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Home › Classic Films › International › 1940s
Review Art House Productions Ltd. / Bicycle Thieves [1948] [VHS]
Actors & Directors
  • Lamberto Maggiorani
  • Vittorio De Sica
  • Enzo Staiola
  • Gino Saltamerenda
  • Vittorio Antonucci
  • Lianella Carell
Release date: 1994-11-21
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: Suso Cecchi d'Amico
RRP: £15.99
Price: £17.50

Review Bicycle Thieves [1948] [VHS] / Art House Productions Ltd.:

Vittorio De Sica's remarkable 1947 drama of desperation and survival in Italy's devastating post-war depression earned a special Oscar for its affecting power. Shot in the streets and alleys of Rome, De Sica uses a real-life environment to frame his moving drama of a desperate father whose new job delivering cinema posters is threatened when a street thief steals his bicycle. Too poor to buy another, he and his son take to the streets in an impossible search for his bike. Cast with non-professional actors and filled with the real street life of Rome, this landmark film helped define the Italian neorealist approach with its mix of real life details, poetic imagery, and warm sentimentality. De Sica uses the wandering pair to witness the lives of everyday folks, but ultimately he paints a quiet, poignant portrait of father and son, played by Lamberto Maggiorani and Enzo Staiola, whose understated performances carry the heart of the film. De Sica and scenarist Cesare Zavattini also collaborated on Shoeshine, Miracle in Milan, and Umberto D, all classics in the neorealist vein, but none of which approach the simple poetry and quiet power achieved in The Bicycle Thieves. -Sean Axmaker.

Review Eureka Entertainment / Torment [VHS] [1944]
Actors & Directors
  • Mai Zetterling
  • Olof Winnerstrand
  • Stig Järrel
  • Gösta Cederlund
  • Alf Sjöberg
  • Alf Kjellin
Release date: 1998-02-16
Run time: 96 min.
Creator: Ingmar Bergman
RRP: £15.99
Price: £4.95

Review Torment [VHS] [1944] / Eureka Entertainment:


Review Bfi Video / Stray Dog [VHS] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Patrick Fugit
  • Liberty Cordova
  • Shawn Levy
  • Kim Landry
  • Tank the Bear
  • Lindsay Felton
Release date: 2002-03-25
Run time: 117 min.
Creator: Tommy Lynch
RRP: £15.99
Price: £18.95

Review Stray Dog [VHS] [1949] / Bfi Video:


Review 4 Front Video / Jour De Fete [VHS] [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Jacques Tati
  • Santa Relli
  • Jacques Tati
  • Maine Vallée
  • Paul Frankeur
  • Guy Decomble
Release date: 1997-01-13
Run time: 77 min.
Creator: René Wheeler
Price: £5.99

Review Jour De Fete [VHS] [1948] / 4 Front Video:


Review Connoisseur Video / Drunken Angel [VHS] [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Toshirô Mifune
  • Michiyo Kogure
  • Chieko Nakakita
  • Takashi Shimura
  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Reisaburo Yamamoto
Release date: 1998-11-09
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Keinosuke Uegusa
RRP: £15.99
Price: £10.95

Review Drunken Angel [VHS] [1948] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Connoisseur Video / Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne [VHS] [1965]
Actors & Directors
  • Robert Bresson
  • Lucienne Bogaert
  • Paul Bernard
  • María Casares
  • Elina Labourdette
  • Jean Marchat
Release date: 1997-02-24
Run time: 82 min.
Creator: Jean Cocteau
RRP: £15.99
Price: £19.99

Review Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne [VHS] [1965] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Connoisseur Video / Orphee [VHS] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • María Casares
  • Henri Crémieux
  • Marie Déa
  • Jean Marais
  • François Périer
  • Jean Cocteau
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 90 min.
Creator: André Paulvé
RRP: £15.99
Price: £16.90

Review Orphee [VHS] [1949] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Bfi Video / Day Of Wrath [VHS] [1943]
Actors & Directors
  • Lisbeth Movin
  • Sigurd Berg
  • Sigrid Neiiendam
  • Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Kirsten Andreasen
  • Thorkild Roose
Release date: 1999-01-18
Run time: 93 min.
Creator: Poul Knudsen
RRP: £15.99
Price: £12.50

Review Day Of Wrath [VHS] [1943] / Bfi Video:


