LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) is a puzzle box of a film, and one of the most influential in the history of cinema. It was created out of a collaboration between its avant-garde nouveau roman writer (and occasional filmmaker) Alain Robbe-Grillet and its director Alain Resnais. In the film’s hypnotic treatment of space, time, and memory, it ushered in a new era of cinematic modernism.

Set in the 1930s during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Douglas Sirk’s THE TARNISHED ANGELS chronicles three days in the lives of a trio of flying-circus performers, headlined by former World War I fighter-pilot hero Roger Shumann (Robert Stack) and his beautiful wife, LaVerne (Dorothy Malone). Romantic complications arise when newspaper reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson) falls in love with LaVerne while covering their daredevil aerial show.

In Curtis Harrington’s NIGHT TIDE (1961), a sailor on shore leave named Johnny (Dennis Hopper) becomes fascinated by a woman, Mora (Linda Lawson), who poses as a mermaid in an oceanfront carnival. As their relationship blossoms, Johnny realizes that Mora is more than a sideshow illusionist. She seems to be a descendent of the mythical sirens of the sea, and is under the mesmeric control of a mysterious woman (Marjorie Cameron) who beckons Mora to return to her home beneath the waves.

Ida Lupino focused on social issue films that dramatically brought to the fore such taboo subject matters as serial killers (THE HITCH-HIKER) bigamy (THE BIGAMIST), rape (OUTRAGE) and out-of-wedlock birth (NOT WANTED). In 1949’s NEVER FEAR, Lupino tackled the taboo subject matter of illness; specifically, polio. The film follows Carol Williams (played by Sally Forrest, who also starred in Lupino’s NOT WANTED). Carol is a beautiful young dancer whose body, and promising career, is suddenly crippled by polio. Carol’s dance partner and fiancé Guy Richards (played by Keefe Brasselle, a featured actor in 1951’s A PLACE IN THE SUN), wants to see her through her illness, but the angry, self-pitying Carol prefers to go it alone. Her father subsequently takes her to the Kabat-Kaiser Institute for rehabilitation, where she meets fellow patients like Len Randall on her road to recovery.

1924’s THE LAST LAUGH (DER LETZTE MANN), directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (PHANTOM, 1922), is one of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement. Emil Jannings stars as an aging hotel doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of his duties and uniform, which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride.

Ida Lupino’s 1953 feature THE HITCH-HIKER is the only classic American film noir directed by a woman. In 1998, the film was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant. In THE HITCH-HIKER, Ray (Edmond O'Brien) and Gilbert's (Frank Lovejoy) fishing trip takes a terrifying turn when the hitchhiker (William Talman) they pick up turns out to be a sociopath on the run from the law. He's killed before, and he lets the two know that as soon as they're no longer useful, he'll kill again. The two friends plot an escape, but the hitchhiker's peculiar physical affliction — an eye that never closes even when he sleeps — make it impossible for them to tell when they can make a break for it.

Presented in this new 4K restoration by Minerva Pictures-Rarovideo USA and L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE CONFORMIST (1970) is both a searing study of sexuality and politics set in 1930s Italy and a feat of opulent visual storytelling. Bertolucci combines a rich visual aesthetic with an emphasis on composition, design, and camerawork to craft a devastating portrait of the kind of personality that allows fascism to flourish. Widely considered Bertolucci's masterpiece, THE CONFORMIST was adapted from a novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia and boasts an authentic Art Deco look crafted by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti. The film also features a score by the acclaimed composer Georges Delerue.

While actress Hedy Lamarr was celebrated for her extraordinary beauty, her looks overshadowed her extraordinary intellect. BOMBSHELL recounts Lamarr’s beginnings as a rising movie star in Europe, her brief marriage to Friedrich Mandl (who was a weapons manufacturer for Hitler), her subsequent escape to America, her rise to Hollywood stardom, and her creation of brilliant inventions — namely frequency-hopping — to aid American allies in World War II.

Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville’s BOB LE FLAMBEUR melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. It could be argued that Jean-Luc Godard could not have made BREATHLESS (1959) without BOB LE FLAMBEUR. (Melville even later appeared in BREATHLESS, as a director interviewed by Jean Seberg, proclaiming his desire “to become immortal and then die”). When François Truffaut first saw the film — the first of Melville’s series of films noir — he exclaimed, “This is the kind of film that we want to make!”

Jean Luc-Godard’s ALPHAVILLE (1965) cleverly amalgamates the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. In his endless journey to subvert cinematic conventions and tropes, Godard took the archetype of the “male anti-hero” and transposed him into a sci-fi setting.