An ‘essayistic’ documentary in which Greenaway’s fierce criticism of today’s visual illiteracy is argued by means of a forensic search of Rembrandt’s Nightwatch. Greenaway explains the background, the context, the conspiracy, the murder and the motives of all its thirty-four painted characters who have conspired to kill for their combined self-advantage. Greenaway leads us through Rembrandt’s paintings into seventeenth-century Amsterdam. He paints a world that is democratic in principle, but is almost entirely ruled by twelve families. The notion exists of these regents as charitable and compassionate entities. However, reality was different.
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Mystery
Naufragio / Shipwreck (1978) Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
One woman (Murguía) lives waiting for his son (Alonso) who is a sailor. She hasn’t seen him for years although he writes to her a lot. The woman shares the letters and her grief with a co-worker and friend (Rojo). This last woman begins to idealize her friend’s son. One day, the mother gets sick and falls into a coma. Her son arrives but she is unconscious. He has a brief but passionate affair with her mother’s friend and then disappears, as quickly as he came back from the sea.
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Someone’s Watching Me! (1978) John Carpenter
A woman is slowly stalked to the brink of madness by a man watching her from the opposite tower block. Her attempts to get the police to take her seriously leave her with no option but to track him down herself.
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Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942) Harry Lachman
A young man visits his fiancée in a remote French villa where her scientist father resides. There he meets Noel, Dr. Renault’s mysterious assistant, who has a strange attraction to Renault’s daughter. Soon he learns Noel’s true identity: he is an ape that was turned into a man by Renault’s bizarre experiments!
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La décade prodigieuse / Ten Days Wonder (1971) Claude Chabrol, Anthony Perkins, Michel Piccoli, Marlène Jobert, Mystery, Drama
Anthony Perkins, a young sculptor with a weird penchant for waking up in strange hotels with his memory wiped clean and bloodied hands, invites a former professor (Michel Piccoli) to the Gatsby-like provincial manor presided over by his powerful tycoon father (Orson Welles). Welcomed by Welles’ young wife (Marlene Jobert), Piccoli soon finds a nest of rats beneath the bourgeoisie voluptuousness — a clan bound in a circle of illicit romance, blackmail, faked burglaries and, of course, murder.
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Taste of Excitement (1970) Don Sharp, Eva Renzi, David Buck, Peter Vaughan
A man has been killed on the Dover/Boulogne car ferry. What is the connection between him and the attempts being made to kill Jane Kerrell, a young girl in her early twenties? As she speeds through the French countryside to the South of France, several attempts are made on her life as she is deliberately forced off the road by another car. But when she reports these attempts, the local Cap Ferrat Police Inspector and the sinister psychiatrist, Dr. Forla believe these attempts are in her imagination and Dr Forla, concludes that Jane is mentally disturbed. At her wits end Jane finds an ally in the young English painter, Paul Hedley who finally believes her life is in danger following an attempt to murder him. When Inspector Malling of Scotland Yard and Mr. Breese arrive in Cap Ferrat trying to uncover the connection between Jane and the murdered man on the ferry, this thrilling puzzle of international intrigue begins to unravel against the backdrop of the French Riviera.
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The Sphinx (1933) Phil Rosen, Wilfred Lucas, Lionel Atwill, Sheila Terry, Theodore Newton
A man known to be a mute is suspected of committing a murder, as he was noticed at the scene. However, witnesses saw and heard him talking as he was leaving the scene of the crime. The police must determine if he is the actual killer or if he is being framed.
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Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944) Phil Rosen, Sidney Toler, Mantan Moreland, Arthur Loft
A scientist working on an important new invention which will protect Allied shipping from U-boat torpedoes has been assigned Secret Service security protection. Amazingly, despite the fact that his laboratory and experiments are located on the upper floor of his Washington mansion, he decides to host a cocktail party for friends on the first floor. Even though several of his guests are foreign nationals with shadowy pasts, he refuses to allow his bodyguards to attend because their presence might offend them. When he is killed by unknown means before joining them, the resultant summary investigation includes Honolulu detective Charlie Chan and children Tommy and Iris, later joined by Birmingham Brown, the chauffeur of one of the guests. When a preliminary autopsy reveals the scientist was electrocuted, Charlie and his associates must decide which of the suspects and red herrings is the guilty party.
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Big Brown Eyes (1936) Raoul Walsh, Cary Grant, Joan Bennett, Walter Pidgeon
Dan Barr is a flatfoot on the trail of jewel robbers. Eve Fallon is his girl of 5 years. We meet them spitting and sparring, but never doubting they’re in love. Eve is a manicurist, with an eye for news. Soon after we meet her, she’s out of the beauty salon and into the news-room as an ace reporter. With Eve’s help, Dan nabs one of the jewel gang members, Cortig, whose stray bullet killed a baby in the park. A spooked witness and a slick lawyer get Cortig off. Disgusted with the lack of justice, Dan quits the force to find his own justice. Eve, likewise, quits the paper and returns to her job as manicurist. While giving a manicure, Eve unwittingly discovers that a prominent local citizen is the jewel gang’s leader. All the while, Dan is hot on the trail. Their trails merge and the case is solved.
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Das Phantom von Soho / The Phantom of Soho (1964) Franz Josef Gottlieb, Dieter Borsche, Barbara Rütting, Hans Söhnker
Sgt. Halan and Chief Ins. Patten of Scotland Yard are called in to investigate several murders which have taken place near the Sansibar, a Soho nightclub. They soon discover the true story of the hooded killer in a grisly skull mask and golden gloves killing off the survivors of the shipwrecked “Yolanda”.
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The Man with Nine Lives (1940) Nick Grinde, Boris Karloff, Roger Pryor, Jo Ann Sayers
Dr. Leon Kravaal develops a potential cure for cancer, which involves freezing the patient. But an experiment goes awry when authorities believe Kravaal has killed a patient. Kravaal freezes the officials, along with himself. Years later, they are discovered and revived in hopes that Kravaal can indeed complete his cure. But human greed and weakness compound to disrupt the project.
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La moustache (2005) Emmanuel Carrère, Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric
Marc is sitting in his bath one morning and asks his wife, “how would you feel if I shaved off my mustache?” She doesn’t think it’s a great idea, for the 15 years they’ve been married, she’s never known him without his ‘stache. He shaves it off anyway, but when he sees his wife, she doesn’t notice, neither do their friends at dinner that night, neither do his co-workers. Marc finally flips out, shouts at everyone, tells them he’s tired of their little joke, and what do they really think. His wife and co-workers are appalled, what is he talking about, he’s never had a mustache. In fact, he’s imagining other things as well, or is he?
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Death at Broadcasting House (1934) Reginald Denham, Ian Hunter, Austin Trevor, Lilian Oldland
When an actor is murdered during the recording of a radio play, Detective Inspector Gregory quickly discovers that the victim had many enemies amongst his fellow players. When his deductions lead him into a blind alley he decides to reconstruct the crime, hoping that this tried and tested device will lead him to the killer. All the technical and human resources of Broadcasting House are brought to his aid…
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