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There are people who’ll tell you that Japanese folklore fantasy Monkey airing at 6pm on Friday nights in the 1980s was the highpoint of post-school, pre-bedtime TV scheduling in the UK. Let’s not tell them that they’re wrong; let’s just pity them for having mistimed their childhood by a decade.

The 1990s were the real peak of the 6pm weeknight TV slot. As long as there was no Wimbledon, snooker, cricket, athletics or Horse of the Year Show, that’s where anyone too young to go to the pub found joy. While grown-ups were watching the Six O’Clock News, kids in households flush enough to have a second television switched on BBC Two or Channel 4. There, to quote Howard Carter upon breaking into Tutankhamun’s tomb, they found wonderful things.

Before the youth-oriented Def II brought 1970s reruns to the slot, weekday teatimes on...

Earlier this week, IndieWire exclusively debuted a video of Steven Spielberg sharing his inaugural picks as an advisor to TCM: five films he chose from the beloved network’s September 2023 lineup. Now his fellow advisors Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson have gotten in on the action too. Watch the video of Scorsese recommending one of TCM’s September titles above: it’s about Arthur Crabtree’s “Madonna of the Seven Moons,” a melodrama produced by Gainsborough Pictures in 1945.

Gainsborough Pictures was a U.K. studio renowned for a series of highly-charged melodramas in the 1940s built around actors like James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, and Dennis Price. None of the films are connected plot-wise, but they do share many of the same creatives in front and behind the camera as well as a similar mood.

In the video above, Scorsese says of “Madonna of the Seven Moons,” which airs September 20 at 2:00pm Et,...

The Lady Vanishes The Lady Vanishes, 1.15pm, BBC2, Sunday, August 22

Alfred Hitchcock neatly balances the thriller elements of this tale of a mysterious disappearance with a comedic tone as young socialite Iris (Margaret Lockwood) boards a train with a kindly old lady (Dame May Witty). When the older woman vanishes, Iris begins to doubt her own sanity after finding virtually everyone else aboard refuses to even acknowledge she existed but enlists the help of sparky academic Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) in the hunt. Hitchcock, as always, makes great use of his confined setting, which is stuffed to the carriage doors with fine character performances from the likes of Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as a pair of cricketers to Philip Leaver as Italian magician Signor Doppo, somehow managing to seed in a darker mood with the lightest of touches. Read our full review

Airplane!, 11pm, Tuesday, August 16, ITV4

There's something infinitely rewatchable about.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Charles Cohen, the founder of the Cohen Film Collection, not only finances and distributes acclaimed independent films, but he also controls the rights to an impressive number of largely forgotten British films. Instead of letting them languish, Cohen has invested in bringing some of these titles to Blu-ray with stunning new transfers. The latest release is a Blu-ray double feature consisting of two modestly-budgeted murder-themed sagas. First- and most impressive- is "Cast a Dark Shadow", a 1955 noirish production with up-and-comer Dirk Bogarde in the lead role. He plays Edward Bare, a handsome and charismatic young man who, when we first meet him, is improbably newly wed to Monica (Mona Washbourne), an elderly woman with a sizable fortune who Edward dotes over and manipulates. Monica's lawyer Phillip Mortimer (Robert Flemyng) smells a rat but Monica is too delusional to believe Edward is manipulating her. When she turns up...

Miranda Fall (Mireille Enos) is a cataloger. Her art leads her on journeys following new subjects in order to understand who each is by what each does and possesses. She voyeuristically captures their lives in photographs and objects, exhibiting her findings as though a celebration despite some of her targets believing it more akin to a memoriam. And why shouldn’t they? Miranda is ostensibly stealing their identities for public consumption and in turn private financial compensation. She uses the mundane routines and patterns of others to provide a distraction from her own and the fame and fortune allowing her excitement and material gains they could never afford themselves. Is she therefore cataloging these strangers or merely cataloging what she needs from them to satisfy her own selfish purposes?

It’s an interesting question to ask of all artists who create in the hopes of a sustainable life. How much...

