1930s

Quote:
“When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.”Read More »

Synopsis:
Horror film icon James Whale directed this well-detailed thriller about a man questioning his wife’s honesty after a friend begins to doubt his own. Dr. Paul Held (Frank Morgan) is an attorney who has been asked to come to the aid of his old friend Walter Bernsdorf (Paul Lukas); Bernsdorf has been accused of killing his wife, and he wants Held to defend him in court. Bernsdorf admits to shooting his spouse, but he tells Held that he lost control when he found out his wife was having an affair. Held takes on his friend’s case, but as he pours over the facts in the Bernsdorf slaying, he finds himself wondering about the fidelity of his own wife, Maria (Nancy Carroll). A Kiss Before The Mirror also features actress Gloria Stuart; James Whale would remake the same story six years later, under the title Wives under Suspicion.
– by Mark Deming, allmovie.comRead More »

Plot Synopsis
In this urban drama, a teenage street punk learns a valuable lesson about the dangers of crime. Jackie Cooper is the tough gangleader with political aspirations. He tries to get himself involved in the graft and corruption of local city government. He almost dies after he is plugged by a gangster. That is the turning point in his life. He decides to forego the crooked path for the straight and narrow. He takes his sweetheart along for the ride.Read More »

imdb:
To regain the trust of his girlfriend, an unscrupulous lawyer decides to mend his ways and follow a straighter path.Read More »

An excellent little suspense thriller with an air of the occult, filmed on location in Morocco by Julien Duvivier. Two versions were made: a German version with Anton Walbrook, and this French version with René Lefèvre and Harry Baur.

One by one, a group of five travellers starts to die, apparently the result of a sorcerer’s curse…Read More »

Synopsis:
Less ambitious than his previous Golgotha, Julien Duvivier’s La Bandera is nonetheless more entertaining. A Foreign Legion yarn, La Bandera downplays spectacular battle scenes in favor of a romantic triangle. Accused of murder, Pierre (Jean Gabin) joins the Legion, with detective Lucas (Robert Le Vigan) hot on his trail. Both Pierre and Lucas fall in love with beautiful Bedouin girl Aischa (Annabella), which only intensifies their hatred of one another. The two antagonists are eventually forced to bury the hatchet when fighting shoulder to shoulder against uprising natives. The ending is rather startling, inasmuch as the audience was expected the actor with the best screen billing to get the girl.
— Hal Erickson (New York Times).Read More »

Quote:
Featuring an all-star Shochiku cast, including the legendary Kinuyo Tanaka, Youth, Why Do You Cry? represents the high-water mark of Kiyohiko Ushihara’s silent period, packing its fast-paced plot, which involves the sudden intrusion of a “modern girl” into a widower’s family home, into a truly breezy three hours. A specialist of coming-of-age stories, Ushihara would leave Shochiku Kamata studios to learn more about a revolutionary new development in sound film, known as the “talkies,” in France, Great Britain, and the United States. Nobuhiko Obayashi (House) considered the film a masterpiece, observing that “even though it’s a three-hour-long silent film, I was moved into thinking that I had just watched a musical work of art.”Read More »

Quote:
In René Clair’s irrepressibly romantic portrait of the crowded tenements of Paris, a street singer and a gangster vie for the love of a beautiful young woman. An international sensation upon its release, Under the Roofs of Paris is an exhilarating celebration of filmmaking.Read More »

Quote:
Reportage showing views of old and new Jerusalem and the modern buildings of Tel-Aviv. It is one of two (along with ‘Tel Aviv’) reportages made in the late 1930s by Romuald Gantkowski in what was then Palestine.Read More »