42nd Street is the classic, fast-paced, backstage movie musical - a refreshing film that changed the film musical forever and saved Warner Bros. studios from bankruptcy, helping it grow into a major studio. Set during the Depression and about the Depression, this film is considered the backstage musical par excellence, the grand-daddy of them all. It was based on the 'putting-on-a-show' tradition stemming from MGM's first sound film, The Broadway Melody (1929), another "backstage musical."
Calle 42 es el clásico musical vertiginoso tras bambalinas, un film renovador que cambió el género para siempre y salvó a la Warner de la quiebra, contribuyendo a convertirla en uno de los cinco estudios más importantes. Ambientado durante la Gran Depresión y abordando ese tema, este film es considerado el musical de bambalinas por excelencia, el antepasado de todos ellos. Estrenado en 1933, Calle 42 continuaba aquella tradición del espectáculo dentro del espectáculo que se iniciara con el primer film sonoro de la MGM, La melodía de Broadway.

Borzage’s first popular success was Seventh Heaven (1927), the earliest of his powerful melodramas. It was released both as a silent film and with a score and sound effects; it won him an award as best director of 1927/28 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
El primer éxito de público de Borzage fue El Séptimo Cielo (1927), el primero de sus poderosos melodramas. Se distribuyó como film mudo con banda musical y efectos de sonido y le valió a Borzage el premio de la Academia para mejor director de 1927/8.

Ageing ex-geisha has always saved her money and is now a grasping property investor and moneylender. Ex-colleagues and lovers both resent her and try to borrow from her. She grows increasingly cynical and hardbitten while the others struggle financially and turn to drink. Grown children leave home for better lives elsewhere.

Antonio Pisapia, known as Tony, is a pop singer. He has a namesake, a few years younger than him, who is a professional footballer. They have completely different characters: the first is a cynical and egocentric braggart, while the other is shy, humble and morose. For both men, the 1980s promise wealth, success and thrills, but their luck doesn't last long. (Variety)

When the father is canned at work, an average Tokyo family goes into slo-mo freefall in “Tokyo Sonata,” a quizzical dramedy by Kiyoshi Kurosawa .
Cuando el padre es echado del trabajo sin aviso previo, una familia común de Tokio experimenta la caída libre en cámara lenta en Tokyo Sonata, socarrona tragicomedia de Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

The Life of Jimmy Dolan, UK title The Kid's Last Fight, is a 1933 film starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta Young. It features John Wayne in a small supporting role as a frightened boxer, and Mickey Rooney as an orphanage kid. It was remade in 1939 as They Made Me a Criminal.

Tokyo March is a 1929 black and white Japanese silent film with benshi accompaniment directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. It is a classic melodramatic love tragedy addressing social inequality in modern Japan, depicted in Mizoguchi's typical style. The nostalgic scenes of Tokyo in the 1920s offers a valuable visual experience.

This is the first movie by Liu Bingjian, who would later direct Cry Woman, and would then be forced to abandon filmmaking (according to this source). Men and Women (the original intended title was Brilliant WC) is a typical "sixth generation" low-key urban drama. Banned in China for its open portrayal of homosexuality, Bingjian Liu's Men and Women is a comedy of sexual awakenings and blurred gender identity.

Chinese Bookie does offer a neat microcosm of Cassavetes in the movie business, with the central conflict between gangsters (i.e., studio money men) and the creative impresario of a strip joint, played with languid competence by Ben Gazzara. Initially, at 135 minutes, the movie was subsequently re-edited by Cassavetes to 109 minutes. This is the 1976 version.

At first glance, Mizoguchi's Empress Yang Kwei Fei is Asian cinema’s answer to Lola Montes – the Max Ophuls extravaganza made that same year. An overpoweringly lush colour fantasia (half history, half Cinderella) about a young woman who rises from murky origins to snare the heart of a reigning monarch. A historical fairytale without, of course, a “happy ever after” ending. In both films, the rapid rise of our heroine throws society into chaos and open revolt. Poor Lola ends her days in a circus freak-show; a hapless Yang Kwei Fei pays for her triumph with her life.

June, 1940. In a German prisoner-of-war camp in North-East France, three soldiers are united by their desire to escape and return to their ordinary civilian lives. One of the last works by Jean Renoir.

Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine, the first movie in 20 years by the long-banned Bahman Farmanara, a onetime distributor of foreign films in North America, is a humorously death-haunted psychodrama in which the filmmaker—playing a movie director called Bahman Farjami—undertakes an absurd quest to document his own funeral. (The Village Voice)

Suzuki may be compared with any of the great mavericks who subvert the studio system by personally reinventing or restructuring popular conventions of cinema, and mostly getting away with it. (Senses of Cinema)

Three San Quentin escapees (Penny, Hastings and Morgan) kill a cop in a gas-station holdup. Wounded, Morgan flees through black-shadowed streets to the handiest refuge: with former cellmate Steve Lacey, who's paroled, with a new life and lovely wife, and can't afford to be caught associating with old cronies. But homicide detective Sims wants to use Steve to help him catch Penny and Hastings, who in turn extort his help in a bank job. Is there no way out for Steve?

Noir favorite Audrey Totter (The Set-Up) leaves her mousy but devoted spouse (Richard Basehart) for another man, and the Tension mounts as he plots revenge, then sees his plan take an unexpected turn. Cyd Charisse, Barry Sullivan and William Conrad co-star in a bitter tale of the postwar American dream frayed into nightmare.