Best movies like Josef von Sternberg, A Retrospective

An exploration of the appeal of horror films, with interviews of many legendary directors in the genre.

John Wayne stars as U.S. Air Force aviator Jim Shannon, who's tasked with escorting a Soviet pilot (Janet Leigh) claiming -- at the height of the Cold War -- that she wants to defect. After falling in love with and wedding the fetching flyer, Shannon learns from his superiors that she's a spy on a mission to extract military secrets. To save his new wife from prison and deportation, Shannon devises a risky plan in this 1957 drama.

American chemist Ned Faraday marries a German entertainer and starts a family. However, he becomes poisoned with Radium and needs an expensive treatment in Germany to have any chance at being cured. Wife Helen returns to night club work to attempt to raise the money and becomes popular as the Blonde Venus. In an effort to get enough money sooner, she prostitutes herself to millionaire Nick Townsend.

A man is haunted by a murder he's committed.

The Foreign Legion marches in to Mogador with booze and women in mind just as singer Amy Jolly arrives from Paris to work at Lo Tinto's cabaret. That night, insouciant legionnaire Tom Brown catches her inimitably seductive, tuxedo-clad act. Both bruised by their past lives, the two edge cautiously into a no-strings relationship while being pursued by others. But Tom must leave on a perilous mission: is it too late for them?

An intimate conversation between filmmakers, chronicling De Palma’s 55-year career, his life, and his filmmaking process, with revealing anecdotes and, of course, a wealth of film clips.

A gambling queen uses blackmail to stop a British financier from closing her Chinese clip joint.

In the carnival in Spain in the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the exiled republican Antonio Galvan comes from Paris masquerade to enjoy the party and visit his friend Capt. Don Pasqual 'Pasqualito' Costelar. However, he flirts with the mysterious Concha Perez and they schedule to meet each other later. When Antonio meets Pasqualito, his old friend discloses his frustrated relationship with the promiscuous Concha and her greedy mother and how his life was ruined by his obsession for the beautiful demimondaine. Pasqualito makes Antonio promise that he would not see Concha. However, when Antonio meets Concha, she seduces him and the long friendship between Antonio and Pasqualito is disrupted

The Austrian Secret Service sends its most seductive agent to spy on the Russians.

A blue-collar worker on New York's depressed waterfront finds his life changed after he saves a woman attempting suicide.

A 1928 silent film crime drama produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures, directed by Josef von Sternberg from an original screen story and starring George Bancroft and Evelyn Brent.

A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.

A chronicle of the production problems — including bad weather, actors' health, war near the filming locations, and more — which plagued the filming of Apocalypse Now, increasing costs and nearly destroying the life and career of Francis Ford Coppola.

La Patinoire is about a film director who is shooting a highly symbolic film called 'Dolores' at an ice rink. He has hired a Lithuanian ice hockey team with which he is having enormous communication problems. His actors all have inflated egos, his film crew is made up of fools, and there is a politician on his back. But he must finish the film, no matter what, in time for the Venice Film Festival.

A man on the run in the Far East is mistaken for an undercover cop.

A criminal known as Thunderbolt is imprisoned and facing execution. Into the next cell is placed Bob Moran, an innocent man who has been framed and who is in love with Thunderbolt's girl, without knowing of their relationship. Thunderbolt hopes to stave off the execution long enough to kill young Moran for romancing his girl.

The Town was a short propaganda film produced by the Office of War Information in 1945. It presents an idealized vision of American life, shown in microcosm by Madison, Indiana.

Paul is a chubby kind-­‐hearted amateur detective. Dorothy is an intense upper class teenager. Paul is into quoting Sherlock Holmes and watching Derrick. Dorothy is into punk clothing and hating her mother. Paul is forty three, Dorothy is sixteen, and the only thing that links them is Paul’s knowledge that he is Dorothy’s biological father… over time, this has grown into a one way relationship with Paul spying on Dorothy as she grew up, always from a safe distance…They would never have met if Dorothy hadn’t heard of Paul’s amateur detective skills. She wants to use him to find her father…

Remake of Josef von Sternberg's 1930 classic.

Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.

A social climber charms a debutante, seduces a factory worker and commits murder.

A documentary encapsulating the career and Western films of director 'John Ford' , including clips from his work and interviews with his colleagues.

Princess is destined to marry the Emperor, until her sister steps in.

From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga is a 1983 television documentary special that originally aired on PBS. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the original Star Wars trilogy, with particular emphasis on the final film, Return of the Jedi. Narrated by actor Mark Hamill, the documentary was written by Richard Schickel who had written the previous television documentaries The Making of Star Wars (1977) and SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

The story of the aborted 1937 filming of "I, Claudius", starring Charles Laughton, with all of its surviving footage.

Documentary about the making of director Steven Spielberg's film Empire of the Sun

Following the life of Marlene Dietrich through her films (including home movies) and interviews with family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and presumed lovers. From the cabaret scene in 1920's Berlin, silent films in Germany, her triumph in _The Blue Angel_ in 1930 (for which her screen test is included in this film), to Hollywood with Josef von Sternberg. The highest paid female star of her time, the luster dimmed by 1935. and in the later part of the decade she might be the most valuable actress in the world but also the most unemployable. But with _Destry Rides Again_ Marlene became a sex symbol who could play comedy and the most remarkable comeback in Hollywood was a reality. She was one of the most active entertainers of the allied troops during WW II. After the war movies were infrequent, but a new career on the stage continued for another 20 years, until she retired into seclusion for the last decade of her life.

Typically controversial speech by psychoanalyst/philosopher Lacan is disrupted by a student, ridiculing such public intellectuals. Lacan refuses to allow security to haul off the student, lets him speak and incorporates such criticisms into his presentation. The packed performance took place at the Catholic University of Louvain on October 13, 1972, with Lacan interrelating death, language, love, alienation, paranoia and life. His talk is followed by a probing interview of Lacan on his concepts of psychoanalysis, conducted by the director, Belgian documentarian Francoise Wolff. One of only 2 known filmed appearances by Lacan, both by Wolff, who also made documentaries of Albert Einstein and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

A behind-the-scenes documentary about director Michelangelo Antonioni as he's shooting his segment of The Three Faces, a vehicle for Soraya, the former empress of Persia. Featuring interviews with Monica Vitti, Tonino Guerra and more.

A former Imperial Russian general and cousin of the Czar ends up in Hollywood as an extra in a movie directed by a former revolutionary.

A hopelessly hopeful drifter, a bitter young woman, and a helpless child live on the docks, spending their days in poverty and listless wandering. Overhead, a dredge hauls up mud and trash from the nearby seabed-- the same mud and trash from the day before. They finally decide to leave for the city to seek fulfillment, only to encounter further privation, destitution, temptation.

A peasant girl goes to great lengths to protect her child in 19th century Vienna. The film is considered lost, and only four minutes of footage are known to remain.

An American millionaire wants to reform a Parisian cabaret singer who moonlights as a jewel thief.

Adapted by Alice Duer Miller from a novel by Alden Brooks, the film concerns a young man who forsakes the humdrum business world for the bohemian life of an artist. Josef von Sternberg had been the original director of Exquisite Sinner, but MGM was dissatisfied with the picture and refused to release it. When the film finally surfaced in 1926 (a full year after its completion), it had been radically altered by staff director Phil Rosen.

Episode of the BBC Scotland television series focusing on Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film "If...", featuring interviews with star Malcolm McDowell, cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček, assistant editor Ian Rakoff, director’s assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin, and screenwriter David Sherwin