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

Modern spy movies have nothing on this Brit thriller produced just as war broke out -- Rex Harrison, Margaret Lockwood and Paul Henried clash with Nazi agents, and risk a daring escape to Switzerland. The witty screenplay is by the writers of Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and the director is Carol Reed, in terrific form. Night Train to Munich Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 523 1940 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September, 2016 / Starring Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul von Hernried, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, James Harcourt, Felix Aylmer, Roland Culver, Raymond Huntley, Fritz (Frederick) Valk. Cinematography Otto Kanturek Film Editor R. E. Dearing Written by Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder story by Gordon Wellesley Produced by Edward Black Directed by Carol Reed

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Alfred Hitchcock's successful series of 1930s spy chase thrillers -- The Man Who Knew Too Much; The 39 Steps --...

Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.

A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)

Despite a loose script that justifies little, Italian director Luca Guadagnino’s follow-up feature to his glorious melodrama I Am Love is a sweaty, kinetic, dangerously unpredictable ride of a film. One is frustrated by the final stroke of genius that never came, but boy was it fun to spend two hours inside such a whirlwind of desires, mind games, delirious sights and sounds. Based on the 1969 French drama La piscine (The Swimming Pool...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor discuss Eclipse Series 36: Three Wicked Melodramas from Gainsborough Pictures.

About the films:

During the 1940s, realism reigned in British cinema—but not at Gainsborough Pictures. The studio, which had been around since the twenties, found new success with a series of pleasurably preposterous costume melodramas. Audiences ate up these overheated films, which featured a stable of charismatic stars, including James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Stewart Granger, and Phyllis Calvert. Though the movies were immensely profitable in wartime and immediately after, Gainsborough did not outlive the decade. This set brings together a trio of the studio’s most popular films from this era—florid, visceral tales of secret identities, multiple personalities, and romantic betrayals.

Stage and screen actor who appeared in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent

Among the many might-have-beens in film history was the starring of Nova Pilbeam opposite Laurence Olivier in Rebecca (1940), Alfred Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. The producer, David O Selznick, desperately wanted Pilbeam, who has died aged 95, for the female lead of Mrs de Winter, and was willing to offer her a five-year contract.

Pilbeam, who while still a teenager had already had important roles in two of Hitchcock’s films, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937), was also hoping she would land the prestigious part, particularly since she had recently lost out to Margaret Lockwood in his The Lady Vanishes (1938). However, Hitch, after auditioning hundreds of young women, opted instead for the 22-year-old Joan Fontaine, claiming that the 20-year-old Pilbeam was not mature enough.

Continue reading...

'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl': Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' review: Mostly an enjoyable romp (Oscar Movie Series) Pirate movies were a Hollywood staple for about three decades, from the mid-'20s (The Sea Hawk, The Black Pirate) to the mid-to-late '50s (Moonfleet, The Buccaneer), when the genre, by then mostly relegated to B films, began to die down. Sporadic resurrections in the '80s and '90s turned out to be critical and commercial bombs (Pirates, Cutthroat Island), something that didn't bode well for the Walt Disney Company's $140 million-budgeted film "adaptation" of one of their theme-park rides. But Neptune's mood has apparently improved with the arrival of the new century. He smiled – grinned would be a more appropriate word – on the Gore Verbinski-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

We seek out some of the best films available to watch for free online. This week: Hitchcock's 1938 tale of mystery, espionage and a disappearing governess

My favourite Hitchcock: The Lady Vanishes

Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) is a young British tourist travelling through central Europe. On boarding a train that will take her home to get married, she's befriended by Miss Froy (May Whitty), an amiable governess, who promptly disappears in extremely mysterious circumstances. Her fellow passengers insist that Miss Froy never existed and that Iris is suffering delusions but she teams up with fellow-Brit Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a charming-yet-vexacious musicologist, and the pair of them set about getting to the bottom of what's going on.

Jean Kent: British film star and ‘Last of the Gainsborough Girls’ dead at 92 (photo: actress Jean Kent in ‘Madonna of the Seven Moons’) News outlets and tabloids — little difference these days — have been milking every little drop from the unexpected and violent death of The Fast and the Furious franchise actor Paul Walker, and his friend and business partner Roger Rodas this past Saturday, November 30, 2013. Unfortunately — and unsurprisingly — apart from a handful of British publications, the death of another film performer on that same day went mostly underreported. If you’re not "in" at this very moment, you may as well have never existed. Jean Kent, best known for her roles as scheming villainesses in British films of the 1940s and Gainsborough Pictures’ last surviving top star, died on November 30 at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds, England. The previous day, she had suffered a fall at her...

