Ealing Studio output from the 1940s and the 1950s helped define what was arguably the golden age for British cinema. This Blu-ray collection brings together three much loved comedy classics directed by Ealing stalwarts Robert Hamer Charles Crichton and Alexander Mackendrick and starring the great Sir Alec Guinness in some of his most memorable roles.
Shelagh Delaney's play 'A Taste of Honey' had already played in the West End and on Broadway when Tony Richardson made his film adaptation shot on location in Salford and Blackpool. Rita Tushingham made her indelible screen debut as Jo a young girl who falls pregnant after leaving home and her floozie of a mother - a revelatory performance by Dora Bryan. Jo befriends Geoff (Murray Melvin) a gentle kind-hearted gay man and they move in together like two children playing house for a while finding an innocent but fragile happiness. Richardson always skilled with actors draws fine performances from his entire cast and 'A Taste of Honey' remains an outstanding example of the British New Wave shot by its star cinematographer Walter Lassally.
When a landlord is forced to pay a year's back rent ASAP he has to maintain a high turnover of tenants. To do this he has to be creative in 'disposing' of clients...
The unexpected casting of Tony Curtis as the presumed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, is only the first of the attractions of this hard-nosed suspense picture. Although the style of The Boston Strangler looks dated today, with its split-screen experiments and post-Bonnie and Clyde permissiveness, the film still has the clean, strong lines of a methodical policier. For the first hour, we don't focus on the Strangler, instead following the Beantown cops (led by Henry Fonda) as they track down leads; the best sequence is the near-accidental connection made between burglary suspect DeSalvo and the killings. Director Richard Fleischer had a forceful hand with true-crime material (Compulsion, 10 Rillington Place) and he takes an unblinking look into the then-taboo subject of sexual pathology. Curtis's physical transformation into a dumpy, dull-eyed brute is the best aspect of his performance; it's a role he lobbied hard for, but it did not lead to more challenging work. --Robert Horton
Dramatic and extremely well made. Daily Mirror Don't miss the first ever DVD release of this crime film starring Trevor Howard and Sally Gray! A superb gritty film noir in which a bored and cynical ex-RAF flyer Clem Morgan (Trevor Howard) joins a criminal gang led by Narcy (Griffith Jones). On his first job the getaway car crashes after killing a policeman and Morgan is knocked unconscious and framed as the driver. He is sent to jail but escapes and heads to London seeking revenge on the gang. In the midst of a massive police hunt he is sheltered by Sally (Sally Gray) who is an associate of Narcy. As the police close in Morgan must prove his innocence as he confronts the gang in an abandoned warehouse.
Maciek a young Resistance fighter is ordered to kill Szczuka a Communist district leader on the last day of World War II.
The Informer
Recently widowed Matt Calder (Robert Mitchum) and his young son begin a new life in the breathtaking rugged Northwest wilderness where Matt is robbed and beaten by ruthless gambler Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun). When Weston's beautiful fiance (Marilyn Monroe) then decides to nurse Calder back to health, the insanely jealous Weston risks all their lives by taking them on a ride down a treacherous river...
Susan Foster (Carla Lehmann) is cast into a web of international intrigue when she decides to hide fugitive British agent Alan Thurston (James Mason) from suave Nazi Dr. Muller (Walter Rilla). Thurston's mission is to travel to the Vichy colony of Algiers and recover a camera revealing the exact location of Allied General Mark Clark and his colleagues who are soon to rehearse signals for the invasion of North Africa.
Charlie is a piano player in a rundown jazz bar he used to be Edouard Saroyan a gifted classical pianist but after suffering his wife's suicide gave up his rising fame. He's miserable and lonely and so self-absorbed that he can't see that Lena the bars waitress is in love with him. When Chico Charlie's crooked brother uses the bar as a refuge from two gangsters he's double-crossed Charlie becomes embroiled in the mayhem. Will the resulting events awaken Charlie's emotions again?
