Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.

When a troupe of danseuses becomes unemployed, one of them takes up burlesque dancing while another dreams of performing ballet.

The name John Frankenheimer became forever synonymous with heart-in-the-throat filmmaking when this quintessential sixties political thriller was released. Set in the early fifties, this razor-sharp adaptation of the novel by Richard Condon concerns the decorated U.S. Army sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), who as a prisoner during the Korean War is brainwashed into becoming a sleeper assassin in a Communist conspiracy, and a fellow POW (Frank Sinatra) who slowly uncovers the sinister plot. In an unforgettable performance, Angela Lansbury plays Raymond’s villainous mother, the controlling wife of a witch-hunting anti-Communist senator with his eyes on the White House. The rare film that takes aim at the frenzy of the McCarthy era while also being suffused with its Cold War paranoia, The Manchurian Candidate remains potent, shocking American moviemaking.

In his controversial masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin, in his first pure talkie, brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomainian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

A troubled man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her in the process.

Guillermo del Toro made an auspicious and audacious feature debut with Cronos, a highly unorthodox tale about the seductiveness of the idea of immortality. Kindly antiques dealer Jesús Gris (Federico Luppi) happens upon an ancient golden device in the shape of a scarab, and soon finds himself the possessor and victim of its sinister, addictive powers, as well as the target of a mysterious American named Angel (a delightfully crude and deranged Ron Perlman). Featuring marvelous special makeup effects and the haunting imagery for which del Toro has become world-renowned, Cronos is a dark, visually rich, and emotionally captivating fantasy.

A lonely shoe salesman and an eccentric performance artist struggle to connect in this unique take on contemporary life.

It's the tail end of winter in 1960. U.S. Senators Hubert Humphrey and John Kennedy seek the Democratic Party's nomination for President. Wisconsin's primary - one of the few direct primaries at the time - is on April 5. We see both candidates on the road; it's retail politics, shaking hands, signing autographs, smiling. We hear part of a standard stump speech from Kennedy; we watch Humphrey talk to farmers in a rural hall. Kennedy is favored. We see his wife, his brother Robert briefly, and on election night his sisters Pat and Eunice. Jacqueline speaks a few words of Polish at a Milwaukee rally. The returns come in; it's on to Indiana and West Virginia.

Allied prisoners of war plan for several hundred of their number to escape from a German camp during World War II.

A writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel's glorious years under an exceptional concierge.

For her first feature after graduating from the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography (VGIK), Larisa Shepitko trained her lens on the fascinating Russian character actress Maya Bulgakova, who gives a marvelous performance as a once heroic Russian fighter pilot now living a quiet, disappointingly ordinary life as a school principal. Subtly portraying one woman’s desperation with elegant, spare camera work and casual, fluid storytelling, Shepitko, with Wings, announced herself as an important new voice in Soviet cinema.

In Boston in the aftermath of the Civil War, Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter), a gifted young orator, has attracted the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), who wishes to nurture Verena as an inspirational force for the Women’s Movement. But ranged against her is Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve), a handsome male chauvinist who wants Verena as his wife. Against a backdrop of luminous New England landscapes, battle is joined, and for Olive the struggle will prove an odyssey that forces her to acknowledge her true nature. Merchant Ivory Productions’ acclaimed screen adaptation of the Henry James classic charts the struggle between two charismatic forces to gain control over the destiny of a spirited young woman.

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, and it is the legendary director’s warmest and most autobiographical film, a four-time Academy Award–winning triumph that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality.

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture – with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.

Marya (Isabelle Adjani), a former chorus girl of humble origins, is gleefully living it up in the decadence of 1920s Paris until Stephan (Anthony Higgins), her art dealer husband, is convicted of theft. Broke and alone, she is taken in by H.J. (Alan Bates) and Lois Heidler (Maggie Smith), a posh and eccentric married couple who take pity on the poor girl, though they barely know her. But before long this trio will become hopelessly entangled in a treacherous love triangle.