Missionary Gladys Aylward heads for China and finds herself having to smuggle a group of children over the border to safety.
Great afternoon movie with an impressive performance from Ingrid Bergman and a final farewell from Robert Donat.
Comedy thriller, slightly stage-bound, where virtually everyone is an agent trying to get hold of the new bombsight Leslie Banks and Michael Wilding are working on.
The pursuit of German battleship Admiral Graf Spee was one of the most dramatic navel engagements of the war. This re-enactment by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger lacks their usual flare and falls down badly with the model work.
Oik gets sent to public school as part of a social experiment. The oik is a 26-year old Richard Attenborough but he's not too unconvincing as a 14-year old. What is unconvincing is the film makers' commitment to social change. They might be saying we can all get on together but you know they all went to decent schools themselves and they aren't going to suggest abolishing the system. Or am I being cynical?
Alec Guinness is the wheeler-dealer on his way up in this Arnold Bennett comedy. Valerie Hobson, Glynis Johns and Petula Clark are the women he meets on his way. This is just such a charming film.
A classic bit of British fantasy. The plot is familiar: Rex Harrison's dead first wife comes back to haunt him after medium Margaret Rutherford holds a séance. It's all done in the best Coward style. Harrison, Kay Hammond and Constance Cummings have never been better but it's Rutherford who steals the picture.
John Gregson, Michael Craig, Richard Attenborough and some more fifties stars are trying to blow up a German fuel dump in this desert war tale. A good example of the genre - small-scale heroics, bit of class tension, the odd bit of self-sacrifice - but it's not terribly interesting any more. The obvious day-for-night shooting of many of the night scenes also undermines the realism of the desert locations.
Street urchin tries to see Queen Victoria.
Andrew Ray gets his best child-star role, but he can't steal the film from Alec Guinness as Disraeli and Irene Dunne as the Queen.
Sabu gets star billing and the full Korda Technicolor treatment in this tale of an Indian Prince who learns to love the British Empire.
David Niven is the Major who takes money owed to him from the company safe and then faces a court-martial. He gives one of his best ever performances in this tense courtroom drama. As a drama it pays more attention to the minutiae of court procedure than the machinations of the plot, but that's part of its appeal. Niven's low-key, human performance always manages bring us back to the personal level when things get overheated.
A madman stalks wartime Kent pouring glue on the head of any girl who goes out at night.
Powell and Pressburger's examination of wartime morality baffled audiences when it first came out. Now it seems one of the most intriguing films to come out the war. It's certainly one of the few that expresses the ambiguity between needing American help (and the help of women) to fight Hitler and resenting that need. The meandering plot takes its own sweet time but delivers an emotional kick that's all the stronger for being so unexpected.
