To Watch

On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front. Myra stayed with him past curfew and is thrown out of the corps de ballet. She survives on the streets of London, falling even lower after she hears her true love has been killed in action. But he wasn't killed. Those terrible years were nothing more than a bad dream is Myra's hope after Roy finds her and takes her to his family's country estate.

A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn), attempts to bribe Dr. John Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift), a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans, Louisiana mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly (Dame Elizabeth Taylor). Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian (Julián Ugarte). Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian's mysterious death that she witnessed while on vacation together in Spain the previous summer.

Passengers on a scheduled train out of the mountainous European country of Mandrika are delayed by a day due to an avalanche, and thus get up close and personal with each other out of necessity in the only and what becomes an overcrowded inn in the area. Once the train departs, the one person who it is uncertain is on the train is a middle aged English governess named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty). Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), who was vacationing in Mandrika with girlfriends before heading back to England to get married, is certain that Miss Froy was on the train as they were in the same compartment and they had tea together in the dining car, but all those people who can corroborate her story don't seem to want to do so. Iris' thoughts are easily dismissed as a possible concussion as Iris was hit over the head just before boarding the train. Iris will take anyone's help in finding Miss Froy, even that of an Englishman named Gilbert (Sir Michael Redgrave), a musicologist with whom she had a not so pleasant encounter at the inn the evening before. As Iris and Gilbert go on their quest throughout the train, they believe there is a conspiracy amongst many of the passengers against the validity of there being a Miss Froy. But if there is a conspiracy, Iris and Gilbert still have to find Miss Froy and find out why anyone would want to kidnap a middle aged English governess.

As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement. At last everyone, even Ann, takes her creation seriously...but publisher D.B. Norton has a secret plan.

Just arrived in Argentina, small-time crooked gambler Johnny Farrell is saved from a gunman by sinister Ballin Mundson, who later makes Johnny his right-hand man. But their friendship based on mutual lack of scruples is strained when Mundson returns from a trip with a wife: the supremely desirable Gilda, whom Johnny once knew and learned to hate. The relationship of Johnny and Gilda, a battlefield of warring emotions, becomes even more bizarre after Mundson disappears...

Harry Morgan and his alcoholic sidekick, Eddie, are based on the island of Martinique and crew a boat available for hire. However, since the second world war is happening around them business is not what it could be. After a customer who owes them a large sum fails to pay, they are forced against their better judgment to violate their preferred neutrality and to take a job for the resistance transporting a fugitive on the run from the Nazis to Martinique. Through all this runs the stormy relationship between Morgan and Marie "Slim" Browning, a resistance sympathizer and the sassy singer in the club where Morgan spends most of his days.

The family of "Big Daddy" Pollitt (Burl Ives) convenes at his and Big Momma's (Dame Judith Anderson's). Among the attendees is alcoholic son, Brick (Paul Newman); an ex-football player, who spends his time drinking and avoiding the ministries of his libidinous wife, Maggie (Dame Elizabeth Taylor) - "the cat". As this gathering isn't so much as a gathering but a farewell (Big Daddy is terminally ill) a lot of memories and revelations which had been hidden come to the surface of both father and son.

Philadelphia socialites Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven married impulsively, with their marriage and subsequent divorce being equally passionate. They broke up when Dexter's drinking became excessive, it a mechanism to cope with Tracy's unforgiving manner to the imperfect, imperfections which Dexter admits he readily has. Two years after their break-up, Tracy is about to remarry, the ceremony to take place at the Lord mansion. Tracy's bridegroom is nouveau riche businessman and aspiring politician George Kittredge, who is otherwise a rather ordinary man and who idolizes Tracy. The day before the wedding, three unexpected guests show up at the Lord mansion: Macaulay Connor (Mike to his friends), Elizabeth Imbrie - the two who are friends of Tracy's absent brother, Junius- and Dexter himself. Dexter, an employee of the tabloid Spy magazine, made a deal with its publisher and editor Sidney Kidd to get a story on Tracy's wedding - the wedding of the year - in return for Kidd not publishing a salacious story with accompanying photographs of Tracy's father, Seth Lord, with a New York showgirl named Tina Marra. In reality, Mike and Liz are the reporter and photographer respectively for Spy. Mike and Liz don't particularly like this assignment or working for Kidd, but they need to make a living as their chosen other fields as serious writer and painter don't pay the bills. A suspicious Tracy is onto them, the entire truth which Dexter admits to her. Tracy decides to turn the tables on Mike and Liz. However, hours before the wedding, as the more self-assured Dexter and Liz get to work on how to get the Lords out from under Spy's threats, Tracy and Mike, both inebriated, go on a journey of self-discovery with Tracy ultimately coming to her realizations a little faster than Mike.

After a vacation in Hawaii, Joanna "Joey" Drayton returns to her parents' home in San Francisco bringing her fiancé, the highly-qualified Dr. John Prentice, to introduce him to her parents. Her mother, Christina Drayton, owns an art gallery and her father, Matt Drayton, is the publisher-editor of the newspaper, The Guardian. Joey was raised with a liberal education and intends to marry Dr. John Prentice, a Black widower who needs to fly to Geneva that evening to work with the World Health Organization. Joey invites John's parents to have dinner with her family and the couple flies from Los Angeles to San Francisco without knowing that Joey is white. Christina also invites the liberal Monsignor Ryan, who is a friend of her family. Throughout the day and evening, the families discuss the problems of their son and daughter.