Lem Siddons is part of a traveling band who has a dream of becoming a lawyer. Deciding to settle down he finds a job as a stockboy in the general store of a small town. Trying to fit in he volunteers to become scoutmaster of the newly formed Troop 1. Becoming more and more involved with the scout troop he finds his plans to become a lawyer being put on the back burner until he realizes that his life has been fulfilled helping the youth of the small town.
Winner of both the Academy Award for best foreign-language film and the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, MARCEL CAMUS' Black Orpheus (Orfeu negro) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack, Black Orpheus was a cultural event, kicking off the bossa nova craze that set hi-fis across America spinning. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Optional English-dubbed soundtrack Archival interviews with director Marcel Camus and actress Marpessa Dawn New video interviews with Brazilian cinema scholar Robert Stam, jazz historian Gary Giddins, and Brazilian author Ruy Castro Looking for Black Orpheus, a French documentary about Black Orpheus's cultural and musical roots and its resonance in Brazil today Theatrical trailer PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Atkinson Click Images to Enlarge
Stomping, whomping, stealing, singing, tap-dancing, violating. Derby-topped hooligan Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has a good time - at the tragic expense of others. His journey from amoral punk to brainwashed proper citizen and back again forms the dynamic arc of Stanley Kubrick's future-shock vision of Anthony Burgess' novel. Controversial when first released, A Clockwork Orange won New York Film Critics Best Picture and Director awards and earned four Oscarr* nominations, including Best Picture. Its power still entices, shocks and holds us in its grasp.This 50th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition includes:. •A Clockwork Orange on 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray. •Blu-ray Bonus Disc featuring Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures and O Lucky Malcolm! documentaries. •32-page booklet. •Double-sided Poster. •Set of 3 Art Cards. •Behind the scenes stills. •Newspaper prop replica. Special Features:. • Commentary by Malcolm McDowell and Historian Nick Redman. • Channel Four Documentary Still Tickin’: The Return of Clockwork Orange. • New Featurette Great Bolshy Yarblockos!: Making A Clockwork Orange. • Career Profile O Lucky Malcolm! [in High Definition]. • Theatrical Trailer.
Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali--complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"--i.e., the power of pure visual associations. Miklós Rózsa's haunting score (which features the creepy electronic instrument, the theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography and special visual effects. --Jim Emerson
Sister George" within The Killing of Sister George is Britain's best-loved soap opera character, played by actress June Buckeridge (Beryl Reid). Buckeridge has become so identified with her character--a sweet old Miss Marple-ish nurse who putters around her quaint little village on a motor scooter--even her friends call her George. But outside the studio she's a hard-drinking, hot-tempered, foul-mouthed lesbian living with an immature young thing she's nicknamed "Childie" (Susannah York, who makes her memorable entrance in a sheer baby-doll nightie). At her worst Sister George is an abusive monster (in a moment of rage she forces Childie to eat the butt of her cigar) but beneath the bluster is an insecure television actress. When the studio decides to kill her character off and an executive makes a play for Childie, the soap star desperately clings to her young lover. Director Robert Aldrich, best known for his tough action films and gothic thrillers, brings his fierce vision of human nature to Frank Marcus's play . In its best moments the film simmers in angry suspicion and helpless frustration, brought to life by Reid's vivacious performance but other scenes are overlong and stage-bound and would have benefited greatly from judicious trimming and tightening. The caricatured portrayals of lesbian life have aged rather poorly--an inevitable sign of the times--but this acidic show-biz drama still carries a hefty emotional punch. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975): Relive Richard O'Brien's sinfully twisted salute to horror, sci-fi, B-movies and rock music - a 'sensual daydream to treasure forever' - starring Tim Curry (in his classic gender-bending performance), Barry Bostwick and Oscar winner Susan Sarandon. Do the 'Time Warp' and sing 'Hot Patootie' with Meatloaf again... and again... and again... at home, or in a movie theater, where it will probably be playing for another 25 years! Shoc...
Live performances from Jazz icons Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie and more recorded at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1969 Dizzy Gillespie was an American trumpet virtuoso and improviser. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop. In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and in...
