Category: Academy Award – Best Picture

Principal Cast : Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant, Georges Guetary, Nina Fochs, Eugene Borden, Madge Blake, Noel Neill, John Eldredge, Anna Q Nilsson. Synopsis:  Three friends struggle to find work in Paris. Things become more complicated when two of them fall in love with the same woman. ******** The streets and bars of the City of Love become the plaything of a struggling artist and hopeless romantic in An American In Paris, a Gene Kelly-starring vehicle which would go on to win the Best Picture Oscar for 1951, at a time…

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Principal Cast : Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw, Robert Earl Jones, Charles Durning, Ray Walston, Eileen Brennan, Harold Gould, John Heffernan, Dana Eclar, Jack Kehoe, Dimitra Arliss, James J Soylan, Charles Deirkop, Lee Paul, Sally Kirkland, Avon Long, Paulene Myers, Tom Spratley, Ta-Tanisha, William “Billy” Benedict. Synopsis:  In Chicago in 1936, two grifters team up to pull off the ultimate con. ***** The dynamite caper film to end all caper films, 1973’s Best Picture-winning The Sting is a true American classic and a resoundingly intelligent storytelling affair. Boasting a stellar…

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Principal Cast : Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Cathy O’Donnell, Hoagy Carmichael, Harold Russell, Roman Bohnen, Gladys George, Ray Collins, Victor Cutler, Minna Gombell, Walter Baldwin, Steve Cochran, Dorothy Adams, Don Beddoe, Marlene Aames. Synopsis: Three World War II veterans return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed. ***** Superlative cinematic storytelling from legendary director William Wyler in The Best Years Of Our Lives, the first film to win Best Picture following the end of World War II, which serves…

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Principal Cast : Ray Milland, Jane Wyman, Phillip Terry, Howard Da Silva, Doris Dowling, Frank Faylen, Mary Young, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Lillian Fontaine, Frank Orth, Lewis L Russell. Synopsis: The desperate life of a chronic alcoholic is followed through a four-day drinking bout. ***** The scourge of alcohol addiction is the prime motivator for 1945’s The Lost Weekend, directed by Hollywood legend Billy Wilder and featuring Ray Milland in a superb Oscar-winning Best Actor performance. Atmospheric, riveting, searing in its approach to the subject matter, and as honest an account of an enormous…

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Principal Cast : Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, James Brown, Gene Lockhart, Rise Stevens, Jean Heather, Porter Hall, Fortunio Bonanova, Eily Malyon, Stanley Clements, William Frawley, Carl “Alfalfa” Gibson. Synopsis: Father Charles O’Malley, a young priest at a financially failing Church in a tough neighbourhood, gains support and inspires his superior. ***** Few films have left me as ambivalent to Oscar’s Midas touch than this low-key Bing Crosby vehicle, a leisurely paced character piece that doesn’t hit the notes it so obviously wants to. The story of Going My Way is…

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Principal Cast : Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Teresa Wright, Dame May Whitty, Reginald Owen, Henry Travers, Richard Ney, Henry Wilcoxon, Christopher Severn, Brenda Forbes, Clare Sanders, Marie De Becker, Helmut Dantine. Synopsis: A British family struggles to survive the first months of World War II. **** Omnipresent fear and implacable resolve is the order of the day for Mrs Miniver, William Wyler’s evocative World War II drama film where innocence lost caves in even the hardiest of British families. With Britain heading to war against Nazi Germany, the impact of the conflict…

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Director :  John Ford Year Of Release :   1941 Principal Cast : Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Sara Allgood, Anna Lee, Patric Knowles, John Loger, Barry Fitzgerald, Rhys Williams, Morton Lowry, Arthur Shields, Richard Fraser, Irving Pichel. Approx Running Time :   118 Minutes Synopsis: At the turn of the century in a Welsh mining village, the Morgans raise coal-mining sons and hope their youngest will find a better life. ******** Sentimental to a fault, 1941’s How Green Was My Valley is perhaps most famous for winning Best Picture over…

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Director :  Victor Fleming Year Of Release :   1939 Principal Cast :  Clarke Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O’Neil, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, George Reeves, Fred Crane, Hattie McDaniel, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory, Everett Brown, Howard Hickman, Alicia Rhett, Rand Brooks, Carroll Nye, Laura Hope Crews, Eddie Anderson, Harry Davenport, Leona Roberts, Jane Darwell, Ona Munson. Approx Running Time :   4 Hours Synopsis:  A manipulative woman and a roguish man conduct a turbulent romance during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods. ******** Few…

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Director :  Frank Capra Year Of Release :   1938 Principal Cast :  Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold, Mischa Auer, Ann Miller, Spring Byington, Samuel S Hinds, Donald Meek, Mary Forbes, HB Warner, Halliwell Hobbes, Dub Taylor, Lillian Yarbo, Eddie Anderson, Clarence Wilson, Charles Lane, Ann Doran, Harry Davenport. Approx Running Time :   125 Minutes Synopsis:  A man from a family of rich snobs becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family. ********** Class snobbery is the order of the day in Frank Capra’s 1938…

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