Classic Drama
see all genres ›It’s the rare contemporary film that has depth, credibility and is satisfying in the most basic storytelling terms, but Hollywood and other national film industries used to crank out such rewards in bulk. Settle back and enjoy narratives as juicy as they are crafty.
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Genres / Classic / Classic Drama
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The Stranger
Having directed two undisputed masterpieces, CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, Orson Welles delved into the suspense film, crafting a baroque postwar thriller that drew upon the style of his previous work, while laying the groundwork for his later film noir classics THE LADY FROM...Watch Movie
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Cairo Station
As shocking now as it was on its original 1958 release, CAIRO STATION is the great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine's masterpiece, a street-level exposé of sexual obsession and working-class madness that is as grimy and claustrophobic as its Cairo railway-station setting. From its noirish...Watch Movie
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The Trial
Adapted from the novel by Franz Kafka, THE TRIAL stars Anthony Perkins as Joseph K., an innocent victim charged with an unnamed crime. Masterfully directed by Orson Welles, who sets a riveting, maddening and brilliantly disturbing pace. While the source for THE TRIAL is described as "restored" it...Watch Movie
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Hell is Sold Out
Believed dead, French resistance fighter and author Dominic Danges returns home from a POW camp to find his house occupied by an alleged wife who's published a best-selling novel under his name. He has to curb his fury, however, when it proves best for all concerned (including...Watch Movie
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Escape to Burma
"Tropic heat… and human hate!" squealed the posters for this entertainingly off-the-cuff B-movie, which finds a quartet of film noir veterans (director Allan Dwan, cinematographer John Alton and stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan) tearing loose amidst an old-fashioned adventure yarn set in...Watch Movie
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Edvard Munch
Famously described by Ingmar Bergman as a "work of genius," Peter Watkins' multi-faceted masterpiece is more than just a bio-pic of the iconic Norwegian Expressionist painter. Focusing initially on Munch's formative years in late 19th Century Kristiania (now Oslo), Watkins uses his trademark...Watch Movie
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Robinson Crusoe
The year is 1659. There is a shipwreck and the sole survivor, Robinson Crusoe, is washed ashore on a deserted tropical island. Suddenly faced with a hostile and unknown wilderness, he carves out a life for himself with his bare hands. Remarkably, he learns how to survive the maddening absence of...Watch Movie
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Sunflower
An Academy Award® nominee for Best Score (Henry Mancini), SUNFLOWER is a grandly emotional melodrama featuring a stunning performance by Sophia Loren. In another of the actress's great collaborations with director Vittorio De Sica (THE BICYCLE THIEF), Loren plays Giovanna, a steel-willed Italian...Watch Movie
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Our Town
OUR TOWN is the classic film based on Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a small New England town fraught with human drama, family conflict, marriage, life and death. Nominated for Best Picture, Best Leading Actress, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Score and Best Original...Watch Movie
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L'age d'or
In 1930, following their short film triumph UN CHIEN ANDALOU, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's created an hour-long avant-garde tour de force that's both an aesthetic avalanche of boldness and a withering attack on a society. L'AGE D'OR delivers a gleeful fever dream of bizarre humor and shocking...Watch Movie
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The Gospel According to Saint Matthew
The birth, life, teachings and death on the cross of Jesus Christ presented almost as a cinéma-vérité documentary. Pasolini's second feature seemed a strange choice for such a revolutionary director, but it is an attempt to take Christ out of the opulent church and present him...Watch Movie
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Four in the Morning
It is a moment before dawn and the river traffic on the Thames begins to ease its way through the fog. The River police find the body of a young girl left dry by the ebb tide. Her body is brought ashore and her possessions examined. Who is she? And what drove her to take her...Watch Movie
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A Star Is Born
Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) comes to Hollywood with dreams of stardom only to have them shattered by a ruthless, cold-hearted town without pity, where the chances of finding fame are one in a hundred thousand. Enter falling (and falling down drunk) movie star Norman Maine (Fredric March), whom...Watch Movie
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The Iron Crown
A deadly tournament for a princess' hand, a mystic "golden deer," babies switched at birth, a raised-by-lions quasi-Tarzan; everything but the proverbial kitchen sink was thrown into this extravagant fantasy adventure. Loin-clothed foundling Arminio (Massimo Girotti) leaves the jungle he grew up...Watch Movie
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The System
The seaside town of Roxham sparks to life only in the summer. So, to skim the cream off the season's spoils, the local boys put their "System" into operation. Through a carefully worked out plan the boys (David Hemmings, John Alderton and Andrew Ray) spot the pretty girls arriving on holiday....Watch Movie
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Fanny
Almost nineteen, Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a five-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in...Watch Movie
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Spare the Rod
At the rough Worrell Street School in London's East End, the pupils are kept in line by the harsh discipline of the staff and the occasional savage beating. An idealistic young schoolteacher (Max Bygraves) takes up his first post since leaving the Navy and resists the authoritarian rule of his...Watch Movie
