Love Story - 1970

Love Story, 1970 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Love Story, 1970 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Love Story is a 1970 romantic drama film written by Erich Segal and directed by Arthur Hiller. The film, well known as a tragedy, is considered one of the most romantic of all time by the American Film Institute (#9 on the list), and was followed by a sequel, Oliver's Story during 1978. Love Story starred Ryan O'Neal, Ali MacGraw, and Ray Milland and is also the film debut of Tommy Lee Jones with a minor role.

The film tells of Oliver Barrett IV, who comes from a family of wealthy and well-respected Harvard University graduates. At Radcliffe library, the Harvard student meets and falls in love with Jennifer Cavelleri, a working-class, quick-witted Radcliffe College student. Upon graduation from college, the two decide to marry against the wishes of Oliver's father, who thereupon severs ties with his son.

Without his father's financial support, the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School with Jenny working as a private school teacher. They rent the top floor of a house near the Law School at 119 Oxford Street, in the Agassiz neighborhood of Cambridge, adjacent to a local laundromat. Graduating third in his class at Harvard Law, Oliver takes a position at a respectable New York law firm.

With Oliver's new income, the pair of 24-year-olds decide to have a child. After failing, they consult a medical specialist, who after repeated tests, informs Oliver that Jenny is ill and will soon die. Oliver then tries again. While this is not stated explicitly, she appears to have leukemia.

As instructed by his doctor, Oliver attempts to live a "normal life" without telling Jenny of her condition. Jenny nevertheless discovers her ailment after confronting her doctor about her recent illness. With their days together numbered, Jenny begins costly cancer therapy, and Oliver soon becomes unable to afford the multiplying hospital expenses. Desperate, he seeks financial relief from his father. When the senior Barrett asks if he needs the money because he got some girl "in trouble," Oliver says yes instead of telling his father the truth about Jenny's condition.

From her hospital bed, Jenny speaks with her father about funeral arrangements, then asks for Oliver. She tells him to avoid blaming himself, and asks him to embrace her tightly before she dies. They lie together on the hospital bed.

The novel also includes the double meaning of a love story between Oliver and his father, highlighted by the scene between Oliver and his father at the end of the book. When Mr. Barrett realizes that Jenny is ill and that his son borrowed the money for her, he immediately sets out for New York. By the time he reaches the hospital, Jenny is dead. Mr. Barrett apologizes to his son, who replies with something Jenny once told him: "Love means never having to say you're sorry."

The Lion in Winter - 1969

The Lion in Winter, 1969 Giclee Print
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An historical, dramatic tale of dysfunctional family intrigue set in the court of British King Henry II (O'Toole) in 1183, from James Goldman's sharply written screenplay (adapted from his own play). Ten years earlier, Henry II had imprisoned his wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn, who won her third of four acting Oscars), as punishment for helping precipitate a civil war against him. His three treacherous sons who are also vying for the British throne consist of the eldest, the legendary and fiery Prince Richard the Lionhearted (Hopkins in his film debut), the quiet but dangerous middle son Prince Geoffrey (Castle), and the youngest, the manipulative and thieving scoundrel Prince John (Terry).

The three sons and estranged wife Eleanor are summoned by Henry to the castle for a Christmas family reunion in Chinon, France. He has decided to name one of his three sons as his heir to the throne. Adding to the intrigue and plotting of who will be favored (Henry favors John, while Eleanor favors Richard), the teenaged but cunning monarch King Philip II of France (Dalton in his film debut) is also invited, with his older sister Princess Alais (Merrow) - Henry's mistress. The film shines with the performances and dialogue between the two leads: 36-year old O'Toole as the 50 year-old monarch, and 61 year-old Hepburn as his younger wife.

The Letter - 1940

The Letter, Bette Davis on Midget Window Card, 1941 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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A classic melodramatic film noir of murder and deceit, effectively directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Howard Koch was based on W. Somerset Maugham's mid-1920s London stage play (with Gladys Cooper in the lead role). Then, it was a Broadway play that opened in 1927 (with Katharine Cornell), followed by Paramount Studios' talkie of the same name in 1929 with Academy-Award nominated Jeanne Eagels (in her sound film debut) as the female protagonist. [It was the first full-length feature made at Paramount's Long Island studio.]

The film's startling opening scene occurs on a moonlight night on the grounds of a Malaysian rubber plantation. The wife of the plantation owner, Leslie Crosbie (Davis) trails after Geoffrey Hammond (Newell) as he staggers from the bungalow's porch, and pumps bullets into his body. She claims to her faithful, long-suffering husband Robert (Marshall) that Hammond, an old family friend, took advantage of her and that she acted in self-defense, but when lawyer Howard Joyce (Stephenson) is hired to defend her, a letter surfaces and reveals her real motives.

One of the trailers for the film provocatively asked: "What are the forbidden secrets in the letter? What is the strange spell that made this woman defy the unwritten law of the Orient?" Hammond's Eurasian widow (Sondergaard) uses the letter as part of a $10,000 blackmail scheme, demands a personal apology, and seeks the ultimate revenge. This great Bette Davis/Warner Bros. picture was positioned between the star's All This and Heaven Too (1940) and The Great Lie (1941).

