Director: Julien Duvivier
Stars: Harry Baur, Valéry Inkijinoff, Alexandre Rignault
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Country: France
Willy Ferriere is dead broke and his mistress costs a lot. One day, he says in a pub that he would give 100,000 francs to get rid of his wealthy aunt. Someone lets him know it’s a deal. The aunt is murdered, and a poor chap is manipulated to be the perfect suspect. But Superintendant Maigret feels something is wrong.
Director: King Vidor
Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Miriam Hopkins, Franchot Tone
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
A divorcée leaves New York to visit her grandfather’s farm and recover in the Midwest, where she unexpectedly falls in love with a married farmer.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Helen Vinson
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Romance
Country: USA
When Prohibition ends, a beer baron sees the writing on the wall, quits the rackets, and tries to break into California society.
Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Loretta Young, Richard Barthelmess, Aline MacMahon
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA
A veteran fights drug addiction to make his way in the business world.
Director: Lewis Milestone
Stars: Al Jolson, Madge Evans, Frank Morgan
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Country: USA
A New York tramp (Jolson) falls in love with the mayor’s amnesiac girlfriend after rescuing her from a suicide attempt
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Stars: Warren William, Loretta Young, Wallace Ford
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A working girl is menaced by her tyrannical employer.
Director: John Ford
Stars: Henrietta Crosman, Heather Angel, Norman Foster
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A possessive mother pushes her son into World War I service rather than see him get married.
Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Loretta Young, Franchot Tone, Ricardo Cortez
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
An abused orphan sinks into a life of crime.
Director: Mikio Naruse
Stars: Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Akio Isono, Sumiko Mizukubo
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Two Geisha with a connection to a young man deal with life’s hardships.
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi, Takuaki Seiryô
Stars: Tokihiko Okada, Ichirô Sugai, Bontarô Miake
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
The tragic tale of a woman who despite doing good where she can gets punished by society.
Director: John G. Adolfi
Stars: George Arliss, Bette Davis, Theodore Newton
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
The vacationing head of a successful shoe company is placed as his rival’s trustee, unbeknown to them.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Robert Young
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Annie the tugboat captain tries to help two young lovers come together.
Director: Rowland Brown
Stars: George Bancroft, Judith Anderson, Frances Dee
Genre: Drama, Film Noir, Romance
Country: USA
Bill Bailey (George Bancroft) is a Los Angeles, California bail bondsman who lives in a world of complete, casual corruption, where all he has to do is pick up the phone to get the charges against a client dismissed. He falls in love with a slumming socialite who bluntly and startlingly declares her sexual preferences with this immortal line: “If I could find a man who would be my master and give me a good thrashing, I’d follow him around like a dog on a leash.”.
Director: Cyril Gardner
Stars: Gloria Swanson, Laurence Olivier, John Halliday
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: UK
A young couple decide to marry under the condition that they agree never to disagree. That agreement is soon put to the test when the husband finds himself attracted to a beautiful young woman.
Director: Phil Goldstone
Stars: Zita Johann, John Miljan, Alan Dinehart
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Nora Moran, a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit. She could easily reveal the truth and save her own life, if only it would not damage the lives, careers and reputations of those who she loves.
Director: Tod Browning
Stars: John Gilbert, Robert Armstrong, Mae Clarke
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Gunner and Bucker are pals who work as riveters. Whenever Bucker gets the urge to marry, which is often, Gunner will hit on his girl to see if she is true or not. So far, Gunner has not failed. But one night, while Gunner is in jail, Bucker meets Mary, a tough dame with a line. He falls for her, and she falls for his dough. But Mary is already a gal pal of Gunner, and no two know about the third one. The trouble starts when the triangle is revealed too late.
