store Santa in the hopes that he will help find a new husband for her divorced mother.
Greta Garbo runs away from an unbearable life at home--and a pre-arranged marriage to a man she despises--and seeks happiness with handsome engineer Clark Gable. Director Robert Z. Leonard's 1931 melodrama also features Jean Hersholt, Alan Hale, John Miljan, Cecil Cunningham, Hale Hamilton and Russell Simpson.
Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of various acquaintances, including a writer James Lee Bartlow, a star Georgia Lorrison and a director Fred Amiel. He is a hard-driving, ambitious man who ruthlessly uses everyone - including the writer, star and director - on the way to becoming one of Hollywood's top movie makers.
The musical biopic of jazz great Red Nichols features a healthy dose of melodrama along with the melodies. As the famed Dixieland cornetist, he runs into opposition to his sound, but breaks through to success. He marries a warm, patient woman (Bel Geddes) and even finds time to raise a family. Then tragedy strikes when their daughter contracts polio. The jazzman puts down his horn to stand by her.
Adapted from one of Dashiell Hammett's best novels, The Glass Key is a lively and straightforward melodrama of political corruption and urban intrigue. George Raft plays Ed Beaumont, the right-hand man to genial ward heeler Paul Madvig (Edward Arnold), who wants to clean up his political act. On the eve of a major election, Madvig is implicated in a murder, and it's up to Beaumont to help him out.
The Grissom Gang is a remake of the notorious 1949 British melodrama No Orchids For Miss Blandish. Kim Darby plays a 1920s-era debutante who is kidnapped and held for ransom. Her captors are the Grissoms, a family comprised of sadists and morons, and headed by Ma Barker clone Irene Dailey. One of the Grissoms, played by Scott Wilson, takes a liking to his prisoner, which results in a bloody breakdown of the family unit. Both The Grissom Gang and the original No Orchids For Miss Blandish were inspired by the best-seller by James Hadley Chase, though neither film retains Chase's original ending.
Everybody seems to have had a good time making the overripe melodrama The Hidden Hand, especially cadaverous Milton Parsons as insane-asylum escapee John Channing. In her efforts to protect her brother from the authorities, John's sister Lorinda (Cecil Cunningham) opens the door for a series of grisly murders. Hero Peter Thorne (Craig Stevens) and heroine Mary Winfield (Elizabeth Fraser) try to stop John before he overracts-er, kills-again. Absolutely impossible to take seriously, The Hidden Hand is nonetheless worth a glance, if for no other reason than to see perennial bit player Parsons in a juicy leading role. The film was based on Invitation to a Murder, a play by Rufus King.
Womanizing workaholic Neil returns to Michigan to reunite with his brother after their father dies. As they try to sell the family home, their interactions are as chilly as the frost-covered February landscape. But Neilâs facade thaws under the glow of his brotherâs charismatic fiancée. Chicago writer-director Patrick Underwood crafts a big-hearted romantic melodrama about rebuilding.
Two women get on the highway heading to Santa Fe. Marilyn dreams of winning a contest held by a famous belly dancing company, while her friend, Mona, has a secret: she's a fugitive from justice - accused of her mother-in-law's death.
Elia Kazan directs Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in an epic western melodrama.
This warmhearted Yuletide tale tells the story of Grandpa Nichols (James Earl Jones) who is spending his first Christmas alone as a widower. His grandson Pete (Flex Alexander from SHE'S ALL THAT) is riveted by his grandfather's story of St. Nick, and Pete decides that it is his desire to do all he can to help out old St. Nick in any way he can. A delight for the whole family.
A young Belgian girl (Mary Pickford), raised by her longtime nanny, flees Europe at the advent of World War I and travels to America to find her real mother. This 1921 melodrama, co-directed by Alfred E. Green and Jack Pickford, also stars Gertrude Astor, John Harron, Helen Raymond and Adolphe Menjou.
Victorian gothic melodrama based on the novel by Sheridan Le Fanu from a screenplay adapted by Aldwych farceur Ben Travers. This creepy chiller is saved from the doldrums by Robert Krasker's atmospheric cinematography, and fine performances from the ensemble cast. The BBC later filmed the story for television in 1987. In 1845, 17-year-old Caroline (Jean Simmons) is nursing her dying father. He has enough faith in the reform of his reprobate brother, Silas (Derrick de Marney), suspected but in the clear of murder, to place her under his wing after his death. The hitherto naive heroine soon learns that scheming Uncle Silas is planning to kill her in order to get his hands on the family fortune, aided by the equally corrupt governess Madame de la Rougierre.
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