Popular stalwart of film classics such as The Browning Version and Fanny By Gaslight

Jean Kent, the fiery, sexy, red-haired bad girl of British movies in the 1940s, who has died aged 92, was a fine actor, and clearly enjoyed life, her work and – while it lasted – her cinema fame. While never a top star, she gained a considerable following, and from the 1960s appeared regularly on television. Her film breakthrough came as a result of stage work: after the revue Apple Sauce, starring Vera Lynn and Max Miller, reached the London Palladium in 1941, she was offered a long-term contract, and the first of her Gainsborough Pictures appearances came in It's That Man Again (1943), with another wartime entertainer, the radio comic Tommy Handley.

It took another four films for her to make her first real mark as Lucy, the friend of Phyllis Calvert in the title role of the melodrama Fanny By Gaslight,...

European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award: Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Judi Dench are the only three female recipients to date (photo: European movies’ Lifetime Achievement Award-less actress Danielle Darrieux) (See previous post: "Catherine Deneuve: Only the Third Woman to Receive European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.") As mentioned in the previous post, French film icon Catherine Deneuve is only the third woman to receive the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award since the organization’s first awards ceremony in 1988. Deneuve’s predecessors are The Lovers‘ Jeanne Moreau (1997) and Notes on a Scandal‘s Judi Dench (2008). In that regard, the European Film Academy is as male-oriented as the Beverly Hills-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. More on that below. Male recipients of the European Film Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award are the following: Ingmar Bergman, Marcello Mastroianni, Federico Fellini, Andrzej Wajda, Alexandre Trauner, Billy Wilder,...

Dirk Bogarde: ‘Victim’ star took no prisoners in his letters to Dilys Powell Letters exchanged between film critic Dilys Powell and actor Dirk Bogarde — one of the most popular and respected British performers of the twentieth century, and the star of seminal movies such as Victim, The Servant, Darling, and Death in Venice — reveals that Bogarde was considerably more caustic and opinionated in his letters than in his (quite bland) autobiographies. (Photo: Dirk Bogarde ca. 1970.) As found in Dirk Bogarde’s letters acquired a few years ago by the British Library, among the victims of the Victim star (sorry) were Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave (Julia), a "ninny" who was “so utterly beastly to [Steaming director Joseph Losey] that he finally threw his script at her face”; and veteran stage and screen actor — and Academy Award winner — John Gielgud (Arthur), who couldn’t "understand half of Shakespeare" despite being renowned for his stage roles in Macbeth,...

Feature Aliya Whiteley 20 Jun 2013 - 10:11

The films of post-war Britain are fascinating; Aliya picks 10 of the best British thrillers from the 1940s

The 1940s was a heck of a decade for the British. We started it at war with Nazi Germany, with the threat of Ira collaboration with the enemy looming large. By the end of it we had seen Independence achieved by India, lived through strikes and rationing, and held the fourteenth Olympic Games in London at a time of great austerity. The welfare state was under formation, and in the space of ten years we had become a very different country.

The British film industry reflected those changes, particularly in the thrillers that were made. The lines between good and evil, safety and danger, were the stuff of entertainment that tapped into the concerns of the public. It was a period of vivid, ambitious, and surprising films.

The 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival continues to expand, with newly added appearances by legendary stars at screenings of some of their most memorable films, including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan, Barrie Chase, Polly Bergen,Coleen Gray, Theodore Bikel and Norman Lloyd, as well as producer Stanley Rubin, Clara Bow biographer David Stenn, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) film collections manager Katie Trainor and director Nicholas Ray’s widow, Susan Ray. In addition, TCM’s Essentials Jr. host and Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader will present screenings of Shane (1953) and The Ladykillers(1955).

And The Film Forum’s Bruce Goldstein will present a special screening of Frank Capra’s The Donovan Affair (1929), complete with live voice actors and sound effects to replace the film’s long-lost soundtrack.Mel Brooks is slated to talk about his comedy The Twelve Chairs (1970). Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Marvin Kaplan...

Flamboyant film director, best known for Death Wish, and later an outspoken restaurant critic and bon vivant

Michael Winner, who has died aged 77, supplied interviewers with a list of more than 30 films he had directed, not always including the early travelogue This Is Belgium (1956), mostly shot in East Grinstead. But his enduring work was himself – a bravura creation of movies, television, journalism, the law courts and a catchphrase, ''Calm down, dear", from an exasperating series of television commercials.

