It Happened One Night (1934) Directed by Frank Capra | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes, and eventually slips onto a Greyhound bus bound for New York. Aboard the bus is newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who has recently been fired for drinking on the job. Peter gets the last seat on the bus -- but when he gets up to argue with the bus driver, Ellie takes his seat. Since it is the last seat on the bus, they have to share it. When Ellie has her purse stolen and she refuses to report it, Peter begins to suspect something. The next morning, they both miss the bus after a leisurely breakfast, and Peter reveals that he knows her identity. She makes a deal with him: if he helps her get to New York, he can write a scoop about her for his paper. Peter thinks she is a spoiled brat, however, and refuses a monetary bribe: "I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You, King Westley, your father -- you're all a lot of hooey to me!" But as they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures, the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together by circumstances, fall in love with each other. This movie set the pace for the "screwball" comedy, the witty and romantic clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both personality and social position, a type of movie often associated with Katherine Hepburn in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and, with Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957), among others. The only other movies to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay) were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Paul Brenner
Title : It Happened One Night (1934)
Directed by Frank Capra
Duration : 105 min.
Subtitles : English, Portuguese, Spanish
Genres : Comedy, Drama, Romance
Countries : USA

Dreams (Kvinnodröm) (1955) Directed by Ingmar Bergman | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Not even Ingmar Bergman was prone to discuss his obscure 1955 production Dreams. While on vacation, photo agency owner Susanne (Eva Dahlbeck) hopes to rendezvous with her married lover. The man's wife puts the kibosh on this, whereupon Susanne enters into an affair with diplomat Sanderby Gunnar Bjornstrand. This liaison ends unhappily, leaving her sadder and wiser at vacation's end. So annoyingly confusing is Dreams that at times it resembles a Woody Allen parody of Bergman, rather than the genuine article. Hal Erickson
Title : Dreams (1955)
Original title : Kvinnodröm
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Duration : 87 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese
Audio in Swedish
Genres : Drama, Romance
Extras : Biography life and work of Ingmar Bergman
Countries : Sweden

La Bête Humaine (1938) Directed by Jean Renoir | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Based on a novel by Emile Zola, La Bete Humaine weaves a mesmerizing tale of a tragic triangle. Train engineer Jean Gabin lusts after Simone Simon, the wife of his co-worker Fernand Ledoux. When Ledoux is in danger of losing his job, Simon offers herself to her husband's boss. In jealous pique, Ledoux kills the man. Gabin is witness to this, so Simon promises to reward him sexually if he'll keep quiet. As this romance intensifies, Simon tries to finagle Gabin into killing Ledoux. Sick of the whole sordid affair, Gabin murders Simon and then kills himself. When Fritz Lang remade La Bete Humaine as Human Desire in 1953, he carefully copied several of the best visual selections made by Jean Renoir in the original film; what he was not permitted to copy was the story itself, which had to be heavily laundered to accommodate Hollywood's censorship limitations.  Hal Erickson
Title :  La Bête Humaine (1938)
Directed by Jean Renoir
Duration : 99 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese
Audio in French
Genres : Drama, Romance, Crime, Thriller
Countries : France

Rififi (Du rififi chez les hommes) (1955) Directed by Jules Dassin | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Jules Dassin -- in his second European film after being driven out of the United States during the years of the house Un-American Activities Committee hearings -- directed this landmark caper film about the planning and execution of a nighttime robbery at a swanky English jewelry shop in the Rue de Rivoli. The story concerns a collection of thieves who band together to commit a seemingly impossible robbery. The gang consists of a tough, straight-talker named Tony Stephanois (Jean Servais); a young man under Tony's tutelage named Jo (Carl Mohner; a happy-go-lucky Italian by the name of Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel); and a safecracker named Cesar (the director Jules Dassin under the pseudonym of Perlo Vita) who likes to jiggle the combinations of women in his off hours. The set piece of the film is an intricate 28-minute sequence that depicts the robbery in detail -- all filmed silently without dialogue or music. After the success of the robbery, the gang barely has time to celebrate when a rival gangster, Pierre Gruuter (Marcel Lupovici), decides that he wants a cut of the take. When Tony's gang refuses to cooperate, Pierre kidnaps Jo's son, and the gang has to get tough with their nemesis. Paul Brenner
Title : Rififi (1955)
Original title :  Du rififi chez les hommes
Directed by Jules Dassin
Duration : 115 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese
Audio in French
Genres : Drama, Thriller
Extras : Biography of Jules Dassin  ...
Countries : France

L'Age d'Or (La edad de oro) (1930) Directed by Luis Buñuel | VIDEO (MKV)

Synopsis :
L'Âge d'Or begins as a documentary about the habits of scorpions, utilizing library footage and silent-style intertitles. Amid the rocks of an inlet, archbishops are seen chanting by a beggar-soldier (Max Ernst), who then makes a long journey back to his hideout. He informs his fellow beggar-soldiers that the "Mallorcans" have arrived and it is time to bear arms and fight. But this small group of soldiers is weak and exhausted through starvation, and only one of them survives the trip back. The Mallorcans, a caravan of wealthy dignitaries and their servants, arrive to lay a cornerstone commemorating the now skeletal archbishops. The ceremony is interrupted by the screams of lovemaking, and the couple is separated by gendarmes and led away. The man (Gaston Modot), whom we later learn is a government official of some standing, establishes his nasty and anti-social character through the kicking a dog. The ceremony continues; a title card identifies this as the foundation of Imperial Rome. The next sequence intercuts scenes of the girl (Lya Lys), who is the daughter of a wealthy marquis, lost in a world of erotic fantasy, with scenes of the man being led down the street by the gendarmes. The man finally produces diplomatic papers, and is released. The marquis (Ibanez) and marquise (Germaine Noizet) throw a large party at their villa, where a number of strange events occur without the slightest notice from the guests. A momentary distraction is caused when the gamekeeper shoots his son over a minor incident. The government official arrives at the party and is soon in pursuit of the girl, although the social nature of the event, at first, keeps them apart. The marquise accidentally spills a little wine over the government official's hand, and he slaps her, exciting the girl. (Alfred Hitchcock would later echo this very scene in Strangers on a Train.) The girl and the government official are finally allowed to consummate their fetishistic desires to the strains of Wagner in an extended love scene in the garden. This is interrupted when the conductor (Duchange) of the concert nearby has a headache and walks off the podium, directly into the arms of the girl. The government official gets a phone call, where he is told that his actions have resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of the "women, children, and old people" he is sworn to protect. He curses the caller, and enraged, he goes to his apartment to rip apart pillows and to hurl several objects, including an archbishop, out the window. The final sequence begins with a series of lengthy, and increasingly agitated, intertitles announcing that the Duc de Blangis (Lionel Salem) and his henchmen are due to emerge from 120 days of debauchery inside a secluded castle. When the party does emerge, the duke is seen to be missing his beard. David Lewis
Title :   L'Age d'Or (1931)
Original title : La Edad de Oro
Directed by Luis Buñuel  
Duration : 63 min.
Subtitles In english
Card in French
Genres : Drama, Comedy, Surrealist Film
Countries : France