Three credited directors, another three uncredited and production shifted to Hollywood to avoid the blitz - it should have been a recipe for disaster. Somehow it worked - and worked brilliantly. This is largely due to William Cameron Menzies' imaginative production design, a witty script from Lajos Biro and Miles Malleson and near perfect casting. Was there ever a vizier as wicked as Conrad Veidt or a princess as beautiful as June Duprez? Several generations of children have come out of the cinema pretending to be Sabu. Altogether now: "I want to be a sailor, sailing out to sea . . .".
Script: Lajos Biro, Miles Malleson
Director: Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan
Players: John Justin, Miles Malleson, Morton Selten, Rex Ingram, Mary Morris, Hay Petrie, Adelaide Hall, Bruce Winston, Roy Emerton, Miki Hood
H.G. Wells' tale of life in the future is by turns dull, silly and virtually plotless. It's also fascinating, prophetic and the most remarkable sci-fi film of the thirties. Essential viewing for any film buff.
Script adapt.: (o.a.) H.G. Wells
Director: William Cameron Menzies
Players: Raymond Massey. Ralph Richardson, Edward Chapman, Margaretta Scott, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Derrick de Marney, Ann Todd, John Clements
A bona fide classic for lovers of the zither, and the rest of us can enjoy it too.
Script adapt.: (o.a.) Graham Greene
Director: Carol Reed
Players: Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Valli, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Wilfrid Hyde White, Eric Pohlmann, Nelly Arno
Creaky thriller with Glynis Johns as a gambler's lucky charm getting involved with a gangster. Not her sort of thing at all.
Script adapt.: (o.a.) Gerald Butler
Director: Gordon Parry
Players: Dermot Walsh, Charles Goldner, Harcourt Williams, Yvonne Owen, Ballard Berkley, Sebastian Cabot, Michael Horden
The pinnacle of Alfred Hitchcock's British career, this film has all the classic elements we've come to expect: innocent man falsely accused (Robert Donat), beautiful blonde (Madeleine Carroll), well known locations (the Forth bridge) and bags of suspense and humour. It's been re-made twice since but why did they bother when the original is so perfect?
Script adapt.: Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, Ian Hay. (o.a. John Buchan)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Players: Godfrey Tearle, Lucie Mannheim, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie, Helen Haye, Wylie Watson, Frank Cellier, Jerry Verno, Frederick Piper
This might be more fondly remembered if it wasn't for the original which, despite its studio-bound scenes, beats this remake hands down. Kenneth More is the hero who gets himself chained to Taina Elg.
Script adapt.: Frank Harvey. (o.a. John Buchan plus large chunks from the original film)
Director: Ralph Thomas
Players: Brenda de Banzie, Faith Brook, Barry Jones, James Hayter, Duncan Lamont, Michael Goodliffe, Reginald Beckwith, Sidney James, Jameson Clark, Andrew Cruickshank, Betty Henderson, Joan Hickson, Brian Oulton, John Richardson, Sam Kydd, Michael Brennan
Noel Coward's story of a family between the wars. It's sentimental and maybe faintly patronising, and the Technicolor makes the whole thing seem very artificial and theatrical; but once you get past that you have a fascinating saga that's well worth another look.
Script adapt.: (o.a.) Noel Coward, David Lean, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame
Director: David Lean
Players: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Stanley Holloway, John Blythe, Kay Walsh, Amy Veness, Alison Leggatt, Eileen Erskine, Guy Verney, Merle Tottenham
A reporter and his wife investigate the arrest of an English peer in France. Follow-up to This Man is News.
Script: Allan Mackinnon, Roger Macdougall
Director: David Macdonald
Players: Barry K. Barnes, Valerie Hobson, Alastair Sim, Anthony Shaw, Edward Lexy, Garry Marsh, Jacque Max Michel, Mona Goya, Cyril Chamberlain, Charles Oliver, Paul Sheridan, Billy Watts
A trapeze act is torn apart by romantic rivalries.
Standard tale of circus folk the like of which has been done better before and since.