He was born in London, the only child of George and Helen Winner, who were of Russian and Polish extraction respectively. His builder father made enough money propping up blitzed houses to invest in London property. The profits funded his wife's gambling, which, her son complained, so distracted "Mumsie" that he was never paid due attention. She left him in the bedroom with the mink coats of guests who came to his...

Being a film star not high up on the list of 1950's children's career ambitions

Only 2 per cent of the boys and 5 per cent of the girls answered "Film actor" or "Film actress" to the question in a Government "quiz" on cinema-going "What would you most like to be when you grow up?" When they were asked which of sixteen film stars they would like to be nearly one in seven said "None." The children's ambitions were, on the whole, very practical, says the report, issued to-day, of a social survey made by the Central Office of Information in 1948 for the Departmental Committee on Children and the Cinema.

Answering the careers question, which was put only to children in the 10-15 age group, 58 per cent of the boys made "realistic" choices. So did 73 per cent of the girls. Compared with 36 per cent of the boys, only 15 per cent of the...

Ethel White's 1936 novel "The Wheel Spins" was adapted to film by an early career Alfred Hitchcock as "The Lady Vanishes." Now the BBC is giving that source material another whirl with Diarmuid Lawrence ("Little Dorrit") directing and Fiona Seres writing the adaptation. Tuppence Middleton ("Chatroom") will play socialite Iris Carr, the role played by Margaret Lockwood in Hitchcock's film, while Selina Cadell will take on the May Whitty role of Miss Froy and Tom Hughes will take on the role of Iris' fellow travel and sole ally, played in the earlier film by Michael Redgrave. Keeley Hawes, Gemma Jones, Stephanie Cole and Julian Rhind-Tutt will also appear in the 90-minute thriller. Read More: 'Vertigo' Replaces 'Citizen Kane' On Top of Sight & Sound List & Some Analysis In adapting the story, Seres looks to be keeping closer to the original source material than...

Michael Leader Nov 2, 2019

Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, had a career that spanned 50-plus films. We think we can narrow it down to the 10 best.

Whenever geeky film conversations turn to the topic of the greatest British directors, a few answers frequently crop up: Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Nicolas Roeg, and Michael Powell are just a handful of a list of potentials, but there is one man whose impact on film history outclasses almost all contenders: Alfred Hitchcock.

Born on the cusp of the 20th Century, Hitchcock came to define entire genres of cinema in a career that spanned over 50 years and over 50 films. His body of work - not to mention his rotund body itself - is both immense and iconic, full of tense thrillers, psycho-dramas, and adventure flicks that were not only wildly popular at the time, but inspired both critical re-evaluation and whole new generations of filmmakers in ensuing years.

On top of a mesmerising plot, perfect casting and the greatest comic duo in British cinema, this comedy thriller derives special urgency from the troubled times in which it was made

Hitchcock and railways go together like a locomotive and tender. He loved them, they figure significantly in his work and never more so than in The Lady Vanishes. Much of what happens could only take place on a railway line – passengers delayed together by an avalanche; classes compartmentalised; strangers trapped together as they're transported across a continent; an engine driver killed in crossfire; a carriage disconnected and shunted on to a branch line; an intrepid hero struggling from one carriage to another outside a fast-moving train as other locomotives rush by; clues in the form of a name traced in the steam on a window, and the label on a tea packet briefly adhering to another window; and above...

The novelist relishes Hitch's prewar comedy adapted by Gilliat and Launder because it both satirises and celebrates the English stiff upper lip

It might not be his best film, but Hitchcock never made anything warmer or more lovable than this. I must have seen it 20 or 30 times and can't imagine ever growing tired of it.

Kudos to his collaborators, first of all. Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's screenplay is sharper than anything written for Hitchcock's other British films (or his American films, come to that – except possibly for North by Northwest) and you could make a strong case for regarding it as a Launder and Gilliat film rather than a Hitchcock one, if authorship has to be decided. That sometimes endearing indifference to nuances of dialogue and characterisation that marks even some of Hitchcock's best films is nowhere to be found here: the edgy banter between Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood really sparkles.

Each week within this column we strive to pair the latest in theatrical releases to worthwhile titles currently streaming on Netflix Instant Watch. This week we offer alternatives to Wanderlust, Gone and The Forgiveness of Blood.

