Richard Burton
We are drowning in celebrity culture and certainly no tabloid topic has been as big as Paris Hilton. Her incarceration and subsequent release, then re-incarceration and her ultimate release once again-left us submerged knee-deep in the twists and turns of her life. Famous for doing nothing, she's the ultimate manifestation of our obsession with celebrity culture and the massive profits that it wields. As long as we are willing to watch and read, who can resist feeding our habit?
In 1978 Jeff Wayne composed and produced one of the most groundbreaking and best-selling musical works of all time. In 2006, after much anticipation, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of The Worlds was brought to the stage for the first time, playing to sold-out arenas. This version filmed at Wembley Arena (UK) on 25th April 2006.
Documentary about the making of 20th Century Fox's 1963 film "Cleopatra," then the most expensive film of all time.
Hollywood careers are full of make-or-break moments. For Clint Eastwood, one such moment came when studio powers agreed to let him make his directing debut. That story and others comprise this portrait of the famed Hollywood icon. His career is explored via an array of film clips, interviews and more.
A poet's tale of a day in the lives of the villagers of a Welsh fishing town of Llareggub.
Ellis Island is a television miniseries broadcast in three parts in 1984 on the CBS television network. The screenplay was co-written by Fred Mustard Stewart, adapted from his 1983 novel of the same title. The series tells the story of several immigrants from the late 1800s until the early 1910s, trying to achieve the American Dream and arriving on Ellis Island, hoping for a better life. Ellis Island highlighted numerous important events which occurred up to and during World War I, and many of the characters are based on real persons, such as Irving Berlin.
George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.
A Celebration of the great life of Frank Sinatra with song, dance, and many famous guests.
The story of the three year expedition led by British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, which ended in August 1982, and which was man's first and only land and sea voyage around the world crossing both poles, without leaving the Earth's surface.
The story of Leonardo da Vinci: his life, his thoughts, his times, his art and inventions and the individuals who had an influence on his life.
The story of the impossible love between a schoolgirl and a 60-year old painter
Starting in late May 1944, during the German retreat on the Eastern Front, Captain Stransky (Helmut Griem) orders Sergeant Steiner (Richard Burton) to blow up a railway tunnel to prevent Russian forces from using it. Steiner's platoon fails in its mission by coming up against a Russian tank. Steiner then takes a furlough to Paris just as the Allies launch their invasion of Normandy.
A French detective in London reconstructs the life of a man lying in hospital with severe injuries with the help of journals and a psychiatrist. He realises that the man had powerful telekinetic abilities.
A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.
At a Catholic boys' school, domineering disciplinarian Father Goddard rules over his pupils with an iron hand. When one of his teenage charges confesses to murder, the dogmatic but deeply repressed Goddard finds his faith challenged and his life spiralling dangerously out of control. Also starring Billy Connolly (in his first feature-film role), Dominic Guard ,Kes star Dai Bradley, and the inimitable Brian Glover, and written by the great Anthony Shaffer, Absolution is one of British cinema’s most underrated chillers, not least for a towering central performance by Burton.
Promotional short film about the making of the 1978 film The Wild Geese.
Henry Fonda is honored for his career in theater, television and film by friends, family, and co-workers.
Bizarre nightmares plague Regan MacNeil four years after her possession and exorcism. Has the demon returned? And if so, can the combined faith and knowledge of a Vatican investigator and a hypnotic research specialist free her from its grasp?
A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.
This feature-length Oscar®-nominated documentary focuses on Malcolm Lowry, author of one of the major novels of the 20th century, Under the Volcano. But while Lowry fought a winning battle with words, he lost his battle with alcohol. Shot on location in four countries, the film combines photographs, readings by Richard Burton from the novel and interviews with the people who loved and hated Lowry, to create a vivid portrait of the man.
