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

43. Fires Were Started (1941)

Dir Humphrey Jennings

Fetch the engines

"The documentary-maker Humphrey Jennings has been well remembered in recent years, first with a film in 2002 by Kevin Macdonald and then in 2004 with a biography by Kevin Jackson ? which might explain the placing of this and his stirring ?Listen to Britain?, both wartime films, so high on our list. A leading light of the GPO and Crown Film Units and a founder of Mass Observation, Jennings was responsible for so many of our received images of Britain during World War II. For ?Fires Were Started?, he filmed firemen in London?s East End but devised characters for them and showed them during both the peace of day and the struggle of fighting a major fire in the docks at night. His film is a celebration of heroism, a lament for lives lost and a stoical expression of the necessary wartime maxim that life must go on. Yes, it?s propaganda ? but what humane, artful propaganda it is. DC"

Heard of this, not seen it.

 

42. "Listen to Britain" (1942)

This is Britain, and everything?s all right. It?s okay. It?s fine.

"That this near-wordless celebration of wartime Britain in all its music-hall, factory-floor, greenfield glory can still inspire a flush of patriotic pride seven decades on is testament to the extraordinary purity of vision and experimental nous of its director, Humphrey Jennings. Alchemically spinning cinema into music (and music into poetry), Jennings paints a national portrait which is admittedly rosy, but also pleasingly humorous (footage of vaudeville crowd-pleasers Flanagan and Allen is intercut with a sign reading ?boiled potatoes?) and even quietly subversive: the cut from a riotous workers? music hall to a stuffy lunchtime classical concert attended by the then Queen accentuates the essential similarity between the two experiences, while the pan from a playground filled with clog-dancing tykes to a street roaring with military vehicles underlines the precipitous state of our nation?s future. If the country had fallen, ?Listen to Britain? would have made a perfect epitaph. TH"

 

41. Witchfinder General (1968) aka "The Conqueror Worm"

Dir Michael Reeves (Vincent Price, Patrick Wymark, Ian Ogilvy)

So if she weighs the same as a duck...

"The quaint English countryside acts as the backdrop for much enthusiastic sadism in this Civil War tale based very loosely on the life of Protestant zealot Matthew Hopkins and his reign of witch-burning terror in East Anglia?s badlands. While we can only imagine the pleasure of watching original choice Donald Pleasance as the sexually repressed misogynist Hopkins, Vincent Price makes a horribly effective substitute, lisping biblical lore to the screams of his victims on the rack and at the stake. The real star, though, is the textured, bleak cinematography of John Colquillon (who later shot ?Straw Dogs?), which lends an eerie, tripped-out detachment to the pitiless violence and casts the landscape as a timeless witness to casual horror. Despite its camp reputation, ?Witchfinder? is grimmer and more effective than many of its costumed contemporaries and fully deserved both the revulsion it attracted at its initial release and the rehabilitation as a classic it has enjoyed since. PF"

Reeves died shortly thereafter, of a drug overdose, which helped the cult rep, but it is interesting.

 

40. Ratcatcher (1999)

Dir Lynne Ramsay (William Eadie, Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews)

Ballad of a bin man

"As debut features go, this one rubs shoulders with the likes of Terrence Malick?s ?Badlands?, Charles Burnett?s ?Killer of Sheep? and Terence Davies?s ?Distant Voices, Still Lives? for the sublime fluency of its technique and conviction in the belief that a film doesn?t need a beginning, middle and end to be meaningful, dramatic and poetic. Following on from a trio of shorts, director Lynne Ramsay revisited her birthplace of Glasgow to deliver an account of innocence and experience, love and death during a dustmen?s strike in the early 1970s . The pranks of monosyllabic scamp James (William Eadie) form the core of the film, and we eventually learn that James wants nothing more than to abandon the squalor of the city and move to a new housing project next to a cornfield in which he can frolic. Ramsay asks, ?Do you know where your kids are??, but she doesn?t forget that it is possible to be socially responsible and artistically audacious at the same time. DJ"

 

39. London (1994)

Dir Patrick Keiller (voice of Paul Scofield)

Let me take you by the hand and lead you...

