julian_craster

The magnificent seven..... Are these the best British films ever?


In celebration of British cinema, the UK Film Council is re-releasing some of our greatest movies. Geoffrey Macnab reviews their selections. Do you agree?

Published: 11 July 2007
From The Independent
The magnificent seven? Are these the best British films ever? - Independent Online Edition > Features

Comedy: Withnail & I
On the grounds that Johnny Depp likes it and that there are fans who can recite backwards every line uttered by Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths), Withnail and I, right, can safely be described as the most cultish British film comedy in living memory. Its great virtue is that it is funny. One of the continuing mysteries of British film history is why so many talented British comedians from music hall, variety and (latterly) TV appear to lose their powers to make us laugh as soon as they are confronted with a movie camera.
Thankfully, this is a trend that the likes of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are succeeding in reversing. We should also remember that we have quite a long heritage in the comedy department. Charlie Chaplin - the most successful screen comedian of all time - was born not far from the Elephant and Castle. Kind Hearts And Coronets - the best-written film comedy of all - was made at Ealing Studios.



Costume drama: Henry V
The UK Film Council and the BBC have opted for Laurence Olivier's Henry V (right) as the quintessential British costume drama. Made during the war, it is certainly superior propaganda. Listening to Olivier exhort his troops (" we few, we happy few, we band of brothers") on St Crispin's Day is enough to make you want to jump off the sofa and invade France all over again. Even so, this is surely not the peak of British costume drama.
It took a Hungarian to teach the Brits how best to make movies about men in tights. Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), for which Charles Laughton won an Oscar, was the first British costume picture to make any kind of dent in the US market. What Korda realised was that pomp and battles are all very well, but if you really want to sell your picture, you need some action in the bedroom. The US marketing campaign was imaginative, if misogynistic. Cinemas were encouraged to exploit the movie on its title and its portrayal of the Bluebeard of kings who married six women and caused two of them to pay for their infidelity under the axe of the executioner. It's a costume piece, but only in its setting.


Social realism: Billy Liar
Billy Liar sets the question that every young male dreamer from the provinces must have asked himself: when Julie Christie invites you to board the train and seek your fortune in London, will you go? The film, though, spends so much time exploring Tom Courtenay's fantasy life that it is debatable whether it can strictly be defined as social realism.
You won't find any whimsy in Lindsay Anderson's bruising, utterly uncompromising This Sporting Life, right. The star of the film, Richard Harris, had clearly been mugging up on his Marlon Brando to portray the rugby league player Frank Machin. British audiences accustomed to British cinema's holy trinity of tweed-jacketed, flannel trouser-wearing chaps, Dirk Bogarde, Kenneth More and Jack Hawkins, were blown away by the sheer physical intensity of Harris's performance. "It has a blow like a fist," the critic Penelope Gilliat wrote of the film. "I've never seen an English picture which gave such expression to the violence and capacity for pain that there is in the English character." Counterpointing Harris's bruising machismo, there was a wonderfully poignant performance from the Welsh actress Rachel Roberts as the widow Mrs Hammond, whose husband died in an industrial accent. He woos her. She scorns him. The suffering he experiences because of her is far worse than anything he experiences on the rugby field - or, for that matter, on the dentist's chair.



Horror/Fantasy: The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man is memorable for the confrontation between Edward Woodward's heroically prudish presbyterian policeman, and Britt Ekland, paganism and combustible Antony Gormley-like sculptures. It is frightening enough in its Highland way, even if - like many cult films that have been the victim of remakes - it suffers from a certain over-familiarity.
In the canon of British horror, however, there are other equally chilling films. You could start with Ealing Studios' Dead Of Night, above, still arguably the best portmanteau picture ever made and justly celebrated for Michael Redgrave's turn as the ventriloquist persecuted by his dummy. Witchfinder General, the last film from young British horrormeister Michael Reeves before his untimely death in 1969, boasts a supremely creepy performance from Vincent Price as the witchfinder in Civil War-era England. If you like a horror film that's also a a ripping yarn, you will relish Terence Fisher's The Devil Rides Out. The sequences of Christopher Lee and co in their pentangle, trying to withstand evil forces conjured up by the diabolic Charles Gray (of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame) may sound kitsch, but they are utterly terrifying. As the film proved, there was more to Hammer horror than just sapphic vampires or reworkings of Frankenstein.



