Kazuo Miyagawa’s prizewinning black-and-white cinematography draws out the moral shadings of Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s 1952 novel Thousand Cranes, a quietly devastating story of a young man, orphaned during the war, who stumbles into a passionate yet tragic relationship with his late father’s mistress and her daughter.
A survivor of the first battles of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 , soldier Charles-Henri Mondel, fleeing with the regiments from a rout of Mac-Mahon 's army , took refuge in the citadel of Bitche , the last French stronghold to resist the enemy's breakthrough.
Big Steve and Little Lefty, a pair of hobos, are happily drifting through life until the First World War comes and enter it and find their lives forever changed.
A soldier of near-superhuman strength fights battles in the First World War and wages a private war to rescue a young woman from the castle where she is imprisoned.
On the night of June 22, 1941, a fire breaks out on a German passenger ship. The Soviet tanker "Caspian" comes to its aid - and navigator Nikolai Borshch rescues a German girl, being severely injured in the process. Later, however, the Germans capture the "Caspian" and force it to go to Hamburg...
In 1850s Mexico, the beautiful owner of a silver mine is kidnapped by a bandit leader, who needs money to finance his revolt against the Emperor Maximilian.
Mikami, a Japanese soldier, is captured by Chinese forces. Although able to escape, he is treated with contempt by his peers. After falling in love with a prostitute named Harumi, she convinces him to desert the army and live with her.
A cavalcade of English life from New Year's Eve 1899 until 1933 is seen through the eyes of well-to-do Londoners Jane and Robert Marryot. Amongst events touching their family are the Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and the Great War.
Jasmine, a young Syrian artist, is preparing a meal with her mother when a bomb goes off, destroying their home and all their belongings. After a panicked escape, they make it safely outside only to find the destruction that remains in their war-torn city. An aid worker recovers Jasmine's sketchbook, leading us on a journey of hope and resolve for their future.
An American soldier who escapes the execution of his comrades by Japanese soldiers in Borneo during WWII becomes the leader of a personal empire among the headhunters in this war story told in the style of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The American is reluctant to rejoin the fight against the Japanese on the urging of a British commando team but conducts a war of vengeance when the Japanese attack his adopted people.
A story of a boy, forced to grow mature before his time and to die too early because of the cruel war circumstances. This film is dedicated to all the children who have died during the National Liberation War.
A film adaptation of a series of short stories by Zofia Nalkowska, describing the fate of people who survived Nazi persecution. The stories report the events with calm and restraint. Nalkowska collected material for the series while working at the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland.
At the end of 1943, during the occupation in Odessa, a new specialist Kraft arrives at the shipyard and soon becomes a chief engineer. It never occurred to anyone that a Soviet intelligence officer was hiding under the guise of a leader showing official zeal. At the decisive moment, when the victorious offensive of the Soviet troops forces the German-Romanian invaders to leave Odessa, on the instructions of the Center, Kraft leaves with them for further work behind enemy lines.
Nagasaki, 1945. Three nursing students, Tanaka Sumi, Ohno Atsuko, and Iwanaga Misao, return home when school is closed due to air raids, and spend some peaceful time with family and friends. However, at 11:02 AM on August 9th, the atomic bomb is dropped, and their daily lives are instantly shattered. The city is reduced to ruins, and despite their inexperience, the nursing students rush to provide medical care to the injured. Faced with the cruel reality that more lives must be buried than can be saved, the women continue to question the value and meaning of life.
During the 1922 Turkish Civil War, two Americans and a group of foreign mercenaries offer their services to a local Turkish governor who hires them as guards for a secret transport.
This short,produced by the United States Civil Defense Department, while shot in the style of Edward R. Murrow's CBS "See it Now" series and with Murrow as the commentator, was produced for theaters and was not a television program...and WAS NOT part of the Murrow television series. This "Iron Curtain/Atomic Age" preparedness film is a plea for needed civilian volunteers to act as aircraft spotters all around the United States. An air attack on New York City is simulated by B-29 bombers flying from London, England, and they fly practically undetected to their target area due to a shortage of civilian-volunteers at spotting points around the country. Murrow's dooms-day narration didn't calm the nerves of the theatre-audiences that saw this, either.