Script: Herman Mankiewicz
Director: Herbert Wilcox
Players: Anna Neagle, Leslie Banks, Tullio Carminati, Horace Hodges, Arthur Finn, Olive Blakeney, Anthony Ireland, Miki Hood, Nicolas Koline, Gaston Palmer, Leonard Snelling, Winifred Oughton
Innocuous family romp through the Swift classic. Its best feature is the work of Ray Harryhausen, but he doesn't pull off a sequence that sticks in the mind like the fighting skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts.
Script adapt.: Jack Sher, Charles H. Schneer. (o.a. Jonathon Swift)
Director: Jack Sher
Players: Kerwin Matthews, June Thorburn, Jo Morrow, Lee Paterson, Gregoire Aslan, Basil Sydney, Sherri Alberoni, Charles Lloyd-Pack, Martin Benson, Mary Ellis, Peter Bull, Marian Spencer, Alec Mango
A lighthouse keeper (Michael Redgrave) hides from the world, but the spirits of people lost in an old shipwreck persuade him to change his mind. This is one of the most bizarre films made during the war though the anti-isolationist propaganda shines through.
Script adapt.: Jeffrey Dell, Bernard Miles, Wolfgang Wilhelm, Anna Reiner. (o.a. Robert Ardrey)
Director: Roy Boulting
Players: Barbara Mullen, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Finlay Currie, Frederick Valk, Sybilla Binder, Frederick Cooper, Jean Sheard, Barry Morse, George Carney, Miles Malleson, A.E. Matthews, Olive Sloane
Tod Slaughter in a classic Victorian melodrama. He kills two people within the first minute of the film and goes from bad to worse, using a prisoner rehabilitation scheme as a front for his villainy (plenty of crooks to put the blame on). With George King directing and producing we have the B-movie dream team to work their special kind of magic.
Script adapt.: H.F. Maltby, A.R. Rawlinson. (o.a. Tom Taylor)
Director: George King
Players: John Warwick, Marjorie Taylor, Robert Adair, Peter Gawthorne, Frank Cochran, Jenny Lynn, Arthur Payne, Norman Pierce
In a far-eastern colony, a naive young Englishman goes to the roughest part of town to look for examples of human decency and finds romance and danger.
The Englishman is played by Victor Garland but who cares about him, since the star of this show is Hollywood legend Anna May Wong. She's running a dance hall/antiques business but having trouble with a protection racket. She can take care of herself, but has one weakness: René Ray. It seems that back in the days of the Chinese Revolution Wong saved Ray and ever since then the two have been inseparable. So inseparable, in fact, that to modern eyes there seems to be a distinct look of lesbianism in the relationship. However, Ray is soon spooning with Garland, so that is quickly passed over.
The lesbianism is only part of the film's easygoing acceptance of life's less conventional aspects. Tiger Bay is presented as a place where prostitutes ply their trade unashamedly, and where people of different races work and play together quite happily. The only threat to their carefree existence comes from a marauding band of Europeans. It's only at the end that the film gets conventional when, in order to avoid jail for murder, Wong kills herself. Did her character survive in any of her films?
Still, before the unhappy end for our star, Tiger Bay is enjoyable entertainment.
Script: John Quin, J Elder Wills
Director: J. Elder Wills
Players: Henry Victor, Lawrence Grossmith, Brian Buchel, Ben Souten, Margaret Yarde, Wally Patch, Ernest jay, Judy Kelly, Ruth Ambler, Betty Ambler
Killer goes on the run with the only witness to his crime - a 12-year-old girl.
Hayley Mills' debut made her a star, and didn't hurt Horst Buchholz' career either.
Script adapt.: John Hawkesworth, Julian Wintle. (o.a. Noel Calef)
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Players: Yvonne Mitchell, John Mills, Megs Jenkins, Anthony Dawson, George Selway, George Pastell, Meredith Edwards, Paul Stassino, Shari, Marne Maitland, Christopher Rhodes, Rachel Thomas, Brian Hammond, Kenneth Griffith, Eynon Thomas, Edward Cast, David Davies
