For director Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich it all began with The Blue Angel, one of the masterpieces of Germany's Weimar cinema. This landmark film thrust the sultry and unrestrained Dietrich on an unsuspecting international film audience. She plays the prototypical role of Lola, the singer who tempts repressed professor Emil Jannings (the king of expressionist actors) into complete submission night after night at the Blue Angel nightclub. The film perfectly captures the masochism and degradation of the Weimar Republic, just before the rise of Adolf Hitler.
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Sophia Loren is in early bloom in this 1954 comedy, which was released years later (bluntly dubbed) in the U.S. to capitalize on her international success. Sophia plays two roles: Cleopatra, of course, and Cleopatra's double, a slave girl who spends a night impersonating the queen of Egypt. Mugging through this double act is Alberto Sordi, as a visiting Roman bewitched by the queen's lookalike. Rubber-faced Sordi, an enormous star in Italy for decades, looked like a cross between Sid Caesar and Gene Wilder, and his antic personality was given a long leash.
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Winchester '73 is the first in a remarkable string of five classic westerns that James Stewart made with Anthony Mann in the 1950s (followed by Bend of the River, The Man from Laramie, The Naked Spur, and The Far Country). It is also distinguished for having helped revive the Western at the box office, and for being the first film in which the star forsook a huge up-front salary in favor of a share of the profits--a strategy that made Stewart rich and forever changed the way that Hollywood does business. The movie itself is pretty darned impressive, too. Stewart traces a stolen Winchester rifle through several owners until he finds the man he's looking for. The final
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