Adriana De Mauro loves Cesar Braggi, but Cesar, honoring his father's dying wish, allows his brother, Antonio, to marry Adriana. As fate wills, Antonio dies in an automobile accident. Adriana's mourning for Antonio ends when Cesar steps in to rekindle her lust of life. Soon, Adriana begins having dizzy spells. Cesar helps her to a specialist, and the diagnosis is not good. She has an incurable disease. For the rest of their time together, Cesar woos Adriana and eventually proposes to her on a gondola. Yet, for some reason or other, Signora De Mauro, Adriana's mother, is not pleased with the relationship and argues bitterly with Cesar.
A small southern town has just been rocked by a tragedy: a young woman has been violently raped. The white town fathers immediately declare that the attacker had to be black, and place the blame on Garth, a young black man. Assuming that the men in white sheets aren't intent on holding a fair and impartial trial, Garth takes to the woods as the Klansmen lynching party hunts him down.
Two strangers, both married to others, meet in a railroad station and find themselves in a brief but intense affair.
In the Nazi occupied city of Rome, an assault on an SS brigade draws retaliation from the military governship. "Massacre in Rome" is the true story of how this partisan attack led to the mass execution of Italian nationals under the orders of SS-Lieutenant Colonel Kappler.
The break-up of an 18 year marriage, seen firstly from his (Richard Burton's) point of view and then from hers (Elizabeth Taylor's).
Tells the story of the Battle of Sutjeska which occurred in Nazi-occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1943.
The Faust legend retold (loosely) and applied to a mentally disturbed patient in a hospital run by a doctor of dubious sanity himself. The patient (Burton) offers the innocent orderly (Bridges) vast riches if he'll help him escape.
The delightful if peculiar story of a day in the life of a small, Welsh fishing village called "Llareggub" in which we meet a host of curious characters (and ghosts) through the 'eyes' of Blind Captain Cat.
After having been forced to leave the Soviet Union 1929 Trotsky has ended up in Mexico 1940. He is still busy with the politics. Stalin has sent out an assassin, Frank Jacson. Jacson befriends a young communist and gets an invitation to Trotsky's house.
Captain Foster plans on raiding German-occupied Tobruk with hand- picked commandos, but a mixup leaves him with a medical unit led by a Quaker conscientious objector. Despite all odds they succeed with their mission. On the way they pick up and drug the mistress of an Italian general, blow up the entire fuel supply for the Afrika Korps, and swap philatelic gossip with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
Ruthless East End gangster Vic Dakin has plans for an ambitious raid on the wages van of a plastic factory. This is a departure from Dakin's usual modus operandi, and the job is further complicated by his having to work with fellow gangster Frank Fletcher's firm. As Dakin plots, Wolfe wheels and deals and MP Draycott gets caught in a web of his own iniquity.
A dog tries to become a canine star with the help of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
An aging gay couple owns a barber shop in the East End of London. One of them is a part-time actor about to go on trial for propositioning a police officer. The action takes place over the course of one night as they discuss their loving but often volatile past together and possible future without each other.
Henry VIII of England discards one wife, Katharine of Aragon, who has failed to produce a male heir, in favor of the young and beautiful Anne Boleyn.
Thirty distinguished astronomers are visited at their observatories throughout the world in this comprehensive report of astronomical theories, research, and discoveries.
A behind-the-scenes look at the difficulties of shooting a movie on location in the Austrian Alps.
World War II is raging, and an American general has been captured and is being held hostage in the Schloss Adler, a Bavarian castle that's nearly impossible to breach. It's up to a group of skilled Allied soldiers to liberate the general before it's too late.
Faustus is a scholar at the University of Wittenberg when he earns his doctorate degree. His insatiable appetite for knowledge and power leads him to employ necromancy to conjure Mephistopheles out of hell. He bargains away his soul to Lucifer in exchange for living 24 years during which Mephistopheles will be his slave. Faustus signs the pact in his own blood and Mephistopheles reveals the works of the devil to Faustus.