Director: Robert Florey
Stars: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Gene Raymond
Genre: Drama, History
Country: USA
It is the World War I period, and Peggy Martin, a showgirl and mistress to London Fiske, marries her love, handsome Monte Van Tyle. They move into the house on 56th street and have a baby, Eleanor. Monte enlists in the army and is killed in action. Peggy is revisited by Fiske who wants her back or he’ll commit suicide. She refuses his advances and the gun he brought accidentally goes off killing him. Peggy is convicted with murdered and jailed. Eleanor is told her mother is dead. Twenty years later, Peggy is released and meets gambler, Bill Blaine. The house on 56th street is now a gambling house owned by politician, Bonelli. Bill and Peggy get jobs there. Eleanor comes to visit them, and goes with Bill into his office. Bill threatens Eleanor, now a huge gambler, that he’ll tell her husband about her huge debts. Eleanor kills Bill and Peggy takes the blame. Bonelli believes Peggy is innocent and offers to help her if she only stays at the house on 56th street.
Director: John Cromwell
Stars: Irene Dunne, Joel McCrea, Laura Hope Crews
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A domineering matriarch is less than happy when her son brings home his new bride. She immediately sets to work at sabotaging their marriage as well as the engagement of her younger and weaker son.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Stars: Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Pat O’Brien
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Country: USA
Butch Saunders has been transferred to Missing Persons because he was too brutal in other police work. He regards the assignment as “kindergarten” work. When a young woman asks him to help locate her husband, Therme, he learns that she is really Norma Phillips, wanted by Chicago police for murder of her husband. She escapes, but Saunders borrows a corpse from the morgue to arrange her fake funeral. The trap brings the woman and Therme to the mortuary out of curiosity.
Director: John M. Stahl
Stars: Margaret Sullavan, John Boles, Edna May Oliver
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A one-night fling during World War I results in a young girl getting pregnant. Years later, she meets him again. Now a successful businessman, he doesn’t even remember her, but tries to seduce her.
Director: Hiroshi Shimizu
Stars: Michiko Oikawa, Yukiko Inoue, Ureo Egawa
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Two schoolgirl friends drift apart when one of them falls for a handsome boy.
Director: Pál Fejös
Stars: Annabella, Gustav Fröhlich, Paul Otto
Genre: Drama
Country: Germany | Austria
Vienna, at the height of the Great Depression. Like so many others, Hans has no work, no money, nowhere to live. Having lost his livelihood as a taxi driver, he decides that the only solution is to kill himself. But just as he is about to drown himself, he sees a young woman dive into the river, obviously with the same intention. Without a thought, Hans pulls the woman out of the water and does his best to comfort her. Her name is Anna and she is only 18, but like Hans she no longer has the strength to go on living.
Director: René Clair
Stars: Annabella, George Rigaud, Raymond Cordy
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: France
Jean is a young cab driver. Anna, a flower-girl neighbour, is in love with him. But he is still thinking to Pola, who just left him. Jean asks her to the bal. Many events (Pola’s come back, two villains…) will disturb this arising love.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Yoshiko Okada, Ureo Egawa, Kinuyo Tanaka
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Ryoichi and Chikako are brother and sister. They live together. Chikako works during the day in an office and at night she prostitutes herself to fund her brother’s studies at the university. Ryoichi doesn’t know about his sister’s secret life, but he is dating Harue whose brother is a policeman.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Stars: James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: USA
Ex-convict Danny Kean decides to become honest as a photographer for a paper. He falls in love with Patricia, the daughter of the policeman who arrested him. Mr Nolan, her father, doesn’t like that relation at first, but McLean, Kean’s boss, convinces him of Kean’s good nature. But Kean uses his relation to Patricia to make a photo of an execution. Due to this, Nolan loses his stripes and Kean isn’t allowed to see Patricia any longer. But when one of his former friends kills two policemen, Kean sees his chance….
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Jôji Oka, Sumiko Mizukubo
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Japan
A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: James Cagney, Mary Brian, Allen Jenkins
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: USA
Small time con artist Lefty Merrill has co-organized a crooked dance marathon and set-up his girlfriend to win the prize money. When his partner disappears with money before the contest is over, he’s forced to come up with a series of cons to help pay it back.
