315 Films & TV Shows Set In Europe During The 1950s
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An Independent Life
๐ท๐บ Russia The 1950sThis is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.
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A Brief History of Time
England The 1940s The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1990sThis shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.
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Poison
๐ซ๐ท France ๐บ๐ธ United States of America The 1950s The 1940sThree intercut stories about outsiders, sex and violence. In "Hero," Richie, at age 7, kills his father and flies away. After the event, a documentary in cheesy lurid colors asks what Richie was like and what led up to the shooting. In the black and white "Horror," a scientist isolates the elixir of human sexuality, drinks it, and becomes a festering, contagious murderer; a female colleague who loves him tries to help, to her peril. In "Homo," a prisoner in Fontenal prison is drawn to an inmate whom he knew some years before, at Baton juvenile institute, and whose humiliations he witnessed. This story is told in dim light, except for the bright flashbacks.
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Let Him Have It
England The 1950s The 1940sThe shocking story of an unbelievable miscarriage of justice. โ In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
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The Inner Circle
๐ท๐บ Russia The 1950s The 1940sThe true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin's private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator's death. Told from Sanchin's view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his "Master" despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife's affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand. Written by Martin H. Booda
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The Original of the Forgery
๐ท๐ธ Serbia The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s The 1940sThe plot lasts from 1945 until today's day. Pavle, Stojan and Dragisa, the three war friends are taking different positions within the society immediately after the war. Pavle, a former war commissar, is now a school teacher. Thanks to him, Stojan, who was a bakery assistant before the war, does the job of a district committee's secretary, while Dragisa works in the state's secret police. The reason of conflict between Pavle and Stojan in 1947 was Stojan's fiancรฉe Lena, who loves Pavle, marries him and gets pregnant, right when Pavle is taken to the state prison. Stojan accepts his wife and kid again, but the avalanche of political events will make all them unable to stop the inevitable catastrophe.
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The Krays
England The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930sWhen people are afraid of you... you can do anything. Remember that. โ The Krays is a film based on the lives and crimes of the British gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray, twins who are often referred to as The Krays and were active in London in the 1960s.
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Stalin's Funeral
๐ท๐บ Russia The 1950s1953 year. Moscow says goodbye to the leader. In the funeral crowd, Eugene met with Elya. During the long hours spent in the funeral procession, they managed to learn a lot about each other ... But Elia absurdly dies. So Zhenya begins another, adult life ...
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Kaleidoscope
New York Connecticut California South Carolina ๐ซ๐ท France The 1990s The 1950s The 1940sYou might find out, or reunite. โ A family friend hires gumshoe John Chapman to find and reunite three sisters estranged by fate for 30 years. The circuitous trail leads Chapman from the Big Apple to Beantown to the City of Light. His investigation, however, opens the door to disturbing revelations about a forgotten past.
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Herzlich willkommen
๐ฉ๐ช Germany The 1950sFriedrich (Uwe Bohm) manages to escape from East Germany to the West in the 1950s. On his arrival, he is greeted with the words Herzlich Willkommen, or "cordial, heartfelt welcome." However, once he finds employment, what he experiences is anything but a cordial welcome at his new job, where he is a teacher/counselor for "wayward children" located in a former castle. The institution is headed by a former Nazi who runs it with the help of the more criminal, bullying boys. Despite these obstacles, Friedrich manages to establish a rapport with a boy who wants to go "straight," and also begins to have an affair with an attractive female teacher at the school.
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Het Sacrament
๐ง๐ช Belgium The 1950sThe Heylen family's annual get-together to commemorate their mother derails completely.
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Great Balls of Fire!
England Mississippi Tennessee New York Kentucky The 1950s The 1940sThe true story of a legend. โ The story of Jerry Lee Lewis, arguably the greatest and certainly one of the wildest musicians of the 1950s. His arrogance, remarkable talent, and unconventional lifestyle often brought him into conflict with others in the industry, and even earned him the scorn and condemnation of the public.
