Tag: 1951

Director: Mikio Naruse
Stars: Ken Uehara, Setsuko Hara, Yukiko Shimazaki
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage, all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

Director: Bretaigne Windust, Raoul Walsh
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Zero Mostel, Ted de Corsia
Genre: Crime, Film-Noir, Thriller
Country: USA

A crusading district attorney finally gets a chance to prosecute the organizer and boss of Murder Inc.

Director: Robert Wise
Stars: Richard Basehart, Valentina Cortese, William Lundigan
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.

Director: Anatole Litvak
Stars: Richard Basehart, Gary Merrill, Oskar Werner
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | West Germany

As the US Army approaches Nazi Germany, they recruit German prisoners to spy behind German lines.

Director: Roy Ward Baker
Stars: Tyrone Power, Ann Blyth, Michael Rennie
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: UK | USA

A scientist obsessed with the past transports himself back in time to 18th-century London, where he falls in love with a beautiful young woman.

Director: Robert Parrish
Stars: Broderick Crawford, Betty Buehler, Richard Kiley
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Johnny Damico botches a murder case and is suspended from the force. In reality, he is put undercover to identify the mysterious boss of the NY waterfront who has murdered everyone in his way. Will Johnny be next in line?

Director: Henry Hathaway
Stars: Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir, Thriller
Country: USA

An unhappy man threatens suicide by standing on the ledge of a high-rise building for 14 hours.

Director: Jacques Tourneur
Stars: Ray Milland, Patricia Roc, Marius Goring
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance
Country: UK

In the 1950s, an American comes to Britain to investigate the murky circumstances of his brother’s death that occurred during a WW2 commando raid in Nazi-occupied France.

Director: Mitchell Leisen
Stars: Gene Tierney, John Lund, Miriam Hopkins
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Ellen McNulty loses her hamburger joint and goes to see her son, who marries a socialite at the same time. Due to her modest background and a case of mistaken identity, Ellen poses as the newlyweds’ cook.

Director: Rudolph Maté
Stars: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hansen
Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA

As a new star and planet hurtle toward a doomed Earth, a small group of survivalists frantically work to complete the rocket which will take them to their new home.

Director: George Cukor
Stars: Jeanne Crain, Thelma Ritter, Scott Brady
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: USA

Marriage broker Mae Swasey, who somewhat cynically arranges her loser clients’ affairs, meets model Kitty Bennett and can’t resist meddling in her life, by disentangling her from a married man and fixing her up with a nice radiologist. Of course things go wrong.

Director: Guy Lefranc
Stars: Louis Jouvet, Jean Brochard, Pierre Renoir
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

Saint-Maurice, an ordinary peaceful village, lived healthily so much so that the local doctor’s practice was scant. But that was before Dr. Parpalaid retired and was replaced by a charlatan by the name of Knock. A real genius this one, for he soon managed to persuade everyone that they were ill. And not only didn’t they resent him but they even loved their physician, who made a fortune and brought prosperity to the village by turning it into a big hospital.

Director: Zoltan Korda
Stars: Canada Lee, Sidney Poitier, Charles Carson
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu (Sidney Poitier) is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg.

Director: Alf Sjöberg
Stars: Anita Björk, Ulf Palme, Märta Dorff
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden

An heiress begins to realize her attraction to one of her family’s servants.

Director: Gordon Douglas
Stars: James Cagney, Phyllis Thaxter, Raymond Massey
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

Alcoholic newspaperman Lew Marsh hits bottom, loses his job and is rehabilitated by Charley Dolan. After six years on the wagon he gets his job back and devotes himself to other recovering alcoholics. His boss enlists his help to sober up his nephew, Boyd Copeland, who has married Lew’s old sweetheart. Boyd, who is involved with a cabaret singer and the mob, presents quite a challenge

Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Nobuko Otowa, Yûji Hori
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective wife, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband’s family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.

Director: Maya Deren
Stars: Cynthia Barret, Terry Chapman, Frank Ionson
Genre: Short
Country: Canada

Maya Deren’s unfinished short film from 1951, “Ensemble for Somnambulists”, set to DeVotchKa’s “How It Ends”.

Director: Peter Lorre
Stars: Peter Lorre, Karl John, Helmuth Rudolph
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: West Germany

German scientist murders his fiancée during World War II when he learns that she has been selling the results of his secret research to the enemy.

Director: Robert Parrish
Stars: Dick Powell, Rhonda Fleming, Richard Erdman
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Ex-con Rocky Mulloy seeks the real culprit in the crime for which he was framed in a night world of deceptive dames and double crosses.

Director: Anthony Asquith
Stars: Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

Forced to retire from an English public school, an unpopular professor must confront his failure as a teacher and husband.

Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Western
Country: USA

A trail guide escorts a group of women from Chicago to California to marry men that have recently began settling there.

Director: Marcel Pagnol
Stars: Fernandel, Hélène Perdrière, Jacqueline Pagnol
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

Albert Topaze, sincere schoolteacher addicted to “rote” morality, works at a private school run by supremely money-grubbing M. Muche, whose daughter, also a teacher, makes cynical use of the knowledge that Topaze loves her. Alas, Topaze’s naive honesty brings him unjust dismissal…and makes him fair game for the “aunt” of his private pupil, really the mistress of crooked politician Regis, who needs an honest-seeming “front man.”