Director: Clarence Brown
Stars: Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Benita Hume
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Depression Era story set in London has department store owner (Lewis Stone) facing bankruptcy while his family fritters away money. A long-standing employee (Lionel Barrymore) gets fired but finds new life in a home-based bakery. The owner’s wife (Benita Hume) can’t face life without money, so she runs off with another man. The tables turn, however, when a last-minute reprieve saves the store and a new relationship is forged between the men.
Director: William Wyler
Stars: John Barrymore, Bebe Daniels, Doris Kenyon
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Successful attorney has his Jewish heritage and poverty-stricken background brought home to him when he learns his wife has been unfaithful.
Director: Mikio Naruse
Stars: Sumiko Kurishima, Teruko Kojima, Jun Arai
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
A single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son until–her long-lost husband returns.
Director: Victor Saville
Stars: Jessie Matthews, Edmund Gwenn, John Gielgud
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: UK
Musical taken from J.B. Priestley’s novel about three musicians joining together to save a failing concert party, the Dinky Doos.
Director: Robert Florey
Stars: Bette Davis, Gene Raymond, Frank McHugh
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Although free spirit Helen Bauer does not believe in marriage, she consents to marry Don, but his infidelities cause her to also take on a lover.
Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young, Marjorie Rambeau
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Bill takes Trina into his depression camp cabin. Later, just as he finds showgirl LaRue who will support him, Trina becomes pregnant.
Director: Archie Mayo, Michael Curtiz
Stars: James Cagney, Madge Evans, Arthur Byron
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Five members of a teen-age gang, including leader Jimmy Smith, are sent to the state reformatory, presided over by the melodramatically callous Thompson. Soon, Patsy Gargan, a former gangster appointed deputy commissioner as a political favor, arrives – complete with hip flask and blonde. Gargan falls for activist nurse Dorothy and, inspired by her, takes over the administration to run the place on radical principles. But Thompson, to conceal his years of graft, needs a quick way to discredit Gargan.
Director: Paul Sloane
Stars: Nancy Carroll, Cary Grant, John Halliday
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
During a three-day pleasure cruise, a murder victim’s friend (John Halliday) tries to trick a new bride (Nancy Carroll) into admitting her guilt.
Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith
Genre: Drama, Western
Country: USA
In the late 1800s New England, banker William Marlowe and his wife Martha have arranged for their daughter Mary to marry the officious and older Lord Hurley of England. Mary does not want to marry Lord Hurley, but rather John Carlton, a lowly clerk at her father’s bank.
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Stars: W.C. Fields, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Rudy Vallee
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
Assorted wacky characters converge on a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention, television.
Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Frankie Darro, Rochelle Hudson, Edwin Phillips
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: USA
In the depths of the Depression, two teenage boys strike out on their own in order to help their struggling parents and find life on the road tougher than expected.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Stars: James Cagney, Mae Clarke, Margaret Lindsay
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: USA
A former gangster makes it big in Hollywood, but his old life catches up with him.
Director: Wesley Ruggles
Stars: Mae West, Cary Grant, Gregory Ratoff
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: USA
Circus performer Tira seeks a better life pursuing the company of wealthy New York men with improbable comic complications along the way.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Stars: William Powell, Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette
Genre: Crime, Mystery
Country: USA
Philo Vance, accompanied by his prize-losing Scottish terrier, investigates the locked-room murder of a prominent and much-hated collector whose broken Chinese vase provides an important clue.
Director: Stuart Walker
Stars: Fredric March, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie
Genre: Action, Drama, War
Country: USA
The pilots of a Royal Air Force squadron in World War I face not only physical but mental dangers in their struggle to survive while fighting the enemy.
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Stars: Edgar Dearing, Peter Freuchen, Edward Hearn
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
The happy life of an Eskimo is disastrously changed when he mingles with an unscrupulous white trader.
