The Defiant Ones 1958  N/R, 97 min.
Genre: Drama / Thriller
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Cara Williams, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles McGraw, King Donovan, Claude Akins, Whit Bissell, Lawrence Dobkin, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, Kevin Caughlin
Hatred turns into understanding and finally love when two escaped convicts (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) must lean on each other to survive. This movie, about the futility of racial hatred, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, Actor (both Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier), Supporting Actor (Theodore Bikel), Supporting Actress (Cara Williams), Director, and Film Editing. It won for Best Writing and Cinematography.
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The Domino Principle 1977   R, 97 min.
Genre: Mystery
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Richard Widmark, Mickey Rooney, Edward Albert, Eli Wallach, Jay Novello, Ken Swofford, Neva Patterson, Ted Gehring
Hired assassin Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) is sent out to kill prominent people, but when he decides he has had enough, he becomes the target.
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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 1967   N/R, 108 min.
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Romance
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Houghton, Cecil Kellaway, Beah Richards, Isabel Sanford, Roy Glenn, Virginia Christine, Tom Heaton, Alexandra Hay, Barbara Randolph, D'Urville Martin, Skip Martin
When Joey's (Katharine Houghton) parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy) discover their daughter is going to marry a Black man (Sidney Poitier), they express their concerns and disapproval. For 1967, this movie dealt with racism in a mature manner. Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for her role. The film also won an Academy Award for Best Writing and was nominated for eight more, including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Cecil Kellaway), and Supporting Actress (Beah Richards). 2 User Reviews
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| | Relevant Social Film | AvidMovieFan 09/22/2007 | | This film in all its glory was groundbreaking in revealing the human spirit in what and how race matters in America. I loved this film because it captures the true feelings in each of us and challenges the status quo to "marry someone of your own race". Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy offer stellar performances along with Sir Sydney Poitier and Katherine Houghton. The film is set in beautiful San Francisco and offers a sense of hope to all who view the world as colorblind. The year this film was made Jim Crow was still active in this country and challenges us to look inside ourselves and question self-prejudice. Excellent film for all, especially for people who are in and interracial relationship. The line at the end, "you'll just have to hold on to each other tight" and don't give a DAMN what anybody thinks is priceless! |
| | Should a rich white girl marry a black nobel prize winner? | 1fatts 03/26/2007 | I really wanted to like this film.
It was Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy . . . in fact, Tracy's last film. Stanley Kramer directed. And in 1967 to dislike anything Sidney Poitier was in was seen, pretty much in itself, as an act of racism.
But the film -- its comedy and its "importance" -- turned, ultimately, on the conflict caused by the white woman and the black man wanting to marry. And it was all a straw man. The girl (Katherin Houghton), aside from playing about as vivid as a cardboard cutout of a Bryn Mawr recruitment ad, faced no sacrifice of money, position, parental angst, or anything else. The boy was a PhD, brilliant, a guaranteed financial and professional success and spoke the Queen's English with an ease and sophistication that John Gilgood could have envied.
In short: no conflict, no tension, no comedy, no "significance".
"In the Heat of the Night" it wasn't. Maybe "in the cool of the cocktail hour." |
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 Inherit the Wind 1960  N/R, 127 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Dick York, Gene Kelly, Harry Morgan, Florence Eldridge, Elliott Reid, Philip Coolidge, Claude Akins, Noah Beery Jr., Donna Anderson, Paul Hartman, Jimmy Boyd, Norman Fell, Hope Summers
Charles Darwin's theories of evolution go on trial in the 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Tennessee where Clarence Darrow (Spencer Tracy) and William Jennings Bryan (Fredric March) argue the merits of teaching the new science in the classroom. 1 User Review
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| | Battle of the Giants | 1fatts 06/16/2009 | The story is that when this movie was being shot, actors on the lot would find their way to the set to just hang out and watch the battle of the giants: Spencer Tracy and Fredric March. It was a good script; no one could direct courtroom like Stanley Kramer; nice casting; great set: but it is, in the end, March and Tracy eating the scenery and creating character.
Other good things deserve to be said about this movie, but it's watching the two actors of their generation pull out the stops that overshadows everything else. |
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 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World 1963 N/R, 188 min.