Last Tango in Paris - 1972

Starring: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial, landmark X-rated film initiated a trend for arthouse films to include explicit erotic content. It told about a primal sexual affair between middle-aged, bitter and grieving hotel owner Paul (Brando in his seventh and last Best Actor-nominated role) whose wife had committed suicide and a 20-year old French student Jeanne (Schneider) who was engaged to be married to Tom (Léaud), a film director who was making a cinema verite film about her.

Upon meeting in an apartment both are looking to rent, Paul forces himself violently on Jeanne sexually, bordering on rape, and begins a torrid, sexually perverse but anonymous 'no questions asked' affair with her (they don't know each other's names) that becomes increasingly vile, unromantic and scatological. His set of rules was notable for the time: "We are going to forget everything we knew - everything". The pure sexual nature of their relationship included the bathtub washing scene and the infamous, disturbing, and explicit sodomy (butter-lubricated anal sex) scene on the floor ("Get the butter").

Later, Paul reciprocated by letting Jeanne penetrate him anally with her fingers - part of his objective to "look death right in the face...go right up into the ass of death... till you find the womb of fear." Predictably, the film ended with his violent death on the balcony when she shot him with her father's gun. The film remains the sole still-mature rated (X, NC-17) film to earn Oscar nominations, alongside Ellen Burstyn's Oscar nomination for Requiem for a Dream (2000). (Midnight Cowboy (1969) and The Exorcist (1973) were subsequently re-rated as R.)

The Last Emperor - 1987

Starring: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Vivian Wu
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

One of the most successful films ever, Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci's lavish epic biography of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty of China (the "Lord of ten thousand years and Son of Heaven") before the Communist revolution deposed him. Based in part on Pu Yi's autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen, Bertolucci garnered unprecedented support and permission from the Chinese government, something no other Western film company had received since 1949.

This was the first film ever to be shot in the Forbidden City in the People's Republic of China, aside from the Lucy Jarvis documentary Forbidden City (1973). The grand, sweeping, character-driven story, told through flashbacks, follows the bittersweet life of the boy emperor born in 1906, who first sat in the Dragon Throne at the age of three -- memorably depicted by the imagery of the scene in which the restless young boy leaps up and pushes away a billowing yellow drapery - and sees thousands of his loyal costumed eunuch-servants bowing before him. He was literally a puppet - imprisoned within the gilded walls of the Forbidden City, and never allowed to leave its gates.

In 1912, at the age of 7, he formally abdicated the throne, and remained a powerless figurehead Emperor, receiving tutoring from Scottish Reginald Johnston (O'Toole) in the ways of the West. In 1924 during a period of civil war, he was ousted from the Forbidden City (along with his opium-addicted empress Wan Jung (Chen) and official consort Wen Hsiu (Mei)) and moved to his native, Japanese-controlled Manchuria, where he served as a puppet emperor backed by the Japanese. After World War II, he was held prisoner as a pro-Japanese war criminal - first by the Russians, and then by the Communist Chinese for ten years, until being freed at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution.

In one of the film's most memorable scenes, as a dispassionate young adult (Lone), Pu Yi wears Western clothes and wistfully croons "Am I Blue" - a silent cry for salvation from his boredom and entrapment. By film's end, his new life as a lowly gardener in Peking in the late 1960s is finally happy and free, and in a poignant scene as an elderly man, he revisits the Forbidden City, now open to tourists.

The Lady From Shanghai - 1948

Lady From Shanghai (The) Framed Art Print
33.75 in. x 47.25 in.

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Starring: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, Ted de Corsia
Director: Orson Welles

Welles' imaginative, complicated, unsettling film noir who-dun-it thriller - a B/W tale of betrayal, lust, greed and murder. With fascinating visuals and tilting compositions, luminous and brilliant camerawork (by Charles Lawton, Jr.), and numerous sub-plots and confounding plot twists. Orson Welles served as director, producer, screenplay writer, and actor, and based his screenplay upon Sherwood King's 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake. The moody film, originally titled Take This Woman and then Black Irish, was made when major stars Orson Welles and sexy Rita Hayworth (with dyed and bobbed bleached-blonde hair) in her last film under contract to Columbia Pictures) were still married although estranged and drifting apart.

Poor Irish seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles), after rescuing Mrs. Elsa 'Rosalie' Bannister (Hayworth) and becoming mesmerized by her - the enigmatic wife of a crippled San Francisco trial lawyer named Arthur Bannister (Sloane), he joins her yachting cruise as a crew member from New York to San Francisco (via the Panama Canal), and finds himself embroiled in a love affair and a mysterious plot (to kill Bannister's creepy business partner George Grisby (Anders)) that turns deadly and implicates him in murder. [The numerous close-ups of Rita Hayworth in the film were later added by Welles in Hollywood upon orders of the studio, to lend strength to her 'star' power.]

