All Films

The Marines

1957 • 22 min • France

François Reichenbach follows a group of young men from the day they enlist in the US Marine Corps, all the way through basic training.

The First Images of Brasilia

1957 • 10 min • Brazil

The first images of the new capital of Brazil, Brasília!

Final Curtain

1957 • 22 min • United States of America

After a horror play's final performance, The Vampire roams the theater.

Route des Cimes

1957 • 18 min • France

With the tank truck of the company British Petroleum (BP), the Bozzetto fuel delivery man crosses mountain roads in winter. Headed to Val d'Isère in Savoie, it faces, night and day, the vagaries of traffic in snowy weather, and penetrates the life of the winter sports resort living to the rhythm of development activities. , sports and tourism: tunnel construction, snow milling machine, cable car, hotel and catering as well as skiing from the peaks to the village (off-piste descent demonstration by Lionel Terray).

Mam'zelle Souris

1957 • 53 min • France

Based on Coq's press cartoons, this series of 16 sketches (2'30" each) is packed with gags and twists of all kinds. The series features the character of Mam'zelle Souris, played by Annie Fratellini, against a backdrop of family vacation scenes in Brittany, on the beach and by the sea.

Venice: Theme and Variations

1957 • 28 min • United States of America

Ivory's initial effort as a filmmaker was Venice: Theme and Variations, a documentary made as his master's thesis at the USC film school that, although only 28 minutes long, is rich in composition and aesthetic texture.

Tick Tack

1957 • 9 min • France

Conceived, drawn and animated live by a team of patients from a psychiatric clinic, this achievement presents, in the eyes of its author, less interest on a purely cinematographic level than on that of human experience. It is the disturbing wordless story of a woman and a man living in a strange setting where objects are endowed with life that they have chosen to tell us through this theater of shadow puppets in cut out figurines. Their characters will know a tragic fate since carried in the air by balloons, they will finally be devoured by a horrible dragon.

Helen La Belle

1957 • 14 min • United Kingdom

Silhouette film – a version of Offenbach’s opera, “La belle Helene”.

Deep Adventure

1957 • 46 min

A skimpy plot---hunting for sunken treasure in the waters of Florida and Haiti--- tied mostly to some underwater scenes shot in the safety of Cypress Gardens, and sold by Warners on a campaign built (no pun intended) on the measurements---42-22-39---of photographer's model Dottie Lee Phillips, who poses under palm trees while Ross Allen and William Fuller are underwater...and on land.

Murder

1957 • 2 min • Poland

The camera shows us a door handle and the door's striker plate; from this angle, they form a cross. The door opens and in steps someone in a dark trench coat. He approaches a bed in the room, where a shirtless man sleeps.

Operation Raintree

1957 • 5 min

MGM short that looks at the behind the scenes production of Raintree County.

Funny Reels

1957 • 17 min • France

Ruby Alcow becomes assistant manager of a factory, twenty years after failing his baccalaureate five times, engaging in absurdist shenanigans with his coworkers. Pialat's early short film made for Olivetti's end-of-year party, where the filmmaker was then a sales representative; an homage to silent era slapstick comedy.

Kurobe Gorge

1957 • 39 min • Japan

Educational film commissioned by Kansai Electric Power Company

As Boys Grow...

1957 • 16 min • United States of America

The coach of a freshman track team explains the intricacies of the male reproduction system, and how to use it, to his team.

The Bone Ranger

1957 • 6 min • United States of America

Sniffer the dog tries to get a bone.

The Platelayer

1957 • 4 min • Hungary

A group of plate-layers are packing the stone-bed under the rail with their pickaxes. They swing their picks in a coordinated, rhythmic way, thereby creating a sequence of rings, when they hit the stones or the rail, which sounds almost as music. When a train passes by, they stand silent beside the rail for a while, and then start the rhythmic beats again.

Haiti

1957 • 30 min • Canada

This short film from the Perspective series highlights social and economic development in Haiti circa 1957. It depicts customs and traditions used to pass along the history of a people, and offers a look into their daily lives — lives that looks very different from their experiences today.

Kandinsky

1957 • 16 min • Germany

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky claimed, or has been credited with, the 'creation' of abstract art. At the core of this film is a dramatic recreation of Kandinsky's account of returning to his studio one dark evening, and being astonished by an unknown masterpiece of abstract art leaning against the easel - a picture which turned out to be one of his own landscapes fallen on its side. 'Now I knew for certain that the object spoiled my pictures.' While this film's narration does indeed emphasize the notion of an inspired breakthrough to Abstraction, the picture it conveys in more purely filmic ways is a rich and complex one.

Living Water

1957 • 11 min • Soviet Union

The second graduation work from Larisa Shepitko.

Jane Eyre

1957 • 60 min

Unusual adaptation of the classic novel.

It's a Crime

1957 • 12 min • Canada

A suave safecracker offers his reflections on wintertime unemployment in Canada.

Daddy's Little Darling

1957 • 7 min • United States of America

Mom goes to the hospital and daddy is left at home to take care of the baby, and he has a terrible time feeding, bathing and changing him as disaster is the result of every thing he attempts. Finally, after hours of exhaustive work, the baby is asleep, and the father hears from the hospital that his wife has just made him the father of triplets. He then goes outside and starts shoot of the passing storks.

Ti-Jean Goes West

1957 • 23 min • Canada

Part comic adventure, part travelogue, this short film features the folkloric character of Ti-Jean, a French-Canadian kid endowed with magic powers. He travels west, drawing upon his superhuman strength to save a farmer’s crops.

Django Reinhardt

1957 • 26 min • France

One of the first filmed portraits of a jazz musician.