Continuing its collection of major Kenji Mizoguchi releases bundled with lesser known treasures, The Masters of Cinema Series offers what may be Mizoguchi’s most critically acclaimed film, 1953’s Ugetsu Monogatari (aka Ugetsu), along with his adaptation of a story...
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Continuing its collection of major Kenji Mizoguchi releases bundled with lesser known treasures, The Masters of Cinema Series offers what may be Mizoguchi’s most critically acclaimed film, 1953’s Ugetsu Monogatari (aka Ugetsu), along with his adaptation of a story by popular novelist Junichiro Tanizaki (The Makioka Sisters), 1951’s Oyu-Sama (a.k.a. Miss Oyu).

Ugetsu is famed for its eerie, delicate atmosphere that makes the most of mist-enshrouded Lake Biwa, telling a story in which two 16th century peasants leave their wives in search of fortune and glory, but soon find that fate has a supernatural sense of justice. The plot is based on two Ueda Akinari stories, The Reed-Choked House and A Serpent’s Lust (both of which are included with this DVD), as well as a Guy de Maupassant character study, How He Got the Legion of Honour. It’s a film that so elegantly straddles realism and fantasy with inordinate mystic beauty – underlining the filmmaker’s recurring theme of the suffering of women and the futility of reckless ambition – that its dreamlike vision has haunted the top of critical lists for decades.

Oyu-Sama marks the beginning of Mizoguchi’s great collaborations with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Sansho Dayu, Chikamatsu Monogatari). Their films are renowned for their incomparable visual beauty, emphasizing fluid tracking shots and exquisite long takes. (One shot in Oyu-Sama lasts an impressive six minutes in its entirety.) In its treatment of a psychological melodrama (a young widow spurns a merchant suitor but then suggests that in order to live with her, he marry her chaste sister), the film highlights Mizoguchi’s increasing move from leftist engagement to a more transcendent view of suffering and loss. The filmmaker’s long fascination with desires of the heart versus the cruel forces of social expectation and power relations is vividly rendered, and Tanaka’s lead performance has been justly celebrated for its intelligence and subtle, ironic awareness.
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This film, based on the true story of the escape by French Resistance fighter André Devigny, here named Fontaine, from the Gestapo's Fort Montluc prison in 1943, is unarguably one of the great works of cinema. Bresson was himself a prisoner of war for 16 months, s...
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This film, based on the true story of the escape by French Resistance fighter André Devigny, here named Fontaine, from the Gestapo's Fort Montluc prison in 1943, is unarguably one of the great works of cinema. Bresson was himself a prisoner of war for 16 months, so brings personal experience to bear on the film.

Bresson filmed in Montluc itself. His film begins at Fontaine’s lowest point after he has failed in his escape attempt, been imprisoned, beaten, handcuffed and left in his 3m x 2m cell. The remainder of the film is taken up by his preparation for escape and the camera scarcely leaves him. The smallest possessions he is able to garner take on enormous importance – a pencil, string, a handkerchief. This is a world in which a spoon is the difference between life and death.

One of the remarkable devices of the film is that it never repeats itself but instead always advances. Once Fontaine finds a solution to a problem, the film, along with Fontaine, moves on. With each step, the stakes for the next become higher. To escape is to gamble everything. The man in the next cell asks, ‘Why do it?’, to which Fontaine responds, ‘To fight against the walls, the cell, myself’.

Fontaine is constantly made aware of the world outside the prison by sounds of trains, bells, a scooter, owls. In Bresson’s sparing use of sound among the predominant silence he raises our own senses to a keen pitch, so that when they do occur, the cracking of a door or the crunching of gravel is almost deafening.

Fontaine’s stands for human ingenuity, resourcefulness, belief and spiritual as well as physical salvation. We care about what happens to Fontaine because it is these qualities of humanity that are at stake. God is on Fontaine’s side but Bresson’s presentation makes it clear that without faith in human effort, no escape could have happened.

A Man Escaped has been called ‘one of the truly great films about man’s spiritual and physical triumph over the forces of terror’. We know Fontaine escapes; reconciling this with how he does so is almost unbearably suspenseful. For anyone who has shied away from Bresson in the past, this is where to begin; it is thrilling cinema.