The film, told through O'Hara's narration, was shot on locations including Acapulco, San Francisco, and at Columbia Studios sets, and features numerous classic set-pieces including: the aquarium scene, and the funhouse and Hall of Mirrors shoot-out climax. Ultimately, the film's length was severely cut down by one hour, creating an almost incomprehensible, discontinuous, cryptic patchwork from numerous retakes and substantial edits. Although it was filmed in late 1946 and finished in early 1947, it wasn't released until late in 1948. The film was mostly ignored - it failed both at the box-office and as a critical success. This was Welles' last Hollywood film until the making of Touch of Evil (1958) ten years later.

L.A. Confidential - 1997

L.A. Confidential Double-sided poster
27 in. x 41 in.

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L.A. Confidential, 1997 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, Kim Basinger, Danny De Vito, David Strathairn, Ron Rifkin
Directors: Curtis Hanson

A gritty, violent, thrilling film noirish tale of sex, conspiracy, scandal, double-cross and betrayal, racism and corruption in early 1950's LA, committed by the police, politicians, and the press. The film pays homage to Robert Towne's earlier noir-based film Chinatown (1974) set in the same City of Angels, and the classics The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946).

Based on a thriller novel by James Ellroy, the film is about the intertwining lives of three very diverse LAPD officers (in an ensemble cast) who use incompatible methods while tackling a multiple murder scene at the all-night diner the Night Owl. Brutal, hot-tempered tough cop Bud Smith (Crowe) uses muscle and violence, while moralistic, clean-cut, college-educated rookie Ed Exley (Pearce) is law-abiding, idealistic, and does everything "by the book." A third narcotics cop, smooth Sgt. Jack Vincennes (Spacey) moonlights as a technical advisor for a sleazy Dragnet-style TV cop show and provides scandal-fodder for celebrity tabloid magazine Hush-Hush (headed by amoral editor-in-chief Sid Hudgens (De Vito) whose trademark closing line for all articles is: "You heard it here first, off the record, on the 'QT', and very hush-hush").

All three are overseen by sinister Captain Dudley Smith (Cromwell), who seems resigned to the corruption in the city and in his own police force. Kim Basinger, in a supporting Oscar-winning role, plays high-class femme fatale Lynn Bracken (a Veronica Lake look-alike through surgical enhancements) who works for a pornographer (Strathairn) who hires out celebrity look-alike prostitutes.

Kings Row - 1942

King's Row, Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Betty Field, Ronald Reagan on Midget Window Card, 1942 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Starring: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Betty Field, Claude Rains, Nancy Coleman, Charles Coburn
Director: Sam Wood

A thought-provoking, emotional, melodramatic, 'Peyton Place'-like film with a turn-of-the-century, small-town setting that reveals evil, sadism, cruelty, and depravity. Directed by Sam Wood and with James Wong Howe's cinematography and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's magnificently rich score, the tragic Warner Bros. film presents a compelling, penetrating and difficult story with eloquence and power. Wood had previously directed two Marx Brothers films, Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), Our Town (1940), Kitty Foyle (1940), Raffles (1940), and The Devil and Miss Jones (1941). Its screenplay by Casey Robinson was based upon Henry Bellamann's widely-read, scandalous 1940 novel of small-town life at the turn of the century. The film's tagline commented on the nature of the town: "The town they talk of in whispers."

The film's main characters were originally five childhood friends, including an idealistic young doctor Parris Mitchell (Cummings), a pretty tomboyish working class girl Randy Monaghan (Sheridan), the neurotic sheltered daughter Cassie (Field) of the town's Dr. Alexander Tower (Rains), the daughter Louise Gordon (Coleman) of a sadistic, morally-righteous doctor (Coburn), and playboy Drake McHugh (Reagan in his best film role), with the unforgettable scene of his realization that his legs have been amputated and his exclamation: "Where's the rest of me?" -- this would become the title of 40th President Reagan's 1965 autobiography.

The Hays Code of 1934 required that much of the questionable, unfilmable content of the novel be modified - eliminating or seriously muting subjects such as illicit premarital sex, homosexuality, a sadistic and vengeful surgeon, and father-daughter incest leading to a murder-suicide. The wartime film's nominations all lost to William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver (1942).

The Killing - 1956

The Killing, 1956 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook, Jr., Timothy Carey
Director: Stanley Kubrick

A stylish film noir crime drama, and the definitive heist-caper movie - Kubrick's third film and first successful one, although highly under-rated when released. The tale is about a desperate gang of anti-hero misfits and lowlifes (in an ensemble cast) led by a grim, determined, and recently-released-from-jail con Johnny Clay (Hayden). The group devises and executes a complex, carefully-timed racetrack heist of $2 million - that goes terribly wrong, similar to Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (also with Hayden). The plan is to cause simultaneous, diversionary confusion by shooting one of the racehorses in mid-race and instigating a bar fight, thereby allowing Johnny to rob the main track offices and seize the day's takings.