At a café on a railway station, housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard). Although they are both already married, they gradually fall in love with each other. They continue to meet every Thursday in the small café, although they know that their love is impossible.

In the mid-1800's, the wealthy Sloper family - widowed surgeon Dr. Austin Sloper, his adult daughter Catherine Sloper (Dr. Sloper's only surviving child), and Dr. Sloper's recently widowed sister Lavinia Penniman - live in an opulent house at 16 Washington Square, New York City. They have accrued their wealth largely through Dr. Sloper's hard work. Despite the lessons that Dr. Sloper has paid for in all the social graces for her, Catherine is a plain, simple, awkward and extremely shy woman who spends all her free time alone doing embroidery when she is not doting on her father. Catherine's lack of social charm and beauty - unlike her deceased mother - is obvious to Dr. Sloper, who hopes that Lavinia will act as her guardian in becoming more of a social person, and ultimately as chaperon if Catherine were ever to meet the right man. The first man ever to show Catherine any attention is the handsome Morris Townsend, who she met at a family party. Catherine is initially uncertain as to Morris' intentions, never having been called on before by a gentleman, but she quickly falls in love with him, as he does with her. They plan to be married. Being a romantic, Lavinia does whatever she can to advance their relationship. However, Dr. Sloper does not trust Morris, believing him to be a fortune hunter who is only interested in Catherine for her sizable inheritance. His beliefs are strengthened after a candid discussion with Morris' sister, Mrs. Montgomery. Dr. Sloper does whatever he can to prevent the two from getting married - the entire reason for his disapproval which he does not fully disclose to either Catherine or Morris - including taking Catherine away for an extended European vacation. Ultimately, incidents with both her father and Morris permanently change Catherine's view of life.

When a woman attempts to kill her uncaring husband, prosecutor Adam Bonner gets the case. Unfortunately for him his wife Amanda, also a lawyer, decides to defend the woman in court. Amanda uses everything she can to win the case and Adam gets mad about it, and their perfect marriage is disturbed by daily petty squabbles.

Only the royal suite at the grandest hotel in Paris has a safe large enough for the jewels of the Grand Duchess Swana. So the three Russians who have come to sell the jewels settle into the suite until a higher ranking official is dispatched to find out what is delaying the sale. She is Ninotchka, a no-nonsense woman who fascinates Count Leon who had been the faithful retainer of the Grand Duchess. The Grand Duchess will give up all claim to the jewels if Ninotchka will fly away from the count.

Uncouth, loud-mouth junkyard tycoon Harry Brock descends upon Washington D.C. to buy himself a congressman or two, bringing with him his mistress, ex-showgirl Billie Dawn. Brock hires newspaperman Paul Verrall to see if he can soften her rough edges and make her more presentable in capital society. But Harry gets more than he bargained for as Billie absorbs Verall's lessons in U.S. history and not only comes to the realization that Harry is nothing but a two-bit, corrupt crook, but in the process also falls in love with her handsome tutor.

September 1914, news reaches the colony German Eastern Africa that Germany is at war, so Reverend Samuel Sayer became a hostile foreigner. German imperial troops burn down his mission; he is beaten and dies of fever. His well-educated, snobbish sister Rose Sayer buries him and leaves by the only available transport, the dilapidated river steamboat 'African Queen' of grumpy Charlie Allnut. As if a long difficult journey without any comfort weren't bad enough for such odd companions, she is determined to find a way to do their bit for the British war effort (and avenge her brother) and aims high, as God is obviously on their side: construct their own equipment, a torpedo and the converted steamboat, to take out a huge German warship, the Louisa, which is hard to find on the giant lake and first of all to reach, in fact as daunting an expedition as anyone attempted since the late adventurous explorer John Speakes, but she presses till Charlie accepts to steam up the Ulana, about to brave a German fort, raging rapids, very bloodthirsty parasites and the endlessly branching stream which seems to go nowhere but impenetrable swamps... Despite fierce rows and moral antagonism between a bossy devout abstentionist and a free-spirited libertine drunk loner, the two grow closer to each-other as their quest drags on...

In what's been called 'the best Alfred Hitchcock film which he didn't direct,' a man is thrown off a train, and when the police locate his wife, it turns out she knew nothing about him - not even his real name. After her are four men, who insist she's in possession of a huge amount of money which they believe to be theirs. If she doesn't give it to them, she'll be killed.

Boston spinster Charlotte has had her life controlled entirely by her mother; a wealthy mother, Mrs. Henry Vale. Feeling despondent, she's convinced to spend some time in a sanitarium. Soon, Charlotte's transformed into a sophisticated, confident woman. On a cruise to South America, Charlotte meets, and begins an affair with Jerry Durrance, a married architect. 6 months later, she returns home, and confronts her mother with her independence. One day, after a brief argument, her mother has a heart attack and dies. Charlotte inherits the Vale fortune but feels guilty for her mother's death. She returns to the sanitarium, where she befriends a depressed, young adolescent, named Tina. The young girls' depression brought on by having been rejected by her mother; Charlotte's former lover, Jerry's wife. Charlotte takes Tina home to Boston with her.

Jerry Mulligan, a struggling American painter in Paris, is "discovered" by an influential heiress with an interest in more than Jerry's art. Jerry in turn falls for Lise, a young French girl already engaged to a cabaret singer. Jerry jokes, sings and dances with his best friend, an acerbic would-be concert pianist, while romantic complications abound.