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A look at the forces that shaped Pre-Code Hollywood and brought about the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934. Documentary.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Informationâs Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazisâ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman â and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums.
Director Johan Grimonprez casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. Subverting a meticulous array of TV footage and using 'The Birds' as an essential metaphor, DOUBLE TAKE traces catastrophe culture's relentless assault on the home, from moving images' inception to the present day.
A compilation of trailers and scenes from crime, horror and sci-fi films.
A tribute to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, featuring contemporary filmmakers, writers, performers, and cultural critics.
An in-depth analysis of the relationship between New Wave pioneers François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, as seen through rare archival footage, interviews, and film excerpts â written and narrated by former Cahiers du Cinéma editor Antoine de Baecque.
Filmmakers discuss how Francois Truffaut's 1966 book "Cinema According to Hitchcock" influenced their work.
A look at actresses who starred in films with thought-provoking subjects made between 1929-1934 - before the Hollywood Production Code was enforced.
A retrospective on the entire movie, from start to finish. There are interviews with many of the principle cast and crew (including Janet Leigh and Joseph Stefano), who all talk openly and lovingly about entire process of making the film. The sessions with Janet Leigh are particularly involving, and she talks a great deal about shooting the now infamous shower scene.
A documentary about the English alternative rock band, The Stone Roses. Meadows interweaves archive film, intimate behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen material, delivering the definitive account of the band and their music. He was also granted unprecedented access to their rehearsals for the summer 2012 Manchester concerts. A momentous occasion in modern music, these were the first gigs performed by The Stone Roses in 16 years.
Red-Headed Woman is a 1932 Pre-Code comedy film, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, based on a novel by Katherine Brush, and with a screenplay by Anita Loos. It was directed by Jack Conway, and stars Jean Harlow as a woman who uses sex to advance her social position. During the course of the film, Harlow breaks up a marriage, has multiple affairs and pre-marital sex, and attempts to kill a man.
Hitchcock follows the relationship between director Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville during the making of his most famous film "Psycho" - and the trials and tribulations the director faced from Hollywood censors.
Sexpot film star Lola Burns (Jean Harlow) is at the top of the pile in Hollywood in this pre-code film directed by Victor Fleming But with her father and brother always hanging around for handouts and the studio PR honcho cooking up endless lurid newspaper stories, she decides to get a new image by trying all sorts of schemes which go awry.
Director Alfred Hitchcock is revered as one of the greatest creative minds in the history of cinema. Known for his psychological thrillers, Hitchcockâs leading ladies were cool, beautiful and preferably blonde. One such actress was Tippi Hedren, an unknown fashion model given her big break when Hitchcockâs wife saw her on a TV commercial. Brought to Universal Studios, Hedren was shocked when the director, at the peak of his career, quickly cast her to star in his next feature, 1963âs The Birds. Little did Hedren know that as ambitious and terrifying as the production would be to shoot, the most daunting aspect of the film ended up coming from behind the camera.
A middle-aged houseguest causes romantic turmoil when he falls in love with his host's teenage daughter. Director Harry Beaumont's pre-code comedy stars Lionel Barrymore, Alice Brady, Godfrey Tearle, Mary Carlisle, William Janney, Katharine Alexander and Halliwell Hobbes.
True story of an innocent man mistaken for a criminal.
Based on the Hammett novel, this ultra-rare filmâis nominally taken from the author's classic gang-war novel Red Harvest, which proved too brutal and cynical even for pre-Code Hollywood.
When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother. The place seems quirky, but fine⦠until Marion decides to take a shower.
Early 30s pre-code comedy about a woman attempting to get her two ex-husbands to pay back alimony.
Lighthearted suspense film about a phony psychic/con artist and her taxi driver/private investigator boyfriend who encounter a pair of serial kidnappers while trailing a missing heir in California.
An early pre-code '30s tale of juvenile delinquency, about a high-school student neglecting his studies, partying hard, falling in with the wrong crowd and finally finding himself on trial for murder committed during a robbery.
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.
Marnie is a beautiful kleptomaniac who is in love with businessman Mark Rutland. Marnie who is a compulsive thief is being watched by her new boss Mark who suspects her of stealing from him and thus decides to blackmail her in the most unusual way. A psychological thriller from Alfred Hitchcock based on a novel of the same name by Winston Graham.
A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.
Refusing to give into police investigators' questions of suspicion, due to the seal of confession, a priest becomes the prime suspect in a murder.
Shortly before the curtain goes up the first time at the latest performance of Earl Carroll's Vanities, someone is attempting to injure the leading lady Ann Ware, who wants to marry leading man Eric Lander. Stage manager in charge Jack Ellery calls in his friend, policeman Bill Murdock, to help him investigate. Bill thinks Jack if offering to let him see the show from an unusual view point, after he forgot to get him tickets for the performance, but then they find the corpse of a murdered women. Bill suspects Eric of the crime, especially, after the second female lead Rita Ross told him she saw the women leaving from Eric's room. Then Rita is shot onstage with Eric's gun. Jack and Bill decide not to stop the show, but Bill preparing to arrest Eric. Is he on the right track ?