The gang includes racetrack teller George Peatty (Cook), a pathetic wimp and loser who is easily tricked by his devious, scheming femme fatale wife Sherry (Windsor) into revealing the details of the heist to pass to her adulterous lover Val Cannon (Edwards, the future doctor Ben Casey on a TV series), who plans to take the loot at the rendezvous point once the robbery has been accomplished. The entire movie is presented non-chronologically in a winding fashion (with flashforwards and flashbacks), and played out in a series of tense, black-comedy scenes with swift transitions. The doom-laden, voice-over dialogue was derived from Lionel White's novel Clean Break.

The film has influenced many heist films, including the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) (also remade in 2001). With excellent cinematography by Lucien Ballard, but ignored completely by the Academy, although this work would influence filmmakers for decades after - most notably Guy Ritchie and crime drama auteur Quentin Tarantino and his film Reservoir Dogs.

The Kid - 1921

The Kid, 1921 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Charlie Chaplin's first full-length film (six reels) as a director. A sentimental, charming semi-autobiographical tale with both humor and pathos about Chaplin's famous Little Tramp character adopting an abandoned infant from a woman "whose sin was motherhood." An inter-title stated that it's "a picture with a smile—and perhaps, a tear." After the Little Tramp unsuccessfully tries to find a home for the child, he assumes responsibility, raises him for five years, and teaches the kid (Coogan) to survive on the streets as a con artist. [Coogan, discovered in vaudeville in Los Angeles and one of the biggest child stars of the era, would later become Uncle Fester on the television show The Addams Family.]

Later, the desperate unwed mother (Purviance) seeks to regain custody through social welfare workers in a heartwrenching, melodramatic moment. Along with hysterical slapstick humor in various bits, the most engaging part is the fantasy dream sequence in which the Tramp sits on a doorway stoop and dreams of a blissful, happier life in Heaven, with the poor transformed into white winged angels. [One of the flirtatious "temptress angels" is 12 year-old Lita Grey, Chaplin's second wife four years later due to pregnancy.]

Chaplin would continue making silent films well beyond the advent of "talkies" until his first full-length sound picture The Great Dictator (1940). Fifty years after the film's original release, Chaplin composed an original orchestral musical score for the film, and re-edited the film by deleting about 6 minutes of scenes (involving the character of the kid's mother).

Key Largo - 1948

Key Largo, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Lauren Bacall, 1948 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor
Director: John Huston

An intelligent, exciting, theatrical, but moody, downbeat crime drama/thriller (and melodramatic film noir) about a bullying, fugitive gangster Johnny Rocco (Robinson), who is on-the-run with fellow mobsters and his alcoholic lush moll and ex-nightclub singer, Gaye Dawn (Trevor). In a Florida Keys hotel in the off-season during a violent, tropical hurricane, the snarling Rocco waits for counterfeit money, prepares to flee to Cuba, and holds the various residents hostage: Frank McCloud (Bogart), a disillusioned, returning war-scarred veteran who is visiting the newly-widowed Nora Temple (Bacall) and her wheelchair-bound father-in-law and hotel manager James Temple (Barrymore) - the father of his friend that died under his WWII command in Italy. Adapted from Maxwell Anderson's stage play by director Huston and Richard Brooks, the plot resembles Bogart's earlier film The Petrified Forest (1936).

Bogart and Bacall would never star together again on the big screen, after having previously worked together in the classic films To Have and Have Not (1942) (which Key Largo resembled in its dark tone), The Big Sleep (1946), Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), and Dark Passage (1947). Huston also directed Bogart in, among other films, The Maltese Falcon (1942), The African Queen (1951) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).

JFK - 1991

JFK Double-sided poster
27 in. x 41 in.

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Starring: Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Joe Pesci, Gary Oldman
Director: Oliver Stone

A controversial, speculatively revisionistic, historical epic surrounding onetime New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's (Costner) investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination on November 22, 1963. Director/co-writer Oliver Stone based his intriguing interpretation in this docu-film thriller on the well-publicized and alleged conspiracy theories of the obsessed attorney about the mystery of the death, based upon the testimony of a number of unreliable witnesses. This complex, provocative courtroom film features a cavalcade of stars, with cameos and supporting roles by such actors as Tommy Lee Jones (in an Oscar-nominated role as Clay Shaw, the CIA agent whom Garrison charges with the murder of Kennedy), Joe Pesci, Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Donald Sutherland (as the mysterious "X"), Laurie Metcalf, Walter Matthau, John Candy, Vincent D'Onofio, Sally Kirkland, Ed Asner, Kevin Bacon, Wayne Knight, Michael Rooker, Gary Oldman (as accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald), and Garrison himself as Justice Earl Warren.

Stone employs innovative, masterful and impressive film editing (with quick cuts and use of various film stocks) through the work of Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia (who won Oscars), and he creates, through gripping cinematography, a tense, kinetic atmosphere that mirrors the whirlwind of memories, incidents and scenarios that play out in Garrison's mind. The trial scene in the last half of the film features three very memorable segments: an analysis of the famous Zapruder film, the scornful rejection of the Magic Bullet theory, and Garrison's impassioned closing argument, finishing with him staring directly into the camera, and saying: "It's up to you." The movie also features stirring music by John Williams that accentuates the emotional themes.