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A masterpiece of ‘poetic horror’ – Gilbert Adair said it was “what one imagines Cocteau's nightmares to be like” – Eyes without a Face was reviled on release but has been reclaimed as a unique fusion of pulp fiction and ethereal beauty.

Living in the atti...
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A masterpiece of ‘poetic horror’ – Gilbert Adair said it was “what one imagines Cocteau's nightmares to be like” – Eyes without a Face was reviled on release but has been reclaimed as a unique fusion of pulp fiction and ethereal beauty.

Living in the attic and drifting through the corridors of Dr Genessier’s clinic is his daughter Christiane, hidden from view since her father’s car accident destroyed her face. Her father uses his assistant – Alida Valli as his honey-voiced procuress – to lure a succession of pretty young girls from Paris to his country hospital, where, drugged and strapped down in his underground operating theatre, they are relieved of their facial skin in the hope that this time, finally, Christiane’s face will accept the graft.

The critics at the time really didn't know what to make of it and responded with dismissive condescension; Sight and Sound said it was 'no more than nauseating'. Their bewilderment was perhaps understandable. After all, this was a film directed by Georges Franju, a founder of the Cinemathèque Française. It was co-scripted by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who has also provided the source material for Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and Hitchcock's Vertigo); it was filmed by the innovative cinematographer Eugen Shuftan (who had conceived special effects for Lang's Metropolis and Gance's Napoléon among others), and featured heavyweight leads in the form of Pierre Brasseur and Alida Valli. And what had this astounding combination of talent produced? Something that seemed to resemble a 1930s gothic horror movie from Universal Studios, but one in which nothing quite fitted. The supposedly deranged surgeon was calm, controlled and even remorseful. For such a bloody subject, there was practically none of the stuff – though its central surgery scene may still cause sensitive viewers to avert their eyes. Maurice Jarre's barrel-organ score adds a tone of sinister comedy, while the police investigation into the missing girls confounds traditional narrative sense and simply peters out. Anticipating audience confusion, the American distributors opted for a hatchet job, cutting it, dubbing it and giving it the preposterous title of The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus.

Happily, the film’s original aura of trancelike beauty now awaits you uncut – unlike Dr Genessier’s unfortunate victims.
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Set largely in Afghanistan (although it was shot, for the most part, along the Afghan border in China), Marc Forster’s adaptation of Khalid Hosseini’s international best-seller The Kite Runner gives fans of the book everything they could possibly want from a trans...
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Set largely in Afghanistan (although it was shot, for the most part, along the Afghan border in China), Marc Forster’s adaptation of Khalid Hosseini’s international best-seller The Kite Runner gives fans of the book everything they could possibly want from a transfer to the big (or little) screen, which is especially pleasing when you consider just how complex the original book was. 

Opening in modern day California (where the author Hosseini currently calls home) with Amir and his wife opening a box containing Amir’s debut novel, a long distance phone call from his late father’s servant calls him home to Afghanistan – and the calling home returns us to Amir’s youth, specifically his friendship with Hassan, his father’s servant’s young son. Although the two children play together (flying kites and kite running, a practice that follows the severing of your opponent’s kite after vicious, swooping air battles, beautifully and vividly recreated onscreen, and then chasing down the severed kite as a spoil of war), the caste system sets them apart (Amir is Pashtun and while Hassan is Hazara), a division only made worse following a double tragedy at the film’s centre. 
 
With its depiction of Kabul, particularly, that begins prior to the first Soviet invasion in 1979, and that takes us through the rise of the Taliban and the subsequent destruction of a once beautiful city, watching The Kite Runner is a curious and compelling experience. Curious because it is in some ways a classic tale (a tale that harks back via Sleepers to Angels with Dirty Faces, with acts committed by children resonating for adults decades later) and compelling as a result of the occasionally unforgiving world we are offered a glimpse of (a scene in which an adulteress is stoned according to Shi’a law is particularly hard to stomach). 

