FR #362 | Movie | War, Drama | France, Japan | Russian, German
Director
Jean Renoir
Writer
Charles Spaak, Jean Renoir
Cast
Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay
Plot
During WWI, two French soldiers are captured and imprisoned in a German P.O.W. camp. Several escape attempts follow until they are eventually sent to a seemingly inescapable fortress.
FR #925 | Movie | Crime, Drama | France, USA | Arabic, French
Director
Julien Duvivier
Writer
Henri La Barthe, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Constant
Cast
Jean Gabin, Gabriel Gabrio, Saturnin Fabre
Plot
A wanted gangster is both king and prisoner of the Casbah. He is protected from arrest by his friends, but is torn by his desire for freedom outside. A visiting Parisian beauty may just tempt his fate.
Stan and Ollie are enlisted to deliver the deed to a valuable gold mine to its rightful owner, but they soon discover that the task is not as easy as it looks.
FR #2202 | Movie | Comedy, Family | USA | English, Italian
Director
Sam Wood
Writer
Robert Pirosh, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer
Cast
Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx
Plot
A veterinarian posing as a doctor teams with a singer and his friends as they struggle to save an upstate New York sanitarium with the help of a misfit racehorse.
FR #2211 | Movie | Adventure, Drama | USA | Mandarin, English
Director
Frank Capra
Writer
Robert Riskin, James Hilton, Sidney Buchman
Cast
Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Edward Everett Horton
Plot
When a revered diplomat's plane is diverted and crashes in the peaks of Tibet, he and the other survivors are guided to an isolated monastery at Shangri-La, where they wrestle with the invitation to stay.
A spoiled brat who falls overboard from a steamship in the 1920s gets picked up by a New England fishing boat, where he's made to earn his keep by joining the crew in their work.
Young Esther Victoria Blodgett comes to Hollywood with dreams of stardom and achieves them only with the help of alcoholic leading man Norman Maine, whose best days are behind him.
The public defender's secretary and an ex-convict get married and try to make a life together, but a series of disasters sends their lives spiraling out of control.
FR #3966 | Movie | Comedy | France, Turkey | French, Turkish
Director
Marcel Carne
Writer
J. Storer Clouston, Jacques Prevert, Marcel Carne
Cast
Francoise Rosay, Michel Simon, Jean-Pierre Aumont
Plot
In Victorian London, a crime novelist and his wife fake their disappearance in order to hide from an uptight Anglican bishop who is leading a campaign against the "evils" of crime fiction.
FR #4205 | Movie | Comedy, Romance | USA | English
Director
Mitchell Leisen
Writer
Preston Sturges, Vera Caspary
Cast
Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Ray Milland
Plot
When a wealthy banker throws his wife's expensive fur coat off a roof and it lands on the head of a stenographer, everyone assumes she is his mistress and has access to his millions.
A plucky little orphan girl gets dumped abruptly into her gruff, hermit grandfather's care, then later gets retaken and delivered as a companion for an injured girl.
An eccentric woman learns she is not dying of radium poisoning as earlier assumed, but when she meets a reporter looking for a story, she feigns sickness again for her own profit.
FR #5189 | Movie | Animation, Short | USA | English
Director
Burt Gillett
Writer
Dick Friel
Cast
Billy Bletcher, Pinto Colvig, Walt Disney
Plot
Mickey, Donald and Goofy run the "Ajax Ghost Exterminators" agency. They receive a call from lonely and bored ghosts to come to their house where they are scared silly by the hilarious haunts and taunts of these spirited pranksters.
FR #5232 | Movie | Comedy, Crime | Germany | German
Director
Karl Hartl
Writer
Robert A. Stemmle, Karl Hartl, Henri Debain
Cast
Hans Albers, Heinz Ruhmann, Marieluise Claudius
Plot
Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann play two confidence tricksters. They manage to stop a night train for nefarious purposes, and impersonate Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Romantic involvement with two young British female travelers en...
Although married Chinese farmers Wang and O-Lan initially experience success, their lives are complicated by declining fortunes and lean times, as well as the arrival of the beautiful young Lotus.
FR #5980 | Movie | Drama | France, Germany | French, German
Director
Julien Duvivier
Writer
Julien Duvivier, Henri Jeanson, Jean Sarment
Cast
Marie Bell, Francoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet
Plot
Christine, newly widowed and consumed by the memory of a ball she attended age 16, decides to track down the men she danced with that night and discover their fates.
FR #6205 | Movie | Animation, Short | USA | English
Director
Ben Sharpsteen
Writer
Otto Englander, Roy Williams
Cast
Pinto Colvig, Walt Disney, James Macdonald
Plot
Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are cleaning a large clock. Among the complications: Mickey fights a sleeping stork that doesn't want to leave, Donald gets tangled up in the main-spring, and Goofy is inside the bell when the clock strik...