Romance: Brief Encounter
It is so frightfully, frightfully unfair to say anything unpleasant about David Lean's Brief Encounter, above), with its scenes of Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard making calf eyes at each other on railway platforms, as Rachmaninov blasts away on the soundtrack.
One might argue, though, that British romantic movies carried more of a charge when they were less polite and emotionally restrained. The critics may have liked Brief Encounter but the real hits at the box-office in the 1940s were the Gainsborough melodramas. As one reviewer noted of bodice-rippers such as The Wicked Lady and The Man In Grey, the formula was usually pretty much the same. "Spectacle and sex, a dash of sadism, near-the-knuckle lines and an end where virtue is rewarded."
The Gainsborough romances boasted big cleavages, tight corsets and Margaret Lockwood up to mischief. James Mason was always skulking in the background, ready to punish her for her misdemeanours.



Thrillers: Goldfinger
It seems perverse to celebrate British thrillers without acknowledging that jowly genius from Leytonstone, Alfred Hitchcock, patron saint of the genre. Goldfinger is a middling Bond movie, mainly notable for introducing Sean Connery to golf and for the lethal, frisbee-throwing antics of Oddjob. It is not a patch, though, on the vintage Hitchcock thrillers of the 1930s, The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps, above. The former offered us Michael Redgrave as a very schoolmasterly action-hero and Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne discussing the cricket, even as their train was attacked in the wilds of continental Europe. The latter boasted the gorgeous Madeleine Carroll, one of the first of Hitchcock's glacial blondes, handcuffed to Robert Donat in the Scottish Highlands.
Goldfinger was directed by Guy Hamilton, who learnt most of his tricks while working as an assistant director on what is widely acknowledged as the greatest British thriller of all - Carol Reed's The Third Man.
If you had to choose between Fort Knox (scene of the denouement of Goldfinger) and the sewers of Vienna (where The Third Man ends), the Austrian rats would win every time.


War: The Dam Busters
The sign of a good British war film is that it will later be bowdlerised by advertisers who want to sell lager. This happened with both The Dam Busters (the title chosen for the Summer of British Film) and Ice Cold In Alex. The Brits made so many war films in the 1950s that they sometimes risk blurring into one neverending movie in which John Mills does his patriotic bit while Sylvia Syms is sweating in the desert.
One of the best British forays into the genre was surely In Which We Serve (1942), directed by Noel Coward and David Lean. It may seem old-fashioned now, but it was formally innovative (check out Lean's use of ripple dissolves), was made in the middle of the war and celebrated consensus and decency. Coward himself is on the pompous side as Captain Kinross (based on Louis Mountbatten) but the film hints at a world in which the old class distinctions no longer apply. (When you are clinging for your life to a raft, it no longer makes much difference where you went to school or what rank you hold.) There are doughty performances from those beneath decks, not least Bernard Miles as a long-suffering English everyman, and a very youngRichard Attenborough.



Alternatively...

Nick James, Editor of Sight and Sound magazine
THRILLER
Defence of the Realm
Still gives you that cold war chill.


ROMANCE
I Know Where I'm Going
Quirky tale of a dreamy bride-to-be in the Western Isles.


SOCIAL REALISM
Nil By Mouth
The most powerful film about working-class London ever.


COSTUME DRAMA
House of Mirth
Shatteringly poignant.


HORROR
Shaun of the Dead
I'm hard to scare, so my kind of horror makes you laugh.


WAR
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Stirs the right kind of anti-war patriotism in me.


COMEDY
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The epitome of deadpan.





Barry Norman, Film critic
THRILLER
The Third Man
Beautifully acted and directed.

ROMANCE
I Know Where I'm Going
A lovely Powell and Pressburger romance.

SOCIAL REALISM
Trainspotting
Said a hell of a lot about Britain.


COSTUME DRAMA
Henry V
I have equal regard for Brannagh and Olivier's versions.


HORROR
Don't Look Now
Sends shivers up my spine.


WAR
The Cruel Sea
A wonderful film, and my father produced it.


COMEDY
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Has a sharp, biting and cynical humour.