Don’t be put off by the flood of controversy (the ban in Afghanistan, the news of how the child actors had to be spirited out of the country to avoid sectarian violence) and don’t dismiss the movie as ‘worthy’; The Kite Runner is one of those rare beasts, an intelligent movie with heart. Don’t miss it.
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This is a marvellous contemporary musical set in Paris from French writer/director Christophe Honoré, who, as in his previous film, Dans Paris, has used jaunty nouvelle vague influences as a springboard for his own film, which here focuses on the intertwined love ...
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This is a marvellous contemporary musical set in Paris from French writer/director Christophe Honoré, who, as in his previous film, Dans Paris, has used jaunty nouvelle vague influences as a springboard for his own film, which here focuses on the intertwined love lives of three young people: Ismaël (played by Honore’s regular on-screen presence Louis Garrel), Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme). The obvious comparison here is Jaques Demy’s 1964 musical film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Dans Paris even employs the same three chapter structure – Departure, Absence and Return – as this earlier film. In most other respects though, this is a radically different world to the bright and bittersweet innocence of the earlier film.
The young cast use their natural singing voices to deliver vibrant performances, and with its great score, this low-budget movie has already become a cult hit. And what better way to celebrate the newly-found ‘entente amicale’ than indulging yourself with some songs of love!
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Suffused with the twin spirits of Dickens and neo-realism, tele-veteran Andrei Kravchuk's debut feature is a perceptive study of identity and possession in an age when everything is for sale, from trust and morality to teenage girls and six year-old orphans. Recal...
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Suffused with the twin spirits of Dickens and neo-realism, tele-veteran Andrei Kravchuk's debut feature is a perceptive study of identity and possession in an age when everything is for sale, from trust and morality to teenage girls and six year-old orphans. Recalling the resolute innocence displayed by Enzo Staiola in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Kolya Spiridonov excels as the tyke who is about to be sold to an Italian couple by orphanage matron Maria Kuznetsova when he discovers that his mother is still alive and embarks upon an epic journey to find her. Taking his inspiration from a true story, Kravchuk lays bear the corruption and criminality of Putin's Russia, whether depicting the junior exploitation ring operating from inside the orphanage or the poverty that Spiridonov witnesses on his travels. Yet while Vladimir Svetorazov's interiors are as forbidding as the bleak street scenes are dismaying, cinematographer Alexander Burov offers a hint of optimism in the vistas that suggest the magnificence of a country whose preoccupation with troubles past and present jeopardises its future.
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With its shifting time frames and emphasis on secrets, lies and regrets, Richard Attenborough's first film in a decade is a solidly crafted and earnestly played treatise on keeping promises and coping with the past. The busy action switches continually between sma...
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With its shifting time frames and emphasis on secrets, lies and regrets, Richard Attenborough's first film in a decade is a solidly crafted and earnestly played treatise on keeping promises and coping with the past. The busy action switches continually between small-town Michigan girl Mischa Barton and the trio of Second World War pilots competing for her affections and Belfast teenager Martin McCann, who becomes interested in her story after retired fireman Pete Postlethwaite unearths the wreckage of a B-17 bomber in the Black Mountains in the early 1990s. Linking the strands is Shirley MacLaine, who risks alienating daughter Neve Campbell by showing scant emotion after burying the man she married in grief. Despite its intricate structure, playwright Peter Woodward's debuting screenplay is a touch cumbersome in places, most notably in the Ulster sequences, and some of the performances are overcooked. But Barton and MacLaine touchingly convey the dreams and disappointments that make up so many lives, while Attenborough directs with the humanity and care that makes him such a skilful and successful commercial film-maker.


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Now in his 80s, Jacques Rivette continues to carry the banner of the nouvelle vague, producing films that challenge the timidity of the mainstream heritage industry by showing how the adaptation of a book can be both literate and cinematic. La Duchesse de Langeais...
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Now in his 80s, Jacques Rivette continues to carry the banner of the nouvelle vague, producing films that challenge the timidity of the mainstream heritage industry by showing how the adaptation of a book can be both literate and cinematic. La Duchesse de Langeaise formed part of Balzac's La Comédie humaine and Max Ophüls nearly persuaded Greta Garbo to star in a Hollywood version in 1948. But whereas Ophüls would have made a film of nimble elegance and impossible romanticism, Rivette has produced a trenchant battle of wits in which the passions of Napoleonic general Guillaume Depardieu are inflamed by 1820s socialite Jeanne Balibar's refusal to accept his ardour, let alone follow his orders. Although much shorter than many previous Rivette outings, this subtle and superbly played study of barbed etiquette and wounded pride still reflects his fascination with the tension between theatricality and realism, with Emmanuelle de Chauvigny's Restoration interiors being lit by William Lubtchansky with an intensity that mirrors Depardieu's shifting mood, as his gauche devotion yields to a menacing fervency for revenge.


