D: Howard Bretherton, William Keighley. Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Dorothy Burgess, Maude Eburne, Lillian Roth, Ruth Donnelly. Stanwyck is terrific in this punchy but occasionally silly pre-Code women's prison picture. She's a tough cookie who's sent up the river after participating in a bank heist.

D: Robert Florey. Kay Francis, Margaret Lindsay, Ricardo Cortez, Gene Raymond, John Halliday, Frank McHugh, Sheila Terry, William "Stage'' Boyd, Hardie Albright. Sprawling chronicle of 25 years in the life of a house, as Francis spends two decades in jail for a crime she didn't commit. The residence is now a speakeasy/gambling joint, where Francis returns to save her daughter from the same situation she was in. Offbeat but nothing special.

D: Lew Landers. Louis Hayward, Anne Shirley, Sally Eilers, Esther Dale, Lee Patrick, Leona Roberts, George Irving. Blunt little women-in-prison drama, a precursor of CAGED, with embittered prisoner Eilers becoming romantically linked to penitentiary psychiatrist Hayward. There's a ruthless matron, a naive inmate who's taken the rap for her boyfriend, a prison break. . . .

D: John Cromwell. Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson, Jan Sterling, Jane Darwell, Gertrude Michael. Remarkable performances in stark record of Parker going to prison and becoming hardened criminal after exposure to brutal jail life. Remade as HOUSE OF WOMEN.

D: Orson Welles. Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead, Dorothy Comingore, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Ruth Warrick, William Alland, Paul Stewart, Erskine Sanford. Welles' first and best, a film that broke all the rules and invented some new ones, with fascinating story of Hearst-like publisher's rise to power. The cinematography (by Gregg Toland), music score (by Bernard Herrmann), and Oscar-winning screenplay (by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz) are all first-rate. A stunning film in every way . . . and Welles was only 25 when he made it! Incidentally, the reporter with a pipe is Alan Ladd; Arthur O'Connell is another one of the reporters.

D: Orson Welles. Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Richard Bennett, Erskine Sanford. Brilliant drama from Booth Tarkington novel of family unwilling to change its way of life with the times; mother and son conflict over her lover. Welles' follow-up to CITIZEN KANE is equally exciting in its own way, though film was taken out of his hands, recut and reshot by others. Previously filmed in 1925 as PAMPERED YOUTH. Also shown in computer-colored version. Remade for cable TV in 2001.