Smalling-2

During the war of 1812, a young nun leaves the convent to search for a series of romantic adventures, and during her journey the statue of the virgin Mary descends from the pedestal and takes the young nun's place until her return.

Adapted from a fairly deadening and lunatic play, and tricked out with the old-fashioned Max Reinhardt pageantry; this immensely long and heavy-going amalgam of would-be religious parable and decorative period romance soon becomes numbingly risible and never lets up. A very curious choice for an emergent leading lady obviously, and unsuccessfully, fighting against her freshly established image, while the star supporting players - apparently intended as a balance - suffer from being tediously typecast. None of the actors have much opportunity to display their skills and the direction is below average. Quite a stupefying enterprise, but a sometimes engagingly silly one.

Two English girls take a cycling holiday in France. After an argument they become separated on an infamous stretch of road, where a mad killer abducts and kills Cathy. Jane meanwhile, is left isolated, frightened and doesn't know who to trust.

Rather leisurely pedestrian and long drawn out suspenser, that vehemently tries to force its not always credible red herrings on the audience, but is done with enough style and panache to make it very tolerable. The setting of bleak French countryside is chillingly effective.

A lonely and passive psychiatrist falls in love with a mysterious lady who might have killed one of his patients.

Moderately stylish Hitchcockian mystery with overstated performances. Despite occasional gripping moments, it is remarkably low on thrills considering its conclusion being pretty hard to guess.

An airline pilot, dumped by his girlfriend, pursues a baby-sitter in his hotel, and gradually realizes she is a maniac psychopath.

Weird, unmotivated and rather silly psycho-suspenser; given some distinction by a suitably eerie, if seldom convincing early performance from Monroe.

A ruthless CIA agent arrives at an Alps ski paradise to track down his son's deadly accident he thinks is really murder, and finds himself in a complex web of intrigue.

Well-staged, quite surprising minor Cold War espionage with magnificent snow-bound photography and exciting action sequences, hampered by bursts of gratuitous violence and an unpleasant hero.

Just before the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an American girl from the South marries to a Japanese diplomat and moves with him to Tokyo.

Mainly melodramatic treatment of a fact-based autobiographical novel, notable for its heartfelt leading performances, strikingly accurate detail of Japanese life, some convincingly documentary-style shots, and its brave change of perspective by showing the Japanese point of view against the American.

A bachelor philosophy professor, while traveling on the train, is forced to take a bag full of robbed money by the robber, who is also pursued by a rival criminal gang. After the robber is being assassinated, the professor is thought to be a mob by all concerned.

Scrappy, undistinguished but surprisingly witty and entertaining crime-comedy caper, with neat plot twists and both stars (Fernandel and Barbara Laage) in excellent form.

A respected superintendent at Scotland Yard makes a mistake in an investigation, causing the execution of an innocent man. He takes the blame and is dismissed, replaced by his rival, but vengefully comes back to investigate when one of his friends is murdered.

Nicely detailed, sometimes suspenseful but curiously uninvolving and unpersuasively played Victorian whodunnit with glamorous but disappointingly inaccurate period setting. The resolution is both unsatisfactory and barely revealing, despite a fairly well-concealed villain.

After being raped, a young girl moves in with an ambivalently behaving garage-mechanic.

Curiously wallowing quest for a star to show off her method acting technique by her stage director husband, this peculiar realist melodrama does deliver some surface style but remains unsuccessfully hollow in its attempt at psychoanalysis.

Just before the big oil discoveries, a Texan rancher visits a Maryland farm to buy a prize horse and falls in love with the owner's daughter, then they marry and return to his ranch. The story of their family and its rivalry with cowboy and (later oil tycoon) unfolds across two generations.

Visually stunning but interminable, insufficiently plotted and pretty unconvincing family saga from a sprawling period book, that only intermittently grabs the interest, with new method acting talents (James Dean, Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper) undoubtedly steal the show from the old conventionals. Dean's sudden tragic death after the shooting provided it with a somewhat undeserved reputation.

A genteel and curiously bitchy widow kills her housekeepers one after another for their savings, until one of them tends to reveal her secret.

Diverting little shocker, generally thrilling with occasional patches of mordant humour, both perfectly sustained and balanced by slick direction and leading performances to match.

A once-famous child star of the 20s finds herself unsuccessful and forgotten in the 30s, but sees that her sister becomes a gigantic star. The latter suffers a serious car accident, perhaps caused by her sister, becomes crippled and retires. Over the decades they still live together, the crippled is exposed and the other increasingly maniac.

A minor milestone in the film history that signs the date of elderly movie starts settling for horror flicks, this generally tense and claustrophobic psycho-shocker has a terrific premise it lets peter out in too great length and heavily melodramatic lapses. But at best, it is harrowingly scary, and the performances are never less than outstanding.

A good-for-nothing, unhappy high society girl recalls a summer when she destroyed the love of her rich playboy father and his respectable bride, because she was afraid of finishing their hedonistic lifestyle.

