Empire's 100 Best British Films: Now Disc. 90. Dracula (1958)

5
The Red Shoes (1948)

Dirs Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring)

?Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the Red Shoes go on??

"The rise of The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, might be the big story in this new list of the 100 Greatest British Films. Their presence was, of course, felt in a similar 1999 BFI list: ?The Red Shoes? placed in the top ten, with three other films (?A Matter of Life and Death?, ?Colonel Blimp? and ?Black Narcissus?) and Powell?s ?Peeping Tom? lurking further down the list. This latest poll has added only two new titles (?A Canterbury Tale? and ?I Know Where I?m Going!?), but it?s the change in rank which is astonishing: not one of these films has fallen outside the top 30, with two in the top ten and another three in the mid-teens. Considering that their votes were split seven ways, The Archers have received far more votes than any other director on the list.

The increased availability of their work on DVD will have played a major role here, particularly in the rediscovery of the two new titles. But there?s been a shift in critical fortunes, too, beginning before the BFI round-up but gathering pace since: while the gritty heavy-handedness of the Angry Young Men has begun to seem increasingly irrelevant, the emotional richness, subtle wit and visual inventiveness of The Archers? films seems ever more enchanting and poignant.

And the pinnacle of their achievements remains ?The Red Shoes?: investing an old story with freshness and vigour and revelling in unabashed emotional excess, this is the absolute peak of Powell?s visionary tendencies as a director, a flawless blend of cinema and dance, animation and music, narrative rigour and experimental freedom, without doubt the most breathtakingly beautiful film ever to come out of these isles. TH"


I think I like "Black Narcissus" better, but this is a wonderful film, and Moira Shearer is the most riveting camera subject ever.

 

4 Kes (1969)

Dir Ken Loach (David Bradley, Lynne Perrie, Freddie Fletcher)

The hawk ascending

"As the tide of the 1960s began to recede, taking with it all that class-obsessed ee-by-?eck pub-jazz new wave chest-beating that had threatened to drag British cinema into some kind of socialist-modernist-industrial nightmare, the real realists were revealed, sitting quietly and waiting for someone to notice. And chief among them was (and still is) Ken Loach, this country?s most relentless cinematic artisan, 47 years at the cultural coalface and still no sign of flagging.

?Kes? was Loach?s second feature film, and just a few years later he was struggling to make work for cinema at all: proof, perhaps, that honesty isn?t always the best policy. Because ?Kes? is, if nothing else, a powerfully honest piece of work, in its performances and relationships, its treatment of trapped lives, its sad-eyed acceptance of human failings. It?s trite but true to say that Billy Casper stands for the crushed child in all of us, with his beloved kestrel as the soaring soul that school, work, family and society conspire to kill quietly in the woodshed.

But this isn?t the true horror of the film. Because Loach is not just suggesting that Billy?s fate is inevitable, but that it?s necessary: in order to survive in this world of barking gym teachers, harried parents and brutalised big brothers (each of them once as open and inspired as Billy), he?ll have to take his lumps and like it. And so ?Kes? remains devastating, the peak of British realism and one of the most heartbreaking works in all of cinema. TH"

 

3
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

Dir Terence Davies (Pete Postlethwaite, Freda Dowie)

This is the life...

"Too often it?s assumed that there?s an arthouse cabal in British cinema obsessed solely with telling stories of the working classes from a distant perspective and with a drab realism ? or, to borrow the moaners? own word, ?miserabilism?. Certainly, there are guilty culprits, but if any filmmaker blows such assumptions out of the water, it?s Terence Davies, whose ?Distant Voices, Still Lives? is arguably among the very greatest British films of the last 25 years ? a judgement our poll seems to confirm. The doubly good news is that, after a hiatus of a decade, 65-year-old Davies is back behind the camera making feature films and is currently editing an adaptation of Terence Rattigan?s ?The Deep Blue Sea?, his first film since 2000?s ?House of Mirth?.

