Anatole Litvak

Act of Love

While on holiday on the French Riviera, former soldier Robert Teller recounts his time in WWII-era France, where he meets and falls in love with a poor girl named Lise. However, they're unable to marry when Lise is accused of prostitution and Teller's commanding officer forbids the match. The couple's love is again tested when Teller learns the truth about his would-be wife's whereabouts.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.

No More Love

An American millionaire, who had always bad luck with women, bets that he can live without them for five years. But after four and a half years traveling around on his yacht, he rescues a lady from drowning in the English Channel.

Loves of Casanova

Republic of Venice, 1760. Pursued by a vengeful husband, the intrepid womanizer Casanova, who symbolizes the decline of the city and its fall into debauchery, manages to escape and, by a circuitous route, arrives in Saint Petersburg, where he will be involved in the many plots that threaten the throne of Czar Peter III…

The Night of the Generals

A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Goodbye Again

Middle-aged businesswoman Paula Tessier rejects the advances of her client's amusing 25-year-old son, Philip Van der Besh, but reconsiders when her longtime philandering partner begins yet another casual affair with a younger woman. She soon learns that May-December romances with older women are frowned upon in society.

Anastasia

Russian exiles in Paris plot to collect ten million pounds from the Bank of England by grooming a destitute, suicidal girl to pose as heir to the Russian throne. While Bounin is coaching her, he comes to believe that she is really Anastasia. In the end, the Empress must decide her claim.

Blues in the Night

A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.

Act of Love

While on holiday on the French Riviera, former soldier Robert Teller recounts his time in WWII-era France, where he meets and falls in love with a poor girl named Lise. However, they're unable to marry when Lise is accused of prostitution and Teller's commanding officer forbids the match. The couple's love is again tested when Teller learns the truth about his would-be wife's whereabouts.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Leona Stevenson is confined to bed and uses her telephone to keep in contact with the outside world. One day she overhears a murder plot on the telephone and is desperate to find out who is the intended victim.

No More Love

An American millionaire, who had always bad luck with women, bets that he can live without them for five years. But after four and a half years traveling around on his yacht, he rescues a lady from drowning in the English Channel.

Loves of Casanova

Republic of Venice, 1760. Pursued by a vengeful husband, the intrepid womanizer Casanova, who symbolizes the decline of the city and its fall into debauchery, manages to escape and, by a circuitous route, arrives in Saint Petersburg, where he will be involved in the many plots that threaten the throne of Czar Peter III…

The Night of the Generals

A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.

Goodbye Again

Middle-aged businesswoman Paula Tessier rejects the advances of her client's amusing 25-year-old son, Philip Van der Besh, but reconsiders when her longtime philandering partner begins yet another casual affair with a younger woman. She soon learns that May-December romances with older women are frowned upon in society.

Anastasia

Russian exiles in Paris plot to collect ten million pounds from the Bank of England by grooming a destitute, suicidal girl to pose as heir to the Russian throne. While Bounin is coaching her, he comes to believe that she is really Anastasia. In the end, the Empress must decide her claim.

Blues in the Night

A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.

The Journey

A Communist officer falls hard for a married woman trying to escape from Hungary.

Decision Before Dawn

WWII is entering its last phase: Germany is in ruins, but does not yield. The US army lacks crucial knowledge about the German units operating on the opposite side of the Rhine, and decides to send two German prisoners to gather information. The scheme is risky: the Gestapo retains a terribly efficient network to identify and capture spies and deserters. Moreover, it is not clear that "Tiger", who does not mind any dirty work as long as the price is right, and war-weary "Happy", who might be easily betrayed by his feelings, are dependable agents. After Tiger and another American agent are successfully infiltrated, Happy is parachuted in Bavaria. His duty: find out the whereabouts of a powerful German armored unit moving towards the western front.

Napoleon

A biopic of Napoleon Bonaparte, tracing the Corsican's career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign) to his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797.

Calais-Douvres

French language version of Nie wieder Liebe! (1931) Disgusted with love, a man bets 500,000 that he can live 5 years without a woman, joins a band of fellow women-haters, and manages to make it through 4 until he meets a troublesome young lady.

