Double indemnity 1944 - The definitive American film noir

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 8,5

Director: Billy Wilder
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, Edward G. Robinson

"Directed by Billy Wilder and adapted from a James M. Cain novel by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity represents the high-water mark of 1940s film noir urban crime dramas in which a greedy, weak man is seduced and trapped by a cold, evil woman amidst the dark shadows and Expressionist lighting of modern cities. The idiosyncratically attractive Stanwyck, generally thought of as pretty but hardly a bombshell, was rarely as sexy as she was as Phyllis Dietrichson, and never as sleazy; Phyllis knows how to use her allure to twist men around her little finger, and from the moment Walter Neff lays eyes on her, he's taken a sharp turn down the Wrong Path, as Phyllis oozes erotic attraction at its least wholesome. While MacMurray was best known as a 'nice guy' leading man (an image that stuck with him to the end of his career), he was capable of much more, and he gave perhaps the finest performance of his life as Walter Neff, a sharp-talking wise guy who loses himself to weak, murderous corruption when he finds his Achilles Heel in the brassy blonde Phyllis. (MacMurray's only role that rivalled it was as the heartless Mr. Sheldrake in The Apartment, also directed by Wilder.) And, while they followed the Hays Code to the letter, Wilder and Chandler packed this story with seething sexual tension; Neff's morbid fascination with Phyllis's ankle bracelet is as brazenly fetishistic as 1940s filmmaking got. Double Indemnity was not a film designed to make evil seem attractive - but it's sure a lot of fun to watch. Double Indemnity ranks with the classics of mainstream Hollywood movie-making." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Meet John Doe 1941 - Capra's dark and powerful comedy about the power of the press

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, Walter Brennan, Spring Byington, James Gleason, Gene Lockhart, Rod La Rocque

"Meet John Doe is the Frank Capra movie that spoke most directly to the mood of the United States at the time that it was made. It's a fundamentally pessimistic film, without a positive resolution, and also an astonishingly mature movie - virtually groundbreaking as a 'message' movie aimed at a mainstream audience. Appearing in 1940, it closed out a decade that had been dominated by despair, disillusionment, dislocation (economic and personal), and desperation, a period characterized by a reliance on often inept government officials or duplicitous would-be leaders. All of these elements are present in Meet John Doe from its opening scene (a mass layoff at a newspaper), and they get addressed over and over again as the plot unfolds. The movie also had the courage to put some very attractive stars - Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck - in some very unattractive roles, as two people putting over a huge fraud on a public that trusts them. It wasn't considered a very successful film in its own time, being a little too dark and mature amid the ominous reality of the European war being waged at the time, but it is probably the best of Capra's 'message' pictures and his best slice-of-life drama other than It Happened One Night." - www.allmovie.com

Download links:

https://archive.org/download/meet_john_doe/meet_john_doe_512kb.mp4

The lady Eve 1941 - An outstanding romantic comedy showing Sturges' perfection

IMDB Link

IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Preston Sturges
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette,William Demarest

Preston Sturges wrote and directed this classic romantic comedy starring Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, who are involved in a scintillating battle of the sexes, as Sturges points up the terrors of sexual passion and the unattainability of the romantic ideal. The Lady Eve is among the funniest films of the World War II era, and one of the few comedies whose humor has survived both cultural changes and shifting audience demographics. Directed by Preston Sturges with his usual efficiency, the battle-of-the-sexes story allows star performers Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck to shine, though supporting performer William Demarest often steals the show. As was common in the censorship-laden war era, Sturges resorted to several clever sexual symbols. Fonda's character is an expert on snakes, and there is a funny moment when the audience catches the phallically suggestive book title, Are Snakes Necessary?. The dialogue is consistently bright and peppy. - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Ladies they talk about 1933 - Bad girl Stanwyck behind bars

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 6,7

Directors: Howard P. Bretherton, William Keighley
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Dorothy Burgess, Lillian Roth

"The women in prison genre reached its peak in the 1950s, but the progenitor of those films can be found in 1933's Ladies They Talk About. Based on a play by actress Dorothy Mackaye, which in turn was loosely based on her actual experiences in a women's prison, Ladies is sheer delight for lovers of hard-boiled dames slinging snappy phrases around like so much hash. As is often the case with films in this genre, the plot has a number of credibility gaps; most of them are passable and add to the general enjoyment, but the final one - in which the heroine shoots and wounds the man she hates, only to immediately declare her love for him, after which he tells the cops that it's nothing and he plans to marry her - does take the cake. The soft country club conditions of the women's prison, which includes dorm-style rooms with lace curtains, is also a bit hard to take. But it doesn't matter, for Ladies has the one and only Barbara Stanwyck on hand to add her special magic to the salty dialogue and to make one happy to overlook any problems with the screenplay. Add in a good supporting cast that includes Lillian Roth warbling a song to a picture of Joe E. Brown, and you have a picture that may not be great but is definitely entertaining." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The bitter tea of general Yen 1933 - Capra's most atypical and sensual film