A delightful Hitchcock film about an ex-burglar who must catch a thief whoâs been copying this style before he gets accused of the wrong crimes. His time is running out as the police are close behind him yet he finds time for a little romance of course. A classic masterpiece starring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant.
Although Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.
In 1831, Irishman Charles Adare travels to Australia to start a new life with the help of his cousin who has just been appointed governor. When he arrives he meets powerful landowner and ex-convict Sam Flusky, who wants to do a business deal with him. Whilst attending a dinner party at Flusky's house, Charles meets Flusky's wife Henrietta who he had known as a child back in Ireland. Henrietta is an alcoholic and seems to be on the verge of madness.
French General Birabeau has been sent to Morocco to root out and destroy the Riffs, a band of Arab rebels, who threaten the safety of the French outpost in the Moroccan desert. Their dashing, daredevil leader is the mysterious "Red Shadow". Margot Bonvalet, a lovely, sassy French girl, is soon to be married at the fort to Birabeau's right-hand man, Captain Fontaine. Birabeau's son Pierre, in reality the Red Shadow, loves Margot, but pretends to be a milksop to preserve his secret identity. Margot tells Pierre that she secretly yearns to be swept into the arms of some bold, dashing sheik, perhaps even the Red Shadow himself. Pierre, as the Red Shadow, kidnaps Margot and declares his love for her.
An ex-tennis pro carries out a plot to have his wife murdered after discovering she is having an affair, and assumes she will soon leave him for the other man anyway. When things go wrong, he improvises a new plan - to frame her for murder instead.
Several civilians are stranded in a lifeboat together after their ship is destroyed in combat. The survivors begin to clash when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be a German from the U-boat who sunk them, and have to come to an agreement on what to do with him.
A wealthy but neurotic Southern belle finds herself trapped in the hideout of a gang of vicious bootleggers. The gang's leader lusts after her, and is determined not to let anything stand in the way of his having her.
Professional photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment, he spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbors. He begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife. Jeff enlists the help of his high society fashion-consultant girlfriend Lisa Freemont and his visiting nurse Stella to investigate.
Sexy Texas gal storms her way through life, brawling and boozing until her luck runs out, forcing her to learn the errors of her ways.
Richard Hannay is a Canadian visitor to London. At the end of "Mr Memory's" show in a music hall, he meets Annabella Smith who is running away from secret agents. He accepts her request to hide her in his flat, but in the night she is murdered. Fearing he could be accused of her murder, Hannay goes on the run determined to break the spy ring.
Katharine Hepburn's second film..based on a novel by Gilbert Frankau. CHRISTOPHER STRONG is about the unlikely romance between a stuffy British politician, and an adventurous girl young enough to be his daughter. Both parties are dragged to a High Society 'Treasure Hunt' as examples of "something impossible to find"...ie.a faithful husband, and a young girl who has never had a love affair. How the romance comes to be, and how everything blows up in their faces, make for an interesting pre-code show. The dialog may be dated, but the acting is "spot on". The young Katharine Hepburn is radiant, and the 32 year old Colin Clive does a spendid job of playing Sir Christopher...conveying a 25 year age difference with little more than body language and a mustache.
Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man's world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.
Alice's boyfriend Frank is a Scotland Yard detective who seems more interested in police work than in her. When she agrees to go out with another man, he attacks her and she defends herself and kills him. When the body is discovered, Frank is assigned to the case. He quickly discovers that Alice is the killer, but so has someone else, and they are threatening blackmail.
Lora Hart manages to land a job in a hospital as a trainee nurse. Upon completion of her training she goes to work as a night nurse for two small children who seem to be very sick, but something much more sinister is going on.
A bored young woman, a teen living in Santa Rosa, California, Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Wright), is frustrated because nothing seems to be happening in her life and that of her family. Then, she receives wonderful news: her uncle (for whom she was named), Charlie Oakley (Cotten), is arriving for a visit. But Uncle Charlie may not be the man he seems to be.
After killing an ex-boyfriend in New Orleans, a prostitute flees to a Caribbean island. There the vicious local police chief sets his sights on her, unaware that she is a fugitive.
Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory "fish out of water" scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal everyday event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off. Released in the US as The Girl Was Young, Young and Innocent was based on a novel by Josephine Tey.
