Topic: 1940s

Direction Francis Ford Coppola

Cast Marlon Brando · Al Pacino · James Caan · Robert Duvall

Plot Epic tale of a 1940s New York Mafia family and their struggle to protect their empire from rival families as the leadership switches from the father (Marlon Brando) to his...

Direction Frank Darabont

Cast Tim Robbins · Morgan Freeman · Bob Gunton · James Whitmore

Plot Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison for the murders of his wife and her lover in the late 1940s. However, only Andy knows...

Direction Roberto Benigni

Cast Roberto Benigni · Nicoletta Braschi · Giorgio Cantarini · Marisa Paredes

Plot Guido - a charming but bumbling waiter who's gifted with a colourful imagination and an irresistible sense of humour - has won the heart of the woman he loves and...

Direction Masaki Kobayashi

Cast Tatsuya Nakadai · Michiyo Aratama · Yusuke Kawazu · Tamao Nakamura

Plot The protagonist is the pacifistic Kaji. Strong-armed into the Japanese military during World War II, Kaji has reluctantly learned to kill on the battlefields. Upon his country's surrender, Kaji and...

Direction Bernardo Bertolucci

Cast Gérard Depardieu · Robert De Niro · Dominique Sanda · Stefania Sandrelli

Plot In 1901, in the north of Italy, the same day Giuseppe Verdi died, the sons of a landlord and a farm worker are born. They will be inseparable friends, although...

Direction William Wyler

Cast Dana Andrews · Fredric March · Myrna Loy · Harold Russell

Plot After the Second World War, the soldiers who survived, some of them with physical problems, came back to the United States. Initially, they were treated as heroes, but afterwards they...

Direction Stanley Kramer

Cast Spencer Tracy · Burt Lancaster · Richard Widmark · Marlene Dietrich

Plot It has been three years since the most important Nazi leaders had already been tried. This trial is about four Judges who used their offices to conduct Nazi sterilization and...

Direction Masaki Kobayashi

Cast Tatsuya Nakadai · Michiyo Aratama · Ineko Arima · Chikage Awashima

Plot During the Second World War, Kaji, a japanese pacifist, tries to avoid military service by accepting a job as a supervisor in the mines of Manchuria, in occupied territory. Kaji...

Direction Masaki Kobayashi

Cast Tatsuya Nakadai · Michiyo Aratama · Kei Sato · Minoru Chiaki

Plot Second World War. Forced to join the japanese army, Kaji is sent to Manchuria. There, he becomes friends with a soldier who sympathizes with communism. After a visit from his...

Direction Zhang Yimou

Cast Gong Li · Ge You · Jiang Wu · Niu Ben

Plot Fugui is the father of a once-wealthy family whose addiction to gambling and chronic bad luck causes him to lose his home in a game of dice with Long'er. Fugui's...

Direction Andrei Tarkovsky

Cast Margarita Terekhova · Philip Yankovsky · Ignat Daniltsev · Oleg Yankovskiy

Plot Tarkovsky mixes flash-backs, historical footage and original poetry to illustrate the reminiscences of a man about his childhood during World War II, adolescence, and a painful divorce in his family....

Direction Ján Kadár · Elmar Klos

Cast Josef Kroner · Frantisek Zvarik · Ida Kaminska · Hana Slivkova

Plot Tono Briko (Josef Kroner) is a slothful Czechslovakian carpenter. The time is World War II, and the occupying Nazis are nationalizing all Jewish-owned businesses. To please his ambitious family, Tono...

Direction Louis Malle

Cast Gaspard Manesse · Raphaël Fetjo · Francine Racette · Stanislas Carré de Malberg

Plot During the winter of 1943, Julien Quentin, a pampered mother's boy who acts tough to the students at the school but is actually a soft kid who wets the bed,...

Direction Fred Zinnemann

Cast Burt Lancaster · Montgomery Clift · Deborah Kerr · Frank Sinatra

Plot When Private Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is transferred to Hawaii, Captain Holmes (Philip Ober) finds out about Prewitt’s boxing abilities and tries to coax him to join the team. Prewitt refuses,...

Direction Víctor Erice

Cast Ana Torrent · Fernando Fernán Gómez · Isabel Tellería · Laly Soldevila

Plot In a small Castilian village in the early 40s, in the wake of the devastating Civil War, Ana and her sister, having seen a mobile projection of Frankenstein, becomes obsessed...

Direction Roberto Rossellini

Cast Vittorio De Sica · Hannes Messemer · Sandra Milo · Giovanna Ralli

Plot Genoa, 1943. Grimaldi is a swindler, pretending to be a colonel in the Italian army to get money from the family of people put into jail by the Nazis. Once...

Direction Tôya Satô

Cast Hoshi Ishida · Mao Sasaki · Yasunori Danda · Mayuko Fukuda

Plot A tragic film covering an aunt's struggle to survive in Japan during World War II whiling caring for her niece and nephew.

Direction Fernando Fernán Gómez

Cast José Sacristán · Fernando Fernán Gómez · Juan Diego · María Luisa Ponte

Plot Sstory of a family of commediants that work in the Spanish countryside during the 40's and 50's.

Direction Bernhard Wicki

Cast Folker Bohnet · Fritz Wepper · Michael Hinz · Frank Glaubrecht

Plot A group of German boys is ordered to protect a small bridge in their home village during the waning months of the second world war. Truckloads of defeated, cynical Wehrmacht...

Direction Shôhei Imamura

Cast Yoshiko Tanaka · Kazuo Kitamura · Etsuko Ichihara · Shoichi Ozawa

Plot The title refers to the radioactive fallout which descended upon ruined city of Hiroshima after the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Young bride-to-be Yoshiko Tanaka has the misfortune to...