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Interrogation
๐ต๐ฑ Poland The 1950sIn Stalinist Poland, cabaret singer Tonia decides to spend the evening drinking with a group of friends. The next morning, she awakes to find that, for reasons unknown to her, she has been jailed as a political prisoner. As prison officials interrogate, torture and humiliate her, she fights for survival and to maintain her innocence by refusing to sign a false confession. As her years of imprisonment pass, her relationship with her captors grows more complicated.
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I'm the King of the Castle
๐ซ๐ท France The 1950sThomas, the son of a millionaire lives a fairly isolated existence, in a mansion in rural France. His father hires a widowed woman to take care of things while he is away. The maid's son, Charles moves in as well, and the two parents hope that the two can become friends but they become enemies immediately after meeting each other. Once their parents fall in love, Thomas decides to make Charles, who he views as an "invader", as miserable as possible.
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Danny the Champion of the World
England The 1950sSomewhere in England, in the Autumn of 1955, a widowed father and his son live an idyllic life together. Only their gas station happens to sit on a piece of land that a local developer wants to buy. And when he won't take no for an answer, and sets government inspectors and social works onto Danny and his father, Danny and his father decide to get even with Hazell and his pheasant- shooting friends in a manner in keeping with their own family tradition.
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The Little Thief
๐ซ๐ท France The 1950sIn a small town in post-World-War-II France, an unhappy sixteen-year-old (Janine Castang) tries to escape her dreary situation by any means at her disposal. Three successive friends (Michel Davenne, a married lover; Raoul, a fellow thief; Mauricette Dargelos, a photographer and fellow prisoner) help her learn from her mistakes.
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Cinema Paradiso
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 1950s The 1940s The 1980sA celebration of youth, friendship, and the everlasting magic of the movies. โ A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist.
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Distant Voices, Still Lives
England The 1950s The 1940sThe second film in Terence Davies's autobiographical series (along with "Trilogy" and "The Long Day Closes") is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies's own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.
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Hรดtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
๐ซ๐ท France ๐ง๐ด Bolivia The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1940sWinner of a Best Documentary Academy Award, Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape--with U.S. help--to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
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The Cold Summer of 1953
๐ท๐บ Russia The 1950sIn 1953, the year Stalin died, many prisoners (some political, but mostly common criminals) were released from the Soviet Gulags. This is the story of a remote settlement which was under attack by a bunch of these recently-released blood-thirsty thugs in the summer of 1953, and the townspeople, along with a two political prisoners, who try to stop them.
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84 Charing Cross Road
New York England The 1970s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940sA true story โ When a humorous script-reader in her New York apartment sees an ad in the Saturday Review of Literature for a bookstore in London that does mail order, she begins a very special correspondence and friendship with Frank Doel, the bookseller who works at Marks & Co., 84 Charing Cross Road.
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Round Midnight
๐ซ๐ท France The 1950sThe music and the magic come together... โ Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.
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Absolute Beginners
England The 1950sWelcome to the world of your dreams! โ A musical adaptation of Colin MacInnes' novel about life in late 1950s London. Nineteen-year-old photographer Colin is hopelessly in love with model Crepe Suzette, but her relationships are strictly connected with her progress in the fashion world. So Colin gets involved with a pop promoter and tries to crack the big time. Meanwhile, racial tension is brewing in Colin's Notting Hill housing estate...
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The Corruption
๐ฎ๐น Italy The 1950sThe film takes place in Vicenza in 1956. Anna (Guerin), a beautiful lawyer's wife, feels abandoned by her husband and grows closer to their maid, Angela (Michelsen). The maid convinces Anna to try increasingly daring erotic games.
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My Life as a Dog
๐ธ๐ช Sweden The 1950sA boy, obsessed with comparing himself with those less fortunate, experiences a different life at the home of his aunt and uncle in 1959 Sweden.
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