Jailhouse Rock - 1957

Jailhouse Rock, 1957 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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A great black and white B-film, and considered the best, most popular, and most famous of Elvis Presley's musicals (his third film out of over 30 films from the late 50s through the 60s) - and slightly parallels the rocker's own life. Presley plays cocky, quick-tempered Vince Everett, who is serving a one-year jail sentence for accidental manslaughter. While in jail, his cellmate Hunk Houghton (Shaughnessy), a former veteran country singer, mentors him to learn guitar and sing, and persuades him to enter the prison talent show. After his release from incarceration, the budding rock star is introduced to the record business.

Struggling to break into the music industry, he decides to form his own record label, and becomes an overnight sensation. After being seduced by the decadent lifestyle of a pop star, he becomes rebellious and unwilling to work with his former cellmate and Peggy Van Alden (Tyler), his loyal and pretty girlfriend / talent scout / record promoter. [Judy Tyler (formerly Princess Summerfall Winterspring on the Howdy Doody TV show) tragically died in a car crash before the film was released.]

This pre-Army film is filled with Presley classics, especially the wonderfully-choreographed set piece for "Jailhouse Rock," as well as the other memorable numbers including "I Want to Be Free," "Treat Me Nice," "Baby, I Don't Care," "You're So Square," and the two tender ballads: "Young and Beautiful" and "Don't Leave Me Now." Presley's most memorable films also include Love Me Tender (1956), King Creole (1958), G.I. Blues (1960), Blue Hawaii (1961), and Viva Las Vegas (1964).

In the Heat of the Night - 1967

In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

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An intense whodunit detective story thriller set in the little town of Sparta, Mississippi during a hot summer, with an innovative score by Quincy Jones and title song sung by Ray Charles. Norman Jewison masterfully directed this murder melodrama from a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant that was based on John Ball's novel. The film's posters proclaimed: "They got a murder on their hands. They don't know what to do with it."

The liberal-minded film, realistically-filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler (who had just filmed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and would later go on to Coming Home (1978)), was a milestone for the racially-divided mid-60s because it forced the odd-couple collaboration of a bigoted but shrewd, redneck Southern sheriff named Bill Gillespie (Steiger) and a lone, intelligently-clever black homicide expert from Philadelphia named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).

The film, with a non-white actor in a lead acting role, was so controversial that it couldn't be filmed in the Deep South, so the sets were recreated in various small towns in two states: Sparta, Freeburg, and Belleville, Illinois, and Dyersburg, Tennessee. Following the success of this film, Sidney Poitier reprised his Virgil Tibbs character in two other films: he investigated the murder of a prostitute in the sequel They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), and battled against a drug smuggling ring in The Organization (1971).

The Hunchack of Notre Dame - 1939

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939, Poster Art Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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One of the many film adaptations of the classic Victor Hugo 'beauty and the beast' novel about a deaf, hunch-backed, outcast bellringer in the Notre Dame Cathedral tower in medieval 15th century Paris, who falls for a beautiful gypsy girl named Esmeralda (O'Hara in her first major role), amidst spiteful jealousy by villainous and sinister Chief Justice Jean Frollo (Hardwicke). This 1939 black and white film version from German expressionistic director Dieterle, the first made during the sound era, is rivaled only by the 1923 silent version starring Lon Chaney.

Charles Laughton, in arguably his best acting performance of his career, was almost unrecognizable as the disfigured and mis-shapen, but sympathetic title character named Quasimodo. One of the biggest budget films of its era, the sets are imposing, the cast is first rate, and the script is excellent, noted for its thrilling scene of the hunchback's rescue of Esmeralda from being hanged on a scaffold, by swinging to her on a rope and whisking her back to Notre Dame, while crying "Sanctuary, Sanctuary."

Also remembered for Esmeralda's offering of water to Quasimodo after a brutal public flogging in the public square, and the bellringer's heartbreaking closing line to a gargoyle atop the church: "Why was I not made of stone like thee?" Also remade as Notre Dame de Paris (1957) with Anthony Quinn in the title role, and as a 1996 Disney musical with an Oscar-nominated score by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.

A Hard Day's Night - 1964

A Hard Day's Night, 1964 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Starring: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Wilfrid Brambell
Director: Richard Lester

The Beatles' first charming, wacky, original and impish movie was released not long after the Fab Four's landmark debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. At first thought to be a cross-promotional exploitation of their phenomenal 'Beatlemania', even critics agreed that it was an inventive, funny and ingenious musical comedy that later helped to inspire the music video craze. Innovative American director Richard Lester used the same type of goofy humor and imaginative visuals from his earlier experimental, grainy, hand-held short film, The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film (1959) starring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, along with black-and-white film stock and a semi-documentary style.

