Subgenre Sampler
Foreign Cinema > Classics: 272 Films to Buy & Rent
Paisa (1946)
- Dir. Roberto Rossellini
Feat. Carmela Sazio, Robert Van Loon, Benjamin Emmanuel
- Six short films focusing on the minor victories and losses of ordinary folk during WW2. Pioneering the now–familiar use of documentary footage,…
Panique (1946)
- Dir. Julien Duvivier
Feat. Michel Simon, Viviane Romance
- Exemplary French noir based on the novel Les Fiançailles de M. Hire by Georges Simenon, the source of the Patrice Leconte film, MONSIEUR HIRE…
Shoeshine (Sciuscia) (1946)
- Dir. Vittorio De Sica
- Perhaps Vittorio De Sica's first acknowledged masterpiece, concerns two young boys struggling to survive on the streets of post–WWII Rome by…
Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne (1945)
- Dir. Robert Bresson
Feat. Maria Casares
- Dir. Bresson and writer Jean Cocteau are strange bedfellows in this lush, stylish drama, well–removed from the director’s austere later…
Les Enfants Du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (1945)
- Dir. Marcel Carne
Feat. Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur…
- This resplendent evocation of nineteeth century Paris street theatre follows the love of mime Jean–Louis Barrault for the highly–strung…
Rome: Open City (1945)
- Dir. Roberto Rossellini
Feat. Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi
- Neo–realist war drama about resistance fighters in fascist Italy places the action right inside the everyday and humanises the heroic.…
Torment (Hets) (1944)
- Dir. Alf Sjoberg
Feat. Stig Jarrel, Alf Kjellin, Mai Zetterling…
- Impressionistic study of authoritarian education and adolescent love was scripted by a young Ingmar Bergman, and its universe of cruel twists and…
Day of Wrath (1943)
- Dir. Carl Dreyer
Feat. Thorkild Roose, Lisbeth Movin, Sigrid Neiiendam
- Witchcraft drama set in 17th century rural Denmark, where an innocent young woman is denounced following the death of her much older, harshly…
Ivan the Terrible Pts. 1 & 2 (1943)
- Dir. Sergei Eisenstein
Feat. Nikolai Cherkassov, Serafima Birman, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya
- Spectacularly staged chronicle of the life of Czar Ivan IV, and his struggle to consolidate the Russian empire in the 16th Century. One of the…
Le Corbeau (1943)
- Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot
Feat. Pierre Fresnay
- Fascinating as a wartime allegory made under the German Occupation of France, a small town becomes a hot–bed of paranoia following a rash of…