Carlos, a former factory worker of humble origins, has made millions – but the upper class refuses to accept him as one of their own. Meanwhile, Barbara, the spoiled daughter of an industrialist, is to enter into a loveless marriage of convenience. Tensions arise when the two fall madly in love.
Tag: 1950s
A beautiful 18-year-old orphan escapes from a reformatory and hooks up wth a gang of jewel smugglers, and decides on a life of crime. However, she falls for and marries a policeman, putting a crimp in her criminal career.
This animated short outlines the problems with alcohol consumption despite its social acceptability in western society. It provides a cursory look at how easily alcohol is produced, and the physiological effects of alcohol on humans, especially when it enters the bloodstream. It delves further into the process of drunkenness. Although few people die from overdosing on alcohol, it describes other direct and indirect dangerous effects of alcohol consumption, such as drinking and driving. It also lists the many reasons why people drink for good and bad.
Just paroled from a prison term for manslaughter, ex-Marine Jim Hughes makes a new start with his wife Ellen and ten-year-old son Paul, on a ranch given him by his old Corps commander. Krivak, a vicious neighbor, threatens to take the land away from him after Jim refuses to sell. He instigates a fight between his dog Thunder and Paul’s much smaller dog, which is killed. Later, the grieving Paul finds a wild puppy, half dog and half wolf, and Jim lets him keep it. Preparing to take his herd to market, Jim finds his fences cut and his herd stolen. He is accosted by two escaped convicts, Trent and Hawkins, who knew Jim in prison, and they force him to take them in.
In 1461, French nobles fearing King Louis XI may seize their lands, join forces with the rebellious Duke of Burgundy to overthrow the king. One of the Duke’s captains suggests enlisting the aid of Francois Villon who is known to oppose the king and is leader of the Vagabonds, a group that robs the rich to aid the poor. In league with Burgundy, Villon and two of his cohorts enter Paris, but are captured by the king’s men. The king, recognizing Villon’s power over the people, proposes that Villon defend Paris against Burgundy and help uncover traitors in the court.
Britain’s first musical shot in colour and widescreen (a process called Cosmoscope) is a cabaret-style featurette centred on a group of young people in Chelsea lodgings, watched over by a fatherly caretaker. Eight specially written songs are performed by stage stars of the day – most notably Georgia Brown, who later created the role of Nancy in Oliver!
Renowned Egyptian director Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with Cairo Station after it screened at the Berlin Film Festival. Focusing on a group of marginalised luggage carriers and soft-drink sellers who live in abandoned traincars, Chahine posits Cairo’s main railroad station as a microcosm of Egyptian society. A crippled newspaper dealer (played powerfully by Chahine himself), falls in love with a beautiful but indifferent lemonade seller who is engaged to the muscular and virile leader of the luggage-carriers. Swept away by his obsessive desire, the crippled man kidnaps the object of his passion, with terrible consequences.
Dramatisation of the Bakiga people’s attempt to cultivate the Kigezi district of Uganda, region inhabited by Pygmies. Jonathan, educated clerk, son of the village’s chief, goes along with other men’s of the village to build the new farms. Injured in a movement of buffaloes, he is helped by some Pygmies villagers with who he becomes friends. When returning to his people’s settlement, his peers don’t see these new acquaintances in a favorable light.