1931-1940

A concert pianist unhappily married to a mentally ill woman falls in love with a waitress.Read More »

Shiro Toyada is known for his literary adaptations and this is an early adaptation of Fumiko Hayashi’s work, the second after Sotoji Kimura’s A Wanderer’s Notebook from three years ealier. Like Toyoda’s later 50s masterpieces it features strong minded woman and weak, feckless men.

Crybaby Apprentice tells of four sisters, the eldest, the widowed Sadako, has a failed businessman as a lover and two children, eleven year old Keikichi and his younger sister. The boy’s sullen demeanour gets on “uncle’s” nerves and after moving in to save money he threatens to move out again. During the course of the film Keikichi is passed from one sister to the next, unwanted either as a nuisance or through poverty.Read More »

This is an early film from the career of Shibuya Minoru and according to Donald Richie in The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, “One of his best, the 1939 [actally 1938] Mother and Child (Haha to ko), was taken from a onvel by Tsuneko Yada. This story of a young daughter, her businessman father, and his mistress was slightly overloaded with sentiment and burdened with the confused social criticism apparent in some of the director’s postwar work, but was nonetheless representative of the period.Read More »

Espionage, war and romance in the Far East in 1904: Russian naval officer Boris Ranewsky marries Youki, the sister of a fanatical Japanese officer – but war is imminent…Read More »

STRANDED is a lightweight but enjoyable romance starring George Brent and Kay Francis.

A world of girders and cable – that’s where Mack Hale works, supervising the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. In its shadow is a world of hopes and fears. That’s where Lynn Palmer works, aiding travelers stranded in an unforgiving city during the depths of the Depression. In this fast-paced romantic drama directed by two-time Academy Award® winner* Frank Borzage, Kay Francis and George Brent portray a young couple threatened by gangsters eager to muscle in on the construction payroll. The plot is crisp but Stranded is equally engaging as a snapshot of time and place as Lynn does her best for an unwed mother, a destitute boy, four giggling mail-order brides and more bewildered folks grateful for her helping hand.Read More »

Quote:
Kazuo Hasegawa has wild friends and hates being compared to his stepbrother, Reikichi Kawamura, who is steady, works hard at his taxicab business, and is amiable. That’s why he left home a year ago. Now he has heard his mother is ill, and wants to come home, but thinks she hates him. That’s nonsense, says Kawamura. Hasegawa agrees to reform. Just then two men come in and want to hire a cab. Everyone has gone home for the evening, so Hasegawa shows his willingness to reform by taking the fare. They drive to a distant house. They ask him to wait. While he does so, Kinuyo Tanaka pops out, begs him to help her escape. He does so. The two men are her step-brother, and the man everyone wants her to marry…. except her, of course.Read More »

Traveler Allan Gray arrives in the village of Courtempierre and takes lodgings in a small inn. Gray has a great interest in the supernatural, particularly vampires. He’s barely settled in when he feels a sinister force descending upon him. In the night an old man enters his room to tell him ‘she must not die’. One of the old man’s daughters, Leone, has been bitten by a vampire. In order to break the curse, Gray and Leone’s sister Gisele must find the original vampire and drive a stake through her heart.Read More »

Synopsis:
In Austria, Katrin is lonely after her sister’s marriage and she agrees to marry her father’s research associate Dr. Walter Fane. Fane takes her to China but constantly ignors her in favour of his medical research. Lonely Katrin has an affair with Jack Townsend of the British Embassy. When it is discovered by Walter he becomes very bitter. Fane travels to fight a cholera epidemic and Katrin goes with him and helps. They grow closer together than ever before but Walter is knifed in a riot incited by the burning of a cholera infested town. Now their new found happiness will depend on Walter’s survival.Read More »

When 11 young Parisian women mysteriously disappear, the police recruit Adrienne Charpentier, the friend of the latest victim, to investigate. The only thing which seems to link the disappearances is that each of the victims replied to a small ad in the newspapers. In answering a number of ads herself, Adrienne meets some suspicious individuals, but they all turn out to be innocent. Then she meets a cabaret performer, Robert Fleury, who instantly falls in love with her. Soon after marrying Fleury, she discovers damning evidence that inculpates him as the murderer of the missing women…Read More »