Screenwriter Alun Owen based his Oscar-nominated script on the group's frenzied popularity, supplemented by musical interludes of concert footage. The frantic film documents thirty-six hours of the group's life as they are on their way to London for a TV performance, marked by the memorable opening intercut to the title song - as the Liverpool group is chased by screaming, hysterical teenage girls while they board a train. The rock-and-roll stars express their charming, laid-back, and saucy personalities in this slice-of-life film that fictionalized their lives -- best exemplified during their interview scenes with their dry, playful one-liner responses (Reporter: "Are you a mod, or a rocker?" Ringo: "Um, no. I'm a mocker"). Wilfrid Brambell also plays Ringo's "very clean," eccentric grandfather who serves as the film's trouble-maker.

The Academy's membership unjustly overlooked the now-classic songs in the film's un-nominated soundtrack in favor of those from Mary Poppins ("Chim Chim Cher-ee"), Dear Heart, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Robin and the 7 Hoods ("My Kind of Town"), and Where Love Has Gone. However, George Martin, the Beatles' producer often recognized as the "Fifth Beatle," was nominated for Best Adapted Score. The Beatles as a group would later star in Help! (1965), Yellow Submarine (1968) and the documentary that showed their breakup, Let It Be (1970).

Other 'British invasion' bands copied this work with their own film projects, such as the Dave Clark Five's Having a Wild Weekend (aka Catch Us If You Can) (1965). The Monkees' mid-60's TV-show was also an offshoot of this film.

The Great Dictator - 1940

The Great Dictator Art Print
11 in. x 17 in.

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In his first full "talkie" (in a film similar to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933)) and his most financially-successful film, Chaplin plays a dual role as: (1) Adenoid Hynkel, the great dictator of the film's title - the power-mad, despotic ruler and Fooey (Fuhrer) of the fictional European nation of Tomania, and (2) an un-named, humble, amnesiac Jewish barber (with some resemblance to Chaplin's Little Tramp character who was retired at the end of Modern Times (1936)) who returns years after being a soldier in World War I to discover that his long-abandoned shop is now part of the Jewish ghetto, occupied by thuggish Aryan stormtroopers of the Double Cross (rather than a swastika).

The Jewish barber is mistaken for the country's tyrannical dictator Hynkel, who is obviously a mocking satire of Adolf Hitler, complete with his squared-off mustache and Nazi-ish uniform. An additional burlesque portrait of Italy's tyrannical Benito Mussolini is in the character of Benzino Napaloni (Oakie), Dictator of the rival country of Bacteria. The film's message was made even more powerful by the satire, making fun of their demagoguery, fascism and anti-Semitism. Chaplin's bold and controversial parody, with its social and political commentary, was banned in occupied Europe, South America and Ireland. Some believed that Chaplin was trivializing the Nazi's violent rise to power; however, the film had entered production in 1938, when most Americans viewed Adolf Hitler as an ally (not an enemy), and were opposed to entering WWII.

It was released before the United States' entry into World War II (in 1941) and before knowledge of the Holocaust. One of the film's most famous scenes is Hynkel playing with an inflated balloon-globe of Planet Earth in a graceful, ballet-like sequence; also the pudding scene, and the one of the barber shaving a customer in time to a radio broadcast of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5. The most powerful moment is when the barber (disguised as Hynkel) delivers a six-minute impassioned monologue (often interpreted as Chaplin's own plea) at the end of the film for peace, hope, human rights, understanding and world tolerance.

The Good the Bad and the Ugly - 1966

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Framed Poster
30.38 in. x 42.38 in.

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The third and final installment (but actual a prequel) in under-rated Italian director Sergio Leone's The Man with No Name epic trilogy, this is perhaps the best-known "spaghetti western" of all-time. 'The Man with No Name' was Eastwood's star-making role, after appearances in the previous A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). Elements of his character can be found in his later anti-hero cop "Dirty" Harry Callahan character in Dirty Harry (1971). As with Leone's other westerns, this film is viciously violent and machismo in tone, but buoyed by the classic, instantly-recognizable, twanging Ennio Morricone score. In this sweeping, stylistic, and operatic film, The Man with No Name (but dubbed Blondie) (Eastwood) is the unsmiling anti-hero "Good" guy, Angel Eyes Sentenza (Van Cleef) serves as the vile and ruthless "Bad" guy, and Tuco Ramirez (Wallach) provides the greedy, talkative, clownish and self-centered "Ugly". With very little dialogue, lots of closeups, and vast widescreen landscapes, the film's plot, set during the Civil War, concerns the acquisition of a treasure chest of $200,000 in stolen Confederate gold buried in a grave at a faraway location.

All three of the main characters, basically amoral, anti-social bounty hunters, outlaws, and murderers, are forced to form an uneasy partnership or alliance, leading to the film's climactic graveyard shootout in which the opportunistic desperados find themselves facing off one last time for the fortune. [In 2003, a special restored and extended English language version, almost three hours in length with about 15 minutes of previously-cut scenes, was released that used the original Italian release cut, with Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach dubbing in their voices to scenes that were cut from the USA release.]




Clint Eastwood Framed Art Print
21 in. x 17 in.