"If you didn't know Patrick Keiller's smartly rambling, tricksy walking tour of our city from 1994, you might think that his title was pompous or presumptive. But his film is anything but as he gives us a fictional, unseen narrator, Robinson (voiced by Paul Scofield), who takes us on a tour of London, known and less known, grand and grotty, around the time of the film?s making, taking in such references as the 1992 general election and the IRA bomb at Bishopgate in 1993. Cinematic psychogeography, you might call it, but that?s a bit, well, pompous for a film that is endlessly self-mocking, witty and perceptive. If only British cinema produced more such films that dance merrily on the border between fact and fiction ? but, then, again, Keiller?s film ? the first in a trilogy ? is so unique in tone that imitators would easily be caught out. DC"

 

38. Went the Day Well? (1942)

Dir Alberto Cavalcanti (Leslie Banks, Elizabeth Allan, Frank Lawton)

Is that an axe in your pocket??

"What if, right, the Hun were on the cusp of clinching victory in Europe, and all that stood between your average, flat-capped English patriot and the swift introduction of sauerkraut to the national menu was the collective muscle of a close-knit countryside community? Well, that?s ?Went the Day Well?? in a nutshell. It?s a droll, Ealing-made World War II propaganda film that also happens to be a ridiculously taut suspense thriller about how the denizens of the fictional Bramley End put aside their differences and foil a Nazi plot to capture Britain, sometimes even sacrificing life and limb by diving on live grenades and going on ad hoc axe rampages. And if that isn?t enough, it also contains the single greatest dialogue exchange in this entire list, as the well-to-do Mrs Fraser asks Cockney urchin George, ?Do you know what morale is?? to which he replies, ?Yeah, it?s summink what the wops ain?t got.? DJ"

Never heard of this one until it popped up in the best World War II list.

 

37. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

Dir Tony Richardson (Tom Courtenay, James Bolam, Julia Foster)

Borstal blues

"As with its French equivalents, much of the British New Wave looks horribly dated in a modern context: all that light jazz, casual romantic disaffection and overeager jump-cutting doesn?t really wash with contemporary audiences. But what?s beyond criticism is the commitment to emotional veracity which fuelled films like ?The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner?. So while the timeworn clichés of the kitchen sink remain intact ? grubby class warfare, county-hopping pseudo-Northern accents, the God?s-eye shot of ?our town from that hill? ? the film is anchored in Tom Courtenay?s remarkable, remorseless performance as the eponymous runner Colin, torn between selfishness and sacrifice, class loyalty and commercial gain, impossible victory and inevitable surrender. TH"

 

36. The Servant (1963)

Dir Joseph Losey (James Fox, Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig)

A touch of class

"Two films by the American exile Joseph Losey have made our list, and few would argue that this chilling domestic two-hander from 1963 is his most enduring. It?s Harold Pinter?s tense, subtle script, adapted from a Robin Maugham novel, which gives life to the story of an aristocratic bachelor, Tony (James Fox), who hires a servant, Hugo (Dirk Bogarde), whose machinations, including moving in his girlfriend (masquerading as his sister) as a maid, wear down Tony so that their hierarchical roles blur and mutate. In other hands, this would be a mildly interesting thriller, but Pinter?s sharp characterisations and unspoken suggestions, along with Losey?s full, slavering embrace of the potentials of Tony?s grand Chelsea home, make this a more open, suggestive work, offering ideas to do with class, power and sexuality. The actors are tremendous. For Bogarde, it built on his daring turn in ?Victim?. For Fox, it was a rehearsal for his similarly shape-shifting role in ?Performance?. DC"

 

34. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Dir Stanley Kubrick (Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates)

Viddy well, little brother

"Swap Beethoven for heroin, and Stanley Kubrick?s scandalous 1971 Moog-mare based on Anthony Burgess?s novel might work as a forerunner to ?Trainspotting?. It presents the wayward travails of Little Alex (Malcolm McDowell) a tearaway who likes nothing more than a bit of the old ultra violence. But after a bungled break-in where he is abandoned by his band of cock-nosed droogs, he is packed off to a hospital to be ?cured?. The style of filmmaking is at once clinically precise and imaginatively loose. This is down to the multitude of tricks that Kubrick hoists in (slo-mo, fast-forward, cartoon inserts, back projection) to encapsulate the total autonomy these characters have and why they see their behaviour as thrilling. The violence is plentiful and invites a mixture of revulsion and amusement, not least because it is usually overlaid by Walter Carlos?s mad reinterpretations of classical standards. Does it stand up psychologically? Probably not. But as an example of a work in which the filmmaking style matches the tone of the material, it?s peerless. DJ"

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought the protagonist of "Trainspotting" was downright dignified compared to Alex DeLarge.