Review Palisades Tartan / Ivan The Terrible - Part 1 [VHS] [1944]
Actors & Directors
  • Mikhail Nazvanov
  • Lyudmila Tselikovskaya
  • Serafima Birman
  • Sergei M. Eisenstein
  • Nikolai Cherkasov
  • Mikhail Zharov
Release date: 1996-08-23
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Sergei M. Eisenstein
Price: £15.99

Review Ivan The Terrible - Part 1 [VHS] [1944] / Palisades Tartan:


Review Artificial Eye / Les Enfants Du Paradis [VHS] [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Pierre Renoir
  • Marcel Carné
  • Pierre Brasseur
  • Arletty
  • Jean-Louis Barrault
  • María Casares
Release date: 1993-10-11
Run time: 181 min.
Creator: Jacques Prévert
RRP: £15.99
Price: £9.99

Review Les Enfants Du Paradis [VHS] [1945] / Artificial Eye:

A film which regularly charts high in critics' polls of the best films of all time, director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's masterpiece Les Enfants du Paradis is as solid a landmark in French film history as the Eiffel Tower is on the Parisian landscape. And at 187 minutes running time, it's a massy edifice indeed, built from a rambunctious cast of characters-ranging from pickpockets and prostitutes to aristocrats and actors-whose lives intersect around the Theatre des Funambules, a popular Parisian theatre on the Boulevard du Crime, during the 1840s. (The title refers to the poor who can only afford seats in the upper galleries of the theatre. ) The heart of the plot is a love story between mime artiste Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) and streetwalker Garance (the magnificent, sand-paper-voiced Arletty). When Garance is falsely accused of pickpocketing, Baptiste provides a mimed alibi for her to the police (one of the film's most famous set pieces). The rose she later throws him in gratitude sets off a romantic obsession, one of several that structure the film, as do love triangles, duels, and tortured confessions of feeling. Thematically, Les Enfant du Paradis gnaws over typically French cinematic preoccupations: illusion and reality, the nature of performance, the indomitable spirit of the proletariat and so on, all made the more charged and poignant when you know the film was shot during the Nazi occupation. (One actor, Robert Le Vigan, was reportedly a Nazi collaborator and disappeared during the filming under mysterious circumstances and so had to be replaced by Pierre Renoir. ) -Leslie Felperin.

Review Connoisseur Video / La Belle et la Bette 1946 - Jean Cocteau VHS
Actors & Directors
  • Jean Cocteau
Release date: 2001-11-19
Run time: 89 min.
RRP: £15.99
Price: £58.48

Review La Belle et la Bette 1946 - Jean Cocteau VHS / Connoisseur Video:

La Belle et La Bete is one of the all-time great movie fantasies, and one of the most gorgeous pictures ever made. It was the first feature film by French director Jean Cocteau, a writer, poet and painter with ties to the surrealists. (In fact, his first film, The Blood of a Poet, was delayed after the scandal caused by L'Age D'Or, made by his fellow surrealists Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. ) The haunting, surreal visuals (candelabra made of human hands, for example) and a sensitive performance by Jean Marais as the Beast imbue the film with an indelible, mythical power. -Jim Emerson, Amazon. com.

Review Connoisseur Video / Germany, Year Zero [VHS] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Roberto Rossellini
  • Edmund Moeschke
  • Franz-Otto Krüger
  • Erich Gühne
  • Ernst Pittschau
  • Ingetraud Hinze
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 69 min.
Creator: Sergio Amidei
RRP: £15.99
Price: £83.45

Review Germany, Year Zero [VHS] [1949] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Bfi Video / La Belle Et La Bete [VHS] [1946]
Actors & Directors
  • Mila Parély
  • Michel Auclair
  • Jean Marais
  • Josette Day
  • René Clément
  • Nane Germon
  • Jean Cocteau
Release date: 2001-11-19
Run time: 89 min.
Creator: Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
RRP: £15.99
Price: £34.95

Review La Belle Et La Bete [VHS] [1946] / Bfi Video:

La Belle et La Bete is one of the all-time great movie fantasies, and one of the most gorgeous pictures ever made. It was the first feature film by French director Jean Cocteau, a writer, poet and painter with ties to the surrealists. (In fact, his first film, The Blood of a Poet, was delayed after the scandal caused by L'Age D'Or, made by his fellow surrealists Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. ) The haunting, surreal visuals (candelabra made of human hands, for example) and a sensitive performance by Jean Marais as the Beast imbue the film with an indelible, mythical power. -Jim Emerson, Amazon. com.

