The legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt’s unconventional life and career are examined in this biopic. At an audition in 1860, the teenage Bernhardt proclaims herself the greatest actress of her time. Her career blossoms, as does her private life. But art and life don’t stay balanced, much to the frustration of her lovers. The eccentric Bernhardt eventually does marry another actor, but it’s her life on stage that ultimately gives her the most satisfaction.
Category: Biography
Based on true events and featuring actual news footage, this film tells the story of Placido Rizzotto, who, after a tumultuous childhood and adolescence, decides to stand up against the gangsters who have overrun his hometown. Placido organizes a union and tries to convince his fellow villagers to fight with him. But it’s not until Placido’s girlfriend, Lia, is ruthlessly brutalized by the Mafia that he realizes he has been playing with fire.
The story of how jazz great Louis Armstrong got his start playing in Chicago clubs, how he was framed on a drug charge, and his travels throughout Europe, where he first gained worldwide fame.
C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) was a Greek poet who wrote exquisitely about his beloved cities, Alexandria and Constantinople, and about the beautiful, sexually available men who lived in them. Thanks to Lawrence Durrell’s frequent favorable mention of him in his popular novels The Alexandria Quartet, Cavafy has become a figure of considerable literary interest outside of Greek and homosexual circles. Part biography, part fantasy, but very much in the spirit of the poet’s work, this film begins in 1933 as a young literateur reads to Cavafy, lying abed in an Alexandrian hospital. Cavafy drifts away into memories from his life and the film takes up his story from childhood.
A look at the profound challenges faced by actress Patricia Neal and her husband, writer Roald Dahl, after Neal suffered a severe stroke.
An “imaginative biography” of Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago who was killed in the line of fire during an assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933.
Vesta Tilley is the daughter of a music-hall chairman who watches shows from the wings with great enthusiasm. One day, her father finds her dressed as a boy, singing to an audience of dolls. Her act, he believes, is good enough to be performed in front of a live audience. As time goes on, word of her spreads. Viewed as the first male impersonator, her fame leads her into marriage to a nobleman.