Witness for the Prosecution

Delbert Mann’s 1958 classic MGM drama Separate Tables, based on a Terence Rattigan play and co-scripted by Rattigan himself, is a star-studded character study of a group of eccentric residents of a Bournemouth boarding house who all share a common trait – loneliness. Major Pollack (David Niven) hides a dark secret behind a polished military […]

Carole Lombard and William Powell dazzle in this definitive screwball comedy by Gregory La Cava—a potent cocktail of romantic repartee and social critique. Irene (Lombard), an eccentric, wealthy Manhattanite, wins a society-ball scavenger hunt after finding a “forgotten man” (Powell)—an apparent down-and-out drifter—at a dump. She gives him work as the family butler and soon […]

Set during Blitz-torn wartime England, Ray Milland (Dial M for Murder, The Lost Weekend) stars as a man just released from a sanatorium who stumbles into an elaborate and murderous Nazi plot. Reminiscent of Lang’s early expressionist films (The Spiders, Dr Mabuse the Gambler, M) and full of bravura set pieces and hallucinatory visuals, Ministry of Fear is one of Lang’s […]

Often acknowledged as one of the best prison films ever made, Birdman of Alcatraz was director John Frankenheimer s first huge success and received rave reviews for its performances, cinematography (by the great Burnett Guffey; From Here to Eternity, Bonnie and Clyde) and Frankenheimer s directing. Burt Lancaster stars as the notorious prisoner, Robert Stroud, […]