Coming to theaters tomorrow, a big-eyed blonde will face down the man who once tried to kill her, while a pack of hippies welcome two uptight New Yorkers and a teen boy is forced to face the claustrophobic consequences of a old-school blood feud. But if these features won’t satisfy your cravings for havoc, slapstick and drama, we’ve got you covered with the best of titles Now Streaming.

A Manhattan couple leaves the rat race begin when they embrace the life of a commune in this wacky comedy from The State’s David Wain and Ken Marino.

Looking for more from Marino and Wain?

Wet Hot American Summer (2001) This cult classic not...

Hollywood has been running out of ideas since filmmakers started making movies in Hollywood. Even the first "official" movie made in Hollywood proper, Cecil B. DeMille's 1914 Western The Squaw Man, wasn't an original story. DeMille's Western was based on Edwin Milton Royle's play. And prior to that, there had been movie shorts with titles such as The Squaw and the Man (1910), Cow-boy and the Squaw (1910), and The Squaw Man's Sweetheart (1912). So, no one should be too surprised that remakes, adaptations, and reboots have been Hollywood staples for decades. And here's another remake in the works: DreamWorks and Working Title Films are to revisit (or reboot, as the case may be) Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 Best Picture Oscar winner Rebecca, which starred Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. As per Variety, Eastern Promises' screenwriter Steven Knight will use Daphne Du Maurier's novel as the source for the project, sort...

Chicago – Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” isn’t one of his most heralded films. You don’t hear it mentioned on most lists of the best works of arguably the most influential director who ever lived. And yet it was the third film chosen for The Criterion Collection and has now been given the upgrade and joined the esteemed Blu-ray ranks of the most important collection in the history of home entertainment. If you’re unfamiliar with this witty, delightful gem of a thriller, there’s no other way to experience it for the first time. And if you’re a fan of Hitchcock’s more famous films, do yourself a favor by checking out one of his earliest.

Blu-Ray Rating: 5.0/5.0

“The Lady Vanishes” had actually been in production with a different director when Alfred Hitchcock came on board mostly to satisfy his British contract before heading to the States.

DVD Playhouse—December 2011

By Allen Gardner

The Rules Of The Game (Criterion) Jean Renoir’s classic from 1939 was met with a riot at its premiere and was severely cut by its distributor, available only in truncated form for two decades until it was restored to the grandeur for which it is celebrated today. A biting comedy of manners set in the upstairs and downstairs of a French country estate, the film bitterly vivisects the bourgeoisie with a gentle ferocity that will tickle the laughter in your throat. Renoir co-stars as Octave. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Introduction to the film by Renoir; Commentary written by scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by Peter Bogdanovich; Comparison of the film’s two endings; Selected scene analysis by Renoir scholar Chris Faulkner; Featurettes and vintage film clips; Part one of David Thomson’s “Jean Renoir” BBC documentary; Video essay; Interviews with Renoir, crew members,...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

New Year’s Eve - Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Biel, Ashton Kutcher

The Sitter - Jonah Hill, Ari Graynor, Sam Rockwell

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (limited) - Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy

Movie of the Week

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Stars: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy

The Plot: In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley (Oldman) is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6′s echelons.

The Buzz: Great title, great cast, great premise. Sold, sold and sold. Gary Oldman is too cool for school. I can’t wait to see this one. On top of the awesomeness that is Oldman, the film also boasts a bevy of heavy hitters in Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, and Mark Strong. I enjoy all of these actors a great deal, so regarding the cast, this film looks super solid.

David Cronenberg, Ralph Fiennes to Become BFI Fellows. [Right: Bette Davis.] The list of those who have received a British Film Institute Fellowship since it was first handed out in 1983 is quite extensive. [See below.] BFI Fellows include not only Britishers, but also numerous foreigners who have somehow or other been associated with either the film world or the BFI itself, among them directors (Michelangelo Antonioni, Marcel Carné), producers (John Brabourne, David Puttnam), film executives (Harvey Weinstein, Sidney Bernstein), editors (Thelma Schoonmaker), cinematographers (Jack Cardiff), actors (from Alec Guinness to Bette Davis, from Jean Simmons to Isabelle Huppert), writers (Graham Greene), critics (Dilys Powell), and philanthropists (J. Paul Getty). There are a number of puzzling omissions, however. For instance, the following are a few British actresses who have left an indelible mark on world cinema: Anna Neagle (left out perhaps because she died in 1986), Margaret Lockwood, Julie Andrews, Julie Christie, Lynn Redgrave, and Greer Garson.