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Ang Lee's startling, erotic espionage thriller is yet another masterpiece from this most versatile of modern directors. Like Lee's acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, it scooped the Golden Lion at Venice, and has emerged as one of the best reviewed films of the year. Show Full Review

Ang Lee's startling, erotic espionage thriller is yet another masterpiece from this most versatile of modern directors. Like Lee's acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, it scooped the Golden Lion at Venice, and has emerged as one of the best reviewed films of the year.
Based on a novella by the Chinese writer Eileen Chang, Lust, Caution is set during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, when a beautiful actress (Wei Tang) begins an affair with a notorious collaborator (Tony Leung) in order to facilitate his assassination. As the couple embark on an intense physical affair, her increasingly complex emotions threaten to compromise the mission.
Lust, Caution made headlines for its graphic sex scenes, yet the physical element is so crucial to the story's central relationship that to censor them (as occurred in China) would have undermined our understanding of the passions that eventually overwhelm both characters.
After their first, chaste introduction, the pair become separated, and their eventual reunion leads to a sexual encounter that is as sudden as it is brutal; later trysts show the couple moving towards a more equal footing.
Wei Tang is one of the most exciting new stars to emerge from Asian cinema in decades, and Lee's slow-burning narrative allows her to reveal a truly remarkable range, as her character’s emotions shift from wary ambivalence, to lust, to growing compassion.
Graphic sex scenes apart, Lust, Caution could pass for a classic Hollywood drama, with a sense of intrigue that recalls the finest thrillers of the 1940s, and stunning production design that superbly evokes the wartime setting. Many of the film's motifs echo classic Hitchcock; the plot is similar to Notorious, while a disastrous murder mirrors a similar sequence in Torn Curtain.
As for the film's epic length, enjoy it; Lust, Caution earns and even requires its running time; it's a film worth watching again and again to pick up every nuance.
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This dark Ealing melodrama is about two very different houses in Victorian Brighton. The first is a pub in which Googie Wither’s calculating landlady Pearl Bond (with her winsomely wicked glance) spies a way of getting rid of her boozy husband to clear the path fo...
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This dark Ealing melodrama is about two very different houses in Victorian Brighton. The first is a pub in which Googie Wither’s calculating landlady Pearl Bond (with her winsomely wicked glance) spies a way of getting rid of her boozy husband to clear the path for her lover; the second is the starchy home of Mervyn John’s respectable, pompous little chemist Edward Sutton, a man in public office as an analyst for the courts. However, the cost of his self-righteous attitude to propriety (‘love and fear are inseparable’ he says) is that he is deceived on all sides by his children, and his naïve son – Gordon Jackson in an early role, tasting independence in the form of tuppence of whisky in Pearl’s pub – unwittingly becomes the dupe of her low cunning.

Unsurprisingly, coming from the director of Kind Hearts and Coronets, there is more than a dash of cynicism about proceedings here, with Hamer thoroughly undermining platitudes as 'there's no place like home' and 'the Lord will provide'. It's another welcome addition to the films of director Robert Hamer available on dvd (and there's another one lurking in the John Mills Centenary Collection Volume 2 if you look for it, the 1952 film, The Long Memory).
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For over fifty years, the presence of John Mills in a British film was as comforting as cup of hot tea. And the characters he played were, more often than not, as reliable as rain on a Sunday. So it can be easy to forget that he was an actor of considerable versat...
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For over fifty years, the presence of John Mills in a British film was as comforting as cup of hot tea. And the characters he played were, more often than not, as reliable as rain on a Sunday. So it can be easy to forget that he was an actor of considerable versatility, and not always ensconced in roles of solid, stiff-lipped decency. This second ‘centenary’ collection admirably captures a broad range of performances, from his youthful, light-footed song and dance man in Car of Dreams (1935) and Forever England (1935), to his Oscar-winning but barely recognisable turn as the mentally challenged Michael in Ryan’s Daughter (1970).

