Category: Classics

ON DVD

Max Schreck stars in this 1922 silent German expressionist film as the vampire Count Orlok. Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), an employee at a real estate agency, pays a visit to Count Orlok’s home on behalf of his employer. During his stay, Hutter gets more than he bargained for as he realizes Orlok is not just the eccentric gentleman up the road.

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Starring: Max Screck and Gustav von Wangenheim

Directed By: F.W. Murnau

Written By: Henrik Galeen

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Run Time: 94 minutes

ON DVD

Reporter Wally Cook (Fredric March) is a problematic newspaper reporter given one last chance by his editor to interview the dying Hazel Flagg (Carole Lambard). Love sparks between the two, and Flagg becomes a public icon; but scandal erupts when the public finds out that Flagg is not dying, and the two must figure out how to cope with the humiliation.

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Starring: Fredric March, Carole Lombard and Walter Connolly

Directed By: William A. Wellman

Written By: Ben Hecht, Ring Lardner Jr., Budd Schulberg

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Drama

Run Time: 77 minutes

ON DVD

This film is an adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat and is considered the first major German sound film. When Professor Emmanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) follows his students to a local speakeasy to scold them, he unexpectedly falls for the club’s dancer, Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich). As he pursues a relationship, he finds that his life subsequently falls apart and must find a way to piece it back together.

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Starring: Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings

Directed By: Joseph von Sternberg

Written By: Heinrich Mann, Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmoller, Robert Liebmann

Genre: Drama, Musical

Alternate Title: Der Blaue Engel

Run Time: 124 minutes

ON DVD

This comedy stars William Powell as Clarence Day Sr., a meticulously organized Wall Street broker by day and father of four by night. Day tries desperately and lucklessly to run a ship-shape household, but finds that the only way his family acknowledges him is with criticisms and demands.

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Starring: William Powell, Irene Dunne and Elizabeth Taylor

Directed By: Michael Curtiz

Written By: Donald Ogden Stewart, Howard Lindsay (story & play), Russel Crouse (story & play)

Genre: Comedy

Run Time: 118 minutes

ON DVD

In this musical comedy, Danny Kaye stars an illiterate member of a traveling medicine show who is picked up for vagrancy in a strange town. The corrupt officials, who’ve been pilfering community funds, think he’s the Inspector General in disguise and hilarity ensues as they attempt to kill him.

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Directed By: Henry Koster

Written By: Harry Kurnitz

Alternate Title: Happy Times

Genre: Musical, Comedy

Run Time: 102 minutes