Though he had forced his way into French film culture by working entirely outside his country's studio system in the 1940s and 1950s, by the 1960s director Jean-Pierre Melville was working with larger budgets and well-known actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Le Doulos. An extension of Melville's fascination with the existential milieu of American gangster films, Le Doulos presents New Wave icon Belmondo as Silien, a man newly released from prison and by reputation a professional informer. A figure, then, of possible duplicity and ambiguity, Silien is the perfect Melvillian hero, difficult to read but propelled by internal forces manifested as direct action. Maintaining friendships with both cop and crook, Silien's notoriety as a "finger man" who informs on the latter is underscored when one acquaintance, a police inspector (Daniel Crohem), waits in ambush for another, a burglar (Serge Reggiani), to perform his next job. But did Silien actually rat out the fellow? Melville pushes the envelope of our perceptions by making it appear Silien did, and then goes through the tale again to reveal another story. A much darker film than his celebrated Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos is an absorbing tale of a world that seems to exist between light and shadow. -Tom Keogh.

The Little Rascals Vol. 1 contains Fly My Kite, Honkey Donkey, Beginner's Luck, Reunion in Rhythm. Vol. 2 contains The First Seven Years, Hi' Neighbor, The Pinch Singer, Rushin' Ballet. Best of Alfalfa contains Alfalfa's Double, Alfalfa's Aunt, Clown Princes, Time Out for Lessons. Laurel & Hardy star in be Big!, Our Gang kids star in Bear Shooters, School's Out, Our Gang Follies of 1938.

Miklós Janscó takes the romance out of Russia's Revolutionary struggle in this simultaneously beautiful and brutal look at the civil war following the Bolshevik coup of 1918. Set in a remote region of Central Russia in 1919, The Red and the White follows the shifting balance of power around an abandoned monastery. The anti-Bolshevik White Army has embarked on a campaign to completely eradicate the area of Red Army soldiers, and scores of Hungarians, former Bolshevik prisoners thrust into battle, are caught in the middle. The graceful camerawork and lush, lovely landscape captured in stunning black-and-white widescreen stand in sharp contrast to the abrupt on-the-spot executions and sadistic cat-and-mouse games of the White Army, hiding behind a mask of politeness and civility as they line up their next row of victims. But Janscó's portrayal of the Bolsheviks, while decidedly more heroic, isn't much more sympathetic. The dreamlike poetry of Janscó's cinema and the surreal atmosphere of doom carries the film in place of a strong story or a central set of characters, but there is no mistaking his sympathies for the victims of the struggle-peasants and prisoners and civilians caught between collision of two armies, systematically stripped of their dignity and their lives as the battle rages around them like an evocation of hell on Earth. It's a brave stance for a Hungarian filmmaker working on Soviet soil in 1968 and it makes for a powerful film. -Sean Axmaker.

One of the most ferociously iconoclastic and experimental films of the French New Wave, Alain Resnais's 1961 feature, winner of the grand prize at that year's Venice Film Festival, is based on a script by Alain Robbe-Grillet. At its center is what seems to be a simple but unanswerable puzzle: Did its protagonist (Giorgio Albertazzi) have an affair the year before with a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he just met (or possibly re-met) at his hotel? The inquiry becomes an unsettling experiment in flattening the dimensions of past, present, and future so that any difference between them becomes meaningless, while Resnais's coldly formal but oddly dreamlike geometric compositions make space itself seem a function of subjective memory. Add to that Resnais's trademark tracking shots-long, smooth, a visual correlative of a wordless feeling-and this is a film that truly gets under the skin in almost inexplicable ways. One of the most influential works of its time. -Tom Keogh.

COLOR. Directed by ALEXANDER PTUSHKO. Ukraine-born filmmaker Ptushko was noted as an accomplished creator of celluloid fables designed especially for children. However, anyone between the ages of eight and 108 will relish this sweeping spectacular which depicts the courage of Ilya Morometz, a legendary Russian hero of the Middle Ages. Once upon a time, there was a happy and peaceful kingdom of golden lakes and rolling hills and fertile soil. A plundering tribe headed by the vicious Kalin has ravaged the land, pillaging village after village and leaving only desolation and despair. Kalin is a warlord whose brutality is "unmatched in history. " Only one person can defy him: a brawny farmer and man of the people who is "stout of heart and brave of spirit," and who is known as Ilya Morometz. With magic sword in hand Ilya sets off down "the road that leads to death" in his quest to topple Kalin. Two of the most terrifying obstacles he must overcome are a wind demon and a flying three-headed fire-dragon. [+]

Spencer Tracy and Gene Tierney star in this Hollywood realization of life aboard the Mayflower on her most historic journey. In one of his meanest roles since Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Tracy is at his gruffest and bitterest as the disagreeable, tempestuous Captain Jones, master of the famous vessel that carried the Pilgrims to the New World. Tierney in Technicolor is as beautiful as ever, despite being cast as a somber Pilgrim. Leo Genn's portrayal of Pilgrim leader William Bradford is memorable, while Lloyd Bridges, Van Johnson, and John Dehner round out the excellent cast. The depiction of the hardships faced by the passengers and crew on the voyage are fairly accurate, despite any minor liberties taken with historical facts. The film won a 1953 Oscar for special effects, and the storm sequence alone is still worth the price of admission today. -Mark Savary.

David Lean's beautiful adaptation of Noel Coward's play is an absorbing as well as charming look at an English family's struggle for stability between the two World Wars. Lean does a masterful job of gently penetrating human nature with truly imaginative camera direction. Robert Newton and Celia Johnson are brilliant, with an especially poignant performance by Johnson. One of David Lean's best cinematic accomplishments.

Ginger Rogers stars as a department store salesclerk about to be laid off after the Christmas holiday, who happens to be passing an orphanage when a woman leaves a baby on the doorstep. The orphanage assumes that Rogers is the mother, despite her protests; when they contact the department store, the owner's son (David Niven) decides to restore her job so that she can take care of the child. Before long, rumors are flying that Niven is the child's father, which fills Niven's father (the great character actor Charles Coburn) with joy. The plot expertly weaves a deliciously funny web of assumptions and denials, with Rogers, Niven, and Coburn turning in topnotch performances-Rogers, who sometimes overplays her comic parts, is brilliantly understated in what is one of her best roles. These great actors are combined with a smart script from Norman Krasna (Mr. and Mrs. Smith, It Started with Eve) and smooth direction from Garson Kanin (My Favorite Wife). Bachelor Mother is one of the most underappreciated gems of the screwball comedy era. -Bret Fetzer.