Skyscraper Souls is a Pre-Code 1932 drama film starring Warren William and Maureen O'Sullivan. The film was directed by Edgar Selwyn and is based upon the novel Skycraper by Faith Baldwin. The film depicts the aspirations and lives of several people in the Seacoast National Bank Building. Among them is David Dwight, the womanizing bank owner who keeps his estranged wife happy by paying her bills. His secretary Sarah wants him to get a divorce so they can marry.
After three British agents are assigned to assassinate a mysterious German spy during World War I, two of them become ambivalent when their duty to the mission conflicts with their consciences.
Harriet and Queenie Mahoney, a vaudeville act, come to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. Eddie was in love with Harriet, but when he meets Queenie, he falls in love to her, but she is courted by Jock Warriner, a member of the New Yorker high society. It takes a while till Queenie recognizes, that she is for Jock nothing more than a toy, and it also takes a while till Harriet recognizes, that Eddie is in love with Queenie
In a flashback to 1991, while riding his bike through the woods, a young boy spots a woman darting between the trees. He puts down his bike and runs after her. The woman meets up with another woman, they speak briefly and run together through the woods until they arrive at an old stone house. The boy continues after them and peaks through the window of the house and watches as they wildly slaughter a rooster. The women spot the boy at the window and chase after him, saying "You'll be sorry, I'll kill you, You'll never get away from us" The flashback ends. A young man, Julio, working late at night spies an attractive neighbor girl getting dressed. He watches her through binoculars as she takes her red bra on and off while wearing only a garter belt below. The next morning, he rides his motorbike to his girlfriend's apartment to pick her up. After they make love, the girlfriend leaves on the motorbike and Julio stays behind in his apartment, watching the neighbors out the window.
An insane hunter arranges for a ship to be wrecked on an island where he can indulge in some sort of hunting and killing of the passengers.
Released shortly after the war, this classic Hitchcock film illustrates the battle between German Nazis and American spies in Rio de Janeiro where a German businessman keeps a wine cellar with uranium ore.
In World War I London, Myra is an American out of work chorus girl making ends meet by picking up men on Waterloo Bridge. During a Zeppelin air raid she meets Roy, a naive young American who enlisted in the Canadian army. They fall for each other, and he tricks Myra into visiting his family who live in a country estate outside London, where his step-father is a retired British Major. However Myra is reluctant to continue the relationship with Roy, because she has not told him about her past.
Hitchcock classic, based on Ethel Lina White's novel "The Wheel Spins". Travellers on a trans-European train are delayed for a night due to bad weather in a small fictional country called Mandrika. The passengers cram into the small village hotel where socialite Iris Henderson meets an old governess called Miss Froy. Shortly after the journey restarts, Miss Froy disappears.
Harry and Inez are a dance team at the Wonder Bar. Inez loves Harry, but he is in love with Liane, the wife of a wealthy business man. Al Wonder and the conductor/singer Tommy are in love with Inez. When Inez finds out that Harry wants to leave Paris and is going to the USA with Liane, she kills him.
Madison Avenue advertising man Roger Thornhill finds himself thrust into the world of spies when he is mistaken for a man by the name of George Kaplan. Foreign spy Philip Vandamm and his henchman Leonard try to eliminate him but when Thornhill tries to make sense of the case, he is framed for murder. Now on the run from the police, he manages to board the 20th Century Limited bound for Chicago where he meets a beautiful blond, Eve Kendall, who helps him to evade the authorities. His world is turned upside down yet again when he learns that Eve isn't the innocent bystander he thought she was. Not all is as it seems however, leading to a dramatic rescue and escape at the top of Mt. Rushmore.
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.
A widescreen, Technicolor remake of Hitchcock's own 1934 film of the same title starring James Stewart and Doris Day. A couple vacationing in Morocco with their son accidentally stumble upon an assassination plot. When their son is kidnapped to ensure their silence, they have to take matters into their own hands to save him.
Director Mervyn LeRoy's 1931 crime drama stars John Gilbert and Leila Hyams.
The European war was only beginning to erupt across national borders. Its titular hero, Johnny Jones, is an American crime reporter dispatched by his New York publisher to put a fresh spin on the drowsy dispatches emanating from overseas, his nose for a good story promptly leading him to the crime of fascism and Nazi Germany's designs on European conquest In attempting to learn more about a seemingly noble peace effort, Jones who walks into the middle of an assassination, uncovers a spy ring, and, not entirely coincidentally, falls in love.
From a wheelchair a handicapped white man rules an area of Africa as a living god. He rules the local natives through superstition and stage magic and he rules the few white people through sadism, keeping them virtual prisoners. He lives for the day he can avenge himself horribly on the man who stole his wife and crushed his spine. Strong and macabre stuff in a nearly forgotten horror film.
Frenzy is the penultimate film from Hitchcock and at the same time the first film that brought his emigration to the USA back to Great Britain.
Heiress learns to fly from aeronautical engineer. Things get complicated as their affair progresses.
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