The tense WWII thriller, Night Train to Munich (aka Night Train), directed by Carol Reed in 1941, concerns a Czech inventor who along with his daughter escape from the Nazis, but he is kidnapped and returned to Germany. Screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat adapted Wellesley’s book, Report on Fugitive, interpolated two characters they had […]

Based in Bombay, acclaimed Indian director Mehboob was reportedly inspired by Satyajit Ray’s 1955 masterpiece, Pather Panchali in making Mother India, a touching, poignant film that depicts the struggles of a family to survive after the father is disabled. But when the son murders the man to whom they are in debt, the mother kills […]

After his acclaimed directorial debut Jour De Fete, brilliant French director Jacques reached international popularity in 1955 with Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot), which received a writing Oscar nomination.

In this well-acted Oscar-nominated melodrama, directed by Vincent Sherman and scripted by Julius and Philip Epstein, Bette Davis plays a beautiful woman who marries the much older Claude Rains for his wealth in order to help her brother. When she behaves indifferently toward their daughter, he divorces her and has an affair.  Years later, she […]

Comedian Billy Crystal's feature directorial debut is a major disappointment. Intermittently funny, the comedy contains some hilarious one-liners and excellent routines, but the film is suffused with excessive “humanism” and intolerable sentimentality.