Director: Victor Saville
Stars: Jessie Matthews, Sonnie Hale, Muriel Aked
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
It is pouring with rain at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth, and the driver of a London bus is peering through his blurred windshield as his vehicle sails down an empty road. Suddenly, lightning strikes, and a vast crane above topples into the path of the oncoming bus. Then Big Ben begins to wind backwards. Time recedes, and we discover the lives of all of the passengers and the events that brought them to that late-night bus journey, from the con man with a hundred pound cheque to the businessman’s distraught and elderly wife. Time flows on, inevitably, to the crash, and past it, as some live and some die.
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: Warren William, May Robson, Guy Kibbee
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
A gangster tries to make Apple Annie, the Times Square apple seller, a lady for a day.
Director: Lowell Sherman
Stars: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Country: USA
In the Gay Nineties, a seductive nightclub singer contends with several suitors, including a jealous escaped convict and a handsome temperance league member.
Director: Victor Fleming
Stars: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA
Sexpot film star Lola Burns seeks a new image and tries marrying a marquis and adopting a baby – all sorts of schemes which go awry.
Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Stars: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ian Keith
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Queen Christina of Sweden is a popular monarch who is loyal to her country. However, when she falls in love with a Spanish envoy, she must choose between the throne and the man she loves.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Stars: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler
Genre: Comedy, Musical, Romance
Country: USA
Chester Kent struggles against time, romance, and a rival’s spy to produce spectacular live “prologues” for movie houses.
Director: George Cukor
Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas
Genre: Drama, Family, Romance
Country: USA
A chronicle of the lives of a group of sisters growing up in nineteenth-century America.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Stars: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Country: USA
A wealthy composer rescues unemployed Broadway performers with a new play.
Director: Alfred E. Green
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A young woman, sexually exploited all her life, decides to turn the tables and exploit the hapless men at a big city bank – by gleefully sleeping her way to the top.
Director: Stephen Roberts
Stars: Miriam Hopkins, William Gargan, Jack La Rue
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
A wealthy but neurotic Southern belle finds herself trapped in the hideout of a gang of vicious bootleggers. The gang’s leader lusts after her, and is determined not to let anything stand in the way of his having her.
Director: Alexander Korda
Stars: Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Franklin Dyall
Genre: Biography, Comedy, Drama
Country: UK
King Henry VIII marries five more times after his divorce from his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Stars: Marion Davies, Onslow Stevens, J. Farrell MacDonald
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA
A young woman living in an Irish fishing village inherits her late grandfather’s estate, but is forced to spend three years in England training to be a proper lady to collect the fortune.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Yoshiko Okada, Ureo Egawa, Kinuyo Tanaka
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Ryoichi and Chikako are brother and sister. They live together. Chikako works during the day in an office and at night she prostitutes herself to fund her brother’s studies at the university. Ryoichi doesn’t know about his sister’s secret life, but he is dating Harue whose brother is a policeman.
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Takeshi Sakamoto, Nobuko Fushimi, Den Ohinata
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan
Two Tokyo co-workers come across a destitute young lady in search of a place to live.
Director: Max Ophüls
Stars: Paul Hörbiger, Magda Schneider, Luise Ullrich
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Germany
Vienna in the beginning of the twentieth century. Cavalry Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer is about to end his affair with Baroness Eggerdorff when he meets the young Christine, the daughter of an opera violinist. Baron Eggerdorff however soon hears of his past misfortune…
Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Thomy Bourdelle
Genre: Crime, Horror, Mystery
Country: Germany | France
Berlin police inspector Lohmann investigates a case, in which all clues lead to a man, who’s in a hospital for mental illnesses for since many years – Dr. Mabuse.
Director: Boris Barnet
Stars: Yelena Kuzmina, Mikhail Zharov, Nikolay Bogolyubov
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Soviet Union
Outskirts is an internationally renowned masterpiece of early sound cinema. In a remote Russian village during World War I, colorful and nuanced characters experience divided loyalties: family loyalty vs. personal desire, nationalism vs. transcendent humanism.