In between, there are some ‘classic Mills’ roles here (as an RAF pilot officer in The Way to the Stars (1945) and a submarine commander in Above Us the Waves (1955), as well as some intriguing ones rescued from semi-obscurity. In Robert Hamer’s The Long Memory, for example, he is an ex-convict bent on revenge after serving 12 years for the murder of a criminal who is actually still at large. A stark urban drama, it shows Mills equally convincing in the underworld as he was on the right side of the law. Similarly, Gerald Thomas’s brisk and serviceable The Vicious Circle (1957) sees him on top form in another ‘wrong man’ role, this time as a doctor framed for the murder of an actress whose body is found in his flat.

In Tiger Bay (1959), with characteristic chivalry, the star lets daughter Hayley walk away with the honours. But, as a Cardiff detective thwarted by a young girl’s protection of a sailor on the run, he still holds the film together, and serves as a safety net for her precocious acting acrobatics.

Ryan’s Daughter, Mills said, was “the best thing that happened to me, professionally. It brought me the Academy Award, and that meant I could finally be known again as somebody other than Hayley Mills’s father.” Nevertheless, this performance was perhaps the last great (welcome) surprise of his career. He then settled into prestigious, elder statesman roles, and continued to bring quality and warmth to British cinema and TV for the next 25 years.
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’My problem,’ director Bill Forsyth once lamented, ‘is that 40 per cent of me wants to make an entertaining film and 60 per cent of me wants to subvert the idea of movies.’ This dichotomy is never more apparent than in his 1983 masterpiece Local Hero, which challe...
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’My problem,’ director Bill Forsyth once lamented, ‘is that 40 per cent of me wants to make an entertaining film and 60 per cent of me wants to subvert the idea of movies.’ This dichotomy is never more apparent than in his 1983 masterpiece Local Hero, which challenges and confounds the viewer’s every expectation, whilst adding an undercurrent of wistful sentimentality and flinging a last-ditch lifeline to its protagonist.



Mac (Peter Riegert) is a deal-broker for an American oil firm, so superficial that even his Scottish heritage is faked. When his boss (Burt Lancaster) decides to buy up a Scottish fishing village and plunder its natural resources, Mac is sent to sweeten up the residents. But anyone anticipating a straightforward story of redemption, in which our hero helps the plucky villagers to defeat the monolithic corporation, may be disappointed. All the villagers – bar one philosophical hermit (Fulton Mackay) – want to sell, while Mac is weak and deferential, with no intention of scuppering the deal.



The ensemble acting is flawless. Riegert, Mackay and Denis Lawson – as a frisky accountant-cum-hotelier – are most engaging, while Lancaster’s amusing performance is underscored by an unexpected humanity that makes his later scenes a treat. Peter Capaldi, as Mac’s guileless accomplice, delivers his own off-kilter dialogue with relish.



Forsyth’s singular sense of humour is, as always, a joy, encompassing sight gags, whimsy and absurdity. After Mac falls foul of Mackay’s ridiculous bargaining techniques, he tries hurriedly to pass on his acquired wisdom to his boss: ‘If he offers you anything to do with sand, say yes, and we'll get him to sign something right away.’ A hysterical subplot has Lancaster’s unhappy, astrology-obsessed tycoon reluctantly undergoing abuse therapy and enduring expletive-filled, ‘anonymous’ phone calls from his psychiatrist. 

And despite – or perhaps because of – its resolute unconventionality, Forsyth’s film is incredibly affecting. The scenes in Scotland are shot, acted and scored (by Mark Knopfler) with such tenderness that even without narration or flashback they play like Mac’s rose-tinted memories. There are few films that bring a lump to the throat with the very mention of their name. Local Hero really is that special.
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Fans of Aaron Sorkin, the brilliant scriptwriter of The West Wing and, more recently, the underrated Studio 64 on Sunset Strip, won’t want to miss this sharp political drama, set during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In the delightfully implausible true stor...
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Fans of Aaron Sorkin, the brilliant scriptwriter of The West Wing and, more recently, the underrated Studio 64 on Sunset Strip, won’t want to miss this sharp political drama, set during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In the delightfully implausible true story, a womanising congressman (Tom Hanks), a rich Texan socialite (Julia Roberts) and an irascible CIA agent (Philip Seymour Hoffman) help fund the conflict for the Afghan side, eventually leading to the Russian troops’ departure.

