Nicholas Ray’s 1948 debut follows a young convict and a service-station attendant who marry and flee across Depression-era America. Shot with quiet intensity by George E. Diskant and performed with understated gravity by Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, it treats love and lawlessness as inseparable states — not as rebellion, but as the only possible response to a world that denies them personhood.
A servant in her own home waits out her stepmother's cruelty until a fairy godmother gives her one night at the palace ball, in the version of Perrault's fairy tale Disney finally completed in 1950 after years of false starts. Made for $2.2 million while the studio was roughly $4 million in debt, the film became Disney's biggest hit since Snow White and reversed a run of expensive, underperforming features — helped along by nearly 380 women auditioning for the title role before Ilene Woods got it almost by accident.