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjellin
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden

A lonely woman recalls her first love thirteen years prior during a brief summer vacation.

Director: Claude Autant-Lara
Stars: Fernandel, Françoise Rosay, Marie-Claire Olivia
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France

A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving a soporific soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard. The story unfolds as the monk tries to save the guest’s lives without violating the holy secrecy of the confession.

Director: Basil Dearden
Stars: Bonar Colleano, Susan Shaw, Renée Asherson
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: UK

When their ship docks the crew disembark as usual to pick up their lives in postwar London. For one of them his petty smuggling turns more serious when he finds himself caught up with a robbery in the City.

Director: Carol Reed
Stars: Ralph Richardson, Trevor Howard, Robert Morley
Genre: Adventure, Drama
Country: UK

A man occupies a position of trust with a merchant in an East Asian port. He’s sacked when he’s caught stealing, but he pretends to commit suicide, and a Captain he befriended agrees to take him to a secret trading post.

Director: Fletcher Markle
Stars: Ray Milland, John Hodiak, Nancy Reagan
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Berkeley university professor adjusts (using alcohol) to tragic fire deaths of wife & son.

Director: Wolfgang Staudte
Stars: Werner Peters, Paul Esser, Renate Fischer
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: East Germany

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below.

Director: Roberto Gavaldón
Stars: Arturo de Córdova, Leticia Palma, Ramón Gay
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Mexico

A fortune teller blackmails a beautiful widow whose husband has recently died.

Director: John Farrow, Richard Fleischer
Stars: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price
Genre: Action, Crime, Film-Noir
Country: USA

A deported gangster’s plan to re-enter the USA involves skulduggery at a Mexican resort, and gambler Dan Milner is caught in the middle.

Director: Pietro Germi
Stars: Gina Lollobrigida, Renato Baldini, Cosetta Greco
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Italy

Four criminals commit a robbery at a soccer stadium, and then split up to try to hide separately from the police.

Director: Laslo Benedek
Stars: Harold French, Pat Jackson, Anthony Pelissier
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

Adaptations of three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham comprise this anthology film where the celebrated author introduces each segment of the film in front of the camera.

Director: Laslo Benedek
Stars: Fredric March, Mildred Dunnock, Kevin McCarthy
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

An over-the-hill salesman faces a personal turning point when he loses his job and attempts to make peace with his family.

Director: Brian Desmond Hurst
Stars: Alastair Sim, Jack Warner, Kathleen Harrison
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK

Ebenezer Scrooge, a curmudgeonly, miserly businessman, has no time for sentimentality and largely views Christmas as a waste of time. However, this Christmas Eve he will be visited by three spirits who will show him the errors of his ways.

Director: Mark Robson
Stars: Arthur Kennedy, Peggy Dow, Julie Adams
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: USA

After he gets blinded by a German sniper’s bullet in 1943, Sergeant Larry Nevins begins the long and painful road to recovery.

Director: Leo C. Popkin, Russell Rouse
Stars: Gwendolyn Laster, Richard Rober, Maidie Norman
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

A small, racially-mixed American town succumbs to violence and utter mayhem after a white man suspected of kidnapping a missing black girl is released by the white authority.

Director: Isidore Isou
Stars: Isidore Isou, Jean-Louis Barrault, Blanchette Brunoy
Genre: Drama
Country: France

In this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of movie-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the seventh art the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world.

Director: Julien Duvivier
Stars: Brigitte Auber, Jean Brochard, René Blancard
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Fates of multiple otherwise disconnected characters intertwine miraculously under the sky of Paris. And it all happens in one day.

Director: Anthony Mann
Stars: Dick Powell, Paula Raymond, Adolphe Menjou
Genre: Adventure, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A New York City detective, traveling by train between New York and Baltimore, tries to foil an on-board plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln before he reaches Baltimore to give a major pre-Inauguration speech in 1861.

Director: Samuel Fuller
Stars: Gene Evans, Robert Hutton, Steve Brodie
Genre: Action, Drama, War
Country: USA

A ragtag group of American stragglers battles against superior Communist troops in an abandoned Buddhist temple during the Korean War.

Director: John Huston
Stars: Audie Murphy, Bill Mauldin, Douglas Dick
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA

Truncated adaptation of Stephen Crane’s novel about a Civil War Union soldier who stuggles to find the courage to fight in the heat of battle.

Director: Mervyn LeRoy, Anthony Mann
Stars: Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA

Fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lygia and begins questioning the tyrannical leadership of the despot Emperor Nero.

Director: Curtis Bernhardt
Stars: Bette Davis, Barry Sullivan, Jane Cowl
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

The film is about divorce but with flashbacks as to why divorce occurs.

