Acting
Former detective Nick Charles has retired from police work, preferring a life of cocktails, parties, and relaxation with his wealthy wife, Nora. Their holiday is interrupted when the daughter of Nick’s former client asks for help finding her missing father, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant. When Wynant’s body is discovered, Nick is drawn back into the investigation, with Nora eagerly joining him. As the couple questions Wynant’s family, friends, and business associates, a tangled web of greed, deception, and murder begins to unravel. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke and adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Thin Man combines witty dialogue, sophisticated comedy, romance, and classic mystery. William Powell and Myrna Loy are perfectly matched as Nick and Nora Charles, whose playful banter and effortless chemistry made them one of Hollywood’s most beloved screen couples. This stylish 1934 mystery remains a landmark of classic American cinema.
A charming and very daring thief known as Arsene Lupin is terrorizing the wealthy of Paris. He even goes so far as to threaten the Mona Lisa. But the police, led by the great Guerchard, think they know Arsene Lupin's identity, and they have a secret weapon to catch him.
Tycoon J.L. Higgins controls his whole family, but one of his sons-in-law, Dan Brooks, and his daughter Alice are fed up with that. Brooks quits his job as manager of J.L.'s paper box factory and devotes his life to his racing horse Broadway Bill, but his bankroll is thin and the luck is against him. He is arrested because of $150 he owes somebody for horse food, but suddenly a planned fraud by somebody else seems to offer him a chance...
A wanted-fugitive, called "Nevada," is wounded by a pursuing posse of lawmen, and is left to die on the desert by his companion, Bill Hall. He is rescued by a young rancher, Ben Ide, who is in love with Ina Blaine, daughter of a neighboring rancher. While "Nevada" is recovering, he and Ina fall in love but, through his loyalty to Ben, he sends her away. Going home, Ina falls into the clutches of Bill Hall, now heading a gang of rustlers, but the real leader is Les Setter who is posing as an honest rancher, and he has designs on Ina himself.
In 19th century Paris, a maniac abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship but constantly meets failure as the abducted women die.
Hat check man Louis Blore is in love with nightclub star May Daly. May, however, is in love with a poor dancer but wants to marry for money. When Louis wins the Irish Sweepstakes, he asks May to marry him and she accepts even though she doesn't love him. Soon after, Louis has an accident and gets knocked on the head, where he dreams that he's King Louis XV pursuing the infamous Madame Du Barry.
An insane surgeon's obsession with an actress leads him to replace her wounded pianist husband's hands with those of a knife-throwing murderer.
Mazie, a shop-girl of New York City's Little Ireland, goes to the aid of a young man in formal attire involved in a street fight. Though badly beaten, he bears a strong resemblance to Lord Lytton, the hero of a magazine story Mazie is reading in installments. Although he is, in reality, a soda clerk, Mazie permits his attentions, and together they read the "Sloppy Stories" yarn about English nobility.
Respected Parisian banker Paul Lavond is framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to prison. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond, however, is consumed with hatred for those who betrayed him, and takes the scientist's methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Convicts escaping from Devil's Island come under the influence of a strange Christ-like figure.
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
When Barry Corvall discovers that his new bride is a possible enemy agent, he resigns from the diplomatic service to go undercover to route out an espionage ring planning to destroy American industrial capability.
When her brother is killed by sabotage, Irene Eaton (Sally Eilers) joins the secret service and goes undercover to unroot the culprits.
A revolutionary leader romances a French aristocrat in Louisiana.
A super-efficient secretary at a department store falls for and marries her boss, but finds out that taking care of him at home (and especially his spoiled-brat daughter) is a lot different than taking care of him at work.
A woman and a man vying for a woman's affection: the usual love trio? Not quite so since the belle in question is Lorraine de Grissac, a very wealthy and alluring society woman, while one of the two rivals is none other than Arsène Lupin, the notorious jewel thief everybody thought dead, now living under the assumed name of René Farrand. As for the other suitor he is an American, a former F.B.I. sleuth turned private eye by the name of Steve Emerson. Steve not only suspects Farrand of being Lupin but when someone attempts to steal a precious emerald necklace from Lorraine's uncle, Count de Brissac, he is persuaded Lupin is the culprit. Is Emerson right or wrong? Which of the two men will win over Lorraine's heart?
The story takes place in medieval France. Poet-rogue Francois Villon, sentenced to hang by King Louis XI for writing derogatory verses about him, is offered a temporary reprieve. His hanging will be postponed for 24 hours, and in that time he must defeat the invading Burgundians and win the love of the beautiful Katherine.
Following their initial pairing in early 1927, Laurel and Hardy ended their first year on top. Their success moving into 1928 galvanized the efforts of everyone at Hal Roach Studios (including famed director Leo McCarey), who proudly upped their game in support of the winning comedy duo. Whether wreaking accidental havoc as a two-man band, doing battle against one another as millionaire and butler, or even becoming grave robbers for a mad scientist, Laurel and Hardy prove in their second year that they have what it takes to not only win over audiences in the twilight of the silent era, but generate enough momentum to make a successful transition to “talkies” in 1929.
Members of a municipal band, Stanley and Oliver seem to be always following someone else's lead, rather than that of the temperamental conductor.
