1930s

A man gets rid of a cheap pot without knowing it contains a map to a treasure. As word spreads, many join in hunting it.

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well-to-do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois. The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations. With Boudu Saved from Drowning, legendary director Jean Renoir takes advantage of a host of Parisian locations and the anarchic charms of his lead actor to create an effervescent satire of the bourgeoisie.

1939 film by Jean Renoir

1932 film by Yasujiro Ozu

The family of a Parisian shop-owner spends a day in the country. The daughter falls in love with a man at the inn, where they spend the day.

During the 18th century, German noblewoman Sophia Frederica, who would later become Catherine the Great, travels to Moscow to marry the dimwitted Grand Duke Peter, the heir to the Russian throne. Their arranged marriage proves to be loveless, and Catherine takes many lovers, including the handsome Count Alexei, and bears a son. When the unstable Peter eventually ascends to the throne, Catherine plots to oust him from power.

Young Dorothy finds herself in a magical world where she makes friends with a lion, a scarecrow and a tin man as they make their way along the yellow brick road to talk with the Wizard and ask for the things they miss most in their lives. The Wicked Witch of the West is the only thing that could stop them.

In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.

A student of the occult encounters supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside of Paris.

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

1938 film by Howard Hawks

In the carnival in Spain in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the exiled republican Antonio Galvan comes from Paris masquerade to enjoy the party and visit his friend Capt. Don Pasqual 'Pasqualito' Costelar. However, he flirts with the mysterious Concha Perez and they schedule to meet each other later. When Antonio meets Pasqualito, his old friend discloses his frustrated relationship with the promiscuous Concha and her greedy mother and how his life was ruined by his obsession for the beautiful demimondaine. Pasqualito makes Antonio promise that he would not see Concha. However, when Antonio meets Concha, she seduces him and the long friendship between Antonio and Pasqualito is disrupted

1933 film by Max Ophüls

Alexander Dovzhenko’s first sound film, revolving around the construction of a giant dam on the Dnieper River, is one of his greatest, though it was poorly received in the Soviet Union when it came out in 1932. It’s only one of the eccentricities of this lyrical and monumental feature that the title refers to three different characters, and it’s telling that the father of one of them, an illiterate peasant who proudly spends his time fishing and loafing while everyone else works, is treated with considerable warmth. (A sequence in which he’s frightened when addressed by an outdoor loudspeaker evokes Chaplin as well as Tati.) As in all of Dovzhenko’s best work, the style veers closer to lyrical poetry (its opening sequence about the river) and portraiture (a later segment introducing us to various workers) than to narrative, though it’s innovative in other respects as well: the final sequence includes some striking jump cuts almost 30 years before Jean-Luc Godard purportedly invented them in Breathless.

A gentleman thief charms a Viennese baron's wife and also conducts a daring daylight robbery of a jeweller's shop.

Originally made as a silent film, Odna was released in 1931 as a 'sound' film – which differs from a talkie because although there are sound effects in the film, there is no synchronised dialogue and it was intended to be performed with an orchestral accompaniment using a score by Shostakovich. After it fell into political disfavour the film was archived in the Lenfilm complex, which was destroyed during the siege of Leningrad. Fortunately, although much of the score was lost, all but one 8-minute reel survived, as did the full score for the missing reel. Mark Fitz-Gerald and colleagues, with the encouragement of Shostakovich's widow, completed the restoration of the original score in 2003. It was first performed in the Netherlands and has also been performed in France, Switzerland and Germany. I attended the London Premiere on 10th February 2006. Normally, a review relates to an experience that can be shared subsequently by any cinema-goer, or watcher of DVDs. A live concert performance (the BBC Symphony Orchesttra conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald) is different. The entire orchestral performance and live sound effects such as the throat singer, Theramin and Harmonium will not be constant factors - which is why performances of great musical works are reviewed repeatedly. The performance I experienced may be different from what you experience. For me, what might have been a rather sentimental ending was transformed by the 'buzz' of the live musical climax (the entire restored score was performed, with titles explaining the action of the missing reel). A notable feature of the film was the superb natural performance of the 'actors' (including a real shaman performing a real ritual) with none of the exaggerated eye makeup of 'Napoleon' and the German expressionists. Such a live performance converted a good propaganda film into something more sublime and an experience that should not be missed if the opportunity is repeated.

Having naively assumed that Kalatozov without Urusevsky would be somewhat underwhelming, I was astounded to see the brilliance of the imagery and montage in his early silent works (both here and in Salt For Svanetia). The machine-gun editing is as exhilarating as anything I've seen, and would surely have Guy Maddin weeping tears of joy. I've no idea what the film is actually about, but I believe it may well be a Russian paean to quality footwear (in the spirit of St. Hubbins). Either way, the lack of subtitles is entirely irrelevant, as this is a film where the inventiveness of the visual language is of paramount importance - indeed, it's so formally daring that it makes the vast majority of contemporary filmmaking seem utterly anaemic by way of comparison.

The film was a great success, De Sica and Lia Franca became stars and the song Parlami d'amore Mariù was a hit. Rarelly in Italian film history, it was filmed on real Milan locations, nowadays it is a sort of documentary how was Milan in the 30s. The film was remade in 1953 by Glauco Pellegrini.

Prim professor Immanuel Rath finds some of his students ogling racy photos of cabaret performer Lola Lola and visits a local club, The Blue Angel, in an attempt to catch them there. Seeing Lola perform, the teacher is filled with lust, eventually resigning his position at the school to marry the young woman. However, his marriage to a coquette -- whose job is to entice men -- proves to be more difficult than Rath imagined.