Ben Barzman

In the year 180 A.D. Germanic tribes are about to invade the Roman empire from the north. In the midst of this crisis ailing emperor Marcus Aurelius has to make a decision about his successor between his son Commodus, who is obsessed by power, and the loyal general Gaius Livius.

Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.

Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz ("El Cid" to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.

Phil and Ellen Gayley have been divorced for a year, and their 7-year old daughter, Flip, is very unhappy that her parents are not together. Flip starts a correspondence with a Marine, sending a picture of her beautiful mother as the author of Flip's flirtatious letters. When the Marine shows up to meet his pen pal, Ellen takes the opportunity to make her ex-husband jealous.

Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a television special about the Third World. Sadiel, the exiled leader of a North African state, is being hunted by the ruthless Colonel Kassar, who will stop at nothing to capture his political rival. Once Sadiel arrives in Paris, Darien realizes he has been manipulated. He tries to turn back the clock, not realizing what or who he’s truly dealing with.

A U.S. Army colonel leads local fighters in a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the Philippines.

Peter, an orphaned boy, is adopted by Gramp Frye after his parents are killed in Europe while doing war relief work. The boy feels safe with his new caretaker, but when he is taunted for being an orphan, he gets demoralized. The next day Peter wakes up with green hair. Embarrassed and further ridiculed, Peter seeks solace in a nearby forest. To his surprise, he finds other orphans in the woods, who encourage him to spread news of the injustices of war.

Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...

1920s Greece is occupied by the Turks. A country in turmoil with entire villages uprooted. A small community conduct their annual Passion Play. The leading citizens, under auspices of the Patriarch, choose the actors: a stuttering shepherd as Jesus, the town butcher as Judas, the town prostitute as Mary Magdalene, and so on. As the story unfolds, the Passion becomes a reality.

Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”

Two female agents from a rival gang are sent to disrupt the operations of a gold-smuggler's caravan in Africa.

Painter Jan Van Rooyer has been art teacher to Jacqueline Cousteau, an older Frenchwoman who becomes his lover. But when she turns up dead, Van Rooyer must explain their relationship to the police to clear his name.

A Montana lawyer gets distracted after moving to California with his wife and children.

Exiled from Hollywood due to the blacklist, director Edward Dmytryk briefly operated in England in the late 1940s. Though filmed in its entirety in London, Dmytryk's Give Us This Day is set in New York during the depression. Fellow blacklistee Sam Wanamaker is starred as the head of an Italian immigrant family struggling to survive the economic crisis.

A writer for a radio program needs some fresh ideas to juice up his show. For inspiration, he rents a room with a typical American family and begins to secretly write about their true life antics. The show becomes a big hit, but he begins to feel guilty about his charade when he falls in love with the family's pretty older daughter.

A man has an affair with his condemned brother's girlfriend while plotting his escape in Tangier.

The Israeli-made Faithful City stars Jamie Smith as an American in Tel Aviv just after World War II. Smith makes the acquaintance of a group of orphans, Jewish refugees of the concentration camps. It takes some doing, but Smith wins the love and trust of these displaced youngsters. Like most government-funded Israeli productions of the early 1950s, Faithful City is designed more to instruct and inform than entertain. That it happens to be entertaining in the bargain is all the more reason to seek out this extremely rare film.

A down-and-out crook on the lam befriends a young street urchin, in an Italian port city. At first amused that the boy is a sneak thief, he tries to deflects the kid from a life of crime. Tipped off by a woman anxious to collect the reward for him (who is wanted for murder), the police pursue the two lost souls.

Working as a pharmacy clerk while dreaming of escape through dance, Normande St-Onge supports a household of dependent and unstable relatives. As her efforts to protect and hold together her improvised family intensify, the pressures of exploitation, eviction, and emotional isolation push her toward psychological collapse. Directed by Gilles Carle, the film blurs the boundary between fantasy and breakdown.

A young woman marries a soldier to fulfill the conditions of a will. However, when she gets ready to divorce him, she realizes that she actually loves him, and determines to find a way to keep him.

Based on the biography of the Polish doctor and educator Janusz Korczak, the film retells the last phase of his life. Korczak, director of the Jewish orphanage in Warsaw and a Jew himself, was forced to move to the ghetto with all the orphans living in the home in 1940 following the occupation of Poland by the Nazis. Despite the terrible conditions within the walls, Korczak continued to care devotedly for "his" children. He even managed to save cases that had been written off as hopeless. However, when Korczak's orphans were also to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp as part of the "Final Solution" and the resulting evacuation of the ghetto, he insisted on going with them. Fully aware that he would no longer be able to help his protégés, he let the children believe that he was taking them on a trip to the countryside to alleviate their fears.

Bob Stanley was an American secret agent during World War II in France. After the war Stanley returns to France as a consul. In reality, he works for the FBI, to roll up the organization that manufactures fake U.S. dollars. A violent confrontation is insurmountable.

Wealthy American Patricia comes to spend some time at her uncle's place in Paris. While out on her own for the evening she meets pseudo-Russian prince Vladimir in a bistro.