Baptista, a rich Paduan merchant, announces that his fair young daughter, Bianca, will remain unwed until her older sister, Katharina, a hellish shrew, has wed. Lucentio, a student and the son of a wealthy Pisan merchant, has fallen in love with Bianca. He poses as a tutor of music and poetry to gain entrance to the Baptista household and to be near Bianca. Meanwhile, Petruchio, a fortune-hunting scoundrel from Verona, arrives in Padua, hoping to capture a wealthy wife. Hortensio, another suitor of Bianca, directs Petruchio's attention to Katharina. When Hortensio warns him about Katharina's scolding tongue and fiery temper, Petruchio is challenged and resolves to capture her love. Hortensio and another suitor of Bianca, Gremio, agree to cover Petruchio's costs as he pursues Katharina.
Richard Burton is interviewed by film critic Kenneth Tynan
Behind the scenes short documentary about the cast and crew during the filming of The Comedians.
A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use a young couple to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other.
A playboy who refuses to give up his hedonistic lifestyle to settle down and marry his true love seeks help from a demented psychoanalyst who is having romantic problems of his own.
British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.
A free-spirited artist, who lives near California's Big Sur, meets the administrator of the parochial school that her young son attends and lures the cleric away from his wife.
A stage production of Hamlet filmed at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York.
Aston (Robert Shaw), a quiet, reserved man, lives alone in a top-floor cluttered room of a small abandoned house in a poor London district. He befriends and takes in Mac Davies (Donald Pleasence), an old derelict who has been fired from a menial job in a café. In time Aston offers him a job as caretaker of the house. Aston's brother, Mick (Alan Bates) - a taunting, quasi-sadist - harasses the derelict when his brother is away, countermanding his orders. Eventually Aston, himself irritated by the cantankerous old man, puts him out.
In 1879, during the Zulu wars, man-of-the-people, Lt. John Chard and snooty Lt Gonville Bromhead were in charge of defending the isolated Natal outpost of Rorke's Drift from tribal hordes, holding out during an Alamo-like siege until they are overwhelmed, losing the battle, but going down in history as heroes. 150 soldiers defended a supply station against some 4000 Zulus, aided by the Martini-Henry rifle "with some guts behind it". In the hundred years since the Victoria Cross was created for valour and extreme courage beyond that normally expected of the British soldier in face of the enemy only 1344 have been awarded. Eleven of these were won by the defenders of the mission station at Rorke's Drift, Natal, January 22nd to the 23rd 1879.
A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.
King Henry II of England has trouble with the Church. When the Archbishop of Canterbury dies, he has a brilliant idea. Rather than appoint another pious cleric loyal to Rome and the Church, he will appoint his old drinking and wenching buddy, Thomas Becket, technically a deacon of the church, to the post. Unfortunately, Becket takes the job seriously and provides abler opposition to Henry.
Behind the scenes documentary of the filming of Tennessee Williams The Night of the Iguana.
Wealthy passengers fogged in at London's Heathrow Airport fight to survive a variety of personal trials.
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
A musical special celebrating the fruitful collaboration of Broadway lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe. Stars from the current Broadway hit "Camelot" and from past triumphs such as "My Fair Lady," and the film "Gigi" perform the romantic, sophisticated songs of Lerner and Loewe.
An atmospheric tribute to the genius of Welsh poet and dramatist Dylan Thomas, using many of the windswept locations where Thomas himself grew up and found his inspiration. The film is hosted/presented by Richard Burton, Thomas's friend, who narrates the story and appears from time to time amidst the Welsh landscape. Burton had already appeared in Douglas Cleverdon's acclaimed BBC radio dramatization of Thomas's 'play for voices' Under Milk Wood in the 1950s and, in the early Seventies, would appear in director Andrew Sinclair's film version as First Voice.
Alaska: America's last great wilderness frontier. A land of primitive grandeur, of glaciers, mountains and ice-fields. And of ambitious cannery tycoon Zeb "Czar" Kennedy (Richard Burton) and rugged activist leader Thor Storm (Robert Ryan), two rough-hewn men whose bitter 40-year rivalry mirrored their powerful land's struggle for statehood.
A young doctor returns to his Massachusetts home town at the request of a terminally ill old friend.
Richard Burton narrates this stunning film of two Polish soldiers struggling to make a living from a derelict farm in Carmarthenshire.
