Citizen Kane (1941), Downfall (2004), Pelle the Conqueror (1987), Holiday Inn (1942), The English Patient (1996), The Glenn Miller Story (1953), The Harmonists (1998), My Reputation (1946) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Swing Music movies.
Storyline: A group of reporters are trying to decipher the last word ever spoken by Charles Foster Kane, the millionaire newspaper tycoon: "Rosebud". The film begins with a news reel detailing Kane's life for the masses, and then from there, we are shown flashbacks from Kane's life. As the reporters investigate further, the viewers see a display of a fascinating man's rise to fame, and how he eventually fell off the top of the world.
Plot Keywords: new york, journalist, marriage, new york city, adultery, suicide attempt, newspaper publisher ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Soviet Armies closing in from the west and south. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his Generals and advisers to fight to the last man. "Downfall" explores these final days of the Reich, where senior German leaders (such as Himmler and Goring) began defecting from their beloved Fuhrer, in an effort to save their own lives, while still others (Joseph Goebbels) pledge to die with Hitler. Hitler, himself, degenerates into a paranoid shell of a man, full of optimism one moment and suicidal depression the next. When the end finally does comes, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.
Plot Keywords: bunker, third reich, nazi, suicide, world war two, ss officer, last will and testament ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: When his wife dies, Lassefar (Max von Sydow) takes his 12-year-old son, Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard), from their home in Sweden to Denmark in search of a better life. Signing on as laborers at a large farm, father and son undergo numerous trials, including prejudice against immigrants and run-ins with those more powerful than themselves in both the physical and the social sense. Over the course of a year, young Pelle learns what it takes to survive in a harsh and unforgiving world.—yusufpiskin
Plot Keywords: boy, farm worker, father son relationship, based on novel, emigration, spanking, genital mutilation ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after femme fatale Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and manager Danny Reed. The music's the thing.
Plot Keywords: blackface, hollywood california, gold digger, reference to george washington, fourth of july, falling from height, engagement ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: October 1944 in war torn Italy. Hana, a French-Canadian nurse working in a mobile army medical unit, feels like everything she loves in life dies on her. Because of the difficulty traveling and the dangers, especially as the landscape is still heavily booby-trapped with mines, Hana volunteers to stay behind at a church to care solely for a dying semi-amnesiac patient, who is badly burned and disfigured. She agrees to catch up to the rest of the unit after he dies. All the patient remembers is that he is English and that he is married. Their solitude is disrupted with the arrival at the church of fellow Canadian David Caravaggio, part of the Intelligence Service, who is certain that he knows the patient as a man who cooperated with the Germans. Caravaggio believes that the patient's memory is largely in tact and that he is running away from his past, in part or in its entirety. The patient does open up about his past, all surrounding his work as a cartographer in North Africa, which ...
Plot Keywords: patient, female frontal nudity, bathtub, shared bath, year 1944, year 1942, undressing ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: The unemployed trombone player Glenn Miller is always broken, chasing his sound to form his band and hocking his instrument in the pawn house to survive. When his friend Chummy MacGregor is hired to play in the band of Ben Pollack, the band-leader listens to one Glenn's composition and invites him to join his band. While traveling to New York, Glenn visits his former girlfriend Helen Berger, in Boulder, Colorado, and asks her to wait for him. Two years later he quits the band and proposes Helen that moves to New York to marry him. After the success of "Moonlight Serenade", Glenn Miller's band becomes worldwide known and Glenn and Helen and their two children have a very comfortable life. Duting the World War II, Glenn enlists in the army and travels to Europe to increase the moral of the allied troops. In the Christmas of 1944, he travels from London to Paris for a concert to be broadcast; however his plane is never found in the tragic flight.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Plot Keywords: band, based on real events, music band, year 1944, 1930s, 1940s, u.s. air force ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Comedian Harmonists tells the story of a famous, German male sextet, five vocals and piano, the "Comedian Harmonists", from the day they meet first in 1927 to the day in 1934, when they become banned by the upcoming Nazis, because three of them are Jewish.—Markus Mühlbauer <muehlbauer@ubaclu.unibas.ch>
Plot Keywords: monocle, dancer, dancing, recording, record player, recording session, wedding ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Tongues begin to wag when a lonely widow becomes romantically involved with a military man. Problems arise when the gossip is filtered down to her own children.—Daniel Bubbeo <dbubbeo@cmp.com>
Plot Keywords: title spoken by character, train station, red cross, divorce, scandal, christmas carol, martini ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Peter Appleton is an ambitious young screenwriter working for HHS Studios during Hollywood's Golden Age, 1951 in particular. "Ashes to Ashes" is about to be released, and he's dating the attractive movie star, Sandra Sinclair. Just when everything seems to be going his way, it is discovered he (unwittingly) attended a Communist meeting during college when pulled there by his girlfriend at the time, and thus heavy suspicion settles over him and he'll have to stand before Congress. Afraid of what might happen if they don't, HHS cancels Appleton's contract and aborts the release date of the film. Appleton promptly begins to wallow in self-pity and spends nearly an entire night at a bar, then drives intoxicated through the streets of the California course until plummeting into a stormy river and getting knocked unconscious. Washing up on the beaches of a small town called Lawson. Although the people there are pleasant and likable, the town is depressed and lifeless due to having lost 62 ...
Plot Keywords: burial, flashback, reference to franklin d. roosevelt, funeral, graveyard, hardware store, hero ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: "Jigger' Lane forms a band that includes singer Ginger 'Character' Powell, wife of the trumpeter Leo Powell, and Nickie Haroyen and Peppi. All of them dedicate themselves to work as a unit and to play 'blues' music. The dedication isn't paying off in money and, while riding the rails in a boxcar, they meet and befriend a gangster named Del Davis. He offers them a job at a New Jersey roadhouse, where Powell falls in love with Kay Grant, a former 'real-good friend' of Davis. But when Powell learns that 'Character' is about to have a baby, he returns to her. "Jigger" tries to make Kay the band's singer and, when this fails, runs off with her. She leaves him with nothing to show for him except a nervous breakdown.Back at the roadhouse, after his recovery, Kay shows up, has a quarrel with Davis, shoots and kills him and plans to take back up with "Jigger", who knows better but just can't help himself. While she is waiting in a car for him, along comes cripple Brad Ames, who she put in that condition, and he gets in and drives the car over a cliff, leaving no survivors in the two-passenger crash. The band is back together at the end, still using boxcars as their transportation, but happy playing the blues.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
Plot Keywords: new jersey, racketeer, racial stereotype, prisoner, police officer, missouri, liquor ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: One dark summer night, Francesca Cunningham, a once world famed pianist, escapes from her hospital room and tries to commit suicide by jumping off a local bridge. She is rescued and taken back to the hospital and undergoes psychological treatment by Dr. Larsen. Larsen, desperately wants to know the events and persons who drove her to this state and help her. He makes Francesca talk about her past - a past with a controlling guardian, Nicholas, no friends, kept apart from the man she loved and forced to practice the piano 5-6 hours a day.—Kelly
Plot Keywords: british noir, portrait, car accident, car crash, orchestra, swing music, cane ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Katharine Hilliard, mousy dean of a stuffy music school, meets and is insulted by swing band leader Barry Clayton on a train. To "show" him she takes a friend's advice, removes her glasses, and puts on a designer gown. Naturally, she becomes gorgeous. Soon, both Barry and crooner Jimmy Hale are after her, and she finds herself in the midst of triangles and misunderstandings.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Plot Keywords: classical music, bartender, vindication, song in title, hotel desk clerk, cigarette smoking, musician ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Lucky Jackson arrives in town with his car literally in tow ready for the first Las Vegas Grand Prix - once he has the money to buy an engine. He gets the cash easily enough but mislays it when the pretty swimming pool manageress takes his mind off things. It seems he will lose both race and girl, problems made more difficult by rivalry from Elmo Mancini, fellow racer and womaniser. Perhaps some singing will help.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
Plot Keywords: las vegas nevada, acoustic guitar, music band, sports car, six gun, stage, gambler ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Judy Bellaire, played by Judy Garland, is the center of trouble at her exclusive private and very conservative school. She is expelled when she starts singing in a Jazzy style in her music class. Mayhem ensues as she returns home to her actress mother, playwright father, dysfunctional Russian maid (Fanny Brice) and tries out as a black face singer in a musical.—BerindaBear
Plot Keywords: singer, financial crisis, family relationships, false accusation, expulsion, engagement, fired from the job ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: "Dakota" Smith (William Terry), a young soldier on a pass in New York City, visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theatre and movies appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. Dakota meets a pretty young hostess, Eileen Burke (Cheryl Walker), and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
Plot Keywords: actor shares first name with character, slang, bellhop, minister, wedding ceremony, classical music, swing music ...
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