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Gaslight - 1944

Gaslight, Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, 1944 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Aka The Murder in Thornton Square, this is a superb, definitive psychological suspense thriller from 'woman's director' George Cukor. [Previous Cukor films that were similar as period dramas included Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), and Camille (1936).] This lavish and glossy MGM film, with authentic Victorian-era production design, was a remake of a taut and subtle film made five years earlier in Great Britain. This earlier version, starring a very sinister Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, was directed by Thorold Dickinson and released in the US as both Gaslight and Angel Street (1940). Both versions were adapted from Patrick Hamilton's long-running, London staged play-melodrama, originally titled Angel Street.

The film's plot, faithfully adapted by its screenwriters, is about a diabolical, Victorian criminal husband Gregory Anton (Boyer playing against type) who systematically and methodically attempts to torment and drive mad his bedeviled, shy young wife Paula Alquist (Bergman), while in pursuit of hidden jewels. Bergman was very effective in the role of the vulnerable woman, who becomes helpless as she experiences a debilitating nervous breakdown and near insanity, until saved by her romantic admirer - a suspicious Scotland Yard detective Brian Cameron (Cotten). The film's impressive photography is expressionistic, shadowy, and menacing - as befits the film's ominous plot.

Full Metal Jacket - 1987

Full Metal Jacket, 1987 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Stanley Kubrick's thought-provoking Vietnam War film was partly based on Gustav Hasford's 1979 book The Short Timers, and followed in the footsteps of Kubrick's other anti-war films: Paths of Glory (1957) and Dr. Strangelove, Or: (1964). This was Kubrick's first film after The Shining (1980), and it made an underappreciated appearance the year after Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) won Best Picture. Kubrick's film was unsuccessful at the box office -- lost in the spate of mostly Vietnam-related war films that came out in Platoon's wake, including Heartbreak Ridge (1986) (about the invasion of Grenada), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Hanoi Hilton (1987), Casualties of War (1989), 84 Charlie Mopic (1989), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

A two-part drama, the first part of the film takes place at Parris Island training-boot camp in S. Carolina (although the entire film was shot in England), where drill instructor Gunnery Sgt. Hartman (Ermey, a former, real life Marine sergeant) transforms young Marine cadets into killing machines with twisted sentiments, and verbal, psychological, and physical abuse and torment. The first half climaxes with a chilling, dehumanizing bathroom scene between Hartman, Private Leonard Lawrence (dubbed "Gomer Pyle") (D'Onofrio) - an overweight, misfit cadet driven insane by Hartman's bullying, and Private J.T. Davis (dubbed "Joker") (Modine), who is caught between them. "Joker," a cynical Stars & Stripes military correspondent/journalist, is the bridge to the second half of the film on the nightmarish, violent front lines within Hue City - a cool, unemotional look at urban warfare on the eve of the 1968 Tet Offensive at the turning point of the war.

A Fish Called Wanda - 1988

One of the cleverest, quirkiest and wittiest madcap caper comedies ever made, that included members of the original anarchic Monty Python troupe with American stars - in a subversive and raucous tale that combined both British and American humor. The film recalls the British Ealing Studio comedies (such as Crichton's own The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955)) and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941). As the tagline stated, the unexpected hit was "a tale of murder, lust, greed, revenge, and seafood," in which three eccentric thieves (Curtis, Kline, and Palin) battle the authorities and each other to recover a valuable cache of stolen diamonds.

All actors are perfect in their roles, especially the self-absorbed, not-too-bright ("Don't you ever call me stupid") Buddha-misquoting Anglophobe Otto West (Kline) and the stuttering, animal-loving hitman Ken (Palin). Features such bits as Ken's attempts at murdering an old woman that results in the deaths of her dogs (to his horror), Otto's constant tormenting of Ken ("Look! It's K-k-ken coming to k-k-kill me!") and conservative, uptight barrister Archie Leach (Cleese), Wanda Gerschwitz's (Curtis) use of sex to dominate the men in her life and her total arousal to foreign languages like Italian and Russian. The leads would team up again in the comedy Fierce Creatures (1997), in lieu of a sequel.

Field of Dreams - 1989

Just one year after playing catcher "Crash" Davis in Bull Durham (1988), Kevin Costner appeared in this - another baseball-themed film coupled with the religious themes of faith and redemption. This sentimental, modern fantasy classic became a smash hit in its unique depiction of Americana. Idealistic Ray Kinsella (Costner), a transplanted city boy-turned-Iowa corn farmer, hears a ghostly Voice telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his corn field, to "ease his pain". His wife Annie (Madigan) is semi-supportive but worried about their finances. No one but those who believe can see the ghostly ballplayers who begin to appear.

This Capra-esque film recalls Harvey (1950), a film in which its main character believes he is befriended by a giant rabbit that no one can see. (Ray's daughter Karen (Hoffmann) is watching Harvey on T.V. at one point in the film, to emphasize the connection.) Adapted from W. P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, the film is almost dreamlike (aided by the mystical score by James Horner), as Ray meets with various sad and wistful icons, including the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson (Liotta) who was banned from baseball for life after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, a disillusioned, reclusive J.D. Salinger-like writer in Boston named Terence Mann (Jones), and a small-town doctor named Doc "Moonlight" Graham (Lancaster) - a rookie player who years earlier yearned to make it into the major leagues.

