Four stories, humorous, romantic or dramatic, are linked by a counterfeit gold sovereign. It is made by the honest engraver in the first story, seduced by the charms of a young widow, and it subsequently passes into the hands of a beggar and a prostitute, a wealthy miser and a newly married couple where the husband is a poor artist.
Tag: 1950s
Parigi e Sempre Parigi was the second feature-length effort from famed Italian documentary director Luciano Emmer. Parigi concentrates on a gentle cultural clash between a band of Italian sports fans and the citizenry of Paris. The hero, DeAngelis has heard so much about “naughty Paree” that he’s determined to experience that naughtiness first hand. This plot device, of course, obliges the director to introduce several delectable French mademoiselles in the proceedings. Ultimately, DeAngelis realizes that reports of French libertinism have been grossly exaggerated, but he has a high old time finding this out.
Albin Skoda plays Hitler, who wanders in and out of delirium as his Third Reich crumbles. He is surrounded by reams of existential dialogue from his generals and associates, courtesy of screenwriter Erich Maria Remarque, who based his script on Judge Michael A. Musmanno’s book “Ten Days to Die”. Oscar Werner costars as a fictional “good” Nazi officer who acts as the film’s voice of reason.
Scott Brady plays an ex-gunslinger who is hired by a group of ranchers to protect them from covetous land baron Roy Engel. Unbeknownst to the ranchers, Brady is the killer of their former leader. Emotional complications ensue when Brady falls in love with Mala Powers, the widow of the man he killed.
A twenty year old Anouk Aimée stars as Albertine, the daughter of a bourgeois couple who house a young officer during the Napoleonic wars. Newly promoted, the officer is quartered by a dull bourgeois couple who treat him with a cold politeness bordering on indifference.
Amiel per la Pelle (Friends for Life) is largely told from a child’s-eye point of view. The heroes of the piece are Mario and Franco, young classmates and inseparable buddies. After several “Our Gang”-style adventures, the boys’ friendship is threatened when Mario reveals a secret that Franco confided in him.
Pretending death at the hands of his friend, Marshal Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid rides away to live in peace under a new name in a far away frontier town, only to run foul of ruthless empire builder Col. Morgan and his top gun Jack Slade. Billy’s the only man who can stop Morgan but he turns down the pleas of help from preacher Jericho Jones, who knows of Billy and his past, newspaper editor Elly McCloud and her romantic rival Tonya. It’s only after the preacher is shot down trying to stop Morgan’s killers that Billy straps on his guns.
Erie Canal, N.Y., 1850: Molly Larkins, cook on Jotham Klore’s canal boat, has a love-hate relationship with her boss. She hires handsome new haul-horse driver Dan Harrow and the inevitable triangle develops (complicated by Dan’s desire to farm and Molly’s to boat) against a background of the canalmen’s fight against the encroaching railroad.