Release Date: Dec. 6, 2011

Price: Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Michael Redgrave (l.) and Margaret Lockwood do some investigating in The Lady Vanishes.

It’s great to see Alfred Hitchcock’s (Psycho) quick-witted and devilish 1938 comedy-thriller The Lady Vanishes get the Criterion treatment.

In the movie, beautiful Margaret Lockwood (Night Train to Munich) is traveling across Europe by train when she meets a charming spinster (Dame May Whitty, Suspicion), who then seems to disappear into thin air. The younger woman turns investigator and finds herself drawn into a complex web of mystery, adventure and even some romance.

Co-starring Michael Redgrave (The Browning Version) and Paul Lukas (The Ghost Breakers), The Lady Vanishes remains an audience favorite and one of the great filmmaker’s purest delights.

Criterion’s Blu-ray edition offers a high-definition digital restoration of the classic film with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack.

There are a number of bonus features on the Blu-ray...

Night Train to Munich

Directed by Carol Reed

United Kingdom, 1940

The title of Carol Reed’s 1940 wartime comedic thriller hardly tells the whole story. Perhaps hoping to capitalize off of the success of the two-years prior The Lady Vanishes, Night Train to Munich would have you believe that it’s an equally contained picture. That famous writers Frank Laudner and Sidney Gilliat wrote both is perhaps then, of no coincidence.

While there is an immensely successful third act that does take place primarily aboard a train, the film is far more sprawling and unfairly overlooked at the expense of its supposed successor.

Scientist Dr. Bomasch (James Harcourt) is forced to free Prague at the invasion of the Nazis. His daughter Anna (Margaret Lockwood) escapes from a concentration camp with the help of fellow internee Karl Marsen (Paul von Hernried) and meets her father in England, where father and daughter take...

Orson Welles, Ruth Warrick, Citizen Kane Orson Welles on TCM: The Third Man, The Lady From Shanghai Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Tartars (1961) A barbarian army attacks Viking settlements along the Russian steppes. Dir: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Victor Mature, Orson Welles, Folco Lulli. C-83 mins, Letterbox Format 7:30 Am Tomorrow Is Forever (1946) A scarred veteran presumed dead returns home to find his wife remarried. Dir: Irving Pichel. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, George Brent. Bw-104 mins. 9:30 Am Moby Dick (1956) Epic adaptation of Herman Melville's classic about a vengeful sea captain out to catch the whale that maimed him. Dir: John Huston. Cast: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn. C-115 mins, Letterbox Format 11:30 Am The V.I.P.S (1963) Wealthy passengers fogged in at London's Heathrow Airport fight to survive a variety of personal trials. Dir: Anthony Asquith. Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan.

Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, The Lady from Shanghai Orson Welles' career as an actor was both fruitful and frustrating. From Citizen Kane (1941) to Someone to Love (1987), Welles appeared — mostly in supporting roles — in about 70 features made in various parts of the world. There was one brilliant performance in one brilliant film, Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, but the rest of what I've seen has been either forgettable or memorable for the wrong reasons. Subtlety is a quality with which Welles the Actor was totally unfamiliar. Whether or not you admire Orson Welles' work in front of the camera, Welles fans are being treated to 13 films featuring Welles as both leading man and supporting player, all day Monday, August 8, on Turner Classic Movies. The only TCM premiere in this "Summer Under the Stars" Orson Welles Day is the 1952 British-made crime drama Trent's Last Case, directed by veteran Herbert Wilcox,...

Veteran British actress Googie Withers has died at the age of 94.

The star, born Georgette Lizette Withers, passed away at her home in Sydney, Australia on Friday. No further information was available as WENN went to press.

Withers was working as a dancer in London's West End when she was asked to be an extra in the 1935 movie The Girl in the Crowd - but she ended up with a main role after director Michael Powell fired a lead actress.

She went on to rack up credits in films such as The Gang's All Here and One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, and also appeared on Broadway.

But she will be best remembered for playing Blanche in Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 thriller The Lady Vanishes, opposite Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave.

Withers was the first non-Australian to be made an Officer of the Order of Australia and she was awarded a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2002.

She married Australian actor John McCallum, who helped create the cult TV series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

They had three children and lived together in Sydney until McCallum's death last year.