The film reaches its climax with Jones' famous monologue on the place of baseball in American history: "The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."

East of Eden - 1955

East of Eden, James Dean, 1955 Framed Art Print
24.875 in. x 30.875 in.

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Director Elia Kazan's updated re-telling of the Biblical story of rival brothers, Cain and Abel and a paradise lost. A brooding James Dean - as the unappreciated son (Cain), vies against his dull, but favored stuffy brother (Abel) for the affections of their father. The maligned, misunderstood Cain character, representing the unlikeable and outcast director himself (for naming names before the HUAC Committee in 1952), becomes the sensitive hero of this film. As the poster stated, "Sometimes you can't tell who's good and who's bad!..."

Writer Paul Osborn's screenplay adapted John Steinbeck's 1952 novel with the same title for this dramatic Warner Bros. film. [The film tells only a small portion of Steinbeck's work, leaving out the childhood of the parents and the Chinese character of Lee.] The CinemaScopic film, set in 1917 at a time just before the US entry into World War I, portrays the relationship between insecure, tortured, neurotic loner Caleb "Cal" Trask (Dean, in his first major role and film) and his dutiful, favored brother Aron (Davalos) - twin sons. Their father is a stern, hardened, devoutly religious, self-righteous man named Adam (Massey), a lettuce farmer living with his family in Salinas, California. The plot becomes emotionally charged when Cal expresses a liking for his brother's girlfriend Abra (Harris), and then learns that his mother (Van Fleet) is actually alive and operating a nearby brothel.

Dinner at Eight - 1933

Dinner at Eight, 1933 Masterprint
11 in. x 17 in.

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A masterfully-directed, poignant melodramatic comedy by director George Cukor and producer David O. Selznick. This MGM film was based on the popular, dialogue-rich Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. It was studded with a tremendous ensemble cast of stars (inspired by MGM's previous year's Best Picture winner, Grand Hotel (1932)) - who are all invited to a Manhattan formal dinner party during the height of the Depression, by social climbing, flighty hostess Millicent (Burke) and floundering businessman husband Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore). [Three of the stars, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery appeared in both films.] Other guests include crass, crooked rich tycoon Dan Packard (Beery) and his candy-chewing, trampish trophy wife Kitty (Harlow), the family doctor Dr. Talbot (Lowe), washed-up, alcoholic silent-era actor Larry Renault (John Barrymore), and elderly ex-Broadway star Carlotta Vance (Dressler). The witty romantic comedy is filled with choice lines of dialogue, and revolves around various relationships between the characters. Suicide, financial ruin, love, infidelity and adultery, economic pressures, class conflict, the dawn of the talkies, divorce, aging and fading careers, and alcoholism affect their interactions.

The Day the Earth Stood Still - 1951

The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1951 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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One of the seminal science fiction films of motion picture history, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is based on Edmund H. North's adaptation of the short story "Farewell to the Master" by Harry Bates. Much like the "drive in movies" of the 1950's, such as The War of the Worlds (1952), Forbidden Planet (1956), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), this influential, fantasy sci-fi film featured state-of-the-art visual effects and salient social commentary on the Cold War and warfare. The film not only examined wider issues of politics and society, but also at human emotions and frailties. This cautionary science fiction parable begins with the landing of a spacecraft on the White House Mall.

A benevolent, interplanetary alien in humanoid form, Klaatu (Rennie), causes a panic when he demands to speak to all of the representatives of Earth's governments. Although he warns the people of Earth to be non-violent and stop nuclear testing, he is shot by a nervous soldier. His massive robotic companion Gort (Martin) vaporizes the offensive weapons, as Klaatu is hospitalized. He goes into hiding posing as an Earthling named Carpenter while residing with a human family (single mother/widow Helen (Neal) and her son Bobby (Gray)), in order to observe their lives, and meanwhile to attempt to establish contact with Earth's leading scientist Dr. Bernhardt (Jaffe). Klaatu's demonstration of power over the industrial complex -- by stopping power everywhere for half an hour -- ends up tragically. One of the most famous phrases in science fiction history is recited by Helen to stop Gort's rampage when Klaatu is killed: "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto." The film ends with the alien visitor's resurrection and a warning-proclamation. With a memorable score by Bernard Herrmann.

Dark Victory - 1939

Dark Victory, Bette Davis, 1939 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.

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Warner Bros. studios' sentimental, tragic and moving melodrama (a "weepie" or "woman's picture") - made in Hollywood's most famous and competitive year. The adult drama contains an electrifying, compelling, tour de force, tear-jerking performance from its major star -- Bette Davis. It was a bit of a risk for the movie studio to make and publicize an intense film about a terminally-ill patient with "prognosis negative." The protagonist is a young socialite-heiress named Judith Traherne (Davis), who suffers from a brain tumor and ultimately falls in love with her supportive and dedicated doctor Frederick Steele (Brent). In the midst of her deadly illness, she comforts her best friend Ann King (Fitzgerald), and courageously meets her fate when her eyesight dims. She climbs her stairs for the last time - accompanied by Max Steiner's swelling score in the film's finale.