A hard-working machinist loses a promotion to a Polish-born worker, he's seduced into joining the secretive Black Legion, which intimidates foreigners through violence.
FR #7220 | Movie | Romance, Drama | France, Germany | French
Director
Jean Gremillon
Writer
Andre Beucler, Charles Spaak
Cast
Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin, Pierre Etchepare
Plot
Soldier Lucien meets elegant Madeleine one night in Cannes. Lovestruck, he follows her to Paris after he is discharged. Their love affair begins anew, but eventually runs cold and he returns to Orange in the south of France. She f...
FR #7709 | Movie | Film-Noir, Crime | USA, UK | English
Director
Lloyd Bacon, Michael Curtiz
Writer
Robert Rossen, Abem Finkel, Seton I. Miller
Cast
Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Lola Lane
Plot
A crusading district attorney persuades a clip joint hostess to testify against her mobster boss after her innocent sister is accidentally murdered during one of his unsavory parties.
The lives of two slum neighbors, one of a happy-go-lucky gambler and the other of a poor ronin, converge when the two get involved with the affairs of a powerful samurai official and his gangsters.
FR #8483 | Movie | Romance, Drama | France | French
Director
Marcel Pagnol
Writer
Jean Giono, Marcel Pagnol
Cast
Gabriel Gabrio, Orane Demazis, Fernandel
Plot
The narrative revolves around a farming village where only three inhabitants remain, but they are told that if only one of them, Panturle, manages to find a wife, the village will be able to prosper again
FR #9188 | Movie | Biography, Court-Drama | USA | English
Director
John Ford
Writer
Dudley Nichols, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Charles Nordhoff
Cast
Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Mary Astor
Plot
A Polynesian sailor unjustly imprisoned after defending himself against a colonial bully is relentlessly persecuted by his island's martinet French governor.
FR #9728 | Movie | History, Comedy | France | English, French
Director
Christian-Jaque, Sacha Guitry
Writer
Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jaque
Cast
Jacqueline Delubac, Sacha Guitry, Lyn Harding
Plot
Three narrators (French writer Jean Martin, an English royal equerry, and a papal chamberlain) tell the story of seven matched pearls, four of them now in the British Crown. Episodes whirl us from Pope Clement VII to Mary Queen of...
Trapped in Puerto Rico, a beautiful young Swede is torn between her passionate, but mildly abusive Caribbean oligarch husband and her longing for her European homeland.
In 1846 the actress Gloria Vane is performing at the Adelphi Theatre, London. She is in love with the destitute nobleman Albert Finsbury, who is shortly departing to Australia to become an officer in the Queen's regiment. He is su...
FR #11706 | Movie | Adventure, Comedy | UK | English
Director
Marcel Varnel
Writer
Frank Launder, J.O.C. Orton, Val Guest
Cast
Will Hay, Moore Marriott, Graham Moffatt
Plot
With the help of a relative, a hopeless railway employee is made stationmaster of Buggleskelly. Determined to make his mark, he devises a number of schemes to put Buggleskelly on the railway map, but instead falls foul of a gang o...
FR #12399 | Movie | Comedy, Drama | Japan | Japanese
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Writer
Akira Fushimi, Yasujiro Ozu
Cast
Sumiko Kurishima, Tatsuo Saito, Michiko Kuwano
Plot
An affluent medical professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokio, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Setsuko is a liberated woman who does what she wants, including smoking, even though she is a minor...
FR #12706 | Movie | Film-Noir, Drama | USA | English
Director
Mervyn Leroy
Writer
Ward Greene, Robert Rossen, Aben Kandel
Cast
Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, Edward Norris
Plot
A politically ambitious district attorney, unscrupulous tabloid journalists, and regional prejudice combine to charge a teacher with the murder of his student.
Neera [Marathi]/Nirmala [Hindi](Apte) is trapped into marrying the old widower Kakasaheb (Date). He is a progressive lawyer with a son and a daughter of Neera's age. She refuses to consummate the union, claiming repeatedly that wh...
FR #13437 | Movie | Comedy, Drama | China | Mandarin, Chinese
Director
Muzhi Yuan
Writer
Muzhi Yuan
Cast
Dan Zhao, Heling Wei, Xuan Zhou
Plot
In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, tried to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller.
FR #13487 | Movie | Biography, Drama | Russia | Russian
Director
Vladimir Petrov
Writer
Vladimir Petrov, Aleksei Tolstoy
Cast
Nikolai Simonov, Nikolay Cherkasov, Alla Tarasova
Plot
A historical film about the life and state activities of Tsar Peter I, the reformer of Russia of the XVIII century, starting from the Battle of Narva in 1700 and ending with the adoption of the title of emperor by Peter the Great ...
