Tag: 1952

Director: Lewis Gilbert
Stars: Eddie Byrne, Jane Barrett, Robert Brown
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK

Because of its high productivity and “almost” 100 per cent employment, the village of Little Hayhoe, England is expecting a visit from the Prime Minister. The “almost” is because of Dan Dance (Eddie Byrne), an old rogue who would rather drink and philosophize than work. The Village Council are determined to have a perfect record so they connive to have the old man put into the alms-house which has been unoccupied for many years, where he must abide by rules laid down 400 years ago. A new Vicar arrives and discovers that, because of the circumstances created by the Council, Dan Dance is entitled to 6,000 pounds a year at the expense of the village

Director: Henry Koster
Stars: Olivia de Havilland, Richard Burton, Audrey Dalton
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Romance
Country: USA

A young man plots revenge against the woman he believes murdered his cousin, but his plans are shaken when he comes face to face with the enigmatic beauty.

Director: Edward Dmytryk
Stars: Arthur Franz, Adolphe Menjou, Gerald Mohr
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

A sniper kills young brunettes as the police attempt to grapple with the psychology of the unknown assailant.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: Walter Newcomb, Janice Hubka
Genre: Drama, Short, Romance
Country: USA

A young man strolls through a city. He walks under a bridge toward a rail yard. A young woman sees him and walks beside him. They cross the tracks and walk into the countryside. They stop at a river. They hold hands. It starts to rain; it’s a downpour. They seek shelter in an abandoned shack. They kiss, long and hard. It stops raining; they leave together but seem alone. They part at the railroad tracks. She watches him go, but he doesn’t look back

Director: Julien Duvivier
Stars: Dany Robin, Michel Auclair, Hildegard Knef
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

After the rejection of their latest – and preposterous – scenario, two script writers get back to basics to prepare a new movie. The new scenario centers on Henriette, a pretty, lively Parisian, and how she spends the 14th of July in Paris with her fiancé.

Director: Georges Franju
Stars: Jehanne d’Alcy, André Méliès, Marie-Georges Méliès
Genre: Short, Biography, Drama
Country: France

A biography of the pioneer film director Georges Méliès, featuring his son André playing Georges, and with shots of his second wife, aged 90.

Director: Henry King
Stars: Jean Peters, David Wayne, Hugh Marlowe
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

At the fiftieth anniversary of his town’s founding, the town’s first barber recalls his long-dead, spirited bride and the flaw in his own character that helped bring about her loss and others.

Director: Howard Hawks
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Dewey Martin, Elizabeth Threatt
Genre: Drama, Western
Country: USA

The success of the journey focuses on keeping the Indian girl alive as well as themselves to complete trade with the Blackfeet.

Director: Ronald Neame
Stars: Alec Guinness, Glynis Johns, Valerie Hobson
Genre: Comedy
Country: UK

A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing, some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman.

Director: Richard Thorpe
Stars: James Stewart, Jean Hagen, Wendell Corey
Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: USA

David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine automatic rifle used in World War II.

Director: Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Henry King, Henry Koster, Jean Negulesco
Stars: Fred Allen, Anne Baxter, Jeanne Crain
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

John Steinbeck introduces a quintet of five of O. Henry’s most celebrated stories from his New York Period (1902-1910) in this anthology film.

Director: Hugo del Carril
Stars: Hugo del Carril, Adriana Benetti, Raúl del Valle
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina

The Peralta brothers work in the countryside the Alto Parana. There they will meet subhuman working conditions. Finally, the workers rise and harshly punish their exploiters.

Director: Giuseppe De Santis
Stars: Lucia Bosè, Carla Del Poggio, Maria Grazia Francia
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France

Based on an actual incident, this is the story of five girls (told in a slow beginning) who are among the 200 women who answer a want ad for a modest secretarial position one rainy morning in Rome in 1951.

Director: Martin Fric
Stars: Jan Werich, Marie Vásová, Natasa Gollová
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: Czechoslovakia

Rudolph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, does not have a simple life. And yet he manages to complicate it even more with his frequent outbursts of anger. While he searches for a mythical Golem, an animated clay statue, Matthew the Baker is thrown into the dungeon for selling the special buns for the emperor to people. Matthew is accidentally mistaken for the emperor and takes his place. And when the Golem is finally found, it will complicate things beyond comprehension.

Director: Richard Fleischer
Stars: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

A woman planning to testify against the mob must be protected against their assassins on the train trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.

Director: John Huston
Stars: José Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Suzanne Flon
Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
Country: UK

Fictional account of French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Director: Phil Karlson
Stars: John Derek, Donna Reed, Broderick Crawford
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

The editor of an exploitation newspaper commits a murder and assigns his protégé to investigate hoping to divert attention away from himself.

Director: Alberto Lattuada
Stars: Renato Rascel, Yvonne Sanson, Giulio Stival
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Italy

Based on Nikolai Gogol’s story with the location changed from Russia to Italy and the time changed to the present (1952), the story is about a poor city-hall clerk (Renato Rascel) whose only desire is for a new overcoat.