Academy award winner Liza Minnelli in an unforgettable performance! They said it was ""the performance of a lifetime"" and they were right! From the moment she appears on stage a lone silhouette in a white mini-raincoat designed by Isaac Mizrahi Liza Minnelli captures the attention and hearts of her audience. In this spectacular show that broke every existing record at Radio City Music Hall Liza is at the top of her form delivering an emotionally charged performance including tributes to important influences in her musical life. Track Listing: Act I: 1. Radio City Music Hall Overture 2. Teach Me Tonight 3. Old Freinds 4. Live Alone And Like It 5. Sorry I Asked 6. So What 7. Sara Lee 8. There Is A Time 9. Quiet Love 10. Some People 11. Seeing Things Act II: 1. Stepping Out / I Want To Get Into The Act 2. Men's Medley 3. It's A Long Long Way To Tipperary 4. Imagine 5. Here I'll Stay / Over Love Is Here to Stay 6. There's No Business Like Show Business 7. Stepping Out (Reprise) 8. Theme From New York New York
An Affair To Remember In this poignant and humorous love story nominated for four Academy Awards Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet on an ocean liner and fall deeply in love. Though each is engaged to someone else they agree to meet six months later at the Empire State Building if they still feel the same way about each other. But a tragic accident prevents their rendezvous and the lovers' future takes an emotional and uncertain turn. Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing William Holden and Jennifer Jones star in one of drama's most endearing and intelligent love stories. Nominated for eight Academy Awards this timeless classic follows the passionate affair of an American correspondent and a Eurasian doctor whose love for each other must overcome racial prejudice and the outbreak of war in Korea. How Green Was My Valley Sixty-year-old Huw Morgan looks back on his life as a boy (Roddy McDowall) in a small Welsh mining town. His reminiscences reveal the disintegration of the closely knit Morgans and his devoted parents (Donald Crisp Sara Allgood) while capturing the sentiments and issues of their time.
From Here to Eternity offers a much more heartfelt interpretation of the event that propelled the United States into World War II than any film made in recent years. Here there are no angst-ridden scenes where "true love" returns from the dead, no costly CGI and definitely no Hallmark happy ending. This is a film about illicit sex, military machismo and tragic loss of love, friendship and ultimately life. The filmmakers did, however, have to make some compromises when adapting James Jones's novel: Alma becomes a "hostess" rather than a prostitute and the very downbeat ending, where Captain Holmes is essentially rewarded for his brutality by the military, was replaced with the morally acceptable punishment of his actions by a more self-aware army. Although Private Robert E Lee Pruitt's story provides the meat of the film, there are other subplots woven into the narrative, including a couple of doomed love affairs, which explore themes of adultery and social acceptance. Sergeant Warden (Burt Lancaster) begins a torrid affair with the commander's wife Karen (Deborah Kerr) leading to one of the most famous moments in movie history--the "clinch in the surf". From then on everything is challenged. Love, honour and eventually whether you should conform or stand up for what you believe in. At the end the couples are left wondering about the future of their relationship, but fate decides for them as the Japanese launch their attack on Pearl Harbor, leaving us with one of the most dramatic and moving endings of any war film. On the DVD: The black and white film is not anamorphically enhanced but presented full frame in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, although the transfer is well done and the picture is pretty sharp. Sound is 2.0 mono rather than the standard 5.1 reworking of the audio track, and it works. The dialogue is clear without any noticeable hiss. There's a 22-minute "making of" documentary, which doesn't really do justice to the film and contains very little information of interest. Along with this is Fred Zinnemann's As I See It, an extract from the director's home video footage from the shoot. You also get the theatrical trailer, but the best feature is the audio commentary, by Fred Zinnemann's son Tim and screenwriter Alvin Sargent, which has some fantastic detail about the struggle between director and studio-head Harry Cohn over casting, along with the run-ins with the censor and US military over the "inflammatory nature" of the film.--Kristen Bowditch
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