In Depression-era New England, a miserly businessman named Benedict Slade receives a long-overdue attitude adjustment one Christmas Eve when he is visited by three ghostly figures who resemble three of the people whose possessions Slade had seized to collect on unpaid loans. Assuming the roles of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future from Charles Dickens' classic story, the three apparitions force Slade to face the consequences of his skinflint ways, and he becomes a caring, generous, amiable man.
At the start of World War I, Paul Baumer is a young German patriot, eager to fight. Indoctrinated with propaganda at school, he and his friends eagerly sign up for the army soon after graduation. But when the horrors of war soon become too much to bear, and as his friends die or become gravely wounded, Paul questions the sanity of fighting over a few hundreds yards of war-torn countryside.
When the Duke of Vienna takes a mysterious leave of absence and leaves the strict Angelo in charge, things couldn't be worse for Claudio, who is sentenced to death for premarital sex. His sister, Isabella (a nun-in-training), however, is a very persuasive pleader. She goes to Angelo, but instead of freeing her brother, she gets an offer from Angelo to save Claudio's life if Isabella sleeps with him. The only sympathetic friend Isabella has is a priest who, in actuality, is the Duke in disguise...and he has a plan.
Orlando is forced to work like a servant for his brother Oliver, so he goes to win his fortune in a wrestling contest, where he meets a lady of the court, Rosalind. Rosalind (daughter of the deposed duke) is companion to Celia, niece of the deposed Duke, and when the current duke banishes Rosalind from the kingdom, she, Celia, the court jester (and incidentally Orlando) all end up in the forest or Arden, where the deposed Duke holds court. Romantic mixups, cross-dressing, love poems nailed to trees, and a lion await them all.
The true story of the relationship between famed author William Allen White and his teenaged daughter Mary, who died in a horseback-riding accident at age 16, and the powerful effect the tragedy had on the life of her father.
Nebraska in the 1880's: bleak, lonely, and far from what you'd expect The Wild West to be. But for a naive Swedish immigrant, the frontier parlor of THE BLUE HOTEL represents the quintessential western fantasy. No one can convince The Swede that his dime-store notions about The West are foolish. He sees murderous intentions all around him and in his terror he turns everybody against him. Inevitably, the Swede attracts tragedy. However, who is responsible? The negative Swede? Or the cliquish hotel guests? Jan Kadar directs this timely story of how society punishes outsiders for being different.
Traveling from town to town during the summer of 1919, young Andy (Ron Howard) has left his Ohio home in search of adventure and romance as a horse trainer on the country fair racing circuit. Ashamed of his occupation, Andy leads Lucy to believe he's wealthy. Soon one deception leads to another... until there is no way to tell Lucy the truth.
A disturbing drama about a young mother who physically abuses her baby. Feeling overwhelmed and aware that she's not coping after the birth of her third child, she sends desperate cries for help. But her mother, husband, neighbour and clinic sister do not recognise the seriousness of the situation until the baby ends up in hospital with a fractured skull. A heart-wrenching film that illustrates the experiences of many women who suffer from post-natal depression.
Bernice, a shy young woman, leaves her safe home to go visit her flapper cousin. When her cousin tries to teach Bernice how to be much more modern, Bernice gives her much more than she bargained for.
A middle-aged woman finds herself simply a widow, a grandmother and a person when a friend takes her to the Stardust Ballroom, a dance hall which recreates the music and atmosphere of the 1940s. There she encounters a most unlikely Prince Charming, a middle-aged mailman. With this encounter, life takes on a new meaning for the film's heroine.
In February, 1962, as the civil rights movement reaches Bayonne, Louisiana, a New York journalist arrives to interview Jane Pittman, who has just turned 110. She tells him her story dating back to her earliest memories before slavery ended. In between the chapters of her life, the present-day struggles of Blacks in Bayonne, urged on by Jimmy, are dramatized.
Explorer Marco Polo is assigned to accompany two priests on a mission to China, to try to convert the "pagan" Kublai Khan to Christianity. However, on a dangerous trek through the mountains, the priests decide they don't believe that China even exists, and when Marco tries to argue the point, they abandon him and turn back. He eventually makes it through the mountains and into the fabled land of China, where he is received at the court of Kublai Khan as an envoy. Accompanied by his faithful servant Pedro, Marco spends 20 years in that country, and when he eventually returns to Europe what he brings with him changes the course of history forever.
Fellini exposes his great attraction for the clowns and the world of the circus first recalling a childhood experience when the circus arrives nearby his home. Then he joins his crew and travel from Italy to Paris chasing the last greatest European clowns still live in these countries. He also meets Anita Ekberg trying to buy a panther in a circus.
German writer Uwe Johnson lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside where he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings-on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film for broadcast featuring interviews with various neighborhood characters.
Mayerling is the name of a notorious Austrian village linked to a romantic tragedy. At a royal hunting lodge there, in 1889, Crown Prince Rudolf--desperate over his father's command to put away his teenage mistress, the Baroness Marie Vetsera--shot her to death and killed himself. The misfortune may indeed have been a murder-suicide, but perhaps it was a political assassination, or even the result of a lunatic family vendetta: scholarship is still catching up with the facts.