William Wyler
The silent cinema had already created colossal movies based on ancient civilizations, but it is in the 1950s when peplums reach their apogee in Hollywood. Then, peplums take root at Cinecittà studios, in Rome, where cheap cinema is produced with bodybuilders as heroes. The genre decays in the late 1960s, but rises again decades later, when a modern classic is released in 2000.
A meditation on youth, war and stunning bravery, featuring footage, taken from the National Archives, from the documentary filmed in 1943 by legendary Hollywood director William Wyler about the famous Memphis Belle flying fortress and the gripping narration from some of the last surviving B-17 pilots.
Eleven heart pounding WWII films, more than five hours of vintage content in one definitive collection. WWII: Air War contains 11 remarkable documentary films on six DVDs selected by specialists at the National Archives. New recruits attend gunnery training in The Rear Gunner and Memphis Belle follows the final mission of the B-17 bomber. Bomber chronicles the manufacture of one fighting aircraft. Thunderbolts covers the 12th Army Air Forces in Europe in 1944 and 45. In Combat America, Clark Gable narrates a dramatization of the 351st Bomber Group. Expansion to Air Power chronicles the forming the US Army Air Forces (AAF) and Army Air Forces: Pacific shows the AAF in the North Pacific. Air War in Europe features footage of Allied forces executing bombing missions and AAF Report showcases AAF accomplishments in 1943. In The Fight for the Sky,
Current filmmakers such as Ridley Scott and George Lucas reflect on the importance and influence of the epic classic "Ben-Hur".
Documentary about how the creative energies of Darryl F. Zanuck and John Ford combined to forge an enduring masterpiece despite the challenges of wartime production.
Jane Fonda hosts the AFI Life Achievement Awards ceremony honoring Bette Davis featuring clips from her films and the reminiscences of many co-workers.
In 1976, William Wyler became the fourth recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, following John Ford, James Cagney and Orson Welles.
A gloomy vision of the possibility of decent relations between whites and blacks anywhere, including the South. Undertaker L.B. Jones, the richest black man in his county of Tennessee, is divorcing his wife for infidelity with a white policeman. Taking a stand against racism, he is greeted with a hostile bunch of Southern bigots and other various stereotypes.
The story of the life of comedienne Fanny Brice, from her early days in the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, to the height of her career with the Ziegfeld Follies, including her marriage to and eventual divorce from her first husband, Nick Arnstein.
A woman must steal a statue from a Paris museum to help conceal her father's art forgeries.
Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money, and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girl friend - in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar, and stalks his victim over several days.
A private school for young girls is scandalized when one spiteful student, Mary Tilford, accuses the two young women who run the school of having a lesbian relationship.
Judah Ben-Hur, a Palestinian Jew, is battling the Roman empire at the time of Christ. His actions send him and his family into slavery, but an inspirational encounter with Jesus changes everything. He finally meets his rival in a justly famous chariot race and rescues his suffering family.
Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the vast expanse of the West to marry fiancée Pat Terrill. McKay is a man whose values and approach to life are a mystery to the ranchers and ranch foreman Steve Leech takes an immediate dislike to him. Pat is spoiled, selfish and controlled by her wealthy father, Major Henry Terrill. The Major is involved in a ruthless civil war, over watering rights for cattle, with a rough hewn clan led by Rufus Hannassey. The land in question is owned by Julie Maragon and both Terrill and Hannassey want it.
Behind the scenes look during the filming of William Wyler's 1958 western, The Big Country
The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real trouble. Should they fight, despite their peaceful attitude?
A collection of amateur films made by photographer Roderic Vickers and friends. These are followed by film shot by Vickers in Australia during production of Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, then by footage he shot on the backlot of Cinecitta Studios in Rome during production of Ben-Hur.
Overwhelmed by her suffocating schedule, touring European princess Ann takes off for a night while in Rome. When a sedative she took from her doctor kicks in, however, she falls asleep on a park bench and is found by an American reporter, Joe Bradley, who takes her back to his apartment for safety. At work the next morning, Joe finds out Ann's regal identity and bets his editor he can get exclusive interview with her, but romance soon gets in the way.
A documentary short film depicting the work of the motion picture director. An anonymous director is shown preparing the various aspects of a film for production, meeting with the writer and producer, approving wardrobe and set design, rehearsing scenes with the actors and camera crew, shooting the scenes, watching dailies, working with the editor and composer, and attending the first preview. Then a number of real directors are shown in archive footage (as well as a predominance of staged 'archive' footage) working with actors and crew.
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det. Jim McLeod, leads a precinct of characters in their grim daily battle with the city's lowlife. The characters who pass through the precinct over the course of the day include a young petty embezzler, a pair of burglars, and a naive shoplifter.
Dull and plain Catherine lives with her emotionally distant father, Dr. Sloper, in 1840s New York. Her days are empty -- filled with little more than needlepoint. Enter handsome Morris Townsend, a dashing social climber with his eye on the spinster's heart and substantial inheritance.
Documentary about the U.S. Air Force's P-47 Thunderbolt bomber's role in the Italian Campaign.
It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare. Captain Fred Derry is returning to a loveless marriage; Sergeant Al Stephenson is a stranger to a family that's grown up without him; and young sailor Homer Parrish is tormented by the loss of his hands. Can these three men find the courage to rebuild their world? Or are the best years of their lives a thing of the past?
