Hugely controversial in its day, this tale of flat caps, unemployment and social disgrace now seems more like a quaint period piece. During the depression in England a young lady from Lancashire decides to be a rich bookmaker's mistress just to help the rest of her family, who are unemployed. A gaggle of local gossips add humour to the otherwise grim proceedings. find out more...

A visually striking and powerful exploration of the "Oedipus" myth so loved by Freud, which draws on the director's own experience and the timeless themes of mythology. In pre-war Italy, a young couple have a baby boy. The father, however, is jealous of his son - and the scene moves to antiquity, where the baby is taken into the desert to be killed. He is rescued, given the name Edipo and brought up by the King and Queen of Corinth as their son. One day an oracle informs Edipo that he is destine find out more...

Set in 1930s California, this adaptation of Steinbeck's novel ‘Of Mice and Men' paints a bold, vivid picture of life in the depression era and tells the tragic tale of George and Lenny two itinerant farm hands searching for a safe haven from the cruelties of the world. find out more...

Set in the Sino-Japanese war, Yasuzo Masumura's black-and-white anti-war film tells of an army nurse who sexually services an amputee and falls in love with a drug-addicted surgeon. This can't be recommended to the squeamish, but neither can its nuanced eroticism nor its passionate, unpredictable moral focus, be easily shaken off. Comparable with Altman's MASH, it suggests a less comic treatment of the same theme, how to preserve one's humanity in impossible circumstances, but its ethics are con find out more...

Based on a Tennessee Williams play and touching on all manner of depraved horrors. Taylor plays the girl driven to madness by what she's witnessed and Clift is the shrink being pressured to lobotomise her, but Hepburn steals the show as the unnervingly genteel aunt trying to sweep everything under the carpet. find out more...

'The Day Of The Locust' is a harrowing fable about delusion and false hope delving into the lives of those trying to achieve the glamorous lifestyle of pre-war Hollywood. The story revolves round an art director trying to get work, who falls for his young actress neighbour, her attempts to become a movie star and the men in her life. Donald Sutherland plays the estranged and deeply religious but now famously named Homer Simpson. find out more...

It's all sweetness and light in this moving music biopic classic of Glen Miller's impressive rise to fame with June Allyson playing his childhood sweetheart and James Stewart outstanding as the man himself. It's got all the great arrangements from 'Pensylvania 6-500' to 'Moonlight Serenade', all scored by Henry Mancini in homage to Miller's style, plus Louis Armstrong makes an appearance playing 'Basin Street Blues' and Frances Langford does 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo'. find out more...

Made almost contemporaneously with the 1930s setting, this authentically portrays the poverty and repression of the migrant 'Okies', evicted from their dustbowl farms and treated like slaves in California. Adapted from Steinbeck's book, often called 'THE Great American Novel' and with outstanding performances coming from Henry Fonda (Tom Joad) and John Carradine (John Casey) a preacher with a fondess for vice, but a true heart... fantastic. find out more...

The true story of an English housemaid who changed lifestyle and became a missionary in the politically turbulent China of the 1930s. Beautifully shot with that famous heart rendering finale as Ingrid Bergman brings the orphans on their own long march through the war torn mountains. find out more...

Based on David Low's cartoon character, Major General Clive Wynne-Candy, VC, we back-track over his life, drawing us into sympathy with the prime virtues of honour and chivalry which have transformed him from dashing young spark of the 1890s into crusty old buffer of World War II. Roger Livesey gives us not just a great performance, but a man's whole life, losing his only love (Deborah Kerr) to the German officer (Walbrook) with whom he fought a duel in pre-WWI Berlin, then becoming the latter's find out more...