FR #14225 | Movie | Drama, Romance | USA | English, French
Director
Henry King
Writer
Melville Baker, Austin Strong
Cast
Simone Simon, James Stewart, Jean Hersholt
Plot
A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, then marches away to war.
FR #14731 | Movie | War, Adventure | Russia | Russian
Director
Mikhail Romm
Writer
Iosif Prut, Mikhail Romm
Cast
Ivan Novoseltsev, Yelena Kuzmina, Aleksandr Chistyakov
Plot
A band of soldiers, escorting some civilians across an Asian wasteland, are set upon and surrounded at a waterhole by a notorious horde of bandits . The soldiers determine to hold off the bandits until hoped-for reinforcements arr...
FR #14945 | Movie | Animation, Short | USA | English
Director
Ben Sharpsteen
Writer
Vernon Stallings
Cast
Pinto Colvig, Walt Disney, Marcellite Garner
Plot
Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto experience all that Hawaii has to offer. Donald tries hula dancing, Pluto explores the beach and Goofy takes up surfing.
When a strategically important new aerial guidance system is stolen, Charlie traces it to the Berlin Olympics, where he has to battle spies and enemy agents to retrieve it.
FR #15482 | Movie | Documentary, Short | France, Mexico | French, Spanish
Director
A.-P. Dufour, Jean Painleve
Plot
We begin on planet Earth, with a demonstration of measuring distances using triangulation. Then, an imaginary voyage begins from earth to the moon, on to Mars, Saturn, the closest star (besides the sun), and beyond to the edge of ...
FR #15958 | Movie | Adventure, Family | USA | English
Director
John Ford
Writer
Ernest Pascal, Julien Josephson, Rudyard Kipling
Cast
Shirley Temple, Victor Mclaglen, C. Aubrey Smith
Plot
Priscilla Williams, a young girl living with her widowed mother and paternal grandfather at the post he commands in northern India, becomes enamored of military life and embroiled in brewing rebellion against the crown in the earl...
FR #15966 | Movie | Horror, Romance | China | Mandarin, Chinese
Director
Weibang Ma-Xu
Writer
Gaston Leroux, Weibang Ma-Xu
Cast
Menghe Gu, Ping Hu, Shan Jin
Plot
China's first horror film, this is loosely based on The Phantom of the Opera. A disfigured musical genius roams a traditional Chinese opera house, punishing those who offend him.
FR #15996 | Movie | Comedy | Sweden | Swedish, Spanish
Director
Weyler Hildebrand
Writer
Robert Wahlberg, Artur Enell
Cast
Thor Modeen, Carl Hagman, Nils Ericson
Plot
The tenants in a Swedish boarding house are expecting a visit from Don Carlos, a famous opera singer from Argentina. When an unexpected visitor turns up, he is mistaken for Don Carlos.
Returning from European exile where she avoided testifying against her criminal associates, a former singer with a tell-all diary is murdered to ensure her silence.
FR #17196 | Movie | Fantasy, Drama | Poland | Yiddish, English
Director
Michal Waszynski
Writer
S. Ansky, S.A. Kacyzna, Andrzej Marek
Cast
Avrom Morewski, Ajzyk Samberg, Mojzesz Lipman
Plot
The mystical love story between Chonen, a poor Talmud student, and Lea, a girl from a wealthy family, depicts the traditional folk culture of Polish Jews before WW2.
FR #17450 | Movie | Animation, Family | USA | English
Director
David Hand
Writer
Vernon Stallings
Cast
Pinto Colvig, Walt Disney, Clarence Nash
Plot
Donald continually heckles Mickey's magic act, but Mickey bests him at every turn. Donald shoots off a magic pistol that causes all the stage props to fall down on them at the finish of the act.
FR #17702 | Movie | History, Adventure | UK | English, Spanish
Director
William K. Howard
Writer
A.E.W. Mason, Clemence Dane, Sergei Nolbandov
Cast
Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Vivien Leigh
Plot
During the reign of Elizabeth I, a young man's fervent devotion to the crown and to his sweetheart, a lady-in-waiting, lead him to battle for England's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588.
FR #17724 | Movie | Documentary, Short | France | French
Director
A.-P. Dufour, Jean Painleve
Plot
The film begins with methodical descriptions of one-dimensional, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional space. It then looks at a two-dimensional world inhabited by flat mice. It imagines how a human, from the third dimension coul...
FR #18187 | Movie | Crime, Drama | USA | English, French
Director
Joe May
Writer
Hans Rameau, Julius J. Epstein, Margaret P. Levino
Cast
Kay Francis, Basil Rathbone, Ian Hunter
Plot
Aging down on her luck cabaret singer murders a respectable composer. On trial she slowly gives in and explains her crime. They had a complicated history.
Two young boys are usurped from being the head of their gang of children. Their father is fired and arrested for this, and they are sent to live with their uncle, only to spend their time thinking of ways to escape back home.