The unlikely three musketeers have a great caustic rapport, and Sorkin’s piquant dialogue gives them some great one-liners (‘You know you've reached rock bottom when you're told you have character flaws by a man who hanged his predecessor in a military coup’). All three stars are at their best playing the flawed characters; Roberts’ spoiled housewife is an improbable heroine, but her sheer chutzpah is admirable, and Hoffman steals the show with some choice outbursts of rage. The sad irony, briefly hinted at in a end title, is that America’s then allies would soon morph into the Islamist haters of US liberty. But that’s another story.
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Boasting a superb cast – Jane Seymour, Leo McKern, Lesley Dunlop, Warren Clarke – in parts both large and small, this 1976 adaptation of Dicken's final completed novel comes direct from the BBC's golden age of costume drama.

When a young man is discovere...
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Boasting a superb cast – Jane Seymour, Leo McKern, Lesley Dunlop, Warren Clarke – in parts both large and small, this 1976 adaptation of Dicken's final completed novel comes direct from the BBC's golden age of costume drama.

When a young man is discovered, apparently drowned, on the way to collect his inheritance, his money passes on to the well-meaning Mr. Boffin, who takes the dead man's fiancee, Bella Wilfer under his wing. Meanwhile, Lizzy Hexam, the daughter of the waterman who discovered the body, is romantically pursued by the sinister Headstone. It’s a classic Dickensian tale of mistaken identity, plots within plots, and, above all, “money, money, money, and what money can make of life”.

The extended running time of this seven part series – available for the very first time – meant that even minor characters could be fully realized. It is also remembered for Carl Davis’s stirring theme music, and perfectly-formed cameos from the likes of Alfie Bass as Silas Wegg, Ronald Lacey as Mr. Venus, and Patrick Troughton as Riderhood.
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Dexter Morgan is one of the most anti antiheroes ever to grace our screens. He’s a serial killer but - here's the high-concept - thanks to a good upbringing he only murders other serial killers. Thankfully for the general populace he encounters plenty of fodder t...
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Dexter Morgan is one of the most anti antiheroes ever to grace our screens. He’s a serial killer but - here's the high-concept - thanks to a good upbringing he only murders other serial killers. Thankfully for the general populace he encounters plenty of fodder through – more high-concept - his line of work as blood splatter expert for Miami Police.

What then, you may wonder, makes this American import more worthy of your attention than all the other highly-praised American imports that pop up every couple of weeks? It’s the programme’s expertly handled tone - a balance of ghoulishness, sardonic humour, thrills and mystery. Dexter never shies away from the monstrous nature of our main character, but the viewer forgets from time to time that our star is an extremely dangerous psychopath, at which time the writers delight in reminding us just who (or what) we're rooting for here.