Genre: Comedy / Adventure / Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Jim Backus, Carl Reiner, Jerry Lewis, Dick Shawn, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson
Buried treasure is the goal of a large group of people who madly race around chasing each other in pursuit of the $350,000 prize. An all-star cast of comedians participates in the chase.
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 Judgment at Nuremberg 1961  N/R, 190 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, William Shatner, Ed Binns, Werner Klemperer, Torben Meyer, Kenneth MacKenna
This classic film about the Nazi war crimes as they were presented at the trial at Nuremberg is spellbinding from start to finish. Spencer Tracy plays the compassionate, yet intelligent, American judge, Maximilian Schell excels as the defense attorney, and Burt Lancaster plays the role of the German judge on trial who chose to give in to Nazi threats. Academy Awards were received for Best Actor (Maximilian Schell) and Best Writing; the film was nominated for nine others, including. Best Actor (Spencer Tracy), Director, Supporting Actress (Judy Garland), and Supporting Actor (Montgomery Clift). 1 User Review
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| | Prettry much as "important" as it thinks it is | 1fatts 04/05/2007 | Be wary of "important" movies. The cast and crew, the critics and pundits can become so wrapped in the aura of the message that needs to be imparted to a waiting world that the human story is lost and we find ourselves being barraged by sanctimonious monologues or, worse, symbolism piled on symbolism to express the truth that words cannot express. (Honestly, did anyone really understand the last ten minutes of 2001?)
But this movie is better than that. It doesn't escape it all, I suppose, but the center of the thing is the consideration of what is evil and what is decency, played out on a stage of characters who give it humanity.
I have considered -- rather often, actually -- what has traveled best in this film in the last forty-five years and what has traveled less well. It is the underplaying that still holds us, the messages not spoken but shown on faces and in motions. Maximilian Schell's defense attorney is all words and logic, which, at its best moments, serve as a counterpoint to the quiet humanity which the destroyed reflect and the innocent portray. It was an Academy Award well deserved. I don't think Tracy ever did better work. Montgomery Clift's short scene is among the most moving ever filmed. Dietrich, Garland, so many others do such fine work.
Richard Widmark, on the other hand, is too theatrical, as is Burt Lancaster, Werner Klemperer and too many others. It is the writing and the direction, but most of all, it is the strain of taking on the issue.. It was 1961, and Hollywood was finally putting on film the question of the guilt of the Holocaust. It WAS important. The writing was honest enough to cast shadows of complicity over Western big business, Cold War Political Fears, the growing willingness of a war-weary world to turn a blind eye to last year's injustice and the suffering of those too unimportant to be represented. The responsibility, the scope of all that, and, no doubt, the pride of all that led to too much Hollywood is the writing and direction.
Yet, on the whole, "Judgment" remembers to focus on the people and not the speeches, and that rescues the film and redeems it. It is still, even after nearly half a century, shocking, complex and deeply thought provoking.
And, yes, it is important. How important? I don't think anyone should be allowed to graduate high school without having seen this film and discussed it with a knowledgeable, sensitive adult -- not only as a "Holocaust" discussion, but as the starting point for the question of why good people allow evil into the world and what, if anything, moral people can do to stand against it. |
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Judgment: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley 1975  TV, 101 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Tony Musante, Bo Hopkins, G.D. Spradlin, Linda Haynes, William Lucking, Harrison Ford, Richard Basehart, Ben Piazza, Leon Russom, Olive Clark
This made-for-TV drama follows the court martial of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley (Tony Musante) who was held responsible for the My Lai massacre that took the lives of many innocent civilians during the Vietnam War.
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Not as a Stranger 1955 N/R, 135 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin, Lon Chaney Jr., Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Jesse White, Harry Morgan
This story begins with a young medical student (Robert Mitchum) and the nurse (Olivia de Havilland) who marries him and helps put him through medical school. The plot then follows him into private practice as a country doctor.
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Oklahoma Crude 1973  PG, 108 min.
