The House On Telegraph Hill is an intriguing cliffhanger set in a spooky Victorian mansion below Coit Tower in San Francisco. Victoria Kowelska (Valentina Cortese) has lived through World War II bombings and relocation camps, and has finally emigrated to America. Now, she should be blissfully happy with her devoted husband (Richard Basehart) in their mansion overlooking the San Francisco Bay, but Victoria is not who she seems, her child belongs to someone else, and her husband and housekeeper are frightening her half to death.

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Vanina Vanini, a bored, spoiled Roman countess, falls in love with a dedicated young patriot who is in Rome to assassinate a traitor to the brotherhood of the Free Masons.

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Opera singer Chivo is currently playing a singing cowboy, and Mexican bandito Braganza kidnaps him (along with Jane, an heiress) so he can learn to become more like the American movie gangsters he admires. Lots of songs including "Cielito lindo", "Adios mi tierra", "The World is Mine Tonight" and "Celeste Aida."

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Carol Reed's taut character study (disguised as a suspense melodrama) was adapted from the novel by F.L. Green and stars James Mason in his star-making role as I.R.A. operative Johnny McQueen. Breaking out of jail, Johnny takes it on the lam, but idealism forces him out of hiding in order to raise money for the I.R.A. cause he believes in so strongly. He decides to rob a bank, but the hold-up goes bad and Johnny is seriously wounded by the police. Staggering through the streets of Belfast, Johnny meets a succession of people who either want to help him or turn him over to the authorities. Johnny finally stumbles into a pub, where he is taken in by a homosexual artist (Robert Newton) who wants Johnny to pose for him in order to capture the desperation in his eyes. Johnny breaks free from the artist and tries to make his way to the waterfront in a final effort to escape ... but the police are slowly closing in.

In the impressive filmography of British director Carol Reed, The Fallen Idol is sandwiched between Odd Man Out and The Third Man--the second of three consecutive masterpieces (adapted by Graham Greene from his short story "The Basement Room") by a filmmaker at the peak of his artistic powers. Of those three, The Fallen Idol is the most delicately subdued, but it's a flawlessly plotted thriller that achieves considerable tension through the psychology of its characters. By telling the story through the eyes of a child, the plot gains even greater urgency as a variation on the theme of "the boy who cried wolf," as young Phillipe (Bobby Henrey)--the 8-year-old son of the French ambassador to England--struggles to clear his beloved embassy butler Baines (Ralph Richardson) from being wrongfully accused of murder.

Adapted from a novel by W.R. Burnett (which hadn't yet been published when the film was released), Arrowhead is a tough, uncompromising western dealing with the delicate issue of White-Indian relations. Charlton Heston is at his most truculent as Indian agent Ed Bannon, who though raised by Apaches has a very low opinion of the tribe's trustworthiness. Bannon's warnings about Indian treachery would seem to be borne out by a series of bloody raids upon the cavalry, but the officers in charge refuse to believe him. It turns out that the man behind the Apache attacks is Toriano (Jack Palance), the chief's college-educated son, who has rejected the ways of the White Man and intends to reclaim his birthright. The film boils down to a mano y mano battle between Bannon and Toriano, personal enemies from way back. Hardly politically correct, Arrowhead is worth seeing if only for the multitextured performance by Jack Palance.

Sometime in the future, the city of Metropolis is home to a Utopian society where its wealthy residents live a carefree life. One of those is Freder Fredersen. One day, he spots a beautiful woman with a group of children, she and the children who quickly disappear. Trying to follow her, he, oblivious to such, is horrified to find an underground world of workers, apparently who run the machinery which keeps the above ground Utopian world functioning. One of the few people above ground who knows about the world below is Freder's father, Joh Fredersen, who is the founder and master of Metropolis. Freder learns that the woman is Maria, who espouses the need to join the "hands" - the workers - to the "head" - those in power above - by a mediator or the "heart". Freder wants to help the plight of the workers in the want for a better life. But when Joh learns of what Maria is espousing and that Freder is joining their cause...

Rare old film from the amazing David S. Bradley Film Collection at Indiana University.
A beautiful shopgirl with a worthless layabout husband gets to live out her Cinderella fantasy when a rich acquaintance needs some eye candy to trick a male visitor into staying in town. Essentially she becomes an escort - but with clothes like these, who cares about dignity? (Cecil B. DeMille, whatever his other flaws as a director, is always on point with his costume game.) The problem comes when she and the mark really do fall (duh) for each other, and her husband, eager to get rich quick to impress her, turns to crime.

Within Our Gates is a 1920 silent race film that dramatically expresses the racial situation in America during the violent years of Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration, and the emergence of the "New Negro". The story focuses on an African-American woman who goes North in an effort to help a minister in the Deep South raise money to keep a school open for poor Black children. Her romance with a black doctor eventually leads to revelations about her family's past that expose the racial skeletons in America's closet, most famously through the film's depiction of a lynching..