Made in Italy

Humphrey Bogart plays a washed up director who gets a new opportunity from a millionaire (Warren Stevens) that wants to make a film starring his girlfriend (Ava Gardner in the title role), a Spanish beauty peasant who dances the flamenco provocatively. O'Brien plays a press agent. Gardner's character becomes a star after three films with (a fatherly) Bogart; she then runs off with a millionaire playboy played by Marius Goring. Later, she marries a Count (Rossano Brazzi) with a protective sister (Valentina Cortese) and a secret. The movie actually begins with the Contessa's funeral, with the story being told in flashback such that the audience eventually learns how and why she died.

After hiding out in Milan for nearly a decade, fugitive gangland chief Abel Davos (Lino Ventura) sneaks back to Paris with his children despite a death sentence hanging over his head. Accompanied by appointed guardian Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo, fresh off his star turn in Breathless) and beset by backstabbing former friends, Abel begins a journey through the postwar Parisian underworld that’s both throat grabbing and soul searching. A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet (Un coeur en hiver) is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema.

This original silent masterpiece is a must-see for anyone interested in classic world cinema. Originally planned as a quartet of 4 hour epics covering the life of the Little Emperor, only this first section was completed and takes us from his snowball fights in the schoolyard to his invasion of Italy. Long thought lost, this fully restored presentation is available thanks to the efforts of the british Film Institute, Images Film Archive and Francis Ford Coppola's Zeotrope Studios.

This seriocomic adaptation of Mordecai Richler's award-winning 1997 novel stars Paul Giamatti as Barney Panofsky, who meets the great love of his life, Miriam (Rosamund Pike), at the most inopportune time imaginable: his marriage to his second wife (Minnie Driver), a wealthy Jewish princess and compulsive shopper. Narrated by Barney as a confessional, the film covers 30 years of his unusual journey – from his first marriage to the chronically unfaithful free spirit Clara (Rachelle Lefevre) and their life in Italy together, through his third marriage to Miriam, with whom he has two children. Standing in the wings is Barney's father, Izzy (Dustin Hoffman), who continues to stick by him as his loyal right-hand man. Through it all, Barney experiences numerous highs and lows, but manages to consistently surprise everyone with unforeseen acts of altruism and kindness that turn him into the quintessential modern hero.

The epic tale of Spartacus and the Roman slave revolt is retold in this 1913 Italian silent classic. Forced to become a gladiator and his sister Idamis a slave, Spartacus leads the mighty rebellion that will rattle the Roman Empire. Luciano Albertini, Enrico Bracci, Alberto Capozzi and Maria Gandini star in director Giovanni Enrico Vidali's historical drama based on the novel by Raffaello Giovagnoli.

An industrialist (Joseph Cotton) and a pianist (Joan Fontaine) meet on a trip and fall in love. Through a quirk of fate, they are reported dead in a crash though they weren't on the plane. This gives them the opportunity to live together free from their previous lives. Unfortunately, this artificial arrangement leads to greater and greater stress. Eventually the situation collapses when they come to pursue their original, individual interests without choosing a common path.

The Hitler Chronicles(Who Was Hitler)tells Hitler's life story in a fifty-year period that provides the basis for understanding the person – if this is at all possible.Using no narrator or talking heads, and sparse additional information, writer and director Hermann P'lking retraces the life of Hitler - from his birth in 1889 in upper Austria to his suicide in Berlin 1945 - entirely from statements made by companions, enemies, victims and observers.

At a spa in the Tuscan Hills, a Russian poet and musicologist, researching the life of an 18th century composer, meets a mysterious man who is convinced that the end of the world is nigh. The Russian, Andrei Gorchakov (Oleg Yankovsky), is asked to cross an ancient sulphur pool carrying a lighted candle as an act of faith. Tarkovsky's first film outside the USSR is full of personal and Christian symbols and works as a study of such themes as memory, melancholia and disenchantment with the material world.

Where the art of filmmaking all began. An exciting visual presentation of the European silent film era, "Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood" commemorates the birth of an art that would transform the 20th century. This stylish and historical documentary focuses on the early days of the movie industry and the enormous contribution made by Europe. Included is rarely seen footage from early movies and interviews with some of the film industry's pioneers.