Additionally, "Forbidden Planet" is remembered for its innovative score—or lack thereof. No music exists on the film's soundtrack; instead, all ambient sounds are "electronic tonalities" created by Louis and Bebe Barren. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen, Anne Francis and, in his debut, Robbie the Robot make up the film's cast. In 1913, a stellar cast of African-American performers gathered in the Bronx, New York, to make a feature-length motion picture.
This holiday favorite written and directed by George Seaton depicts a kindly old man calling himself Kris Kringle who is hired as the Macy's department store Santa. When he meets the young daughter of the store's personnel manager (Maureen O'Hara), he endeavors to teach the girl to become a normal, imaginative child instead of the miniature adult raised by her no-nonsense mother. When he becomes beligerent in defending himself as Santa, the old man is sent to an asylum birthday backdrop hire and a public sanity hearing follows. With the help of a sympathetic attorney the court finds that he is indeed Santa Claus and little girl learns the power of believing in the unbelievable. In possibly the screwiest of Preston Sturges screwball comedies, a small-town girl with a soft spot for soldiers wakes up the morning after a farewell party for the troops to find that she married someone she can't remember, and shortly thereafter learns she's pregnant.
Written and directed by Hughes, the film's cast includes Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy. This taming of the Oregon Trail saga comes alive thanks to the majestic sweep afforded by the experimental Grandeur wide-screen process developed by the Fox Film Corporation. Audiences marveled at the sheer scope of the panoramic scenes before them and delighted in the beauty of the vast landscapes. Hollywood legend has it that director Raoul Walsh was seeking a male lead for a new Western and asked his friend John Ford for advice. After beginning his career on the stage (where he originated the role of Messala in "Ben-Hur" in 1899), William S. Hart found his greatest fame as the silent screen's most popular cowboy. His 1914 "The Bargain," directed by Reginald Barker, was Hart's first film and made him a star.
The second Hart Western to be named to the National Film Registry, the film was selected because of Hart's charisma, the film's authenticity and realistic portrayal of the Western genre and the star's good/bad man role as an outlaw attempting to go straight. Writer/director Robert Zemeckis explored the possibilities of special effects with the 1985 box-office smash "Back to the Future." With his writing partner Bob Gale, Zemeckis tells the tale of accidental time-tourist Marty McFly. Produced and directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, the influential film compilation "The Atomic Cafe" provocatively documents the post-World War II threat of nuclear war as depicted in a wide assortment of archival footage from the period .
Though few of his movies survive, one that has is this short mystery in which a delivery boy is falsely accused of stealing $20,000. All hope seems lost until the boy's sister, who works as a film editor, uncovers celluloid evidence to free him -- a plot device that anticipates security cameras and eyewitness home videos by decades. Thanhouser, who co-directed with Lawrence Marston, demonstrates a command of visual storytelling that rivals D.W. This low-budget film of alienated youth struck a game-changing blow to Hollywood when every studio tried to duplicate its success. The exceptional life of country music legend Loretta Lynn is traced in this classic biopic documenting her unlikely ascent as a child bride from Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, to superstar singer and songwriter.
Famous for the scene in which Chico and Harpo impersonate an unwitting Groucho in front of a mirror, the film is generally acknowledged as the brothers' masterpiece. Unlike many directors, McCarey, whose credits also include the Registry comedies "Ruggles of Red Gap" and "The Awful Truth," successfully tempered the patented Marx mania without inhibiting it. Library of Congress Collection.Betty Grable's first starring role in a Technicolor musical happened only because Alice Faye had an attack of appendicitis, but Grable took advantage of the situation and quickly made herself as important to 20th Century-Fox as Faye. Released just over a year before America entered World War II, this film and others starring Grable established her as the pinup queen. The title explains much, with Grable traveling to South America and falling in love with Don Ameche. Carmen Miranda makes her American film debut, and the Nicolas Brothers' unparalleled dance routines dazzle.
