A Danish seaman, smuggling Contraband, falls for a British agent and gets involved with a German spy ring.
Powell and Pressburger reunite Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson fresh from the big success of The Spy in Black, and come up with an equally exciting thriller.
The romantic adventures of Mary Tudor are maybe not the most natural subject for a swashbuckler but Disney gave it a try.
Dirk Bogarde has the title role. Michael Horden is his employer, a diplomat, trying to bring up his son Jon Whiteley after his wife has left them. The son's more interested in Dirk however, making Michael very jealous.
Bogarde by this point was King of the Rank Studios and trying to stretch himself with roles which were different from the norm. This is one of his better early efforts at escaping from being just a matinee idol.
A package holiday to Spain is ruined when the hotel is only partly-built. This is the Carry On that divides fans and is either a last gasp of greatness or evidence of the series' decline depending on your fancy.
Valerie Hobson goes undercover to expose a plot to sink the British fleet in WW1 and falls for German Conrad Veidt.
Excellent spy thriller which marked the first collaboration of Powell and Pressburger.
British cinema largely ignored the problems of Northern Ireland but on the rare occasions it did tackle the subject the star was usually on the IRA side if only temporarily (I See A Dark Stranger, The Crying Game). This time it's James Mason's turn. He is shot as he escapes from prison and gets separated from his colleagues. He spends the rest of the day trying to get to the docks, meeting the bizarre inhabitants of Belfast on the way. As his life bleeds away, the film gets more surreal.
It's a classic of British cinema and one of the rare films that combine social realism with fantasy.
A female Russian pilot lands in the West and an American tries to convince her of the merits of Capitalism.
The fatal teaming of Katherine Hepburn and Bob Hope scuppered this attempt at a Cold War Ninotchka, though it does seem to be in the middle of a critical reassessment at the moment. Goodness knows why!
Valerie Hobson is the titular governess in this melodrama that's as lurid as its Technicolor. Michael Gough is the wimpy single parent, Stewart Granger the family bastard. She marries the first but fancies the second. Naturally, it all ends badly for all involved.
This is total tosh but what a load of fun on the way! The production design is stunning - the script less so, though it's entertaining spotting which bits of plot have been nicked from other films.
After a doctor tells Dirk Bogarde he's dying he goes to Canada and tries to prevent Stanley Baker from flooding a valley for a hydro-electric scheme. Nice scenery helps distract the mind from niggling plot worries (not least during the climactic dam failure only twelve hours after they start filling it. We knew Baker was using dodgy concrete but he'd have to be building with tissue paper to get that sort of failure).
Powell and Pressburger's tale of a bomber crew forced to bale out over occupied Holland. It gets a bit preachy as it wears on but it's fairly effective propaganda and worth comparing to the duo's latter 49th Parallel and its tale of Germans trying to cross Canada.
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.
A group of Anglican nuns try to bring a bit of Christian discipline in the Himalayas but fail. It's another unforgettable film from The Archers as English repression comes under the spotlight. Kathleen Byron is the one we all remember going mad with lust for David Farrar (and who can blame her). Deborah Kerr has a good sniff around him as well.
Walter Greenwood's tale of depression, poverty and industrial unrest in Lancashire would never have got past the censors a couple of years earlier, but surprisingly the outbreak of war made the censors less touchy about union activism and prostitution.
Only The Archers could make a war film with a sympathetic German and an incompetent British officer. And only they could make a film with such verve.
Paul Robeson's finest film and the best portrayal of life in the Welsh valleys. Penn Tennyson may have romanticised the life a bit but this is miles better than Hollywood's "How Green Was My Valley". Robeson is given a job in the mine so he can join the choir. When the mine is closed, the village fights to reopen it.
A middle-aged cuckold decides to murder his wife's lover. Robert Newton is the man obsessed and gives it all he's got.
Deborah Kerr is the Irish lass whose IRA sympathies are used by the Germans to make her a Nazi spy.
Fascinating comedy-thriller from Launder and Gilliat which is almost impossible to imagine being made now.
A group of Anglican nuns try to bring a bit of Christian discipline in the Himalayas but fail. It's another unforgettable film from The Archers as English repression comes under the spotlight. Kathleen Byron is the one we all remember going mad with lust for David Farrar (and who can blame her). Deborah Kerr has a good sniff around him as well.
Boring couple Kerr and Donat join the services, but the adventurous life changes them.
