Directed by John Ford • 1940 • United States
Starring John Wayne, Ward Bond, Ian Hunter
Shot in stunning chiaroscuro by master cinematographer Gregg Toland, THE LONG VOYAGE HOME is John Ford’s and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s lyrical adaptation of four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill, distilled into one movingly expressive human drama. En route from the West Indies to Baltimore aboard the British tramp steamer the SS Glencairn, a motley crew of men—including Irishman Driscoll (Thomas Mitchell), young Swede Olsen (John Wayne), and Brit Smitty (Ian Hunter)—confront both personal demons and the specter of World War II. When the ship takes on a cargo of dynamite and suspicion grows that one of the crew members may be a German spy, tension and fear threaten the men’s camaraderie.
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring
THE RED SHOES, the singular fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is cinema’s quintessential backstage drama, as well as one of the most glorious Tech...
Directed by Abraham Polonsky • 1948 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor
In this expressively tough and terse noir classic, shady lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) joins forces with a ruthless gangster (Roy Roberts) to consolidate control of the numbers racket in Ne...
Directed by Max Ophuls • 1949 • United States
Starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan
One of the outstanding and often overlooked films that the legendary European filmmaker Max Ophuls (THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE . . .) made during his Hollywood exile is a visually superb, noir-ting...