This fiercely literate and independent Liverpudlian spent the first 16 years of his career, with three shorts, and then two feature films, ?Distant Voices, Still Lives? and ?The Long Day Closes? (1992), finding different, personal and poetic ways of making sense of his recollections of his childhood in a post-war, working-class Liverpool home. ?Distant Voices?? is essentially a portrait of his parents and siblings around the time he was born ? but with Davies himself removed from the frame. As such, its fractured, truthful evocation of life in 1940s and ?50s Liverpool is as much about memory as truth. We experience the stuff of life ? the brutality of a patriarch (Pete Postlethwaite), a daughter?s wedding, sing-songs at the pub ? but the flow of the film is more emotional than chronological, and Davies prefers resonant images and moments to straightforward storytelling. Its songs lift us, while its sadnesses bring us down. Mostly, though, it?s Davies?s love for cinema that is apparent in every single frame of this beautiful film. DC"

 

2. The Third Man (1949)

Dir Carol Reed (Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alide Valli)

Join the dots

"It swooped in at number one on the BFI?s 1999 British cinema poll, but here, Carol Reed?s The Third Man? will have to settle for second spot. But, hey: it?s still a masterpiece. The genius at the core of this superlative, bible-black Euro noir is the way it teases you in to thinking that you?re watching a disposable pulp yarn about an honest schlub who touches down in a crumbling, post-war Vienna and won?t rest until he uncovers a conspiracy concerning the death of an old pal.

Our hero, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), is a writer of dimestore westerns. His pal is Harry Lime (Orson Welles), a bootlegger whose latest grift has landed him in an early grave, or so it seems. The further down the rabbit hole Holly ventures, the more it becomes clear that Reed?s glibness is mere cover for a bleak lament to a world tainted by corruption and evil. Replace Vienna with Los Angeles, and it?s basically ?Chinatown?.

Inventive and exhilarating though the story is, its beauty lies in its flawlessly judged and occasionally eccentric construction: Robert Krasker?s high-contrast cinematography; Anton Karas?s eerily chipper zither score; and the depiction of a world so divided by politics, religion, gender and language, that you begin to understand why compassion would loose its appeal to these characters. ?Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever?? asks Harry Lime. It?s a chilling conundrum that rings with truth and despair, and one of which politicians, businessmen and, well, everyone, should continually be wary. DJ"

Some great performances, of which Orson Welles is about fourth best, and Joseph Cotten is best (in fact, fantastic).

 

This is a film that works on every level, and one of cinema's undisputed masterpieces. Orson Welles steals the show with his famous cuckoo clock speech, and the films use of dutch angles in cinematography add the the disorentation that the film needs.

I like the film that will come up at number #1, but this film should still be number #1. It is truly the best British film ever made.

 

1.
Don't Look Now (1973)

Dir Nicolas Roeg (Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland)

Nothing is what it seems

So, the number one film on our list is?

"?Nicolas Roeg?s hallucinatory 1973 Daphne du Maurier adaptation ? the story of a couple, played by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, who decamp to a spooky Venice after the death by drowning of their daughter. We can speculate on the roots of its popularity: that it satisfies the genre and arthouse crowds; that it uses framing, sound, editing and camera movement to unreel a transfixing tale and flesh out excruciatingly authentic characters; that it dares to coax out the ghosts lurking in every watery passageway in Venice, Europe?s most ornate and singular city; that it contains arguably the greatest sex scene on film. Or, we can just accept it as a movie whose every glorious frame is bursting with meaning, emotion and mystery, and which stands as the crowning achievement of one of Britain?s true iconoclasts and masters of cinema. DJ"

 

Number 1 belongs to "Third Man", "Kwai", or "Lawrence".

 

don't look now is damned good, though.

 

Don't look is at least in the top ten or top five.

But yeah, Lawrence's position is a travesty.

 

Lean's position is very strange. They could have also included his comedy "Hobson's Choice", which they didn't, but "Brief Encounter" ranks well ahead of "Lawrence" and "Kwai"? That's just bizarre.

 

Going back a bit, I love both Kind Hearts and Coronets and A Matter of Life and Death.

The ending of Don't Look Now scared the crap out of me when I first saw it - makes me shudder to think of it today.

I agree with everybody - this list is weird. Lawrence should be much, much higher, along with Bridge Over the River Kwai (which I love appreciate a little bit more each time I see it - one of the signs of a great movie).

 

Empire List:

Darling (1965)

Directed by John Schlesinger
Starring Julie Christie, Laurence Harvey, Dirk Bogarde

"The opening title sequence of John Schlesinger's tirade against the superficial sees a billboard of Julie Christie's face pasted over an image over starving Africans on a World Relief poster. The moment is typical of Darling - clichéd, perhaps, but with an udeniable potency and power. Schlesinger's tale charts the rise up the social ladder of '60s It Girl (Julie Christie), via esteemed TV reporter (a brilliant Dirk Bogarde) and a greasy playboy (Laurence Harvey) to a crown prince of Italy. Harvey and especially Bogarde are superb, but this is Christie's movie, taking a caricature of a bored married socialite/fashion model and making her three dimensional, manipulative but fragile, heartless but human. It's an Oscar winning performance that stands in for a specific time - the soulless sixties - but in itself is timeless."