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly, Gavin Gordon

"The Bitter Tea of General Yen is the oddest, least characteristic talkie effort of director Frank Capra. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the intended of an American missionary (Gavin Gordon) who is sent to spread the good word in China. During a military revolution, Stanwyck and her fiance inadvertently wander into forbidden territory while trying to help a group of orphans escape. The couple is forcibly detained by elegant warlord General Yen (played by Swedish actor Nils Ashter), who relies upon the financial advice of drunken American expatriate Walter Connolly. Yen is overcome with desire at the sight of Stanwyck; at first repulsed by his attentions, Stanwyck finds herself strangely drawn in by his charisma. When everyone but Connolly deserts Yen when he needs them most, Stanwyck offers to stay behind with the General. Fearing that he will never be able to truly attain the woman he so loves, the honorable General Yen commits suicide by drinking poisoned tea rather than put her in harm's way. The one scene that everyone remembers takes place during one of Stanwyck's fevered dreams, in which she imagines Yen as a Fu Manchu-type rapist, who then melts into a gentle, courtly suitor. Directed with the exotic aplomb of a Josef von Sternberg by the usually down-to-earth Frank Capra, The Bitter Tea of General Yen was unfortunately a box office failure, due in great part to its miscegenation theme (this was still 1933)." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

Illicit 1931 - Stanwyck exudes raw sensuality

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 6,2

Director: Archie Mayo
Main Caast: Barbara Stanwyck, James Rennie, Ricardo Cortez, Natalie Moorhead, Charles Butterworth, Joan Blondell

"'Nearly every girl I know is either unhappily married or unhappily divorced' -  a no-nonsense Barbara Stanwyck tells prospective father-in-law Claude Gillingwater in an early scene in this frank society drama from Warner Bros. Despite rumors of an illicit affair with handsome James Rennie, Gillingwater's son, Stanwyck remains doubtful of whether marriage is for her. And amazingly to viewers accustomed to post Production Code films, there is indeed an illicit affair going on here, what with Miss Stanwyck and her prospective groom lounging about at all hours in their night attire. They do of course get married but almost immediately lose that special spark that comes with a new romance. Rennie begins to dally with mature femme fatale Natalie Moorhead and Stanwyck, despairing at being turned into the shrewish wife, demands that they start afresh, and in separate apartments. Needless to say, the couple come to their senses before the obligatory happy ending, but that didn't pacify scores of local censorship boards, some of whom refused to permit even the film's title. Borrowed from Columbia and suffering a slight case of miscasting, Barbara Stanwyck nevertheless gives yet another of her patented standout performances, adding a bit of street smarts to her Long Island debutante. She is matched in most scenes by the unfairly forgotten James Rennie, a stage actor from Canada, who is best remembered today as the husband of Dorothy Gish. Based on a risqué 1930 play by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin, Illicit was remade by Warners in 1933 as Ex-Lady, this time starring Bette Davis." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

(Double feature with Girl Missing 1933)

Ladies of leisure 1930 - The movie that made Stanwyck a star

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021040/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 6,8

Director: Frank Capra
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Lowell Sherman, Marie Prevost

"23 year old Barbara Stanwyck became a leading film star in 1930 with the release of Ladies of leisure, after having starred in two flops in 1929. This is a very slender story of a good time girl who falls in love with a millionaire's son who basically is just interested in her as a model for a painting he wants to do. Given how free-wheeling and blunt most early talkies were on morality, this movie is surprisingly discreet about Stanwyck's character's past. We are supposed to read into the story she's a prostitute (or more accurately, a former mistress) - but in her first scene she is fleeing a yacht party that's too risqué for her!! Stanwyck rings honesty out of a cardboard script and she's got good support from three second-tier silent stars who are quite good in talkies - Ralph Graves as the object of her affection, Marie Prevost as her wisecracking, less prudish pal, and especially Lowell Sherman as Graves' drunken buddy who is very open to being Stanwyck's next sugar daddy yet the best scene is the confrontation being Stanwyck and Graves' mother, superbly played by a somewhat unsung character actress, Nance O'Neil.
The movie's minor fame today rests on it being Stanwyck's first screen success and an early hit for director Frank Capra yet Capra's direction is rather dull and often awkward and the movie is very badly edited with some scenes conspicuously made up of different takes with shot angles and acting rhythms off among other giveaways.
A 'silent' version of the film was also shot (the smaller studios like Columbia were still making silent versions of some of their films up to 1931 for the ever dwindling number of movie theaters that were still not wired for sound)."

Download links:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL334D6D7429259515

Stella Dallas 1937 - The complexity of maternal love

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029608/
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: King Vidor
Main Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil, Alan Hale, Marjorie Main

"The height of multiple-hankie melodrama, King Vidor's Stella Dallas is also the most affecting screen adaptation of the Olive Higgins Prouty novel. The combined talents of Samuel Goldwyn, director King Vidor and star Barbara Stanwyck lift this property far above the level of mere soap opera. As the ultimate self-abnegating mother, Stanwyck endows her upwardly aspiring Stella with a potent mixture of crass fashion sense, hedonistic energy, self-aware pathos, and maternal love, while Anne Shirley's Laurel is visibly and poignantly torn between embarrassment and daughterly attachment. Stanwyck's dignity gives Stella's sacrifice to the class system the emotional punch that it requires, as she memorably stands outside a bay window in the rain, watching her refined daughter finally get what Stella always wanted for her. Critically praised for its superior performances, Stella Dallas garnered Stanwyck the first of her four Oscar nominations for Best Actress, as well as a Supporting Actress nomination for Shirley. Previously filmed in 1925, Stella Dallas was remade again in 1990 as the Bette Midler vehicle Stella." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/stella-dallas-v46809

DVD links: