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M (1951 Film)
''M'' is a 1951 American film noir directed by Joseph Losey. It is a remake of Fritz Lang's 1931 German film of the same name about a child murderer. This version shifts the location of action from Berlin to Los Angeles and changes the killer's name from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Both versions of ''M'' were produced by Seymour Nebenzal, whose son, Harold, was associate producer of the 1951 version. The film was restored in 2015, with Harold Nebenzal as Executive Producer of the restoration. Plot Martin W. Harrow (David Wayne) is a compulsive child-murderer, and the public demands of the mayor and police that he be caught. The police start a crackdown on criminal operations, dive bars and hangouts in the city, hoping that the murderer will turn up in one of the many raids. This pressure is preventing the city's crime syndicate from doing business, and its boss, Marshall (Martin Gabel), organizes his forces to find and stop the murderer so that the police will stop the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Losey
Joseph Walton Losey III (; January 14, 1909 – June 22, 1984) was an American theatre and film director, producer, and screenwriter. Born in Wisconsin, he studied in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and then returned to the United States. Blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s, he moved to Europe where he made the remainder of his films, mostly in the United Kingdom. Among the most critically and commercially successful were the films with screenplays by Harold Pinter: '' The Servant'' (1963) and '' The Go-Between'' (1971). Losey's 1976 film ''Monsieur Klein'' won the César Awards for Best Film and Best Director. He was a four-time nominee for both the Palme d'Or (winning once) and the Golden Lion, and a two-time BAFTA nominee. Early life and career Joseph Walton Losey III was born on January 14, 1909, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he and Nicholas Ray were high-school classmates at La Crosse Central High School. He attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, beginning as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
M (1931 Film)
''M'' is a 1931 German mystery suspense thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre in his breakthrough role as Hans Beckert, a serial killer of children. An early example of a procedural drama, the film centers on the manhunt for Lorre's character, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld. The film's screenplay was written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou and was the director's first sound film. It features many cinematic innovations, including the use of long, fluid tracking shots, and a musical '' leitmotif'' in the form of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" whistled by Lorre's character. Now considered a timeless classic, the film was deemed by Lang to be his magnum opus. It is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, and an indispensable influence on modern crime and thriller fiction. Plot In Berlin, a group of children are playing an elimination game in the courtyard of an apartment building, using a chant about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Servant (1963 Film)
''The Servant'' is a 1963 British drama film directed by Joseph Losey. It was written by Harold Pinter, who adapted Robin Maugham's 1948 novella. ''The Servant'' stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig and James Fox. It opened at London's Warner Theatre on 14 November 1963. The first of Pinter's four film collaborations with Losey, ''The Servant'' is a tightly constructed film about the psychological relationships among the four central characters and examines issues relating to social class. Plot Wealthy Londoner Tony, who says he is part of a plan to build cities in Brazil, moves into his new house, and hires Hugo Barrett as his manservant. Barrett appears to take easily to his new job, and he and Tony form a quiet bond, retaining their social roles. Relationships begin shifting, however, when Tony's girlfriend Susan meets Barrett. She is suspicious of Barrett and asks Tony to dismiss him, but he refuses. To bring his lover, Vera, into his world, Barrett convinces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), '' The Homecoming'' (1964) and '' Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include '' The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), '' The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), '' The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of Atlanta, Georgia. The channel's programming consists mainly of classic theatrically released feature films from the Turner Entertainment film library – which comprises films from Warner Bros. (covering films released before 1950), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (covering films released before May 1986), and the North American distribution rights to films from RKO Pictures. However, Turner Classic Movies also licenses films from other studios and occasionally shows more recent films. The channel is available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta (as Turner Classic Movies), Latin America, France, Greece, Cyprus, Spain, the Nordic countries, the Middle East, Africa (as TNT), and Asia-Pacific. History Origins In 1986, eig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative United States Congressional committee, committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having either Fascism, fascist or Communism, communist ties. It became a standing (permanent) committee in 1945, and from 1969 onwards it was known as the House Committee on Internal Security. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary, House Judiciary Committee. The committee's anti-communist investigations are often associated with McCarthyism, although Joseph McCarthy himself (as a U.S. Senator) had no direct involvement with the House committee. McCarthy was the chairman of the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; 26 April 1897 – 14 January 1987) was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s. Sirk started his career in Germany as a stage and screen director, but he left for Hollywood in 1937 after his Jewish wife was persecuted by the Nazis. In the 1950s, he achieved his greatest commercial success with film melodramas '' Magnificent Obsession'', '' All That Heaven Allows'', ''Written on the Wind'', ''A Time to Love and a Time to Die'', and '' Imitation of Life''. While those films were initially panned by critics as sentimental women's pictures, they are today widely regarded by film directors, critics, and scholars as masterpieces. His work is seen as "critique of the bourgeoisie in general and of 1950s America in particular", while painting a "compassionate portrait of characters trapped by social conditions". Beyond the surface of the film, Sirk worked with complex mises-en-scène and lush Technicolor t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B Film
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature (akin to B-sides for recorded music). However, the U.S. production of films intended as second features largely ceased by the end of the 1950s. With the emergence of commercial television at that time, film studio B movie production departments changed into television film production divisions. They created much of the same type of content in low budget films and series. The term ''B movie'' continues to be used in its broader sense to this day. In its post-Golden Age usage, B movies can range from lurid exploitation films to independent arthouse films. In either usage, most B movies represent a particular genre—the Western was a Golden Age B movie staple, while low-budget science-fiction and horror films became more popular in the 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany quickly became a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", alluded to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which Hitler and the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945 after just 12 years when the Allies defeated Germany, ending World War II in Europe. On 30 January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, the head of gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercury Theatre
The Mercury Theatre was an independent repertory theatre company founded in New York City in 1937 by Orson Welles and producer John Houseman. The company produced theatrical presentations, radio programs and motion pictures. The Mercury also released promptbooks and phonographic recordings of four Shakespeare works for use in schools. After a series of acclaimed Broadway productions, the Mercury Theatre progressed into its most popular incarnation as ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air''. The radio series included one of the most notable and infamous radio broadcasts of all time, "The War of the Worlds", broadcast October 30, 1938. The ''Mercury Theatre on the Air'' produced live radio dramas in 1938–1940 and again briefly in 1946. In addition to Welles, the Mercury players included Ray Collins, Joseph Cotten, George Coulouris, Martin Gabel, Norman Lloyd, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, and Everett Sloane. Much of the troupe would later appear in Welles's films at RKO, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. While in his 20s, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project, including an adaptation of ''Macbeth'' with an entirely African-American cast and the political musical '' The Cradle Will Rock''. In 1937, he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented a series of productions on Broadway through 1941, including ''Caesar'' (1937), an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Julius Caesar''. In 1938, his radio anthology series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel ''The War of the Worlds'', which caused s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jim Backus
James Gilmore Backus (February 25, 1913 – July 3, 1989) was an American actor. Among his most famous roles were Thurston Howell III on the 1960s sitcom ''Gilligan's Island,'' the father of James Dean's character in '' Rebel Without a Cause,'' the voice of the nearsighted cartoon character '' Mr. Magoo'', the rich Hubert Updike III on the radio version of ''The Alan Young Show'', and Joan Davis' character's husband (a domestic court judge) on TV's '' I Married Joan''. He also starred in his own show of one season, '' The Jim Backus Show'', also known as ''Hot Off the Wire''. An avid golfer, Backus made the 36-hole cut at the 1964 Bing Crosby Pro-Am tournament. He was inducted to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Early life Backus was born February 25, 1913, in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Bratenahl, Ohio, an East Side suburb of Cleveland located on the Lake Erie shore, surrounded by the city on three sides. He was the son of Russell Gould Backus and Daisy Taylor (né ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
