50's/60's movies

In Paris, wealthy Charles Bonnet is well known in the art world as a collector of rare pieces, mostly of the impressionist masters. He will on occasion sell paintings from his collection at auction. In reality, he is an art forger, he only reproducing those pieces known to have gone missing. His daughter, Nicole Bonnet, wants him to stop this business fearing that some day soon he will get caught. She is most concerned about he loaning out his Cellini Venus statue to the Kléber-Lafayette Museum, as she knows that technology can now test for things such as material age which would prove that the statue and by association he is a fraud. He ends up causing a problem for himself when he signs a $1 million insurance policy for the statue for the museum, which unwittingly allows them to test the piece for its authenticity. To save her father from jail, Nicole feels the only thing she can do is try to steal the statue from the gallery which may not be the easiest thing to do especially as the museum has installed an electronic security system around the piece to protect it above and beyond the regular security. She contacts the only person she knows who she believes can help her, namely a burglar named Simon Dermott. Nicole and Simon had only recently met when he broke into the Bonnet mansion to steal a Van Gogh painting, Nicole catching him in the process. Nicole could not call the police to report him for fear that her father's fraudulent life would be uncovered. Nicole not only has to convince Simon to help her without actually divulging the reason why she wants to steal her own statue, but they also have to come up with a plan to steal it. Complicating matters is an American art collector named Davis Leland who is not only wooing Nicole, but wants to add many of M. Bonnet's pieces to his own collection, most specifically the Venus. Within this collective, not all is as it appears on the surface.

Three sailors - Gabey, Chip and Ozzie - let loose on a 24-hour pass in New York and the Big Apple will never be the same! Gabey falls head over heels for "Miss Turnstiles of the Month" (he thinks she's a high society deb when she's really a 'cooch dancer at Coney Island); innocent Chip gets highjacked (literally) by a lady cab driver; and Ozzie becomes the object of interest of a gorgeous anthropologist who thinks he's the perfect example of a "prehistoric man". Wonderful music and terrific shots of New York at its best.

The love story of young adults Oliver Barrett IV and Jenny Cavilleri is told. Oliver comes from an extremely well off and old money New England family, the Barrett name which holds much gravitas and which is plastered especially all over Harvard where Oliver is in pre-law. Like those before him, he plans on attending Harvard Law School, which is not an issue in either the school not accepting him or he not wanting to attend. He has an extremely stiff relationship with his parents, especially his father, Oliver Barrett III, who loves his son in the old school way. Jenny, a music student at Radcliffe, comes from a working class Rhode Island background, she working her way through the program before she plans on going to Paris to further her studies. Unlike Oliver's relationship with his father, Jenny has a very casual one with her baker father, who she calls by his given name Phil. When Oliver and Jenny meet, there are immediate fireworks - she always with a quick quip to put him in his place - both of a good and bad kind, but they both quickly come to the realization that they are in love with each other. They have many obstacles to overcome in having a committed relationship, outwardly his father's disapproval of someone like her not being Barrett material being arguably the the biggest. However, other things that happen in the natural course of life and death may trump all.

With his family away for their annual summer holiday, New Yorker Richard Sherman decides he has the opportunity to live a bachelor's life - to eat and drink what he wants and basically to enjoy life without wife and son. The beautiful but ditsy blond from the apartment above his catches his eye and they soon start spending time together. It's all innocent though there is little doubt that Sherman is attracted to her. Any lust he may be feeling is played out in his own imagination however.

Arthur is a happy drunk with no pretensions at any ambition. He is also the heir to a vast fortune which he is told will only be his if he marries Susan. He does not love Susan, but she will make something of him the family expects. Arthur proposes but then meets a girl with no money, with whom he could easily fall in love.

Naive, by the book French police officer Nester Patou, is transferred to the Red Light district. Upon witnessing what must be a brothel, he calls the station and organizes a raid, transporting all the 'ladies' to the jail. This unfortunately disrupts the well organized system of the police and the Pimps union. Not to mention inadvertently netting his station superior at the brothel. Fired, he goes to a bar to drink, is befriended by Irma, beats up her pimp, and finds he is now Irma's new pimp. Nester's doesn't like the thought of his girl seeing other men, so comes up with a plan.

When Mike Hagen and Marilla Brown marry after a whirlwind romance on the west coast, they return to New York to find that they don't have much in common. She is a clothing designer who lives in a swanky apartment and whose friends are actors, artists and the like. He is a sports writer who likes to go boxing matches and horse races. They clearly love one another and make every effort to be flexible. When a mobster, whom Mike has been accusing of fixing sports events, decides to go after him he must pretend to be out of town and mayhem ensues.

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.

Pompous phonetics Professor Henry Higgins (Sir Rex Harrison) is so sure of his abilities that he takes it upon himself to transform a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for a cultured member of high society. His subject turns out to be the lovely Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn), who agrees to speech lessons to improve her job prospects. Higgins and Eliza clash, then form an unlikely bond, one that is threatened by aristocratic suitor Freddy Eynsford-Hill (Jeremy Brett).

Basing himself in Paris for the purpose, American hack writer Richard Benson, with advance in hand, has been hired by movie producer Alexander Meyerheim to write the screenplay for his latest movie, Benson selling him only on the title, The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower. Meyerheim, who knows about his drinking problem, has been assured by Benson that he is on the wagon. Benson hires Gabrielle Simpson through a secretarial service to be his typist. At the time she arrives for the job, Gabrielle learns that Benson has squandered away almost twenty weeks, with several drinks passing his lips over the course, without having written a word. With nary a story idea, Benson has only two days, on Bastille Day, until Meyerheim will be arriving from Cannes expecting a final product in Benson having continually implied he is near completion. Upon learning that Gabrielle originally came to Paris to experience life, Benson comes up with a brainchild to imagine the movie being a day, Bastille Day, in the life of someone like Gabrielle. As Benson and Gabrielle work through the screenplay, an espionage caper, they imagine themselves in the lead roles of "Rick" and "Gaby", they subconsciously and sometimes consciously steering the story in the direction of what they hope will happen between "Richard Benson" and "Gabrielle Simpson", both to the screenplay's benefit and detriment.

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.

Maggie Prescott, the Editor-in-Chief of New York based Quality, a fashion magazine that sets trends i.e. leads instead of follows, has come up with her latest brainchild: to feature a model to be the Quality Woman, complete with successful Paris-based designer Paul Duval to devise a new collection inspired by her. The Quality Woman is not only to embody beauty, but also intellect. Against Maggie's initial judgment, she relents to the vision of her head photographer Dick Avery in choosing Jo Stockton rather than one of their in-house models as the Quality Woman, Jo the clerk they met in an impromptu photo shoot they did against her will in the Greenwich Village bookstore where she works. The marks against Jo are not only that she isn't a professional, but that she has what she even considers a funny looking face, something that Dick instead calls interesting. Jo, who abhors all that the world of fashion represents in she being an intellectual, ultimately agrees as the job would take her to Paris where she hopes to meet her idol, Professor Émile Flostre, the leading philosopher on the concept of empathicalism. But in Paris, the two worlds for Jo begin to collide in more ways than one, arguably the most important in she falling for Dick, his actions solely to get her to exude the emotions he wants for the photos.

In New York, the interior decorator Jan Morrow and the wolf composer Brad Allen share a party line, but Brad keeps it busy most of the time flirting with his girlfriends. They do not know each other but Jan hates Brads since she needs the telephone for her business and can not use it. Coincidently Jan's wealthy client Jonathan Forbes that woos her is the best friend of Brad and he comments with him that he feels an unrequited love for Jan, who is a gorgeous woman. When Brad meets Jan by chance in a restaurant, he poses as a naive tourist from Texas named Rex Stetson and seduces her. But Jonathan hires a private eye to find who Rex Stetson is.

Michael Dorsey is an unemployed actor with an impossible reputation. In order to find work and fund his friend's play he dresses as a woman, Dorothy Michaels, and lands the part in a daytime drama. Dorsey loses himself in this woman role and essentially becomes Dorothy Michaels, captivating women all around the city and inspiring them to break free from the control of men and become more like Dorsey's initial identity. This newfound role, however, lands Dorsey in a hot spot between a female friend/'lover,' a female co-star he falls in love with, that co-star's father who falls in love with him, and a male co-star who yearns for his affection.

A matchmaker named Dolly Levi takes a trip to Yonkers, New York to see the "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire," Horace Vandergelder. While there, she convinces him, his two stock clerks and his niece and her beau to go to New York City. In New York, she fixes Vandergelder's clerks up with the woman Vandergelder had been courting, and her shop assistant (Dolly has designs of her own on Mr. Vandergelder, you see).

C.K. Dexter-Haven, a successful popular jazz musician, lives in a mansion near his ex-wife's Tracy Lord's family estate. She is on the verge of marrying a man blander and safer than Dex, who tries to win Tracy's heart again. Mike Connor, an undercover tabloid reporter, also falls for Tracy while covering the nuptials for Spy magazine. Tracy must choose between the three men as she discovers that "safe" can mean "deadly dull" when it comes to husbands and life.

Benjamin Braddock returns home to California after successfully completing college. He gets a hero's welcome from his parents but Ben isn't quite sure what to do with the rest of his life. He is soon seduced by Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's partner, who methodically pursues the inexperienced young man. Soon, they are meeting regularly in hotel rooms. Warned by her to stay away from her daughter Elaine, his father goads him into taking her out on a date. He finds he quite likes Elaine but when she learns he's been having an affair with her own mother, she'll have nothing to do with him. He's smitten however and pursues her.

Joanna and her architect husband, Mark Wallace have been married for a decade, and their relationship's become very rocky. As they drive from their London home to St. Tropez for the unveiling of a house Mark has designed for his clients, Maurice and Francoise Dalbret, they recall the events - both happy and sad, which neither then to this point. Told in flashback they pair recall their first meeting, and memorable moments in their courtship and early wedded life, as well as the tensions they both felt which led them each to extramarital affairs. With a terrific score by Henry Mancini, this welli-loved Stanley Donnen film's a sparkling effervescent story which deals in an atypical way for films of this time - showing both the joyousness and pathos off love.