Genre: Comedy
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: George C. Scott, Faye Dunaway, John Mills, Jack Palance, Woodrow Parfrey, William Lucking, Harvey Jason, Ted Gehring, Cliff Osmond, Rafael Campos
Lena (Faye Dunaway) has rights to an oil well but her claim is in jeopardy because a large oil refinery's bosses are trying to take over. She hires a drifter, Mose (George C. Scott), to help her keep what is rightfully hers. Scott's funny role makes this watchable.
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On the Beach 1959 N/R, 134 min.
Genre: Drama / Sci-Fi
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, John Tate, Lola Brooks, John Meillon, Guy Doleman, Harp McGuire, Kevin Brennan, Grant Taylor
The rest of the world has been destroyed by radiation; however, one United States submarine, captained by Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) sails into an Australian port where the radiation has not yet traveled. Although the citizens are not yet affected by the deadly radiation, they are suffering from having to survive on their own. Dwight becomes enamored with Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) and, through her, gets involved with naval officer Peter Holmes (Anthony Perkins) and his wife Mary (Donna Anderson). All have different methods of dealing with their tragic fates.
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 The Pride and the Passion 1957 N/R, 132 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Sophia Loren, Theodore Bikel, Jay Novello, John Wengraf, Jose Nieto, Philip Van Zandt, Carlos Larranaga, Paco El Laberinto
During Napoleon's takeover in Europe in the early 1800s, British Captain Anthony Trumbull (Cary Grant) joins up with a band of Spanish guerillas to fight against French forces. A particular target is an enormous cannon.
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R.P.M. 1970  R, 97 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Ann - Margret, Gary Lockwood, Paul Winfield, Graham Jarvis, Alan Hewitt, Ramon Bieri, John McLiam, Don Keefer, Donald Moffat
Perez (Anthony Quinn) is a popular professor who deals with a group of student radicals.
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The Runner Stumbles 1979  PG, 99 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Kathleen Quinlan, Maureen Stapleton, Ray Bolger, Tammy Grimes, Beau Bridges, Allen Nause, John Procaccino, Bill Dore, Jock Dove
Director Stanley Kramer adapted this film from a Broadway play about a priest, Father Rivard (Dick Van Dyke), accused of murdering a young nun, Sister Rita (Kathleen Quinlan).
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The Secret of Santa Vittoria 1969 PG, 140 min.
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani, Virna Lisi, Hardy Kruger, Sergio Franchi, Renato Rascel, Giancarlo Giannini, Eduardo Ciannelli, Valentina Cortese, Leopoldo Trieste, Patrizia Valturri, Gigi Ballista, Quinto Parmeggiani
During World War II, Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn) serves as mayor of the Italian town, Santa Vittoria. Italo and his wife Rosa (Anna Magnani) own a wine shop, and when they learn that the Nazi army will be marching to their town to steal their vintage wine, Italo leads the town's residents in an effort to hide the wine. The residents work day and night to hide one million bottles of wine in a cave–a plan that ensures that the wine will not be found by the Nazis when they arrive in town. 2 User Reviews
| User Reviews |
| | Took place during a serious but highly entertaining | BBRIN1 11/14/2009 | | Saw it on Turner Classics probably a year ago |
| | hugely entertaining | nectarine 10/21/2007 | | |
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Ship of Fools 1965 N/R, 150 min.
Genre: Drama
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner, Heinz Ruhmann, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer, Michael Dunn, George Segal, Elizabeth Ashley, Alf Kjellin, Jose Greco, Charles Korvin, Lilia Skala, Barbara Luna
This is the screen adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's bestseller about passengers on a 1933 voyage from Vera Cruz to Bremerhaven. The story shows great insight into people on the verge of changes in their lives. Among the Academy Award nominations are Best Picture, Actor (Oscar Werner), Actress (Simone Signoret), and Supporting Actor (Michael Dunn).
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| 1. The Defiant Ones (1958)
2. The Domino Principle (1977)
3. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
4. Inherit the Wind (1960)
5. It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
6. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
7. Judgment: The Court Martial of Lt. William Calley (1975)
8. Not as a Stranger (1955)
9. Oklahoma Crude (1973)
10. On the Beach (1959)
11. The Pride and the Passion (1957)
12. R.P.M. (1970)
13. The Runner Stumbles (1979)
14. The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)
15. Ship of Fools (1965)
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