Description
"Essential Classic Dramas" include: "The Maltese Falcon" - A gallery of high-living lowflies will stop at nothing to get their sweaty hands on a jewel-encrusted falcon. Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) wants to find out why - and who'll take the fall. "Citizen Kane" - Orson Welles' timeless masterwork (#1 in the American Film Institute's 1998 list of Best American Movies) is more than a groundbreaking film. Presented here in a magnificent 60th anniversary digital transfer with revitalized digital audio from the highest quality surviving elements, it is also grand entertainment sharply acted (starting many of Welles' Mercury Players on the road to thriving film careers) and superbly directed with inspired visual flair. Depicting the controversial life of an influential publishing tycoon, this Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winner (1941) is rooted in themes of power, corruption, vanity - the American Dream lost in the mystery of a dying man's last word: "Rosebud." "Ben Hur" - The numbers speak volumes: 100,000 costumes, 8,000 extras, 300 sets and a staggering budget in its day the largest in movie history. "Ben-Hur's" creators made it the best, the greatest Biblical-era epic ever. Charlton Heston brings a muscular physical and moral presence to the role of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish nobleman in Palestine whose heroic odyssey includes enslavement by the Romans, a bold escape from an embattled slave galley, vengeance against his tormentors during a furious arena chariot race and fateful encounters with Jesus Christ. Heston's charismatic performance brought him the Best Actor Oscar; the winner as 1959's Best Picture with the legendary William Wyler earning his third Best Director trophy, the film won a total 11 Academy Awards - a tally unequaled until 1997's "Titanic" set sail. After his boyhood friend Messala's fanatic loyalty to Rome makes him a powerful enemy, Jewish nobleman Judah Ben-Hur (Heston) is found guilty of an attempted murder he did not commit.