Prospero, the deposed Duke of Milan, who lives in exile on a remote island as a sorcerer, uses his powers to shipwreck his usurper brother on the island.
A dramatized account of a Victorian cause célèbre, written by John Osborne and concerning the true story of the last person in England to be tried for blasphemy. Richard Burton plays John George Holyoake, a social reformer who goes on trial for speaking in public about his atheist views. Rachel Roberts plays his wife, and the programme is introduced by Face to Face inquisitor John Freeman.
Amidst intrigue and cannibalism, a mad and homosexual king, searching for immortality, finds himself caught up between two women. Based on William Shakespeare's unfinished play.
Collaborative documentary (credited to a committee rather than to individual filmmakers) detailing the CND march from London to Aldermaston at Easter 1958.
A disillusioned, angry university graduate comes to terms with his grudge against middle-class life and values.
Mistreated foundling Heathcliff and his stepsister Catherine fall in love, but when she marries a wealthy man, he becomes obsessed with getting revenge, even well into the next generation.
In 1942, a cargo ship jammed with British evacuees from Singapore is sunk by a Japanese sub. A small lifeboat carries a beautiful woman, an army officer, a bigoted administrator, and a black seaman. Only the seaman knows the woman is a nun. The men reveal their true selves under the hardships of survival. Told in a too-long flashback frame.
During the second world war, two British officers, Brand and Leith, who have never seen combat are assigned a vital mission. Their relationship and the operation are complicated by the arrival of Brand's wife, who had a tryst with Leith years earlier.
He was a fierce military commander who led huge armies into battle without a single defeat; a magnificent warrior who many believed was part god - this was Alexander the Great (Richard Burton), the legendary Greek hero hailed by his countrymen as "The King of Kings". Born in 356 B.C. into a turbulent world of political unrest, educated by Aristotle (Barry Jones) and chosen to lead his people in the grand tradition of his powerful father (Fredric March), this glamorous world conqueror rose above all conflict to unite the continents of Europe and Asia to become one of the most celebrated rulers of all time! Written, produced and directed by Oscar - winner Robert Rossen and featuring the extraordinary Claire Bloom and a remarkable cast of thousands, this stunning portrait of one of history's most fascinating figures is colossal entertainment and an amazing spectacle.
Prince of Players is a biographical film about the 19th century American actor Edwin Booth.
India. The spoilt and stubborn Edwina Esketh, comes to a small town with her husband. She falls in love with an indian doctor, Dr. Safti. She also meets an old friend of hers, the alcoholic Tom Ransome. An awful earthquake is followed by days of rain.
Won the Academy Award for the Best Documentary Short of 1954. The subject deals with the children at The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, Kent. The hearing-handicapped children are shown painstakingly learning what words are through exercises and games, practicing lip-reading and finally speech. Richard Burton's calm and sometimes-poetic narration adds to the heartwarming cheerfulness and courage of the children.
Richard Burton plays a Scottish Army officer put in charge of a disparate band of ANZAC troops on the perimeter of Tobruk with the German Army doing their best to dislodge them
Marcellus is a tribune in the time of Christ. He is in charge of the group that is assigned to crucify Jesus. Drunk, he wins Jesus' homespun robe after the crucifixion. He is tormented by nightmares and delusions after the event. Hoping to find a way to live with what he has done, and still not believing in Jesus, he returns to Palestine to try and learn what he can of the man he killed.
A young man plots revenge against the woman he believes murdered his cousin, but his plans are shaken when he comes face to face with the enigmatic beauty.
When ship's fireman Peter McCabe walks out on his long-suffering wife, he leaves her impoverished, with two young daughters and a boy born soon after his departure. After an absence of fourteen years McCabe returns, sacked and humiliated, trailing trouble in his wake.
This is a British drama film from 1950 about a young woman in London in WW2 with amnesia.
An old woman fights a group of industrialists who are planning to build a dam and flood the valley where she grew up.
Tony Palmer's award-winning feature-length documentary profile of Richard Burton.