Director: Roberto Rossellini
Stars: Gennaro Pisano, Marilyn Buferd, William Tubbs
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy
Country: Italy

A demon bestows on a self-righteous working photographer’s camera the power to smite from the Earth “evil-doers”. Naturally, the indignant photographer turns his new weapon on, one by one, his entire village, beginning with the wealthy or illustrious. Soon, the poor he is so supposedly so enamored of become his victims too, so rife with impatience and contempt is he, that the slightest flaw is cause for smiting.

Director: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Gregory Peck, Ann Blyth, Anthony Quinn
Genre: Action, Adventure, History
Country: USA

In San Francisco in 1850, a Russian Countess runs away from an arranged marriage to a Russian Prince and falls into the arms of an American sea captain who occasionally poaches seals in Russian Alaska.

Director: Renato Castellani
Stars: Maria Fiore, Vincenzo Musolino, Filomena Russo
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: Italy

The story concerns the romance between Carmela and Antonio. The ardor is one-sided at first, but Carmela is a determined young woman, willing to scale and conquer any obstacle in pursuing her heart’s desire. Once he’s “hooked,” Antonio scurries from job to job to prove his financial viability. Faced with the hostility of their parents, Carmela and Antonio symbolically shed themselves of all responsibilities to others in a climactic act of stark-naked bravado.

Director: Norman Taurog
Stars: Cary Grant, Betsy Drake, Lurene Tuttle
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

A fairly well-to-do family takes in two troubled orphans.

Director: Norman McLaren
Stars: Grant Munro, Jean Paul Ladouceur
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: Canada

A surreal story of two neighbours’ destructive feud over a flower.

Director: George Cukor
Stars: Judy Holliday, Aldo Ray, Madge Kennedy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

Florence and Chet Keefer have had a troublesome marriage. Whilst in the middle of a divorce hearing the judge encourages them to remember the good times they have had hoping that the marriage can be saved.

Director: Anthony Asquith
Stars: Michael Redgrave, Richard Wattis, Michael Denison
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

When Algernon discovers that his friend, Ernest, has created a fictional brother for whenever he needs a reason to escape dull country life, Algernon poses as the brother, resulting in ever increasing confusion.

Director: Robert Siodmak
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Nick Cravat, Eva Bartok
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Country: USA | UK

During the 1700s, pirate Captain Vallo seizes a British warship and gets involved in various money-making schemes involving Caribbean rebels led by El Libre, British envoy Baron Jose Gruda, and a beautiful courtesan named Consuelo.

Director: David Miller
Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, Gloria Grahame
Genre: Film-Noir, Thriller
Country: USA

After an ambitious actor insinuates himself into the life of a wealthy middle-aged playwright and marries her, he plots with his mistress to murder her.

Director: Jean Negulesco
Stars: Bette Davis, Shelley Winters, Gary Merrill
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

While awaiting a delayed flight, a lawyer who has left his unfaithful wife, befriends three fellow passengers. After the plane crashes and he is among the few to survive, he feels compelled to contact the families of his dead friends.

Director: Julien Duvivier
Stars: Fernandel, Gino Cervi, Vera Talchi
Genre: Comedy
Country: Italy | France

A determined priest and a Communist mayor develop a grudging friendship in spite of their official rivalry.

Director: Richard Brooks
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

With his newspaper about to be sold, crusading editor Ed Hutcheson tries to complete an exposé on gangster Rienzi.

Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Stars: Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins, Terence Morgan
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

Mandy Garland was born deaf and has been mute for all of her life. Her parents believe she is able to speak if she can only be taught and enroll her with a special teacher.

Director: Ralph Richardson
Stars: Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton, Jack Hawkins
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: UK

David Preston, a bank official, goes missing for twenty-four hours and has no memory of the lost time. When he learns that the steward of his local club has implicated him in a robbery, and has been found murdered, Preston finds he has no alibi. The police want him to account for the lost hours.

Director: William Wyler
Stars: Laurence Olivier, Jennifer Jones, Miriam Hopkins
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A young girl from a provincial town learns the bitter reality of a big city and great love.

Director: Charles Crichton
Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Jon Whiteley, Elizabeth Sellars
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: UK

A violent fugitive and a mistreated small boy team up to flee from authority.

Director: Samuel Fuller
Stars: Gene Evans, Mary Welch, Bela Kovacs
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

The Globe is a small, but visionary newspaper started by Phineas Mitchell, an editor recently fired by The Star. The two newspapers become enemies, and the Star’s ruthless heiress Charity Hackett decides to eliminate the competition.

Director: Georges Franju
Stars: Michel Simon
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: France

A tour of the Hotel des Invalides, and more particularly of the Army Museum and the Saint Louis Chapel. From François I’s armor to Guynemer’s airplane, to Napoleon’s and Marshall Foch’s tombs. But this is no ordinary tour,it is rather a chilling visit guided by Georges Franju and narrated by Michel Simon emphasizing – at times through biting humor -not the glory but the nonsense of wars, but their tragic aftermath.

Director: Stuart Heisler
Stars: Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: USA

A washed-up movie queen finds romance, but still desires a comeback.