DAN JOLIN
Features editor, Empire magazine
THRILLER
Dead Man's Shoes
Meadows is a fantastic talent.


ROMANCE
A Matter of Life and Death
You can't get more romantic.


SOCIAL REALISM
Scum
Harsh social realism which was Ray Winstone's calling card.


COSTUME DRAMA
Witch Finder General
Usually categorised as horror.


HORROR
The Descent
White knuckle stuff.


WAR
Lawrence of Arabia
What better than a film that Steven Spielberg watches before he goes into a new project?


COMEDY
Brazil
Surreal science fiction comedy.







Hannah McGill, Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which launches today
THRILLER
Brighton Rock
Almost unbearably tense.


ROMANCE
Gregory's Girl
Innocent yet clever: what's not to fall in love with?


COSTUME DRAMA
Great Expectations
Once seen, never forgotten - every element here is stunning.


SOCIAL REALISM
This Sporting Life
Anderson was a genius.


HORROR
An American Werewolf in London
Still unbeaten.


WAR
A Matter of Life and Death
About redemption and hope rather than battlefield glory.


COMEDY
The Man in the White Suit
A perfect satire.

DB7

These are a few alternative and personal selections not mentioned. Thriller would probably be Get Carter, Comedy nod would go to Oh Mr Porter or a Carry On and Horror to Dead of Night

The Wicked Gentleman

Nobody heard of Monty Python?

batman

A few suggestions ....

Thriller - 3rd Man/Brighton Rock
Costume - Gone to Earth
Horror - Dracula/Dead of Night
Social Realism - The Angry Silence
Comedy - Oh Mr Porter
Romance - Truly Madly Deeply
War - The Small Back Room

Bats.

I'm the cutest bottom judge!

DB7

For War Film I'd go with their second choice; Ice Cold in Alex. Just watching it makes you thirsty for a cool lager.

batman

I think the scene in Small Back Room with Mr Farrar and his 'giant' bottle is a good companion for that scene.

Bats.

I'm the cutest bottom judge!

orpheum

the dam busters is on Channel 4 this Saturday at 4.40pm

Welcome To Highbury The Home Of Football

Wolfgang

I like Barry Norman's list best, except Billy Liar edges out Trainspotting in my book. He probably felt obligated to put something modern in.

Wolfgang

Dan Jolin's list is awful.

Joenoir

Thriller: The 39 Steps
Costume: Richard III
Horror: Dead of Night
Social Realism: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Comedy: The Green Man
Romance: Brief Encounter
War: Next of Kin
Musical: A Hard Day's Night
Comingofage: Quadraphenia
Scifi: Quatermass
Silent: Piccadilly

Start every day with a smile and get it over with.

Steve Crook

With A Matter of Life and Death and Scum?
What would your list be?

Mine could well be:
Thriller: A Matter of Life and Death / Black Narcissus
Costume: Gone to Earth
Horror: Peeping Tom
Social Realism: The Battle of the River Plate
Comedy: The Elusive Pimpernel
Romance: A Matter of Life and Death / I Know Where I'm Going!
War: A Matter of Life and Death / The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / I Know Where I'm Going!
Musical: The Red Shoes / The Tales of Hoffmann
Coming of age: Age of Consent
Scifi: The Boy Who Turned Yellow
Silent: The Magician

Or is that a bit biased?

Steve

Windthrop

The fact that there can be so many relavent choices in each category does at least prove the rich heritage of British film - heres my take

Thriller - Green for Danger
Horror - Night of the Demon
Costume - Tom Jones
Comedy - I'm All Right Jack
Social Realism - A Kind of Loving
War - Zulu
Sci Fi - Quatermass and the Pit
Musical - Oh What a Lovely War !
Romance - I know Where I'm Going

Carmel

Everyone has their own favorites so most people will have a different lists, i personally loved the Haunted the original version as a really good horror and up the junction i loved that as well as a drama, which neither was mentioned so there is my point.

oldmantv

I totally agree with the Wicker man, Henry V and Goldfingers.........

my corner of paradise ....

myspace.com/oldskooltele

stevie boy

Steve, your fave is AMOLAD, what is your number 2???, I would guess IKWIG. Am I right???