It's an interesting movie, which takes place just before the onset of drugs on the London scene. Dated (very sexist), and often stupid (cheap irony), and yet the film is engaging. Christie's good, and she has charm (absolutely essential here); the two main men do a decent job (superb is stretching it, and they are both very irritating, but that's the zeitgeist rather than their fault). Worth seeing, though you may have a different reaction than the scriptwriter and director obviously intended.

Not on the Time Out (British) list.

 

99 The Ipcress File (1965)

Directed by Sidney J. Furie
Starring Michael Caine, Gordon Jackson, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd

"Since it simply wasn't possible to compete with Connery's 007 in the super-spy stakes during the '60s, Sidney J Furie's first adaptation of cook-turned author Len Deighton's Cold War novels goes the other way. While investigating kidnapped scientists, undisciplined surveillance man Harry Palmer doesn't globe-trot, bed-hop or trade verbage with cat-stroking megalomaniac villains; he spends his time on mundane form-filling tasks in drab offices. Despite coming from the Bondian creative team (supremo Harry Saltzman, designer Ken Adams, editor Peter Hunt, scorer John Barry), this labyrinthine thriller provides a credible everyman alternative to Bond while embracing British everydayness. There's decent support too (most notably from Gordon 'him from The Professionals' Jackson), but the adventures are worth watching for Michael Caine's (arguably) most iconic role, where his unique brand of cockney cool really started to shine."

Not on the Time Out (British) list.

 

I've come to love The Ipcress File over the years. I think it contains one of Michael Caine's best performances, plus the music, cinematography and script are all very good.

 

98. Oh! What A Lovely War (1969)

Directed by Richard Attenborough

Starring Dirk Bogarde, John Mills, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Redgrave, Maggie Smith, Laurence Olivier, Paul Shelley

"Starring enough Redgraves to populate a small island, Richard Attenborough's Great War musical flaunts one of the chunkiest contacts book in British movie history. The director assembled the cream of '60s acting talent, garbed it in khaki and set it lose on a uniquely British satire. At times it plays like the most thespian game of I-Spy in history. The general behind that bushy moustache? Laurence Olivier, of course. That recruitment drive chanteuse? Maggie Smith. And aren't those Dirk Bogarde, John Mills and Vanessa Redgrave doing their bit for the war effort? 'Oh! What A Luvvie War' might have been a better title. But stardom aside, it adds up to an indictment of the War's immeasurable suffering that's both scathing and deeply moving. If the chronological approach gives it an occasionally episodic quality, Attenborough choreographs it all with such flair and compassion that it feels like the world's most dazzling history lesson. Filled with the hummable tunes from the trenches and boasting one of the most heartbreaking final shots in cinema, it's an unsung epic."

Not on Time Out's (British) list.

 

Oh! What A Lovely War over The Ipcress File.



Three films in and this list has already purveyed fail in the highest.

 

97. 24 Hour Party People (2002)

Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Starring Steve Coogan, Paddy Considine, Shirley Henderson

"Ostensibly a movie about the Manchester music scene between '76 - '92, 24 Hour Party People spends more time mocking its lead character and narrator, record label owner Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan), than relaying the stories of Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays, all of whom passed through his orbit. But as you roll on the floor laughing when Tony crashes into a tree while riding a hang glider, or gets caught by his wife in the back of a "nosh van" getting "oral pleasures" from a stranger, you really don't mind how much '90s pop culture gets brought to life - or whether what is shown on screen actually happened in the first place. Deftly directed by Winterbottom, 24HPP (as no-one ever calls it) is far, far funnier than anyone should ever expect a biopic to be. If you can call it a biopic. Or expect anything of it at all, really..."

This is on the Time Out (Brit) list at 94.

Their take: "94
24 Hour Party People (2002)

Dir Michael Winterbottom (Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Ron Cook)

Manchester, so much to answer for?

