Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
Murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago.
Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.
The true story of the relationship between famed author William Allen White and his teenaged daughter Mary, who died in a horseback-riding accident at age 16, and the powerful effect the tragedy had on the life of her father.
The story of a group of friends in turn of the century New York, from their early days as street hoods to their rise in the world of organized crime...
A runaway orphan, young Sonora, persists in a menial job mucking stables in Doc Carver's travelling stunt show. Her great wish is to become a death-defying "diving girl," but Doc refuses her pleas. Undaunted, Sonora's gutsy resolve finally convinces him to give her a break. On the brink of stardom, however, a cruel twist of fate threatens to destroy her dream.
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
In the era of normalisation, a number of (pseudo)historical films were made, even described as reconstructions, which glorified the world-building mission of the Communist Party and attributed to it exclusively humanitarian intentions ("Days of Betrayal", "Sokolovo", "Liberation of Prague", "The Victorious People"). In 1929, when its fifth congress met, Klement Gottwald, who had taken the line of the Russian Bolsheviks, took over the leadership of the Communists...
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
Based on the novel by Allen Raine - In Wales, a girl loves a manager but weds her employer who dies in a fire lit by a jealous madwoman.
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
Set in 1929, a political boss and his advisor have a parting of the ways when they both fall for the same woman.
'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.
New York, 1929, a war rages between two rival gangsters, Fat Sam and Dandy Dan. Dan is in possession of a new and deadly weapon, the dreaded "splurge gun". As the custard pies fly, Bugsy Malone, an all-round nice guy, falls for Blousey Brown, a singer at Fat Sam's speakeasy. His designs on her are disrupted by the seductive songstress Tallulah who wants Bugsy for herself.
The story of two women, a mother and her daughter, who during the Cristero War set traps for government soldiers passing by their house, using seduction that was never consummated. The idea was to deceive the soldiers by making them feel safe, then hand them over, almost with their hands tied, to the Cristero guerrillas. But then one of the women, the daughter, truly falls in love with one of the soldiers, allows herself to be seduced by him, and then tries to save him, only to be killed, in the circumstances, by the soldier himself.
A working-class love story set in and around the London Underground of the 1920s. Two men – gentle Bill and brash Bert – meet and are attracted to the same woman on the same day at the same Underground station. But the lady chooses Bill, and Bert isn't the type to take rejection lightly...
Los Angeles, 1928. When single mother Christine Collins leaves for work, her son vanishes without a trace. Five months later, the police reunite mother and son. But when Christine suspects that the boy returned to her isn't her child, her quest for truth exposes a world of corruption.
Boundary-pushing Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein selects renowned French composer Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro.