Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock directed this film in 1935. It's one of his greatest successes. The film is based on a novel by John Buchan, also known as Lord Tweedsmuir. The story has a Canadian mining engineer, Richard Hannay, unwillingly drawn into a spy chase when a woman unknown to him latches onto him as he's leaving a London theatre. She tells him she's a spy and that she needs his help. He's skeptical of her story, but he goes back to his London flat with her. Hannay is brilliantly played by actor Robert Donat. He turns out to be quite an interesting character, and a resourceful one at that. When the woman he returned home with turns up dead in his flat, Hannay flees London for Scotland, hoping to find a man he believes can clear him. The newspapers accuse Hannay of murder, so he knows he's a wanted man. During a chase through Scotland, Hannay finds he's not only pursued by the police for the murder he didn't commit, but by members of the spy ring the woman warned him about. Watch how he manages to deal with police, spies and a beautiful young woman played by Madeleine Carroll.

An early James Bond film starring Sean Connery as the British secret agent. Sent to Turkey to pick up a Russian coding machine, Bond finds danger and romance with beautiful Soviet diplomatic employee, Tatiana Romanova(played by Daniela Bianchi). Robert Shaw plays Soviet agent and killer Red Grant, who is out to stop Bond and the Soviet coding machine from ever reaching England.

This film closely follows the novel as it was written by author Ian Fleming. Fleming had been a naval commander during the Second World War, and after it began writing stories that featured British secret agent James Bond.

A well-shot film; the backdrops of Turkey and of Venice are simply stunning. The train ride from Turkey to Trieste, and the boat trip to Venice show 1960's Europe at its most beautiful.

In the early 1950's, fear of Communism and of the Soviet Union was a strong force here in America. Senator Joseph McCarthy made a great many accusations of Communists in government, thus contributing to an already present climate of fear.

McCarthy's accusations were widely reported. Not so widely reported was the fact that his accusations were without foundation.

By 1954, some four years after McCarthy began his campaign to root out Communists in government, CBS News broadcaster Edward R. Murrow decided to investigate the Senator.

This film explores how CBS News took on McCarthy and how it succeeded in exposing a powerful but corrupt Senator.

James Mason stars in this film about stealing state secrets. Mason's character, Diello, is the valet to the British ambassador to Turkey. But he hates the British and steals classified documents from the ambassador's safe by photographing them. He offers them to the Nazis, who buy them, but doubt their veracity. Diello, as played by Mason, has all the oily charm of a man who wants to be a "gentleman." His opposite number, Moyzisch, the German attaché, is portrayed as something of a bumbler. But Franz von Papen, the German ambassador to Turkey, is portrayed as smart and impatient with the incompetents around him. The story is based on a post-war memoir by German attaché L.C. Moyzisch, who had dealings with the British embassy spy.