Review Connoisseur Video / Les Enfants Terribles [VHS] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Nicole Stéphane
  • Jean-Pierre Melville
  • Renée Cosima
  • Edouard Dermithe
  • Jean Cocteau
  • Melvyn Martin
  • Jacques Bernard
Release date: 2000-03-06
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Monique Bonnot
RRP: £15.99
Price: £14.99

Review Les Enfants Terribles [VHS] [1949] / Connoisseur Video:

Jean-Pierre Melville's second film, made in 1950, became a significant influence among French film-makers and earned Melville renown as a maverick who could do wonderful things outside his country's studio system. (Melville's independence was a forerunner of that enjoyed later in the decade by New Wave figures such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. ) Les Enfants Terribles is based on a 1929 novel by poet and film-maker Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the script with Melville and according to some people interfered in everything from the casting (the rather stiff male lead was a Cocteau protégé) to the photography. Nevertheless, the story of a sister (an outstanding performance by Nicole Stephane) and brother (Edouard Dhermite) who withdraw into their own, insulated world to play out suggestively erotic dramas, has a fluid, lyrical movement that is part of a visionary whole. In some ways a harbinger of the coming pop narcissism of youth culture, Les Enfants Terribles is also a timeless tale of mythic exploration of existence and purpose. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Review Bfi Video / Ossessione [VHS] [1942]
Actors & Directors
  • Elio Marcuzzo
  • Dhia Cristiani
  • Vittorio Duse
  • Massimo Girotti
  • Luchino Visconti
  • Clara Calamai
Release date: 2003-05-05
Run time: 140 min.
Creator: Mario Alicata
RRP: £15.99
Price: £60.29

Review Ossessione [VHS] [1942] / Bfi Video:


Review Palisades Tartan / Ivan The Terrible - Part 2 [VHS] [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Sergei M. Eisenstein
  • Nikolai Cherkasov
  • Amvrosi Buchma
  • Mikhail Zharov
  • M. Filimonova
  • Serafima Birman
  • Pavel Kadochnikov
Release date: 1996-08-23
Run time: 81 min.
Creator: I. Soluyanov
Price: £15.99

Review Ivan The Terrible - Part 2 [VHS] [1945] / Palisades Tartan:


Actors & Directors
  • Mark Donskoi
Release date: 1999-03-15
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Mark Donskoi
Price: £15.99

Review My Universities - The Maxim Gorky Trilogy - Part Three [1940] [VHS] / Red Pictures:


Review Connoisseur Video / Rome, Open City [VHS] [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Anna Magnani
  • Nando Bruno
  • Vito Annichiarico
  • Marcello Pagliero
  • Roberto Rossellini
  • Aldo Fabrizi
Release date: 2000-01-24
Run time: 97 min.
Creator: Sergio Amidei
RRP: £15.99
Price: £20.99

Review Rome, Open City [VHS] [1945] / Connoisseur Video:


Review Bfi Video / Jour De Fete [VHS] [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Jacques Tati
  • Guy Decomble
  • Jacques Tati
  • Santa Relli
  • Paul Frankeur
  • Maine Vallée
Release date: 2004-11-29
Run time: 87 min.
Creator: René Wheeler
RRP: £12.99
Price: £12.90

Review Jour De Fete [VHS] [1949] / Bfi Video:


Models & Brands:
Bicycle Thieves [1948] [VHS], Torment [VHS] [1944], Stray Dog [VHS] [1949], Jour De Fete [VHS] [1948], Drunken Angel [VHS] [1948], Les Dames Du Bois De Boulogne [VHS] [1965], Orphee [VHS] [1949], Day Of Wrath [VHS] [1943], Ivan The Terrible - Part 1 [VHS] [1944], Les Enfants Du Paradis [VHS] [1945], La Belle et la Bette 1946 - Jean Cocteau VHS, Germany, Year Zero [VHS] [1949], La Belle Et La Bete [VHS] [1946], Les Enfants Terribles [VHS] [1949], Ossessione [VHS] [1942], Ivan The Terrible - Part 2 [VHS] [1945], My Universities - The Maxim Gorky Trilogy - Part Three [1940] [VHS], Rome, Open City [VHS] [1945], Jour De Fete [VHS] [1949]

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