Highest-Rated Movies about 'Moral Decay'

The Blue Angel (1930), Pandora's Box (1929), Dangerous Liaisons (1959), Xala (1975), Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Ace in the Hole (1951), Greed (1924) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Moral Decay movies.

#16. Elmer Gantry (1960)

Storyline: Elmer Gantry is a fast-talking, hard-drinking traveling salesman who always has a risqué story and a hip flask to entertain cronies and customers alike. He is immediately taken with Sister Sharon Falconer, a lay preacher whose hellfire-and-damnation revivalism has attracted quite a following. Gantry uses his own quick wit and Bible knowledge to become an indispensable part of Sister Sharon's roadshow, but his past soon catches up with him in the form of Lulu Bains, now a prostitute. While Gantry seeks and eventually gets forgiveness from Sharon, tragedy strikes when she finally manages to get out of her revivalist tent and opens a permanent church.—garykmcd

Plot Keywords: religion, hypocrisy, faith, alcoholism, redemption, corruption, romance ...

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#17. Mephisto (1981)

Storyline: A German stage actor finds unexpected success and mixed blessings in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany. As his associates and friends flee or are ground under by the Nazi terror, the popularity of his character supercedes his own existence until he finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons.—Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca>

Plot Keywords: war, nazi, germany, politics, art, actor, moral dilemma ...

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#18. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Storyline: The real story behind the world of sales. This is a realistic portrayal of what it is to try making a life in high pressure sales with all its highs and lows; promises of fortunes and deliveries of dross. Red-leads and dead-leads are to blame for life's outcomes. Living with "Objection, Rebuttal, Close".

Plot Keywords: real estate, competition, moral dilemma, workplace, greed, betrayal, survival ...

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#19. Scarlet Street (1945)

Storyline: Chris Cross, 25 years a cashier, has a gold watch and little else. That rainy night, he rescues delectable Kitty from her abusive boyfriend Johnny. Smitten, amateur painter Chris lets Kitty think he's a wealthy artist. At Johnny's urging, she lets Chris establish her in an apartment (with his shrewish wife's money). There, Chris paints masterpieces; but Johnny sells them under Kitty's name, with disastrous and ironic results.

Plot Keywords: film noir, crime, drama, mystery, psychological thriller, betrayal, murder ...

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#20. The White Ribbon (2009)

Storyline: From July, 1913 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of incidents take place in a German village. A horse trips on a wire and throws the rider; a woman falls to her death through rotted planks; the local baron's son is hung upside down in a mill; parents slap and bully their children; a man is cruel to his long-suffering lover; another sexually abuses his daughter. People disappear. A callow teacher, who courts a nanny in the baron's household, narrates the story and tries to investigate the connections among these accidents and crimes. What is foreshadowed? Are the children holy innocents? God may be in His heaven, but all is not right with the world; the center cannot hold.

Plot Keywords: drama, historical, mystery, psychological, thriller, black and white, german film ...

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#21. Cabaret (1972)

Storyline: Cambridge University student Brian Roberts arrives in Berlin in 1931 to complete his German studies. Without much money, he plans on making a living teaching English while living in an inexpensive rooming house, where he befriends another of the tenants, American Sally Bowles. She is outwardly a flamboyant, perpetually happy person who works as a singer at the decadent Kit Kat Klub, a cabaret styled venue. Sally's outward façade is matched by that of the Klub, overseen by the omnipresent Master of Ceremonies. Sally draws Brian into her world, and initially wants him to be one of her many lovers, until she learns that he is a homosexual, albeit a celibate one. Among their other friends are his students, the poor Fritz Wendel, who wants to be a gigolo to live a comfortable life, and the straight-laced and beautiful Natalia Landauer, a Jewish heiress. Fritz initially sees Natalia as his money ticket, but eventually falls for her. However Natalia is suspect of his motives and cannot ...

Plot Keywords: musical, song and dance, germany, 1930s, nazis, cabaret, berlin ...

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#22. The Public Enemy (1931)

Storyline: Tom Powers and Matt Doyle are best friends and fellow gangsters, their lives frowned upon by Tom's straight laced brother, Mike, and Matt's straight laced sister, Molly. From their teen-aged years into young adulthood, Tom and Matt have an increasingly lucrative life, bootlegging during the Prohibition era. But Tom in particular becomes more and more brazen in what he is willing to do, and becomes more obstinate and violent against those who either disagree with him or cross him. When one of their colleagues dies in a freak accident, a rival bootlegging faction senses weakness among Tom and Matt's gang, which is led by Paddy Ryan. A gang war ensues, resulting in Paddy suggesting that Tom and Matt lay low. But because of Tom's basic nature, he decides instead to take matters into his own hands.

Plot Keywords: crime, classic, 1930s, usa, violence, warner bros, social issues ...

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#23. Baby Face (1933)

Storyline: Lilly (Baby Face) sleeps her way from basement speakeasy bartender, literally floor by floor, to the top floor of a New York office building. Bank sub-manager Jimmy McCoy finds her a job in the bank only to be cast aside as she hooks up with the bank's president. When he complains of not seeing her she says: "I'm working so hard I have to go to bed early every night."—Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

Plot Keywords: pre-code hollywood, drama, romance, feminism, prostitution, ambition, sexual liberation ...

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#24. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

Storyline: The wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secretive romance with a gentle bookseller between meals at her husband's restaurant. Food, colour coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable which has been interpreted as an allegory for Thatcherism.

Plot Keywords: crime, drama, thriller, black comedy, erotic, revenge, violence ...

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#25. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Storyline: A wealthy harridan, Violet Venable, attempts to bribe Dr. Cukrowicz, a young psycho-surgeon from a New Orleans mental hospital that is desperately in need of funds, into lobotomizing her niece, Catherine Holly. Violet wants the operation performed in order to prevent Catherine from defiling the memory of her son, the poet Sebastian. Catherine has been babbling obscenely about Sebastian's mysterious death that she witnessed while on holiday together in Spain the previous summer.

Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, drama, film noir, gothic, literary adaptation, psychoanalysis, family secrets ...

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#26. Coup de Torchon (1981)

Storyline: 1938, in a French african colony. Lucien Cordier is the cop of this village, populated with blacks and a few whites (usually racialist and lustful). He is a washout, everyone (including his wife Huguette) humiliates him. He never arrests anyone and looks at elsewhere when a dirty trick occurs. But one day, he turns into a machiavellian exterminating angel.—Yepok

Plot Keywords: crime, drama, black comedy, french film, colonialism, moral ambiguity, corruption ...

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#27. The Visit (1964)

Storyline: Karla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a millionairess for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Karla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...—Dave Kocsis <david.kocsis@delta-air.com>

Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, family dynamics, rural setting, black comedy, social satire, class conflict, moral dilemma ...

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#29. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Storyline: In 1886, in the Victorian London, the corrupt Lord Henry Wotton meets the pure Dorian Gray posing for talented painter Basil Hallward. Basil paints Dorian's portrait and gives the beautiful painting and an Egyptian sculpture of a cat to him while Henry corrupts his mind and soul telling that Dorian should seek pleasure in life. Dorian wishes that his portrait could age instead of him. Dorian goes to a side show in the Two Turtles in the poor neighborhood of London and he falls in love with the singer Sibyl Vane. Dorian decides to get married with her and tells to Lord Henry that convinces him to test the honor of Sibyl. Dorian Gray leaves Sibyl and travels abroad and when he returns to London, Lord Henry tells him that Sibyl committed suicide for love. Along the years, Dorian's friends age while he is still the same, but his picture discloses his evilness and corruptive life. Can he still have salvation or is his soul trapped in the doomed painting?

Plot Keywords: gothic, horror, drama, fantasy, mystery, film noir, moral decay ...

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#30. Written on the Wind (1956)

Storyline: On 24 October 1955, the hard-work geologist of the Hadley Oil Company Mitch Wayne meets the executive secretary Lucy Moore in the office of her boss Bill Ryan in New York and invites her to go to a conference with the alcoholic playboy and son of a tycoon Kyle Hadley. On the way of the meeting, he confesses that they had traveled from Houston to New York to satisfy the wish of the reckless Kyle, who is his best friend since their childhood, of eating a sandwich from club 21 and the meeting was just a pretext to Kyle's father Jasper Hadley. Mitch and Kyle immediately fall in love for Lucy, and Kyle unsuccessfully uses his money to impress Lucy; then he opens his heart and proposes Lucy. They get married and travel to Acapulco and the insecure Kyle stops drinking. Meanwhile, Kyle's sister Marylee is an easy woman and has a non-corresponded crush on Mitch that sees her as a sister. One year later, Kyle discovers that he has a problem and might be sterile and starts drinking again. The jealous Marylee poisons Kyle telling that his wife and Mitch are having a love affair. When Lucy finds that she is pregnant, Kyle believes that the baby belongs to Mitch and his mistrust leads to a tragedy.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Plot Keywords: drama, romance, family, wealthy family, tragedy, desire, alcoholism ...

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