Adapted from a cult novel, the show actually improves significantly on the original text. Thankfully, it does keep the main story line - an absolute doozy that'll have you chain-watching episodes till past bedtime. If you can handle the sinister edge, Dexter is well worth your time.
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In a new BBC series that celebrates architecture as a creative force and a portrait of humanity through building, architectural historian and writer Dan Cruickshank explores the world’s greatest cities, buildings and monuments. He travels the world seeking out its...
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In a new BBC series that celebrates architecture as a creative force and a portrait of humanity through building, architectural historian and writer Dan Cruickshank explores the world’s greatest cities, buildings and monuments. He travels the world seeking out its most stunning constructions, with locations ranging from Russian palaces to Mayan pyramids; from igloos in Greenland to Bavarian castles and from the largest Buddha in the ancient world, situated in China, to the Sun Temple in Konarak in India, a Hindu place of worship whose sexually explicit statues so appalled the British in the 19th century that it was almost demolished. Other programmes take him to the lavish baroque ornament of the Catherine Palace in St Petersburg and the Albi Cathedral in southern France. Each programme has a theme, such as beauty, pleasure or paradise. Over eight weeks, Cruickshank explores the cities and buildings that illustrate each theme, travelling to the locations, learning about the countries and meeting the people who live in, and with, the buildings that are his destination.
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The latest (but happily not the last) volume in this incredibly popular series of films from the British Transport Films Unit covers its twilight years and its eventual demise. Although there are films from the 1960s here – The North Eastern Goes Forward, about ad...
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The latest (but happily not the last) volume in this incredibly popular series of films from the British Transport Films Unit covers its twilight years and its eventual demise. Although there are films from the 1960s here – The North Eastern Goes Forward, about adapting services for that region to keep pace with rapid change, Right Time Means Right Time, about how seconds lost by staff quickly accumulate, and Motorsport Tries Motorail, about members of The London Motor Club taking their cars by Motorail for a contest in Torbay, the bulk of the set is taken up with films from the 1970s – ‘The Age of the Train’. It was the era of the Advanced Passenger Train and the Inter-City 125. The latter (whose story is told in Inter-City 125) was so successful that it is still with us today.
By the 1970s, the Unit’s activities were concentrated more on training and safety films, and here we come to one of the strangest films ever made by BTF, and included here, John Krish’s The Finishing Line. A film to discourage children from playing on railway lines, it takes the form of a school sports day on a railway track (an idea so bizarre, Krish said, that he hoped it would be turned down so he wouldn’t have to direct it). Instead, to his amazement, it was accepted without changes, and features children in games such as chicken, stone-throwing at trains and a tunnel walk! Needless to say, mass casualties are the result. Although it was shown on TV and loaned to schools, some viewers were horrified, so it never made it into the BTF catalogue. The film’s producer, James Ritchie, said that it ‘was made to shock and be remembered’. Anyone who sees it will concur that it succeeds.
The Unit’s legacy – over 1500 films made between 1950 and 1986 – is, as shown by the incredible popularity of these DVDs, at last receiving its due. The films are not only an invaluable record of Britain’s transport history, but are also, as a poster for the Intercity service once punningly put it, great entertrainment.
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Lacanian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek has been described as ‘the Elvis of cultural theory’, a misleading though at times strangely apposite title for the one-time Slovenian presidential candidate whose prodigious output includes some 50 volumes i...
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Lacanian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek has been described as ‘the Elvis of cultural theory’, a misleading though at times strangely apposite title for the one-time Slovenian presidential candidate whose prodigious output includes some 50 volumes including works on Hitchcock and David Lynch.

Astra Taylor’s documentary follows its subject as he gives sell-out lectures both in the US and in Argentina, signing autographs, visiting his publisher, playing with his young son’s toys, shopping for DVDs, discussing the nature of philosophy whilst tucked up in bed, and even making an appearance on an American talk show whose silver-haired presenter proclaims of Žižek’s The Puppet and the Dwarf (2003),‘this is the most complicated book I’ve ever tried to read!’

Interspersed with animated intertitles expounding on aspects of Žižek’s theory, the film features a wonderful score by Jeremy Barnes from New Mexico outfit A Hawk and a Hacksaw and is an illuminating, entertaining glimpse into the whirlwind life of a philosopher whose declared aim is to bring philosophical thinking to the general public.


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Films such as Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania have given Romany music its highest profile for some time. Jasmine Dellal’s documentary When the Road Bends… takes us behind this particular scene, adding context to each exotic-sounding beat as it follows musicians from ar...
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Films such as Tony Gatlif’s Transylvania have given Romany music its highest profile for some time. Jasmine Dellal’s documentary When the Road Bends… takes us behind this particular scene, adding context to each exotic-sounding beat as it follows musicians from around the globe on the ‘Gypsy Caravan’ tour across North America.

Interviewing her chosen artistes between sell-out gigs, Dellal is keen to stress there’s as much variation within Romany music as there is in dance or metal. It’s not all the traditional sound of accordions, fiddles and raucous horns – represented here by Romania’s Taraf de Haïdouks; crowd-pleasers Maharaja incorporate cross-dressing into their tabla-and-sitar numbers, while Spain’s Antonio el Pipa works up an irresistible flamenco.