Composer Henry Mancini's classic "Moon River," featuring lyrics by Johnny Mercer, also received critical acclaim. Mancini considered Hepburn's wistful rendition of the song on guitar the best he had heard. One of the truly unique pioneers of cinema, African-American producer/director/writer/distributor Oscar Micheaux somehow managed to get nearly 40 films made and seen despite facing racism, lack of funding, the capricious whims of local film censors and the independent nature of his work. Most of Micheaux's films are lost to time or available only in incomplete versions, with the only extant copies of some having been located in foreign archives.
Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux, "The Phantom of the Opera" is a classic horror film released by Universal, the studio that would go on to dominate the horror and "monster-movie" market during the sound era. The production and distribution process for "The Phantom of the Opera" was complicated and involved multiple directors, multiple reshoots, multiple script rewrites, shooting some sequences in two-strip Technicolor, and building a huge Paris Opera House set on the Universal backlot. Particularly impressive was Lon Chaney's makeup, which he applied himself and kept a secret from the cast and crew until the actual filming. Even today, the exact techniques Chaney used to create Erik's appearance are unknown.
Seen as Hollywood's tough guy, his style was most evident in his breakneck storytelling and central characters who defy easy categorization. In "Shock Corridor," undercover reporter Peter Breck gets himself committed to a psychiatric ward to flush out a Pulitzer Prize-worthy story. Cinematographer Stanley Cortez shot the film entirely indoors in ominously lit rooms and corridors, and editor Jerome Thoms amps up the hysteria with quick cuts that create a montage of disturbing behavior, violent outbursts, and dream sequences. Library of Congress Collection.From a modest start as a critical success, but something of a commercial bust upon initial release, "The Shawshank Redemption" now often rates as the top film in Internet Movie Database polling.
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Fairbanks plays a nobleman who has vowed to avenge the death of his father at the hands of pirates, and once upon the pirates' vessel, protects a damsel in distress taken hostage by the band of thieves. Library of Congress Collection.Perhaps more than any other film comedian in the early days of movies, W.C. His absurdist brand of humor, at once dry and surreal, endures for the simple reason that the movies bear up under repeated viewings; in fact, it's almost a necessity to watch them over and over, if only to figure out why they're so funny. In his second-to-last feature, The Bank Dick (which he wrote under the moniker "Mahatma Kane Jeeves"), Fields as unemployed layabout Egbert Souse -- Soosay, if you don't mind -- replaces drunk movie director A. Pismo Clam on a location shoot in his hometown of Lompoc, California before chance lands him in the job of bank detective -- after which the movie becomes a riff on the comic possibilities of his new-found notoriety.
Directed by Charles Lamont and starring Spanish-born actress Luana Alcañiz and Mexican star Fernando Soler, this melodrama surrounds a boxer, released after eight months in jail, who comes home to a recently pregnant wife. Produced at low-budget Columbia studio, "Verbena tragica" was unusual for the multi-version formula in that an English-language version was never made, most likely due to the film's themes of adultery and revenge. Tatsuno's footage, a total of nine rolls of Kodachrome film that runs approximately 48 minutes, is the only color motion pictures of life inside an internment camp, and often features smiling evacuees. Tatsuno observed that his films lacked "the fear, the loneliness, the despair and the bitterness that we felt." Before "They Call It Pro Football" premiered, football films were little more than highlight reels set to the oom-pah of a marching band. In 1964, National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle agreed to the formation of NFL Films.
Although Porter suggested to exhibitors it could just as easily be shown at the beginning of the film instead. Weill critiques the historically prevalent notions of women, marriage and motherhood, and the difficulties in pursuing an alternative lifestyle. The film uses deft observation of minor intimate vignettes (one has Mayron making a boyfriend pass the "mumps" test) to capture the life of a single woman trying to make a career during the Gloria Steinem-esque era of sexual freedom and the responsibilities and dangers that entails. Courtesy of George Eastman Museum George Eastman Museum founding film curator James Card was a passionate devotee of silent film director John H. Collins' work. It is through his influence that the museum is the principal repository of the director's few extant films. The film, shot in Egypt and Palestine often in Biblical locations, tells the story of Jesus' life in 10 chapters, with scenes staged as tableaus.