Mildred Pierce (1945), Sudden Fear (1952), Grand Hotel (1932), Harriet Craig (1950), Possessed (1947), The Damned Don't Cry (1950), Strange Cargo (1940), Strait-Jacket (1964) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Joan Crawford movies.
Storyline: When Mildred Pierce's out-of-work husband leaves her for another woman, Mildred decides to raise her two daughters on her own. Despite Mildred's financial successes in the restaurant business, her oldest daughter, Veda, resents her mother for degrading their social status. In the midst of a police investigation after the death of her second husband, Mildred must evaluate her own freedom and her complicated relationship with her daughter.
Plot Keywords: film noir, drama, crime, mystery, melodrama, thriller, family drama ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Actor Lester Blaine has all but landed the lead in Myra Hudson's new play when Myra vetoes him because, to her, he doesn't look like a "romantic leading man." On a train from New York to San Francisco, Blaine sets out to prove Myra wrong...by romancing her. Is he sincere, or does he have a dark ulterior motive? The answer brings on a game of cat and mouse; but who's the cat and who's the mouse?—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: film noir, thriller, drama, suspense, crime, mystery, psychological thriller ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Berlin's plushest, most expensive hotel is the setting where in the words of Dr. Otternschlag "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.". The doctor is usually drunk so he missed the fact that Baron von Geigern is broke and trying to steal eccentric dancer Grusinskaya's pearls. He ends up stealing her heart instead. Powerful German businessman Preysing brow beats Kringelein, one of his company's lowly bookkeepers but it is the terminally ill Kringelein who holds all the cards in the end. Meanwhile, the Baron also steals the heart of Preysing's mistress, Flaemmchen, but she doesn't end up with either one of them in the end...
Plot Keywords: drama, classic, black and white, hollywood, all-star cast, 1930s, mgm ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Domineering Harriet Craig holds more regard for her home and its possessions than she does for any person in her life. Among those she treats like household objects are her kind husband Walter, whom she has lied to about her inability to have children; her cousin Claire, whom she treats like a secretary; and her servants whom she treats like slaves.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: drama, family, marriage, manipulation, female lead, psychological drama, film noir ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A woman wanders the streets of Los Angeles in some sort of emotional distress. She is also under some delusion as she approaches many men, strangers who she calls "David." Eventually, an ambulance is called, the attendants who take her to the hospital, where she is eventually placed in the psychiatric ward. Placing her under some medication to help her remember, Dr. Harvey Willard, the psychiatrist on duty, is able to get some semblance of a story out of her over the ensuing days. This phase of her life begins just over a year ago when she, single RN Louise Howell, is employed by wealthy Dean Graham to take care of his chronically ill and largely bedridden wife, Pauline Graham, at their lake house outside of Washington, D.C. Due to her circumstances, Pauline believes that Dean and Louise are having an affair behind her back. Louise can see that Dean does have feelings for her that way in his loneliness. The "David" in question is David Sutton, a civil engineer who lives across the lake from the Grahams, and who has been having a secret affair with Louise. That relationship was meant to be casual, but David tries to break it off with her when he sees that she has fallen in love with him to an obsessional state. Louise begins to manipulate the situation to be in David's life, even if only peripherally. Louise also begins to feel that if she can't have David, nobody else should. Louise is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia during this time--something she does not mention to anyone in her life--which places her story to Dr. Willard in some context, including what of the story is real and what is all part of her delusion.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: film noir, psychological thriller, crime, murder, mental illness, hallucination, romance ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The murder of gangster Nick Prenta touches off an investigation of mysterious socialite Lorna Hansen Forbes, who seems to have no past, and has now disappeared. In flashback, we see the woman's anonymous roots; her poor working-class marriage, which ends in tragedy and her determination to find "better things." Soon finding that sex appeal is her only salable commodity, she climbs from man to man toward the center of a nationwide crime syndicate...a very perilous position.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: film noir, crime drama, femme fatale, gangster, melodrama, classic hollywood, 1950s ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Verne wants nothing more than to escape from a penal colony located off the northern coast of South America. He tries to involve Julie, a saloon girl, in his plans but she turns him in to the authorities. On Verne's next try, he piggybacks on the escape of six other convicts and runs into Julie again in the process. One of the convicts is a spiritual figure who seems to know what will happen before anyone else. The group attempts to travel through the jungle, board a boat, and make it to the mainland.—JeanneArmintrout@juno.com
Plot Keywords: adventure, drama, romance, crime, escape, film noir, suspense ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Lucy Harbin has been in an asylum for twenty years after axing her husband and his mistress during a crime of passion, witnessed by her young daughter, Carol. While trying to renew ties with Carol, who is now a young woman about to be married, heads begin to roll again. Is Lucy repeating her past?—Ray Hamel <hamel@primate.wisc.edu>
Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, horror, murder mystery, mental illness, family secrets, betrayal, revenge ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Janie lives to dance and will dance anywhere, even stripping in a burlesque house. Tod Newton, the rich playboy, discovers her there and helps her get a job in a real Broadway musical being directed by Patch. Tod thinks he can get what he wants from Janie, Patch thinks Janie is using her charms rather than talent to get to the top, and Janie thinks Patch is the greatest. Steve, the stage manager, has the Three Stooges helping him manage all the show girls. Fred Astaire and Nelson Eddy make appearances as famous Broadway personalities.—Lisa Grable <grable@unity.ncsu.edu>
Plot Keywords: musical, romance, comedy, broadway, dance, golden age hollywood, joan crawford ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Millicent Wetherby is a middle-aged woman whose life is devoid of love and affection. Millicent's solitary existence changes when she encounters Burt Hansen a charismatic younger man. As Burt successfully woos her and wins her hand in marriage, rumors begin to surface that Millicent's newfound beau is in fact a deranged maniac. Things grow even more complicated for Millicent when a woman claiming to be Hansen's first wife shows up. As Burt begins to lose control of himself, Millicent ponders the most radical of actions against her husband.—alfiehitchie
Plot Keywords: drama, romance, film noir, psychological drama, mystery, crime, loneliness ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Eva Phillips is a Southern socialite whose manipulation and ruthlessness ruins the lives of everyone around her. The question is, will anyone be able to stop her?—Kelly
Plot Keywords: drama, female lead, family, marriage, power struggle, 1950s, classic film ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: The relationship between Christina Crawford and her adoptive mother Joan Crawford is presented from Christina's view. Unable to bear children, Joan, in 1940, was denied children through regular adoption agencies due to her twice divorced status and being a single working person. Her lover at the time, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lawyer Greg Savitt, was able to go through a brokerage to adopt a baby girl, who would be Christina, the first of Joan's four adoptive children. Joan believes that her own difficult upbringing has made her a stronger person, and decides that, while providing the comforts that a successful Hollywood actress can afford, she will not coddle Christina or her other children, she treating Christina more as a competitor than a daughter. Joan's treatment of Christina is often passive-aggressive, fueled both by the highs and lows of her career, the narcissism that goes along with being an actress, and alcohol abuse especially during the low times. However, Joan sees much of ...
Plot Keywords: biography, drama, psychological thriller, hollywood, celebrity, abuse, mother-daughter relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Mary, a writer working on a novel about a love triangle, is attracted to her publisher. Her suitor Jimmy is determined to break them up; he introduces Mary to the publisher's wife without telling Mary who she is.—Diana Hamilton <hamilton@gl.umbc.edu>
Plot Keywords: comedy, romance, drama, classic, black and white, hollywood, marriage ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: When two teenagers make prank phone calls to strangers, they become the target for terror when they whisper "I Saw What You Did, And I Know Who You Are!" to psychopath Steve Marek who has just murdered his wife. But somebody else knows of the terrible crime that was committed that night, the killer's desperately amorous neighbor Amy Nelson.—Joan Crawford & William Castle
Plot Keywords: thriller, suspense, crime, film noir, psychological thriller, murder, teenagers ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Count Armalia believes that the luck of birth is all that separates the rich from the poor. To test his theory, he sends Anni, who is a singer in a dive, to a ritzy resort for two weeks. With fancy new clothes and ersatz status, Anni decides that she likes the rich life. But with time running out, she needs a rich husband and Rudi is the one she chooses. Only it takes longer than two weeks for Rudi to dump his fiancée and propose to her. In the weeks that she has been there, she finds that she loves Giulio, the postman with the small house and the donkey cart. But will she give up love for wealth....—Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
Plot Keywords: romance, drama, comedy, female lead, class divide, identity disguise, 1930s ...
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