Johnny Depp provides celebrity endorsement, but the musicians are stars in their own right, particularly the formidable Esma Redzepova, who’s raised 47 children and isn’t shy bringing up her other achievements: ‘I opened borders!’. Far from the fly-by-nights of movie legend, these are performers of staggering virtuosity with fascinating stories to tell, offstage as well as on.
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His reputation maybe somewhat in flux these days, but there are many who would still argue that Laurence Olivier was the greatest actor of the modern age. His cinema career was more chequered than his stage one, but the glories were numerous: the Shakespeare films...
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His reputation maybe somewhat in flux these days, but there are many who would still argue that Laurence Olivier was the greatest actor of the modern age. His cinema career was more chequered than his stage one, but the glories were numerous: the Shakespeare films with Walton, of course, Kubrick’s Spartacus and even Bunny Lake is Missing for Preminger (in which the director coaxes a performance of remarkable subtlety from him; Olivier – the master of the grand gesture – was fully aware of the value of underplaying in film.

For many years, this controversial adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera was one of Olivier's hardest films to see, making this issue all the more welcome. Olivier utilises his most charismatic armoury of effects as the Machiavellian Macheath and Peter Brook’s exuberant adaptation of Gay’s opera about the famous highwayman in Newgate prison sports a cast that is particularly relishable: Olivier, of course, but also Stanley Holloway, the exquisite Dorothy Tutin (who rarely got cinema roles commensurate with her talent) and the legendary stage actor George Devine – here wildly panto in style. What makes the film particularly intriguing is the fact that Brook didn't quite know what to do with this material: the tone varies strikingly from scene to scene but the effect (to modern eyes) makes everything now look curiously post-modern, with the interface between theatrical acting styles (notably the over-the-top Devine and Hugh Griffiths) and the more subtly realised effects of, for instance, Dorothy Tutin (dubbed by Adele Leigh, whose singing is notably better than the over-taxed Olivier).

For many years, the film was most famous for being a spectacular commercial disaster; its initial reception in the 1950s was so negative that the film was taken out of circulation after a single night’s showing with the producers being paid compensation. In fact, Peter Brook’s career (in film terms) remained in stasis until 1960. All of which enhanced the curiosity value of the film. Looked at today, The Beggar’s Opera is a fascinating curate’s egg (particularly with Arthur Bliss in charge of the score).
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It’s fair to say that any film which buries some of Hollywood’s most famous faces under layers of prosthetics so they can play unrecognisable cameos doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. The List of Adrian Messenger is a romp whose improbable plot is strongly sc...
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It’s fair to say that any film which buries some of Hollywood’s most famous faces under layers of prosthetics so they can play unrecognisable cameos doesn’t take itself entirely seriously. The List of Adrian Messenger is a romp whose improbable plot is strongly scented by red herrings. Trying to spot Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra encased in latex is only one of its charms.

Adrian Messenger’s list has eleven names on it, all of dead men. Soon, he’ll be added to it himself, another victim of a dastardly master of disguise (Kirk Douglas, under yet more rubber). It’s up to Messenger’s friend Anthony Gethryn (Scott) to untangle the mystery and to stop the villain claiming his prize.

John Huston’s movie is the missing link between Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Avengers, a droll mystery of English eccentricity. Huston’s direction is sure-footed and while it’s not quite as glorious as his Beat The Devil, it’s spirited entertainment that’s nearly as much fun to watch as it must have been to make.


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Load the cannon, splice the main brace and set sail on what must be one of the most purely pleasurable films ever made. An affectionate celebration-cum-parody of pirate pictures, The Crimson Pirate has enough swordplay and enthusiasm to set even the hardest heart ...
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Load the cannon, splice the main brace and set sail on what must be one of the most purely pleasurable films ever made. An affectionate celebration-cum-parody of pirate pictures, The Crimson Pirate has enough swordplay and enthusiasm to set even the hardest heart beating faster.

The title character is Vallo, played by Burt Lancaster at his most charming. When his shipmates seize a Spanish galleon, he spies an opportunity for profit by playing the Spanish authorities against the rebels who are battling for freedom. But true love – amongst a great many other things – intervenes, putting his pirate principals under pressure.

But it isn’t the plot that matters, it’s the acrobatics (performed by Lancaster and his circus buddy Nick Cravat), the sight gags (many of which were plundered by those Pirates of the Caribbean) and the sheer swash-buckling exuberance (courtesy of Siodmak, proving there’s more to him than Film Noir).

Here’s a film for anyone who’s ever loved a pirate, from Errol Flynn to Johnny Depp. It’s a glorious tribute to high-seas hi-jinx.


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