Allen Baron's chilly 1961 noir Blast of Silence follows hitman Frank Bruno (played by Baron) as he returns to New York City during Christmastime. Ostensibly in the city to perform a hit, the coldhearted Bruno finds himself unable to focus, instead choosing to lose himself in the winter festivities.

"Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls," proclaimed Jean Cocteau of his groundbreaking first film - an exploration of the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor and the relationship between art and dreams. One of cinema's great experiments, this first installment of the Orphic Trilogy ...

Suffused with wry humor, Jean - Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naive associates while plotting one last score - the heist of ...

Although the 1920s brought him acclaim as a stage actor and singer, Paul Robeson still had to prove himself as a viable screen performer. Mainstream avenues were limited, however, and his first two films, both silent, were made on the peripheries of the film business. Body and Soul (1925), directed by the legendary African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, is a direct ...

Before carving out a niche as one of the most distinct voices in nineties American cinema , Allison Anders made her debut, alongside codirectors and fellow UCLA film school students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent, with 1987's Border Radio. A low - key, semi - improvised postpunk diary that took four years to complete, Border Radio features legendary rocker Chris ...

Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well - to - do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval). The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to ...

Branded to Kill, the wildly perverse story of the yakuza's rice - sniffing "No. 3 Killer," is Seijun Suzuki at his delirious best. From a cookie - cutter studio script, Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece - and was promptly fired.

Pitting the imagination of common man Sam Lowry (the brilliantly befuddled Jonathan Pryce) against the oppressive storm troopers of the Ministry of Information, Terry Gilliam's Brazil has come to be regarded as an anti-totalitarianism cautionary tale equal to the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Gathering footage from both the European and American versions of this ...

From Noel Coward's play Still Life, legendary filmmaker David Lean deftly explores the thrill, pain, and tenderness of an illicit romance in the dour, gray Britain of 1945. From a chance meeting on a train platform, a middle - aged married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a quietly passionate, ultimately doomed love affair, set ...

As hard - hitting as its title, Brute Force was the first of Jules Dassin's forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power - tripping guard Captain Munsey ...

For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career - Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog's determination to shoot ...

Torben Skjodt Jensen's elegant documentary is a collage of memories and reflections on one of cinema's greatest directors. Visually rich and densely layered, Carl Th. Dreyer - My Metier illuminates an artist too little understood and too important to overlook. Through interviews, historical writings, and rare archival footage, a portrait of Dreyer emerges - an austere perfectionist, yes, but also ...

Herk Harvey's macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television and has been bootlegged for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, Carnival of Souls was intended to have the "look of a Bergman" and "feel of a Cocteau," and succeeds with its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) survives a ...

Jacques Becker lovingly evokes the Belle Epoque Parisian demimonde in this classic tale of doomed romance. When gangster's moll Marie (Simone Signoret) falls for reformed criminal Manda (Serge Reggiani), their passion incites an underworld rivalry that leads inexorably to treachery and tragedy. With poignant, nuanced performances and sensuous black - and - white photography, Casque d'or (Golden Marie) is Becker ...

A trio of crooks relentlessly pursue a young American (Audrey Hepburn) through Paris to recover the fortune her dead husband stole from them. The only person she can trust is a suave, mysterious stranger (Cary Grant). A deliciously dark comedic thriller, Stanley Donen’s Charade dazzles with style and macabre wit to spare. Unavailable for nearly three years, this ’60s spy ...

Chasing Amy is the third installment in the "New Jersey Trilogy" from award-winning writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma). Cult comic-book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), only to be thwarted by her sexuality, the disdain of his best friend Banky (Jason Lee), and his own misgivings about himself. Filled with Smith's ...

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 Carne and screenwriter Jacques Prevert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th - century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers.

"Why would I tie myself to one woman if I were interested in others?" says Jerome, even as he plans on marrying a diplomat's daughter by summer's end. Before then, Jerome spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse nursing crushes on the sixteen - year - old Laura and, more tantalizingly, Laura's long - legged, blonde stepsister, Claire. Baring her ...

Visionary of the French New Wave, Agnes Varda captures the atmosphere of Paris in the '60s with this portrait of a singer searching for answers as she awaits test results from a biopsy. A chronicle of two crucial hours in one woman's life, Cleo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid verite and melodrama. The film features ...

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher's apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self - discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy ...