Alec Guinness

Star Wars

Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with the loveable robot duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore peace and justice in the Empire.

Doctor Zhivago

The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.

Lawrence of Arabia

During World War I, English officer Thomas Edward 'T.E.' Lawrence sets out to unite and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes to fight the Turks.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.

Kafka

After a colleague is murdered, insurance worker Kafka gets embroiled in an underground group who are attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society.

Pasternak

Using still pictures and newsreel footage, this short film tells the life story of Russian author Boris Pasternak, who was forced by the Russian government to refuse the 1958 Nobel Prize in literature for his novel Dr. Zhivago.

The Empire Strikes Back

The epic saga continues as Luke Skywalker, in hopes of defeating the evil Galactic Empire, learns the ways of the Jedi from aging master Yoda. But Darth Vader is more determined than ever to capture Luke. Meanwhile, rebel leader Princess Leia, cocky Han Solo, Chewbacca, and droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are thrown into various stages of capture, betrayal and despair.

Return of the Jedi

Luke Skywalker leads a mission to rescue his friend Han Solo from the clutches of Jabba the Hutt, the Emperor prepares to crush the Rebellion with a more powerful Death Star, and the Rebel fleet mounts a massive attack on the space station. Luke Skywalker confronts Darth Vader in a final climactic duel before the evil Emperor.

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

In his delirium from his return from war, Francesco Bernardone goes back in his memories to the days when he lived for parties and carnal pleasures. He slowly recovers, but after the illness he is no longer the Francesco that everybody knew. Instead of spending hours in taverns, he meditates on the beauty of God's creatures, soon renouncing his riches and his family with plans to rebuild an abandoned church and his life.

Oliver Twist

When 9-year-old orphan Oliver Twist dares to ask his cruel taskmaster, Mr. Bumble, for a second serving of gruel, he's hired out as an apprentice. Escaping that dismal fate, young Oliver falls in with the street urchin known as the Artful Dodger and his criminal mentor, Fagin. When kindly Mr. Brownlow takes Oliver in, Fagin's evil henchman Bill Sikes plots to kidnap the boy.

The Ladykillers

Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms on a cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.

Murder by Death

Lionel Twain invites the world's five greatest detectives to a 'dinner and murder'. Included are a blind butler, a deaf-mute maid, screams, spinning rooms, secret passages, false identities and more plot turns and twists than are decently allowed.

Cromwell

Disgusted with the policies of King Charles I, Oliver Cromwell plans to take his family to the New World. But on the eve of their departure, Cromwell is drawn into the tangled web of religion and politics that will result in the English Civil War.

Kind Hearts and Coronets

When his mother eloped with an Italian opera singer, Louis Mazzini was cut off from her aristocratic family. After the family refuses to let her be buried in the family mausoleum, Louis avenges his mother's death by attempting to murder every family member who stands between himself and the family fortune. But when he finds himself torn between his longtime love and the widow of one of his victims, his plans go awry.

Raise the Titanic

To obtain a supply of a rare mineral, a ship raising operation is conducted for the only known source, the Titanic.

Our Man in Havana

Jim Wormold is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter Milly. He owns a vacuum cleaner shop but isn’t very successful so he accepts an offer from Hawthorne of the British Secret Service to recruit a network of agents in Cuba.

The Man in the White Suit

The unassuming, nebbishy inventor Sidney Stratton creates a miraculous fabric that will never be dirty or worn out. Clearly he can make a fortune selling clothes made of the material, but may cause a crisis in the process. After all, once someone buys one of his suits they won't ever have to fix them or buy another one, and the clothing industry will collapse overnight. Nevertheless, Sidney is determined to put his invention on the market, forcing the clothing factory bigwigs to resort to more desperate measures...

The Lavender Hill Mob

A meek bank clerk who oversees the shipments of bullion joins with an eccentric neighbor to steal gold bars and smuggle them out of the country.

Scrooge

A musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic ghost tale starring Albert Finney.

Great Expectations

In this Dickens adaptation, orphan Pip discovers through lawyer Mr. Jaggers that a mysterious benefactor wishes to ensure that he becomes a gentleman. Reunited with his childhood patron, Miss Havisham, and his first love, the beautiful but emotionally cold Estella, he discovers that the elderly spinster has gone mad from having been left at the altar as a young woman, and has made her charge into a warped, unfeeling heartbreaker.

H.M.S. Defiant

Defiant's crew is part of a fleet-wide movement to present a petition of grievances to the Admiralty. Violence must be no part of it. The continual sadism of Defiant's first officer makes this difficult, and when the captain is disabled, the chance for violence increases.

Tunes of Glory

Following World War II in peacetime Scotland, brigade headquarters replaces commanding officer Major Jock Sinclair, a boisterous battalion leader, with the strict, temperamental Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow. Resentful toward his replacement, Sinclair undermines Barrow's authority and damages his successor's reputation among the soldiers. Barrow faces an uphill battle in regaining the discipline and respect of his battalion.

The Captain's Paradise

Mediterranean ferryboat captain Henry St James has things well organized - a loving and very English wife Maud in Gibraltar, and the loving if rather more hot-blooded Mistress, Nita in Tangiers. A perfect life. As long as neither woman decides to follow him to the other port.

The Card

A charming and ambitious young man finds many ways to raise himself through the ranks in business and social standing - some honest, some not quite so. If he can just manage to avoid a certain very predatory woman.

The Horse's Mouth

Gulley Jimson is a boorish aging artist recently released from prison. A swindler in search of his next art project, he hunkers down in the penthouse of would-be patrons the Beeders while they go on an extended vacation; he paints a mural on their wall, pawns their valuables and, along with the sculptor Abel, inadvertently smashes a large hole in their floor. Jimson's next project is an even larger wall in an abandoned church.

The Swan

Princess Beatrice's days of enjoying the regal life are numbered unless her only daughter, Princess Alexandra, makes a good impression on a distant cousin when he pays a surprise visit to their palace. Prince Albert has searched all over Europe for a bride and he's bored by the whole courtship routine. He is more interested in the estate's dairy than Alexandra's rose garden. And then he starts playing football with the tutor and Alexandra's brothers. Invite the tutor to the ball that night and watch how gracefully Alexandra dances with him.

A Passage to India

Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator.

Barnacle Bill

A seasick sea captain commands an amusement pier despite local opposition. Released in the U.S. as 'All at Sea'

A Run for Your Money

Two Welsh coal-mining brothers win a trip to London to claim a monetary prize. They are supposed to meet a newspaper reporter who will be their escort. Instead, the brothers are launched into an adventure with some London riff-raff. It is up to the reporter to look out for the brothers, and what a job it turns out to be!

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.

A Handful of Dust

English aristocrat Tony Last welcomes tragedy into his life when he invites John Beaver to visit his vast estate. There Beaver makes the acquaintance of Tony's wife, Brenda. Together, they continue their relationship in a series of bedroom assignations in London. Trusting to a fault, Tony is unaware that anything is amiss until his wife suddenly asks for a divorce. With his life in turmoil, Tony goes on a haphazard journey to South America.

The Quiller Memorandum

After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.

Last Holiday

George Bird is a salesman of agricultural machinery who finds out that he hasn't long to live. On his doctor's advice, he goes to an exclusive seaside resort to spend his savings on one last holiday.

Little Dorrit

Amy Dorrit spends her days earning money for the family and looking after her proud father who is a long term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. Amy and her family's world is transformed when her employer's son, Arthur Clennam, returns from overseas to solve his family's mysterious legacy and discovers that their lives are interlinked.

Malta Story

Malta, 1942, during World War II. While the German air force is relentlessly bombing the island, a British pilot falls in love with a young Maltese girl.

Hitler: The Last Ten Days

Hitler: The Last Ten Days takes us into the depths of der Furher’s Berlin bunker during his final days. Based on the book by Gerhard Boldt, it provides a bleak look at the goings-on within, and without.

The Fall of the Roman Empire

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.

Hitler: The Comedy Years

A documentary about the portrayal of Adolf Hitler in popular culture.

Mute Witness

When a mute makeup/special effects artist working on a low-budget slasher film gets locked in a dilapidated Moscow movie studio late one night, she thinks she witnesses the making of a snuff film. Thus begins a night of terror.

Lovesick

Sigmund Freud's ghost advises a married New York psychiatrist in love with a patient.

The Ealing Comedies

The story of the men and women who produced a series of film comedies that were so original and funny that they put Ealing on the map.

The Prisoner

A cardinal is arrested for treason against the state. He is a popular hero of his people, for his resistance against the Nazis during the war and his resistance when his country again fell to a totalitarian conqueror. In prison, his interrogator is determined to extract a confession of guilt, and thus destroy his power over his people.

The Comedians

American and British tourists get caught up in political unrest in Haiti.

To Paris with Love

A father and son go to Paris to help each other find love.

Father Brown

Works of art are disappearing, stolen by a master thief, a master of disguise. Father Brown has two goals: to catch the thief and to save his soul.

The Mudlark

It's 1875 and a young street urchin wants to see Queen Victoria...

The Scapegoat

An Englishman in France unwittingly is placed into the identity, and steps into the vacated life, of a look-alike French nobleman.

Hotel Paradiso

Monsieur Feydeau has writer's block and he needs a new play, so he takes an opportunity to observe his upper class neighbors of 1900 Paris. There is Monsieur Boniface with hard domineering wife Angelique; also, Monsieur Cotte with beautiful but neglected wife Marcelle. Henri Cotte traces architectural anomalies (mostly "ghost" sounds in the drain pipes) and plans a night at the Hotel Paradiso, which happens to be the chosen romantic rendezvous spot of Marcelle and Monsieur Boniface. One wife, two husbands, a nephew, and the perky Boniface maid, all at this 'by the hour' hotel and consummation of the affair is, to say the least, severely compromised (not the least by a police raid). All of this is under Feydeau's eye, and his play is the 'success fou' of the next season.

Situation Hopeless — But Not Serious

A lonely German clerk captures two American flyers and keeps them as prisoners in his basement long after WWII has ended.

A Majority of One

A gentle love story about a Japanese businessman and widower, and a Brooklyn widow. But before a happy ending can ensue, they must learn again the lessons of tolerance, kindness and forgiveness.

Monsignor Quixote

Sir Alec Guiness stars with Leo McKern in the story of a friendship between a Catholic priest and a Communist Mayor. Together they travel from their remote village to Madrid and back exploring their friendship, the demands of belief and constancy of faith. This lavish production filmed entirely on location captures the wit, warmth, and vitality that make the original novel by Graham Greene a unique work of literature.

The Art of Film: The Many Roles of Alec Guinness

A documentary about the film roles of British actor Alec Guinness. Volume 8 in a series produced by Janus Films.

Eskimo Day

Comedy drama about the trials and tribulations of three sets of parents as they finally realise that their children have grown up and reluctantly they have to let them enroll at Cambridge University.

The Rise and Fall of a Jungle Giant

A behind-the-scenes look at the building of the bridge in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and the preparations for its destruction.

Twelfth Night

Sir Alec Guinness, Sir Ralph Richardson and Joan Plowright star in this merry on-stage mix-up of identity, gender and love in Tony Award-winner John Dexter’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Originally broadcast on Britain’s ITV, this classic performance captures all the slapstick, puns and double entendres that have amazed and amused audiences for over four hundred years.

The Gift of Friendship

Elderly novelist asks disliked guest to be literary editor.

Caesar and Cleopatra

Adaptation of the play by Bernard Shaw.

Tales from Hollywood

A slightly ironical description of the colony of German artists in Los Angeles, who had to leave their country during the Nazi-regime. A young playwriter (von Horvath) joins them and finds out, that there are gaps between the artistical attitudes and the real live behavior of authors like Thomas or Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger or Bertold Brecht.

Evensong

Loosely based on the story of the singer Nellie Melba...

Audrey Hepburn: Remembered

Audrey Hepburn was one of the movies' best-loved stars, blessed with beauty, talent, an elegant sophistication and an enduring aura of youthful innocence. As Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, she spoke for the world's suffering children and families, earning an affection and admiration that only increased with news of her untimely death. From the star herself we learn of her career and the family and friendships that were her priority.

Grace Kelly: The American Princess

A biography of American actress Grace Kelly from her early days as an aspiring actress to her death as Princess of Monaco.

When Star Wars Ruled the World

A VH1 television special wherein the cast discuss the making of the films and what made the franchise a phenomenon.

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Luke Skywalker and Han Solo battle evil Imperial forces to help Chewbacca reach his imperiled family on the Wookiee planet - in time for Life Day, their most important day of the year!

Rowlandson's England

England of Thomas Rowlandson's day, seen through his drawings and cartoons.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thirty years after defeating the Galactic Empire, Han Solo and his allies face a new threat from the evil Kylo Ren and his army of Stormtroopers.

Star Wars: Evolution of the Lightsaber Duel

Though lightsabers have been a force in the Star Wars galaxy since George Lucas’ original film, the weapon’s on-screen presence evolved throughout both cinematic trilogies and into Star Wars: The Force Awakens. SportsCenter is tracing the lightsaber’s lineage through the films, and a new trailer for the special will definitely delight any fan’s inner Star Wars Kid.

SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back

Hosted by Mark Hamill, this revealing documentary offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into the amazing special effects that transformed George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back into reality!

The Stratford Adventure

This short film depicts how a small Canadian city, bearing the name of Stratford and by a river Avon, created its own renowned Shakespearean theatre. The film tells how the idea grew, how a famous British director, international stars and Canadian talent were recruited, and how the Stratford Shakespearean Festival finally became a triumphant reality.

Starring Sigmund Freud

Starring Sigmund Freud is a video memento for Sigmund Freud's little-known film career. Based on an essay John Menick published in Frieze in 2011, the video collects the dozens of appearances that the character of Sigmund Freud has made on small and big screens. After the 1950s, when pill vials replaced analytic couches, the father of psychoanalysis found a second career impersonating himself in everything from a John Huston clunker to a Star Trek episode. The video suggests that maybe it is in front of the camera, alongside surgically enhanced starlets and CGI chimeras, that “Herr Doktor” will find his final resting place. This video was produced by the Kadist Foundation and commissioned by dOCUMENTA (13).

The Story of Star Wars

The Skywalker family is at the heart of the Star Wars saga. Now hear the inside story of Luke and Anakin Skywalker from the characters who witnessed it all: the famous droid duo C-3PO and R2-D2. Episodes IV,V and VI are explored in "The Story of Luke Skywalker," which follows the young man escaping from his daily chores on Tatooine to his becoming a hero in the Rebal Alliance. In "The Story of Anakin Skywalker," you'll go behind the mask of the greatest Star Wars villain and discover how Darth Vader started life as a young Podracing Champ on Tatooine and later became a headstrong young Jedi seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. With clips from the Star Wars films, C-3PO and R2-D2 take you on an hour-long journey through the saga and prepare you for the explosive final chapter: Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

A Foreign Field

Nostalgic comic drama in which Cyril and Amos, two veterans of the Normandy landings, return to France to visit the grave of their wartime buddy. They encounter Waldo, an American on a similar mission, and the meeting sparks memories of an old girlfriend from the past. With the mysterious American lady Lisa in their wake, Cyril and Waldo decide to try and track her down.

The Comedians in Africa

Behind the scenes short documentary about the cast and crew during the filming of The Comedians.

David Lean: A Life in Film

A documentary video that profiles the life of David Lean, the director of Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.

Edwin

Touching comedy about a high court judge, now retired to his English countryside home, who resolves to end years of suspicion about his wife's fidelity and the true paternity of their son.

The Making of Star Wars

Learn the incredible behind-the-scenes story of how the original Star Wars movie was brought to the big screen in this fascinating documentary hosted by C-3PO and R2-D2 which includes interviews with George Lucas and appearances by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The surviving Resistance faces the First Order once again as the journey of Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron continues. With the power and knowledge of generations behind them, the final battle begins.

Grace Kelly: Destiny of a Princess

In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the sensational event.

Lionpower from MGM

"Lionpower from MGM" (1967) is an exciting 60's promotional short subject, which showcases MGM's releases for the 1967-68 film season under a "five seasons" theme--fall, winter, spring, summer--plus a "fabulous fifth season". The main music is set to the rousing theme from "The Magnificent Yankee" composed by David Raksin in 1950. The promo is narrated by some of the best voice-over actors of the time, and is an excellent time capsule of a by-gone era.

A Pee, a Poop, a Plate: Paradise (Heidi in Dreamland)

The dog in dreamland? Or at least one of us is…

Way of Tomorrow: The Evolution of Science Fiction Movies

Documentary on the History of Science Fiction Movies from The Day the Earth Stood Still onward.

...On Seeing Film

A co-production of Columbia Pictures and USC’s Department of Cinema, this 1958 educational short hosted by William Holden explores the art of adaptation through behind-the-scenes footage of the production of David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Las Guerras de las Hayacas

When two potheads from the outskirts team up with Han Jala Solo and Chuchaqui, they discover that Princess Leia has been captured by the evil Darth Verde and Joyce de Ginatta. The heroes will embark on an adventure that will change the history of the galaxy...