Lily Kann Movies

Set in post WW II-Vienna this British spy adventure centers on an international effort to thwart the communists that is led by an American newspaper journalist trying to save the two innocents from certain death. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In direct contrast to his later lush-budgeted international epics, director J. Lee Thompson turns his lenses towards the London slums in the sincere but saccharine No Trees in the Street. Based on the play by Ted Willis, the film is set in the years just before World War II, when England hadn't completely dug itself out of the worldwide depression. Melvyn Hayes is featured as an aimless teenager, who tries to escape his squalid surroundings by entering a life of crime. He falls in with local hoodlum Herbert Lom, who holds the rest of the slum citizens in the grip of fear--including Hayes' own family. No Trees in the Street chronicles Hayes' sordid progress from nickel-and-dime thefts to murder. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Clark Gable's final effort for his longtime home studio MGM, Betrayed is an exciting espionage thriller set during World War II. Intelligence agent Gable is ordered to keep tabs on suspected Nazi collaborator Lana Turner (a brunette for the occasion). Both Gable and Turner join the Dutch underground, making contact with a flamboyant resistance leader known as "The Scarf" (Victor Mature). Turner poses as a sexy chanteuse, the better to gain the confidence of the lascivious Nazi officers. Within the next few weeks, several underground operatives are captured and shot, and it begins to look as though Gable's suspicions concerning Turner are correct. The real collaborator is revealed some twenty minutes before the finale, but the suspense level is expertly maintained throughout. The location-filmed Betrayed would later be mercilessly lampooned in the 1984 spy spoof Top Secret! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This comedy is essentially a prototype of Disney's 1961 film Parent Trap and tells the tale of twin girls, separated after their parents divorce, who meet each other at summer camp and hatch an elaborate scheme to get their parents back together. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Three generations of a Scottish clan are chronicled in this melodramatic saga. The film starts with the death of a sickly med student in a Glasgow slum. His fiancee also dies in childbirth. Her brother, who survives, begins raising her baby girl who grows up to have an affair with a lab assistant. Her "father" disapprove and threatens to destroy the wedding. She retaliates by poisoning him and then gets married. She bears a son. Unfortunately she has never recovered from the guilt of her earlier murder and ends up taking her own life. Later her son grows up to discover a vaccine for a fatal disease. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Howard Hawks directed this classic farce about how love attempts to triumph over military red tape after the close of World War II. Capt. Henri Rochard (Cary Grant) is a French officer who is assigned to put a stop to a black market operation in occupied Germany with the help of Lt. Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan), an American WAC. While their initial meetings are hardly harmonious, in time Rochard and Gates find that opposites really do attract, and they fall in love. The two decide to get married, which seems simple enough, but the moment Gates receives orders to return to the United States and Rochard wants to join her, they soon discover just how complicated the U.S. Army can make things. While the Army has a strict protocol for dealing with "war brides," there is no similar routine for men who marry female Army personnel, so in order to follow his new wife into the States, Rochard has to disguise himself as a WAC. From this moment on, nearly everything that happens to Rochard is an affront to his dignity and/or his patience, from his inability to share a bunk with his new bride to his discovery that Army regulations prevent him from driving a motorcycle (Gates has to take the handlebars, while her husband is forced to ride in a sidecar). As more than one writer has pointed out, while Grant gives a deft comic performance, it's a bit of a stretch to imagine that he's French (but probably no more than to imagine that anyone would really believe that he's a woman). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Set in 1783, this romance chronicles the doomed relationship between a prince regent and a Catholic widow. The prince falls for her first, but as there is a great gulf in social class, she laughs at his advances. The poor prince is so distraught he attempts suicide. The widow then feels compassion and secretly marries him. Unfortunately, their secret becomes grist for the rumor mill and when it threatens the relationship between the prince and the king, the prince denies his marriage. The jilted woman runs away, and the prince marries the woman to whom he was originally betrothed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Derrick de Marnay stars as a Parisian sculptor who enters into a deadly menage a trois. The girl in the case (Joan Greenwood) is a bit all right; alas, her husband is off his trolley. When he discovers the illicit affair, Hubby, a sculptor in his own right, bumps off his wife and conceals her body in a very clever and (for him) characteristic manner. DeMarnay must resort to the occult to determine the location of his lost love; had he but consulted the movie audience, his problem would have been solved. No relation to the later Hitchcock film of the same title, Frenzy was based on the play L'Angoisse by Pierre Mills and C. Vylars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this espionage film, a Danish double-agent is assigned by the Nazis to sneak into to England and abscond with the secret plans for a European invasion. Unbeknownst to the Nazis, the man is really and agent for the Allies. He is pursued by an English agent who exposes him. She then takes part in a plan to trick the German navy into leaving the port with fake documents. The ruse works. Unfortunately, the double-agent dies. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide