The Vatican Film List by RobinJRichards

(Religion, 1959) "Director William Wyler's classic Hollywood epic follows the Jewish prince of the title (Charlton Heston) after he's betrayed by his boyhood Roman friend (Stephen Boyd) and subjected to much misery until finally achieving retribution for all his suffering."

(Values, 1981) "Two young Englishmen (Ben Cross and Ian Charleson) overcome quite different obstacles to win gold medals at the Paris Olympics of 1924. One is a Jew determined to beat the anti-Semitic establishment at its own game and the other is a devout Scot who runs for the glory of God."

(Art, 1963) "With both career and marriage in chaos, an Italian movie director (Marcello Mastroianni) protects his overgrown ego by retreating into surreal memories of the past and wild fantasies about the present. Director Federico Fellini has some self-indulgent fun with his profession, semibiographical events from his youth and themes from his movies while taking viewers on a journey through the rich, at times bizarre, imagination of an artist whose attempts to cope with the demands of the real world are resolved in a final flood of optimism as the director joins with all his characters in a human carousel of life."

(Religion, 1966) "Engrossing drama of the last seven years in the life of Thomas More, Henry VIII's chancellor, who met a martyr's death rather than compromise his conscience during a period of religious turmoil. Robert Bolt's script is masterfully directed by Fred Zinnemann, with a standout performance by Paul Scofield in the title role..."

(Values, 1916) "D.W. Griffith's epic masterpiece intercuts four stories of injustice -- the fall of Babylon, the Crucifixion, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and a contemporary American story of an innocent man sentenced to death. The movie develops parallel action in each of the stories, though centered principally on the tale of an impoverished couple whose wife tries to save her husband from being unjustly hung and the Assyrian conquest of Babylon which is presented on an epic scale."

(Art, 1939) "In this Western classic, a cowboy (John Wayne) wanted by the law on trumped-up charges joins an odd assortment of passengers (Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, Donald Meek, John Carradine and others) on the stage to Lordsburg in the midst of an Apache uprising."

(Religion, 1987) Screen version of a story by Isak Dinesen, set in a rugged fishing village in 1871 Denmark, shows the impact of a French housekeeper (Stephane Audran) on two pious sisters who carry on their late father's work as pastor of a dwindling religious flock.

(Values, 1945) "Composite picture of the resistance movement in [the titular German-occupied city] focusing on an underground leader (Marcello Pagliero) hidden by a widow (Anna Magnani) until he's betrayed to the Gestapo, then tortured and executed along with a partisan priest (Aldo Fabrizi). Director Roberto Rossellini began filming while German troops were still in the city and the result has a documentary quality giving a sense of immediacy to the period..."

(Art, 1936) "Charlie Chaplin's insightful fable of man versus machine centers in the artificiality of industrialized society and the anxieties caused by the Depression as Charlie dances his way through the hazards of an assembly line job."

(Religion, 1986) "In the 1750s, the large and prosperous Jesuit Indian missions were divided between Spain and Portugal. In dramatizing these events, Robert Bolt's screenplay focuses not on the religous but on the sociopolitical dimension of the colonial era and its injustices. The epic production is visually splendid but Roland Joffe's direction is erratic and bogs down in contrasting a nonviolent priest (Jeremy Irons) and one (Robert De Niro) who leads the Indians against a colonial army."

(Values, 1993) "Sobering account of an opportunistic German businesssman (Liam Neeson) out to make his fortune by exploiting Jewish labor in occupied Poland but the increasing barbarism of Nazi racial policies and the sadistic perversions of the local commandant (Ralph Fiennes) cause him to risk his life trying to save the Jews in his employ."

(Art, 1940) "Using different approaches and animation styles for each piece of music as performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski, the imaginative work was not only Disney's most ambitious undertaking but it remains an enjoyably creative introduction to fine music, especially for youngsters."