Director: Luis Buñuel
Stars: Lilia Prado, Carmelita González, Esteban Mayo
Genre: Comedy
Country: Mexico

A newly-wed country boy receives the terrible news that his mother is dying, and takes a long and dangerous bus trip to the city to contact a notary for her last will and testament. Will he resist temptation and do the right thing?

Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Stars: Shin Saburi, Michiyo Kogure, Kôji Tsuruta
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

A childless middle-aged couple faces a marital crisis.

Director: George Sidney
Stars: Stewart Granger, Janet Leigh, Eleanor Parker
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Country: USA

In France during the late 18th Century, a man sets out to avenge the death of his friend at the hands of a master swordsman.

Director: Noel Langley
Stars: James Hayter, James Donald, Nigel Patrick
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: UK

The Pickwick Club sends Mr. Pickwick and a group of friends to travel across England and to report back on the interesting things they find. In the course of their travels, they repeatedly encounter the friendly but disreputable Mr. Jingle, who becomes a continual source of trouble for all who know him. Pickwick himself is the victim of a number of misunderstandings that bring him both embarrassment and problems with the law.

Director: Mikio Naruse
Stars: Kinuyo Tanaka, Kyôko Kagawa, Eiji Okada
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother’s attempt to sustain her family.

Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, Paul Douglas
Genre: Drama, Film-Noir, Romance
Country: USA

Mae Doyle comes back to her hometown a cynical woman. Her brother Joe fears that his love, fish cannery worker Peggy, may wind up like Mae. Mae marries Jerry and has a baby; she is happy but restless, drawn to Jerry’s friend Earl.

Director: Pietro Germi
Stars: Amedeo Nazzari, Cosetta Greco, Saro Urzì
Genre: Action, Drama
Country: Italy

In 19th century southern Italy (near Melfi, Basilicata), a small force of soldiers fight in the hills against the bandits who are holding their country to ransom.

Director: Luis Buñuel
Stars: Rosario Granados, Julio Villarreal, Tito Junco
Genre: Drama
Country: Mexico

After indulging in an affair with a man (a friend of the family) she truly loves, a woman returns to her young son and husband for good, and loses contact with the man. Her husband is unaware of the affair. Twenty years later, there is news that the friend has died and left all of his money to the younger son in the family, which leads us to question this younger son’s biological origin.

Director: Compton Bennett
Stars: Maria Schell, Marius Goring, Lucie Mannheim
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK

During World War II, German soldiers occupy the home of a beautiful Belgian girl and her mother.

Director: Richard Thorpe
Stars: Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Louis Calhern
Genre: Adventure
Country: USA

An Englishman vacationing in a Ruritarian kingdom is recruited to impersonate his cousin, the soon-to-be-crowned king after the monarch is drugged and kidnapped.

Director: Marcel Pagnol
Stars: Edmond Ardisson, Henri Arius, Charles Blavette
Genre: Drama
Country: France

To revenge her father’s death, Manon blocks the source from which the village gets water.

Director: Mikio Naruse
Stars: Hideko Takamine, Mitsuko Miura, Kyôko Kagawa
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

Poor, pathetic mother Ose (Kumeko Urabe) has four children, three daughters and a son, by four different men.

Director: George More O’Ferrall
Stars: Ralph Richardson, Celia Johnson, Margaret Leighton
Genre: Drama
Country: UK

A heartwarming tale of an English minister and his family reunited at Christmas time. Their story includes a remembrance of their World War II trials.

Director: Henry Hathaway
Stars: Tyrone Power, Patricia Neal, Stephen McNally
Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir
Country: USA

Cold War yarn about a US State Department courier who tangles with Soviet agents and seductive women in post WW2 Europe.

Director: Kaneto Shindô
Stars: Nobuko Otowa, Osamu Takizawa, Masao Shimizu
Genre: Drama, War
Country: Japan

Post war Hiroshima: It’s been four years since the last time she visited her hometown. Takako faces the after effects of the A-bomb when she travels around the city to call on old friends.

Director: René Clair
Stars: Gérard Philipe, Martine Carol, Gina Lollobrigida
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Music
Country: France | Italy

A young composer has vivid dreams of the past that reflect, yet conflict with his waking life.

Director: André Cayatte
Stars: Marcel Mouloudji, Raymond Pellegrin, Antoine Balpêtré
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy

Rene is not a bright guy. He was taught to kill by the Resistance. But the WW2 is over and he keeps on killing. He is condemned to death. In jail, expecting the presidential pardon, he mets other condemned men. An anti-capital punishment drama, written and directed by a former lawyer.

Director: Federico Fellini
Stars: Alberto Sordi, Giulietta Masina, Brunella Bovo
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy

During a day in their honeymoon, a couple is separated by the city’s lust and the desires it produces.

Director: Fritz Lang
Stars: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer
Genre: Western
Country: USA

After the murder of his fiancée, a Wyoming ranch hand sets out to find her killer.

Director: Anthony Mann
Stars: James Stewart, Rock Hudson, Arthur Kennedy
Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance
Country: USA

When a town boss confiscates homesteader’s supplies after gold is discovered nearby, a tough cowboy risks his life to try and get it to them.