Notorious 1946 - Hitchcock's visual masterpiece

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern

"One of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, Notorious features the director at his devilishly elegant, self-assured best. The film's smooth veneer largely creates its visceral impact; lurking beneath the gloss are dealings of the most grotesque sort, their execution made all the more insidious by their sophisticated guise. Aside from containing one of Hitchcock's most famous MacGuffins, the uranium ore, Notorious boasts some of his most famous camerawork, most notably the gorgeous tracking shot during Sebastian's party that takes the viewer from the top of a staircase to Alicia's hand, clenched around the key that will lead her to the uranium ore. The camera moves with the quiet intimacy of an unobserved party guest, almost serpentine in its journey. Similarly ingenious is Hitchcock's use of point-of-view shots, particularly that of Alicia's waking up with a hangover and watching Devlin walk toward her as the camera spins 180 degrees. Seeing through Alicia's eyes, the audience sympathizes with her, making the character one of Hitchcock's most full-blooded and enduring heroines. It goes without saying that the success of Alicia's characterization is in no small part due to Ingrid Bergman's performance; tragic, lovelorn, and marked by logical cynicism, her portrayal of Alicia was one of the best of Bergman's career. She was ably supported by Cary Grant and Claude Rains, the former going against his likeable, effortlessly charismatic persona to play an initially charmless man with morals as questionable as the heroine's are supposed to be. Rains, paired with Bergman again after Casablanca, makes Sebastian into one of the film's more sympathetic characters; it is a mark of Rains' ability that when Sebastian turns to climb the stairs in the film's closing scene, we feel real terror for him. That Sebastian's fate is the result of both his own manipulations of others and his heart's manipulations of himself is at the center of the film's true MacGuffin: masquerading as a Cold War thriller, Notorious is one of the screen's classic black romances." - www.allmovie.com

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Casablanca 1942 - A truly classic masterpiece

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IMDB rating: 8,6

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S. Z. Sakall

"One of the most beloved American films, this captivating wartime adventure of romance and intrigue from director Michael Curtiz defies standard categorization. It's hard to imagine a movie in which the leads are better cast: Humphrey Bogart's tough, effortless cool gives Rick the ideal balance of honor and cynicism, Ingrid Bergman's luminous beauty makes it seem reasonable that men would fight for Ilsa's affections, and Paul Henreid's Victor is cold enough that you can imagine Ilsa's being tempted by her old flame. The supporting cast is superb down the line; Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, and S.Z. Sakall are all so memorable that one tends to forget that none is onscreen for very long. The screenplay often walks the border of cliché, but the story has just enough twists, and the dialogue so much snap, that it stays compelling throughout. And Michael Curtiz knew just when to turn on the schmaltz and when to cut it off. Casablanca blends romance, suspense, humor, and patriotic drama with such skill that one imagines it must have happened by accident, and the movie looks better with each passing year." - www.allmovie.com

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They won't forget 1937 - An emotionally gripping piece of American history

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IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, Edward Norris, Otto Kruger, Allyn Joslyn, Lana Turner

"This hard-hitting Warner Bros. courtroom drama begins with the usual 'Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental' disclaimer. Filmgoers with long memories, however, recognized Robert Rossen and Aben Kandel's screenplay as a blow-by-blow recreation of the Leo Frank-Mary Phagan case of 1915. Phagan, a 14-year-old employee in a Marietta, GA pencil factory, was found murdered. The bulk of the evidence pointed to a black janitor (who actually confessed to the crime years after the fact), but race-baiting Atlanta newspaper publisher Tom Watson decided to go after Leo Frank, the Northern Jew who owned the factory where Mary worked. 'We can lynch a nigger any time', the politically ambitious Watson is alleged to have said, 'but when do we get a chance to hang a Yankee Jew?' Thanks largely to Watson's 'guilt by headline' campaign, and to Fulton County's cooperative solicitor general, Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death. Georgia Governor John M. Slaton, who all along smelled something fishy in the case, commuted Frank's case to life imprisonment (and was ruined politically as a result). En route to prison, Frank was abducted by a mob and lynched, an incident that boosted the prestige of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan.
Aben Kandel dramatized this appalling miscarriage of justice in his novel Death in the Deep South, which served as the basis for They Won't Forget. In Mervyn LeRoy's film version, Lana Turner (in a star-making turn) plays Mary Clay, a teen-aged typing school student who dresses garishly and flirts with every man she meets. Mary is later found murdered; the last person to see her alive was her teacher, recently arrived Northerner Robert Hale (Edward Norris). Once more, a black janitor (played as a superstitious moron by Clinton Rosemond) is the most likely suspect, but the ambitious district attorney (Claude Rains) seems sincere in his belief that Hale is guilty. Once Hale is sentenced to death, the governor, played by Paul Everton, commutes his sentence, serene in the belief that, once his career is finished, he'll be able to retire peacefully (real-life governor Slaton did not go down so benignly).
Except for the removal of the original case's anti-Semitic elements, They Won't Forget is stark, powerhouse filmmaking, one of the best of Warners' 'social protest' films of the 1930s. 25 years would pass before Hollywood would return to Southern racism with To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. Viewed outside its historical context, They Won't Forget succeeds as a motion picture due to the passion of its director Mervyn LeRoy, and the fine performances of Claude Rains, Edward Norris, and Lana Turner. The film's socially conscious screenwriters, Robert Rossen and Abel Kandel, were hardly rewarded for their efforts: Rossen was among the first people blacklisted in the 1950s, while Kandel spent much of that era writing low-budget horror films under a pseudonym.
It was remade as the 1987 TV movie The Murder of Mary Phagan starring Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Peter Gallagher, and Charles S. Dutton (as well as as the unsuccessful 1998 Broadway musical Parade)." - www.allmovie.com