This documentary centers on the crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to execute a strategic bombing raid on sub-pens in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
English middle-class family, The Minivers, experience life in the first months of World War II.
The ruthless, moneyed Hubbard clan lives in, and poisons, their part of the deep South at the turn of the 20th century. Regina Giddons née Hubbard has her daughter under her thumb. Mrs. Giddons is estranged from her husband, who is convalescing in Baltimore and suffers from a terminal illness. But she needs him home, and will manipulate her daughter to help bring him back. She has a sneaky business deal that she's cooking up with her two elder brothers, Oscar and Ben. Oscar has a flighty, unhappy wife and a dishonest worm of a son. Will the daughter have to marry this contemptible cousin? Who will she grow up to be - her mother or her aunt? Or can she escape the fate of both?
Drifter Cole Harden is accused of stealing a horse and faces hanging by self-appointed Judge Roy Bean, but Harden manages to talk his way out of it by claiming to be a friend of stage star Lillie Langtry, with whom the judge is obsessed, even though he has never met her. Tensions rise when Harden comes to the defense of a group of struggling homesteaders who Judge Bean is trying to drive away.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
The Earnshaws are Yorkshire farmers during the early 19th Century. One day, Mr. Earnshaw returns from a trip to the city, bringing with him a ragged little boy called Heathcliff. Earnshaw's son, Hindley, resents the child, but Heathcliff becomes companion and soulmate to Hindley's sister, Catherine. After her parents die, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up wild and free on the Moors and despite the continued enmity between Hindley and Heathcliff they're happy -- until Cathy meets Edgar Linton, the son of a wealthy neighbor.
Mobster "Baby Face" Martin returns home to visit the New York neighborhood where he grew up, dropping in on his mother, who rejects him because of his gangster lifestyle, and his old girlfriend, Francey, now a syphilitic prostitute. Martin also crosses paths with Dave, a childhood friend struggling to make it as an architect, and the Dead End Kids, a gang of young boys roaming the streets of the city's East Side slums.
Martha and Karen graduate from college and turn an old Massachusetts farm into a school for girls. The friends are aided in their venture by local doctor Joe Cardin, who begins a relationship with Karen, and a prominent woman whose granddaughter, Mary, later enrolls in the new school. Mary soon reveals herself to be a spiteful child and tells a scandalous lie about Martha and Joe that threatens to destroy the lives of all involved.
An ambitious lumberjack abandons his saloon girl lover so that he can marry into wealth, but years later becomes infatuated with the woman's daughter.
Mirabel wins a $5,000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.
In 1930s Budapest, naïve orphan Luisa Ginglebuscher becomes an usherette at the local movie house, determined to succeed in her first job by doing good deeds for others and maintaining her purity. Luisa's well-meaning lies get her caught between a lecherous businessman, Konrad, and a decent but confused doctor, Max Sporum. When Luisa convinces Konrad that she's married to Max, Konrad tries everything he can to get rid of the baffled doctor.
Successful attorney has his Jewish heritage and poverty-stricken background brought home to him when he learns his wife has been unfaithful.
A New England fisherman's (Walter Huston) second wife (Helen Chandler) prefers his son (Kent Douglass).
Three bank robbers on the run happen across a woman about to give birth in an abandoned covered wagon. Before she dies, she names the three bandits as her newborn son's godfathers.
The life of a less-than successful professional boxer changes when he takes in an orphan.
A chorus girl loses her job and thus the room she owes back rent on, and ends up being rescued from the street by a dashing rich man. But his family isn't over-accepting of chorus girls joining their family.
Anybody Here Seen Kelly? is a 1928 American silent comedy film directed by William Wyler. This was the first non-Western film to be directed by Wyler and is now considered to be a lost film. This is Bessie Love's final silent film.
As Betty arrives from the East Coast to take over the ranch and fortune left by her late father, the trip is interrupted by an Indian attack.
Bandits kidnap an old prospector, threatening to let him starve if he refuses to reveal the location of his gold mine. The old man's partner, hoping to get a share of the loot, tells the place to the crooks.
Cobb plays a Mountie called Field, who protects a girl from Jackson Rasker, the leader of an outlaw gang. Field falls for the girl, but her father's dying wish is that she should marry Rasker, who will stop at nothing to get the gal.
While he goes to his lender to repay his debts, Sam Perry is robbed. He decides to hunt down the bandit, whose description corresponds strangely to that of Dutton, known as "Dude".
American Western film directed by William Wyler and written by Basil Dickey and Gardner Bradford.
An irascible and brutal boss, Will King, owner of the Deux Croix ranch, sends his employees back on the slightest pretext. Only his wife resists him. Burke, a bum who is looking for a bad move, shows up on the ranch pretending to be an experienced cowboy.
Returning home from the Great War, "Breezy" Hart (Fred Humes) and his shell-shocked buddy Frank Wilcox (Ralph McCullough) discover the Wilcox property in the hands of evil Sam Hardy (William Norton Bailey). Frank, who is the rightful heir to the ranch, goes into hiding, while "Breezy" takes a job in the ranch kitchen. Learning of Frank's whereabouts, Hardy plots to have the young heir killed. Luckily, Breezy overhears the villain plotting with his henchmen and is able to rescue his friend. Hardy and his men are arrested, and Frank, now cured of his illness, is reunited with his girl, June Marston (Nita Cavalier). Breezy, meanwhile, is busy romancing his kitchen staff colleague, Mary Jane (Louise Lorraine).