Director: Nicholas Ray, Ida Lupino
Stars: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Hard, withdrawn city cop Jim Wilson roughs up one too many suspects and is sent upstate to help investigate the murder of a young girl in the winter countryside. There he meets Mary Malden, whom he finds attractive and independent. However, Mary’s brother is chief suspect in the killing. And Mary herself is blind.

Director: John Boulting
Stars: Robert Donat, Maria Schell, Renée Asherson
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: UK

A chronicle of the life of William Friese-Greene, a British inventor and early pioneer in cinema.

Director: Georges Lacombe
Stars: Jean Gabin, Simone Valère, Gérard Oury
Genre: Drama
Country: France

After an accident Raymond has gone blind .His family treats him like a child .But fortunately ,a nun comes to his rescue.She works in a center where blind people learn to read with the Braille alphabet.

Director: Sacha Guitry
Stars: Michel Simon, Jean Debucourt, Jacques Varennes
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: France

Through a series of circumstances and plot twists an enterprising man manages to get away with murdering his wife, even though he cheerfully admits his guilt in court.

Director: John Sturges
Stars: Ethel Barrymore, Maurice Evans, Angela Lansbury
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

Mary Herries (Ethel Barrymore) has a passion for art and fine furniture. Even though she is getting on in years, she enjoys being around these priceless articles. One day she meets a strange young painter named Harry Springer Elcott (Maurice Evans), who uses his painting skill to enter into her life. Little does she expect that his only interest in her is to covet everything she has.

Director: Marcel Carné
Stars: Gérard Philipe, Suzanne Cloutier, Jean-Roger Caussimon
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Michel has stolen from his employer, Mr Bellanger, for the love of Juliette. He is now in jail. One night, while sleeping in his cell, he wakes up all of a sudden, the gates open and he finds himself in a strange village where all the inhabitants have lost their memory. There, meets Juliette again who seems to agree to marry a powerful man, who might well be Bluebeard.

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Stars: Setsuko Hara, Masayuki Mori, Toshirô Mifune
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Japan

A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Hokkaido where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman.

Director: John Berry
Stars: John Garfield, Shelley Winters, Wallace Ford
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Nick and his partner Al stage a payroll holdup. Al is shot and Nick kills a policeman. Nick hides out at a public pool, where he meets Peg Dobbs. They go back to her apartment and he forces her family to hide him from the police manhunt.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stars: Fred Stadtmueller, Bob Hite, Pedro
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: USA

Two days in the life of priest Father Fred Stadtmuller whose New Mexico parish is so large he can only spread goodness and light among his flock with the aid of a monoplane. The priestly pilot is seen dashing from one province to the next at the helm of his trusty Piper Cub administering guidance (his plane, the Flying Padre) to unruly children, sermonizing at funerals and flying a sickly child and its mother to a hospital.

Director: Jacques Becker
Stars: Daniel Gélin, Anne Vernon, Elina Labourdette
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

Edouard is a pianist, married with Caroline. This evening, they are invited to Claude’s. Claude is the snobbish uncle of Caroline, his son Alain (as snobbish as his father) is in love with Caroline. They spite Edouard a little because he’s poor.

Director: Stephan Streker
Stars: Bea Diallo, Pascal Mercier
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Belgium

In boxing, winning a fight means you’ve taken a step up on the ladder of success. But if you lose, it’s back to rung number one. That day, the day of the fight, can make or break you.

Director: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
Country: UK

During the Napoleonic wars, a British Navy Captain has adventures in Central American waters.

Director: Luchino Visconti
Stars: Anna Magnani, Walter Chiari, Tina Apicella
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy

A woman from the lower class desperately tries to get her daughter into the movies.

Director: Charles Crichton
Stars: Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway, Sidney James
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: UK

A meek bank clerk who oversees the shipment of bullion joins with an eccentric neighbor to steal gold bars and smuggle them out of the country as miniature Eiffel Towers.

Director: Robert Hessens, Alain Resnais
Stars: María Casares, Jacques Pruvost
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France

On April 26 1937 the small Basque town of Guernica was bombed without warning by the German aviation. Two thousand people, all civilians, got killed. Like millions all over the world, Pablo Picasso was shocked and he translated his emotion into a magnificent but terrifying picture bearing the name of the martyred city. This film does not only comment on the painting, it also gives it a new life through frantic camera and sound effects.

Director: Luis Buñuel
Stars: Rosita Quintana, Fernando Soler, Víctor Manuel Mendoza
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico

An unstable young woman escapes from a reformatory for very, very wayward girls and deceptively finds shelter in the kind home of a frighteningly nice and decent family. Little by little, she causes unrest and discord among the members of the household, until they are virtually fighting with each other.

Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Stars: Moira Shearer, Robert Rounseville, Ludmilla Tchérina
Genre: Fantasy, Music, Musical
Country: UK

A melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer.

Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Stars: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood, Cecil Parker
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: UK

An altruistic chemist invents a fabric which resists wear and stain as a boon to humanity, but big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons.

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Stars: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Jack Kinney
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Country: USA

Alice stumbles into the world of Wonderland. Will she get home? Not if the Queen of Hearts has her way.

Director: Robert Wise
Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: USA

An alien lands and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.