Actor whose 1940s heyday featured two films as co-star to James Mason

The 1940s was a ripe period for women in British films, when stars such as Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, Valerie Hobson and Jean Simmons had a chance to shine. Although Joyce Howard, who has died aged 88, was never in their league, she had her moments of glory in a relatively short career which lasted from 1941 to 1950. Howard's high spots were the two films in which she co-starred with the up-and-coming matinee idol James Mason: The Night Has Eyes (1942) and They Met in the Dark (1943).

Howard was the ideal foil for the saturnine Mason. In the former film, she is the vulnerable, repressed heroine whose passions are aroused by Mason's brooding, secretive composer, the kind of relationship so beloved of wartime British melodramas. The film, directed by Leslie Arliss, creates a pervasive sense of danger, with the characters...

Without protection, film-making in this country has been reduced to a cottage industry; and Hollywood continues to tighten its grip

Once, we had a British film industry that rivalled the best of Hollywood, from serious drama to comedy. And we had British directors, such as David Lean, Michael Powell, Lindsay Anderson, Ken Russell and many others, plus stars such as Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Lockwood and Julie Christie, who were internationally acclaimed.

Why? Because British film-making was being protected by quotas.

But it all came to an end on 1 January 1983, when Margaret Thatcher suspended them. Since then we have become a country where the film industry has gone the same way as the car industry: we build Japanese (and some French) cars, and we make films for Hollywood studios – as long as we give them big enough tax incentives, that is.

British film-making has been reduced to...

Supporting actor in works from Harry Potter to Shakespeare

In St Paul's church, Covent Garden, amid the memorials to the theatrical stars of their day, is a modest plaque dedicated to an actor described as "a much-respected player of supporting parts". Such a one was Jimmy Gardner, who has died aged 85.

In his acting career, stretching over half a century, he played the gamut of character roles, ranging from the statutory drunken old man in the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage version of A Clockwork Orange (1990) to Peter in Romeo and Juliet (a role first created by Shakespeare's clown, Will Kempe), to the bus driver Ernie Prang in the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). No popular TV series could be counted as having truly arrived until he had played a cameo role in it, whether it be The Forsyte Saga, Z Cars, Doctor Who, EastEnders, Casualty, The Bill,...

One of Hitchcock's best films, available online for free? What are you waiting for? Alfred Hitchcock made The Lady Vanishes in 1938, and it was widely considered to be the culmination of all his work up to that point. It uses a unique blend of comedy and suspense, and the two elements are playfully, masterfully mixed and intertwined to enhance one another, such as a lengthy scuffle with a suspect in the baggage car. It creates nervous laughter.

Iris (Margaret Lockwood) is an independent young lady traveler, who is about to embark on the last leg of her journey, returning to England to marry. Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) is a happy-go-lucky musicologist who annoys everyone with the noise from his hotel room. Gilibert and Iris hate each other at first, which pretty much assures that they will fall in love. On her way to the train, Iris gets bonked on the head,...

British-born film star known for her roles in Great Expectations and Spartacus

Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing...

British-born film star known for her roles in Great Expectations and Spartacus

Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing...

Jean Simmons, the beautiful actress who was nominated for Oscars for her work in Hamlet (1948) and The Happy Ending (1969), died of lung cancer on Friday night (Jan. 22) at her home in Santa Monica, Calif. The London-born actress would have turned 81 on Jan. 31. Simmons’ film debut took place in the 1944 British comedy Give Us the Moon, in which she played star Margaret Lockwood’s younger sister. A couple of years later, she was the snotty teenage Estella, the companion to the reclusive Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt), in David Lean’s Academy Award-nominated version of Great Expectations (1946). And the following year, she was an uppity Indian girl with a jewel in her nose in Michael Powell [...]...

Dame May Whitty, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave in The Lady Vanishes (top); Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (bottom) On Nov. 27-28, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present the last four films in its "Hitchcock: The British Thrillers" series. They are: The 39 Steps (1935), starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; Number 17 (1932), featuring the now-forgotten John Stuart and Anne Grey; The Lady Vanishes (1938), starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Whitty, and a cast of first-rate supporting players, including future Oscar winner Paul Lukas; Young and Innocent (1937), with Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney. The 39 Steps is the film that turned Alfred Hitchcock into an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. The film goes from one situation [...]...