Show-Business at War

A multi-studio effort to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

City for Conquest

The heartbreaking but hopeful tale of Danny Kenny and Peggy Nash, two sweethearts who meet and struggle through their impoverished lives in New York City. When Peggy, hoping for something better in life for both of them, breaks off her engagement to Danny, he sets out to be a championship boxer, while she becomes a dancer paired with a sleazy partner. Will tragedy reunite the former lovers?

Meet Me at Dawn

A young man makes his living in Paris in 1900 by fighting duels on behalf of other parties. He is hired to injure a leading politician and starts to get involved with a girl he uses to provoke the challenge. One newspaper, hostile to the politician, headlines the story of the impending duel asking who this Madame X is. Problem is, she is in fact the daughter of the paper's proprietor if only he knew it.

The Deep Blue Sea

A woman is unhappy in her marriage to a boring, stiff judge, so she takes up with a wild-living RAF pilot, who ends up being more than she can handle.

Lilac

Also known as Lilac, this early Anatole Litvak-directed talkie was based on a play by Tristan Bernard and Charles Henry Hirsch. The story bears traces of the Bertold Brecht-Weill piece The Threepenny Opera, with heroine Lilac (Marcelle Romeo) consorting with the criminal scum of Paris. Lilac falls in love with a handsome detective (Andre Luguet), but he doesn't let his emotions stand in the way of his duty, and in the end he reluctantly turns her over to the authorities. At $120,000, Coeur de Lilas was one of the most expensive movies to come out of France in 1931, but it more than made back its cost at the box-office.

All This, and Heaven Too

When lovely and virtuous governess Henriette Deluzy comes to educate the children of the debonair Duc de Praslin, a royal subject to King Louis-Philippe and the husband of the volatile and obsessive Duchesse de Praslin, she instantly incurs the wrath of her mistress, who is insanely jealous of anyone who comes near her estranged husband. Though she saves the duchess's little son from a near-death illness and warms herself to all the children, she is nevertheless dismissed by the vengeful duchess as the attraction between the duke and Henriette continues to grow.

The Long Night

City police surround a building, attempting to capture a suspected murderer. The suspect knows there is no escape but refuses to give in.

This Above All

In 1940 England, aristocratic Prudence Cathaway alarms her snobbish parents by joining the WAF service branch. She soon meets and falls in love with the brooding Clive Briggs, despite his prejudice against the upper classes, and agrees to spend a week with him at a Dover hotel. When Clive's soldier friend, Monty, arrives to retrieve him, Prudence learns that Clive went AWOL after Dunkirk, and urges him to recall why England must fight the war.

The Snake Pit

Virginia Cunningham is confused upon finding herself in a mental hospital, with no memory of her arrival at the institution. Tormented by delusions and unable to even recognize her husband, Robert, she is treated by Dr. Mark Kik, who is determined to get to the root of her mental illness. As her treatment progresses, flashbacks depict events in Virginia's life that may have contributed to her instability.

Castle on the Hudson

A hardened crook behind bars comes up against a reform-minded warden.

Confessions of a Nazi Spy

FBI agent Ed Renard investigates the pre-War espionage activities of the German-American Bund.

Five Miles to Midnight

American ex-Air Force man and current businessman Bob Macklin is married to the impoverished Italian-born Lisa. Bob’s jealousy and immaturity irks Lisa, who tells him she’s planning to file for a divorce before his plane departs on a business trip for Casablanca.

Cinépanorama

Film Emigration from Nazi Germany

Based on extensive interviews, shot on 16mm in a series of static long takes, Filmemigration aus Nazideutschland, is one of the most fascinating examples of "Film history on film" ever produced. Straschek devoted years to researching the topic and accumulating both film and non-film materials. Apart from some radio features and articles, however, this 290-minute TV programme remains the only published trace of Straschek's lifelong work on the emigration of film personnel. He had intended to publish a three-volume book, encompassing all available data about 3,000 emigrants originating from the centre and peripheries of film production, but the book never materialised.