Well-acted, starry cast and very graciously made but, in atmosphere, oddly faithless adaptation of a sharply cynical novel, which tends to glamorize and ennoble its originally unlovable characters against luxurious backgrounds. It holds the interest, however, and the glossily colorful photography of the sunlit French Rivera in the past alternating with the bleakly black and white present, is particularly excellent.

Scenes from the life of an argumentative middle-class family: a strong-willed wife and a resigning husband are confronted with her alcoholic sister, their continuously marrying daughter, and their friend couple who are afraid of being alone.

Completely uncinematic, downbeat and very static photographed play, from a Pulitzer prize-winning Albee material, with all the psychological soul-killings expected from the author. A pretty valuable record of a theatrical performance: brilliant dialogue and acting are the best it can offer - and it does so.

A group of holidaymakers are prepared for a luxury vacation in Spain but find themselves in a half-ready hotel with incompetent staff.

Gag-filled little comedy with much sag until a zany finale. Despite considerable invention it displays, the overall experience is more tired than lively.

A gang of thieves plan to make their fortune by stealing a shipment of contraceptive pills from Finisham maternity hospital and make one of them disguised and infiltrated the hospital.

The last excursion into the often-used hospital territory, and one with bright moments and performances, though it goes over the top in a very laborious way.

A sanitary inspector is mistaken for a law marshal in a slummy western town, and is expected to sweep away the gang terrorizing the habitants.

Unexpectedly clever, engagingly performed and enjoyably spirited western spoof that ranks among the best of the series.

A woman with a past returns to her alcoholic father living on a shabby boat and falls in love with a sailor.

A deliberately grim movie gained fame as Garbo's first talkie (revealing her warm, silky deep voice), and was simultaneously made in Germany - from a well-known O'Neill play. This version now seems pretty stilted and shows the most typical mistakes of early talkies, but full of vivid moments of great power, full-blooded performances (especially the genial interplay between Garbo and Dressler)and the rare Hollywood quality of gritty realism.

Joy Adamson and her husband, Kenya game warden George Adamson, bring up a lion cub Elsa, but later they have to teach her about the wild and free life she was born to.

Warm, good-looking but rather casually assembled screen version of a highly popular bestseller, with irresistible animal shots that made it enormously successful at the box-office - and over the years a family film "par excellence". It started a cycle then and was followed by the less successful "Living Free".

After Elsa's death, the Adamson couple have to undertake her cubs.

Flabby sequel to "Born Free", unnecessarily verbose and determined to gain all its charm from the cubs, who are not on the screen long enough to maintain interest.

At the turn of the century in Yonkers and New York, a busy, verbose and widowed matchmaker arranges everyone's love life and takes herself a rich husband.

Thoroughly professionally made and generally likeable musical from a long-running Broadway musical, that itself was based on a thin Thornton Wilder play. Despite its very handsome look, some excellent acting, virtuoso numbers and a plethora of sparkling, exhilarating revue sequences, the final result is a lengthy, entirely overblown and over-budgeted extravaganza that should have been made about twenty years earlier. In spite of her best efforts, too-young Barbra Streisand is fatally miscast, that makes a not-too-convincing premise even more risible at times.

A wandering seaman joins an odd couple - aged millionaire husband and glamorous wife - for a bizarre cruising journey that ends up in a murder plot.

Ineffably silly story tarted up with brilliant cameraworks, good performances and undeniable flair; this now strongly reputed, heavily expressionist film noir thriller betrays uncertain handling and hasty production, so that it finally gives the impression of being found out while making. On the whole, a stylish exercise for conoisseurs - particularly the final shoot-out sequence among the mirrors - but the plot is still a downer, and at the time was an audience-baffling commercial flop that also destroyed Rita Hayworh's image and career.

A fashionable playwright begins a love affair with an attractive ski trainer and later she goes after him to the New York as her own twin sister.

Light-hearted and often light-headed comedy that tried to make a fashionably stock comedienne out of Garbo's unique personality, therefore it failed miserably and presumably caused her early retirement. Watching it over a few decades, it is still quite silly, but pleasing and often witty undistinguished entertainment, with accomplished comic actors making their best efforts. Even Garbo seems enjoying what she does, though Constance Bennett undoubtedly steals the show as the secretly hysterical, wisecracking ex-girlfriend.

A special commissioner intelligence arrives at a small Connecticut town to catch a Nazi war criminal who lives there under a pseudonym, with a wife who knows nothing about his past.

Unconvincing and highly artificial, if technically skillful and finely acted suspenser with attention to detail and sinister atmosphere, not to mention some typically effective touches from its director, notably the final cliffhanging sequence at the church tower. Undermined by narrative flaws and the impression that Welles wishes to do something else.

After a successful swindle, a ruthless and manipulative woman cheats both her husband and her new noodle boyfriend.

Tough, blackly comic, extremely clever film noir thriller from a director particularly enthusiastic about the genre; graced by a tightly constructed script scintillating of demotic, quick-fire wit and surprises, plus Fiorentino's wonderfully bitchy performance.