FR #18689 | Movie | Animation, Short | USA | English
Director
Jack King
Writer
Carl Barks, Tom Armstrong
Cast
Adriana Caselotti, Billy Bletcher, Cliff Edwards
Plot
Donald Duck visits a museum of modern inventions; among the inventions he struggles with: a robot butler who keeps taking his hat; a package wrapping machine; a robot nursemaid; an automated barber chair.
FR #19440 | Movie | Comedy, Musical | Poland, Japan | Polish, Japanese
Director
Leon Trystan
Writer
Emanuel Schlechter, Ludwik Starski, Eugeniusz Bodo
Cast
Eugeniusz Bodo, Jozef Orwid, Helena Grossowna
Plot
Two apartment house dwellers, although unrelated, share the same name. One is an older man with an appreciation for and love of classical music, while the other is a younger man addicted to swing music. The niece of the older man ...
FR #19441 | Movie | Crime, Mystery | USA | English, French
Director
Eugene Forde
Writer
Charles Belden, Jerome Cady, Robert Ellis
Cast
Warner Oland, Keye Luke, Virginia Field
Plot
Although Charlie and Lee are in Monaco for an art exhibit, they become caught up in a feud between rival financiers which involves the Chans in a web of blackmail and murder.
FR #20221 | Movie | Comedy, Fantasy | France | French
Director
Christian-Jaque
Writer
Paul Fekete
Cast
Fernandel, Mona Goya, Alexandre Rignault
Plot
Honorin (Fernandel) is the simple and naive stage manager of a traveling theatre troupe, whose one ambition is to once play the role of the cavalier in the opera "Francis I, or the Loves of the Beautiful Ferroniere". A hypnotist p...
FR #20941 | Movie | Romance, Musical | USA | English, Italian
Director
Roy Del Ruth
Writer
Jack Mcgowan, Sid Silvers, Harry W. Conn
Cast
Robert Taylor, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy
Plot
Steve Raleigh wants to produce a show on Broadway. He finds a backer, Herman Whipple and a leading lady, Sally Lee, however his wife Caroline Whipple forces Steve to use a known star, not a newcomer. Sally purchases a horse she us...
The daughter of a struggling musician forms a symphony orchestra made up of his unemployed friends and through persistence, charm and a few misunderstandings, is able to get Leopold Stokowski to lead them in a concert that leads t...
FR #21718 | Movie | Crime | France | English, French
Director
Pierre Chenal
Writer
Marcel Achard, Pierre Chenal
Cast
Erich Von Stroheim, Albert Prejean, Jany Holt
Plot
Paris, 1937. Winckler kills his enemy Gordon, a Chicago mobster, from the stage of a Parisian music hall, where he performs telepathy. He pays another artist, Helene, so that she tells the police they've spent the night together, ...
FR #21951 | Movie | Comedy, Fantasy | USA | English
Director
Frank Borzage
Writer
Lawrence Hazard, Katharine Brush, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast
Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Alan Curtis
Plot
Affluent Hennessey falls for Jessie who is married to good-for-nothing Eddie. To provide a better life for Jessie Hennessey wants to marry her, and Eddie even approves of the plan, hoping to profit from it financially.
FR #22230 | Movie | Drama, Romance | Russia | Russian
Director
Yakov Protazanov, Aleksandr Rou
Writer
Aleksandr Ostrovskiy, Yakov Protazanov, Vladimir Shvejtser
Cast
Olga Pyzhova, Nina Alisova, Anatoli Ktorov
Plot
Larisa Ogudolova (Nina Alisova), unlike her sisters, refuses to obey her mother's wish that she marry a wealthy old man in order to collect a dowry. She falls in love with a dashing scoundrel who betrays her in about sixty minutes...
FR #22456 | Movie | Comedy, Romance | USA | English
Director
Lloyd Bacon
Writer
Lawrence Riley, Earl Baldwin, Lillie Hayward
Cast
Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Frank Mchugh
Plot
Lecherous bosses make it difficult for an attractive secretary to keep jobs, so she decides to appear considerably more homely in hopes of holding onto work.
Boris Chirkov, Valentina Kibardina, Anatoliy Kuznetsov
Plot
Maxim, now a Marxist agitator going by the name of Fyodor, organizes strikes against the production of military equipment, culminating in open revolt against the Czarist forces.
One of the few European films of the 30s to criticize the Nazis, even if they couldn't be directly named due to censorship: Gangsters with gray hats stir up trouble in what is obviously the Sudetenland.
FR #22934 | Movie | Romance, Drama | USA | English
Director
Edmund Goulding
Writer
Edmund Goulding
Cast
Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, Anita Louise
Plot
Mary Donnell, a young legal secretary with a past, elopes with a client's son, but his father has the marriage annulled without knowing she's pregnant.