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Four daughters 1938 - Garfield introduced a new kind of rebellious acting style

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030149/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: Michael Curtiz
Main Cast: Claude Rains, John Garfield, Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Frank McHugh, May Robson

"Fannie Hurst's Sister Act was the source for this money-making Warners weeper. The four daughters of the title are played by the Lane Sisters - Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola - and by Gale Page. All are musical prodigies, and all are daughters of master-musician Claude Rains. John Garfield makes his movie debut (no, he wasn't in 1933's Footlight Parade) as an embittered piano genius. Garfield has us in the palm of his scruffy hand the moment he begins philosophizing about the fates: 'So they flipped a coin... heads he's poor, tails he's rich... they flipped a coin - with two heads'. Aware that he can bring only unhappiness to Priscilla Lane, the daughter who cares most for him, Garfield obligingly drives into a heavy snowstorm and is killed in an auto accident (but it's not staged as a suicide, lest the Hays Office spank). John Garfield made so powerful an impression in Four Daughters that Warners was compelled to write him into the sequel Four Wives, first as a flashback and then as (implicitly) a ghost. Another film, Daughters Courageous, was hastily constructed using the same cast, but with different character names so as to accommodate a happier denouement for Garfield and Lane. Four Daughters was remade in 1954 as Young at Heart, with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day in the John Garfield and Priscilla Lane roles." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/four-daughters-v18310

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The adventures of Robin Hood 1938 - Errol Flynn is the ultimate hero of Sherwood forests

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029843/
IMDB rating: 8,0

Directors: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley
Main Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles, Eugene Pallette

"The adventures of Robin Hood is one of the screen's greatest adventure films and an excellent example of how the studio system's production-by-committee method could create synergistically what, in that era, likely could not have been created by any single force. The hero behind the camera is co-director Michael Curtiz, who was installed by the corporate chiefs at Warner Bros. midway through production. Curtiz had little to do, though, with the impeccably selected cast. Errol Flynn may not have been the studio's first choice, but he is the screen's greatest Robin Hood. Among the film's many pleasures, you can watch for the meticulous attention to detail that was a hallmark of Curtiz's work. Incidentally, if you're wondering how the special effects were done on the split arrow stunt, there were no special effects. The astonishing shot was performed by professional archer Howard Hill who needed only one take.
James Cagney was originally announced for the role of Robin Hood, just before Cagney left Warner Bros. in a salary dispute. William Keighley was the original director, but he worked too slowly to suit the tight production schedule and was replaced by Curtiz (both men receive screen credit). A lengthy opening jousting sequence was shot but removed from the final print; portions of this sequence show up as stock footage in the 1957 Warners film The story of mankind. The chestnut-colored Palomino horse ridden by Olivia de Havilland in the Sherwood Forest scenes later gained screen stardom as Roy Rogers' Trigger."

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The clairvoyant 1935 - "The evil mind" of Claude Rains!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024989/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,7

Director: Maurice Elvey
Main Cast: Claude Rains, Fay Wray

"Claude Rains is a phony psychic who makes a good living fleecing the suckers with his wild prognostications. But after Rains is plagued by severe headaches, he discovers that he truly does have "visions". Suddenly his predictions begin to come true, and Rains is elevated to a position of prominence in European social and political circles. Despite the protestations of his loving wife (Fay Wray), Rains becomes intoxicated by his own power, which leads to disaster. Also known as The Evil Mind, The Clairvoyant is an elaborate British-made cautionary fable, with an excellent performance by Claude Rains and a remarkably good one from Fay Wray." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-clairvoyant-v87378

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The invisible man 1933 - A new kind of horror movie with humor!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024184/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: James Whale
Main Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan

"Based on H. G. Wells' novel, James Whale's The Invisible Man was a new kind of horror movie in 1933 - one that made audiences laugh almost as much as it frightened them. Whale might simply have relied on the dazzling impact of John Fulton's special effects, which did an extraordinary job of creating the illusion of an invisible man on screen. Instead, he challenged his audience's expectations by playing many of the key scenes for laughs, such as that of the shirt dancing around the room while the police officer chases it; the scenes between the inn keeper (Forrester Harvey) and his hysterical wife (Una O'Connor); and the confusion of various characters trying to describe what they've seen (or, more properly, haven't). Wittily scripted by R.C. Sherriff and an uncredited Philip Wylie, and brilliantly directed by James Whale, The Invisible Man is a near-untoppable combination of horror and humor. Also deserving of unqualified praise are the thorouhgly convincing special effects by John P. Fulton and John Mescall. With the exception of The Invisible Man Returns, none of the sequels came anywhere close to the quality of the 1933 original. Audiences feel as though they've seen two films for the price of one, and the mixing of genres and moods worked so well that Whale was emboldened to try for even more extremes of humor, irony, and horror in his next major movie, The Bride of Frankenstein, 18 months later, and succeeded even further beyond anyone's expectations, creating that rare sequel that outstrips its predecessor. It is on that film, and The Invisible Man, that much of Whale's 70-year-plus reputation as a master filmmaker and horror creator rest, and from these two movies that dozens of modern filmmakers, from Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper to Tim Burton, derived much of the inspiration for their work and their careers." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-invisible-man-v25334

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