True story of how HMS Amethyst escaped from the Chinese revolution in 1949. The story is fascinating but the film far too long.
Script adapt.: Eric Ambler. (o.a. Laurence Earl)
Director: Michael Anderson
Players: Richard Todd, William Hartnell, Akim Tamiroff, Donald Houston, Keye Luke, Sophie Stewart, Robert Urquhart, James Kenney, Richard Leech, Michael Brill, Barry Foster, Thomas Heathcote, Sam Kydd, Ewan Solon, Ian Bannen, Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Cope, Kenneth Cope, Alfred Burke, Cyril Luckham
American Peter Thompson becomes an Earl. Poor fish-out-of-water comedy with only a few glimpses of the usual British stalwarts to lighten the gloom.
Script adapt.: (o.a.) John Paddy Carstairs
Director: John Paddy Carstairs
Players: Guy Middleton, Noelle Middleton, Diana Decker, Harold Lloyd Jr, Jon Pertwee, Edward Chapman, Richard Wattis, Reginald Beckwith, Jennifer Jayne, Sidney James, Harry Locke, George Woodbridge, John MacLaren
Andrew Ray is the child blackmailed into helping a robber after a fight over the titular balloon ends in a friend's death. Kenneth More is the dad, taking another step closer to movie stardom. It's good, but soon fades from the memory.
Script: Anne Burnaby, J. Lee Thompson
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Players: Kathleen Ryan, William Sylvester, Bernard Lee, Hy Hazell, Veronica Hurst, Sandra Dorne, Campbell Singer, Sidney James, Marjorie Rhodes, Eliot Makeham, Peter Jones
Under-rated spy story. Anna Neagle is the posh German-sympathiser forced to go to Canada for her own safety. Really she's working undercover to expose a plot to blow up Halifax harbour. Of course we knew it all along, but Miss Neagle does a grand job of half-convincing us that maybe she is a Nazi. In British films of the period it is usually the posh person who turns out to be the Quisling, but this is about the only film to examine the sympathy the upper-classes had for Hitler. It's also a cracking thriller and very atmospheric in its recreation of wartime conditions.
Script: Miles Malleson, DeWitt Bodeen
Director: Herbert Wilcox
Players: Richard Greene, Lucie Mannheim, Albert Lieven, Nova Pilbeam, Margaret Rutherford, Cyril Fletcher, Marjorie Fielding, Aubrey Mallalieu, Eliot Makeham, Ian Fleming, Valentine Dyall, Leslie Dwyer
Diana Dors gives her best dramatic performance as the Ruth Ellis figure waiting to be hanged and recalling what lead her to kill.
Script adapt.: John Cresswell, (o.a.) Joan Henry
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Players: Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, Geoffrey Keen, Olga Lindo, Michael Ripper, Marianne Stone, Dandy Nichols, Shirley Ann Field
Lieutenant Donald Sinden's drunken practical joke gets mistaken for a secret weapon. Totally daft Cold War comedy.
Script adapt.: Peter Rogers. (o.a. Edward Hyams)
Director: Ken Annakin
Players: Sarah Lawson, Akim Tamiroff, Naunton Wayne, Bill Kerr, Dora Bryan, Martin Miller, Michael Shepley, Ferdy Maine, Michael Horden, Peter Arne, Bryan Coleman, Peter Martyn, Shirley Lorrimer, Cyril Chamberlain, Marianne Stone, Shirley Eaton, Lisa Gastoni
Silly and cheap tale of smugglers. The contraband in question are rare books which makes a change from gems or drugs but doesn't exactly up the excitement quota.
Script adapt.: Maclean Rogers. (o.a. Michael Cronin)
Director: Maclean Rogers
Players: Honor Blackman, Hugh McDermott, Jane Hylton, Ivan Samson, Ferdy Mayne, Hugh Moxey, Shirley Dean, Gerard Heinz, Basil Dignam
Young man goes on the run after being unjustly accused of murder and is helped by a beautiful blond woman.
Charming performances from Nova Pilbeam and Derrick de Marney enhance one of Hitchcock's most endearing films. There are lots of typical Hitch sequences, but the most famous is the camera glide through a crowded dance hall to pick out the murderer's twitching eye.
Script adapt.: Charles Bennett, Alma Reville, Antony Armstrong, Edwin Greenwood, Gerald Savory. (o.a. Josephine Tey)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Players: Percy Marmont, Edward Rigby, George Curzon, Mary Clare, John Longden, Basil Longden, Basil Radford, George Merritt, J.H. Roberts, Jerry Verno, H.F. Maltby, Pamela Carme, Torin Thatcher, Frederick Piper
An American and an Eastern European meet in London and fall in love. But the forces of the Cold War try to drive them apart.
It's Romeo and Juliet with a 50s twist, and as such works very nicely.
Script: Robin Estridge, George Tabori
Director: Anthony Asquith
Players: David Knight, Odile Versois, David Kossoff, Joseph Tomelty, Paul Carpenter, Theodore Bikel, Jill Adams, John McClaren, Betty Marsden, Peter Illing, Peter Dyneley, Bernard Rebel
Robert Donat plays our youngest Prime Minister in this patriotic morale booster.
Script: Frank Launder, Sidney Gilliat, Viscount Castlerosse
Director: Carol Reed
Players: Phyllis Calvert, Robert Morley, Raymond Lovell, John Mills, Max Adrian, Felix Aylmer, Albert Lieven, Stephen Haggard, Geoffrey Atkins, Jean Cadell, Agnes Laughlin, Ian MacLean, A. Bromley Davenport, John Salew, Kathleen Byron, Frank Pettingell, Jack Watling, Ronald Shiner, John Slater, Leslie Dwyer, Frederick Leister, Esma Cannon, Merle Tottenham, Aubrey Mallalieu, Margaret Vyner, Austin Trevor, Leo Genn, James Harcourt, Muriel George, Kynaston Reeves, Alf Goddard, Frederick Valk, Esme Percy,
Stage farce about two couples sharing a house. It doesn't have the precision of a theatre performance but it does have Joan Greenwood and Audrey Hepburn and that should be enough for anyone.
Script adapt.: Anne Burnaby. (o.a. Ronald Jeans)
Director: Henry Cass
Players: Helen Cherry, Nigel Patrick, Derek Farr, Guy Middleton, Athene Seyler, Fabia Drake, Irene Handl, Joan Sanderson
Newlyweds discover a will makes them rich if they divorce.
Would-be farce that doesn't work on any level.
Script: Ronald Jeans
Director: Anthony Simmons
Players: Peggy Cummins, Donald Sinden, Richard Wattis, Peter Reynolds, Georgina Cookson, Barbara Steele, Gladys Boot, Betty Buskcomb, Olive Sloane, Ian Fleming, Candy Scott, Noel Trevarthen