In a national cinema prone to self indulgent rock follies (?Tommy?, ?The Wall?, ?Give My Regards to Broad St?), the best British music films are those which refuse to take their subjects as seriously as themselves. A perfect case in point is the disconnect between Anton Corbijn?s mournful, largely forgettable 2007 kitchen sink biopic ?Control?, which placed Ian Curtis on a tortured-artist pedestal, and Michael Winterbottom?s lurid, lively Madchester romp ?24 Hour Party People?, which presented the Joy Division frontman as a sadistic, sarcastic Tory loudmouth: hell to live with, perhaps, but painfully human. The film remains one of the purest pleasures in modern British cinema: scrappy, inconsistent, inventive, insightful, heartfelt and wickedly funny. TH"

 

Nil By Mouth (1997)

Directed by Gary Oldman
Starring Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, Jamie Foreman, Charlie Creed-Miles

"We all know that Gary Oldman is an actor's actor - he's established his reputation beyond doubt over the past three decades - but this (as yet) sole effort as auteur shows that he's an actor's director too. A disturbingly honest and unflinching look at the practice and results of domestic violence, this gave Ray Winstone an astonishing chance to shine and established him as both a hardman and an actor capable of great subtlety and range even as he plays someone capable of neither. But no less capable is Kathy Burke, previously best known for TV comedy, who gives a three dimensional performance in what could have been a simple "victim" role. It's not a feelgood effort - quite the opposite - but a semi-autobiographical exorcism of the demons of Oldman's own south London upbringing that shows a side of life that we might all prefer to ignore. Few debuts are this powerful or memorable. On this evidence, Oldman's next film can't come soon enough."

This is very much higher on the Time Out (British) list at 24:

"il by Mouth (1997)

Dir Gary Oldman (Kathy Burke, Ray Winstone)

Kathy don?t come home

What a pity Gary Oldman has never been able to fulfil his dream of following up this, his directorial debut! However fine many of his performances had been, both the writing and the direction of this deservedly acclaimed movie displayed considerably more than great promise. ?Nil by Mouth? remains, even now, one of the most painfully honest and eloquent studies of a kind of London working-class life. Often erroneously described as ?autobiographical?, the film?s astute portrait of macho violence, alcoholic excess, drug addiction and petty criminality nevertheless benefitted from Oldman?s proximity to such behaviour in his early years, and that, coupled with a style partly inspired by Cassavetes, makes for a movie as riveting in its raw, nocturnal ?realism? as it is unsentimental in its humanity and dark humour. It won Kathy Burke a Cannes prize, revived Ray Winstone?s fortunes and kickstarted the acting career of the director?s sister (under the pseudonym of Laila Morse). GA"

 

95. Gregory's Girl (1981)


Directed by Bill Forsyth
Starring John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Jake D'Arcy, Claire Grogan

"There are many teen comedies, and teen sex comedies. None, however, come close to Gregory's Girl, a story of love and lust burning in all its teenage intensity that manages both realism and unspeakable hilarity without ever forgetting to sympathise with its subjects. John Gordon Sinclair is the youngster struck down with adoration for the gorgeous, football-playing Dorothy (Hepburn), while Grogan plays Susan, Dorothy's friend and a far better bet for the awkward Romeo. It's a familiar set-up, but it's almost never been as beautifully observed or intelligently written as it is here, for which all credit to Bill Forsyth. After all, dates that involve aimless walks and visits to the chip shop will ring just a little bit more true-to-life than American cinema's endless parade of proms, beach parties and sporting events. View it as a companion piece to the director's Local Hero, and settle yourself in for some of the most convincing real-life laughs you will ever see on film."

58. on the Time Out (Brit) list.

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)


Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy

"When we've had more of a chance to digest this most recent entry on the list, it'll probably climb a few places, but even green and unseasoned this elegant Cold War thriller deserves a spot. Led by Gary Oldman's buttoned-down George Smiley ("It's a sitting down role," as he describes it), it's an old-fashioned search for a mole among the top spies of "The Circus", something made more difficult by the fact that he's officially retired. Also, of course, the suspects are some of Blighty's finest actors, from Colin Firth to Toby Jones and Ciaran Hinds, while the pawns at stake include Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, so they're not going to be easy to read. With that lot on top form, Alfredson might have been forgiven for just pointing the camera at them and giving up, but in fact he crafts a grimy, distinctly 70s London in muted tones and dim shadows and gives the whole thing a sheen of undoubted quality."

Sounds like a great cast; it's the story I find risible.

 

I'm surprised they'd make room for a movie from this year. But the trailers did look really great; and a great cast. And, unlike Nevermind, I tend to find Le Carre not risible.

 

À chacun son goût...

 

With all the accents yet. You're amazing.

 

Oldman is getting Oscar buzz...

 

Forecast a long time ago. Meaty, iconic role, Kinda Oscarish film (Burton was nominated for playing Alec Leamas, of course), and the fact that Oldman has never been nominated for an Oscar before, which is genuinely astonishing.