 

33. Secrets & Lies (1996)

Dir Mike Leigh (Brenda Blethyn, Timothy Spall, Marianne Jean-Baptiste)

The girl is mine

?Naked? proved to many that Mike Leigh was a filmmaker who would continue to surprise well into and beyond his third decade of filmmaking ? but ?Secrets and Lies? proved the same to everyone else when it won the Palme d?Or and Best Actress prizes at Cannes and was nominated for five Oscars. The story of an adopted, professional black British woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who tracks down her white, working-class birth mother (Brenda Blethyn) came with its own themes and ideas. But it also allowed Leigh to refine interests he had been exploring for years, such as the relationships between parents and kids, the love and antagonism of siblings and our awkward relationships to material wealth. Ultimately, it?s about the power ? and destructiveness ? of the unspoken, and a climactic barbecue scene, in which Timothy Spall breaks the silence and gives one of the best performances of his career, is both heartbreaking and liberating, for the characters and for us. DC'

 

32. Get Carter (1971)

Dir Mike Hodges (Michael Caine, Britt Ekland, John Osborne)

A pint of bitter? in a thin glass

"Its overfamiliar poster, score and lazy stylistic appropriation by glossy lads? mags may make the very idea of ?Get Carter? something of a chore, but once the train starts rolling, there?s simply no getting off. A cold, impossibly grimy film, ?Get Carter? is a ?Third Man? for the three-day week generation that drags you through the sulphurous back rooms of hell. Michael Caine?s frosty Lahndahn gangster uncovers layer upon layer of villainy as he travels to Newcastle to investigate his brother?s death, but the details ? and, for many, the plot ? are secondary to the air of desperation, squalor and complicity. ?The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over and? we have failed to paint it black,? might well have been the mantra in Ladbroke Grove and Camden Town, but ?Get Carter? presents the more desolate reality of those for whom the swinging ?60s were something that happened to other people and a grim, forlorn post-war mindset remained the pervading norm. ALD"

 

31. The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Dir Alfred Hitchcock (Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave)

Strangeness on a train

"Some argue that Hitchcock made his greatest works in the US, but the presence of four of his British films on our list suggests that not everybody holds that view ? or at least that his earlier work is still held in very high regard. ?The Lady Vanishes? builds on the mysterious, on-the-run mood of the earlier, more well-known ?The 39 Steps? (1935), but its 1938 date, mittel-European setting on a train from an Alpine location and well-integrated political nods slyly tie it to debates over appeasement and engagement. That said, it?s first and foremost a suspenseful thriller as a little old lady, Miss Froy, disappears on a train and everyone bar a young man and woman (Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood) proceed to deny she exists. It?s very funny, and its ridiculous but masterly twists and turns are made doubly fun by a colourful cast of characters including a nun, a surgeon and a pair of cricket-loving bounders. DC"

Terrific, witty film.

 

The Ladykillers (1955)

Dir Alexander Mackendrick (Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Katie Johnson)

Help! The aged!

"Small wonder this classic Ealing crime caper remains a mainstay of so many film polls. The casting and performances, for a start, are brilliantly sharp. As is Ealing writer William Rose?s finely wrought script: five caricatured criminals (Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Cecil Parker and Danny Green) masquerading as a group of classical musicians arrive at the King?s Cross home of a dear little old lady (Katie Johnson, who won a Bafta for her pitch-perfect performance) and enquire whether they might rent a few rooms ? while they surreptitiously plot an audacious railway robbery. The set-up paves the way for a wonderful series of amusing dialogues between the old biddy and the ?quintet? whose pretence she never twigs until the final comically violent frames. Guinness and Lom are the standouts; both look as if they?d strayed in from a Hammer production. Unforgettable. DA"

I love this movie and I *hated* it when the Coens desecrated it with their awful remake. Example: Peter Sellers suggests faking a suicide note when they are scheming to murder their landlady: "I can't go on. Mrs. Wilberforce." Katy Johnson is wonderful and the men are stellar.

 

29. Peeping Tom (1960)

Dir Michael Powell (Karl Böhm, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley)

The pervert?s guide to cinema

"This magical mystery tour of Soho knocking shops and glossy TV studios was Michael Powell?s defiant ?up yours? to all that was good and sacred in the late 1960s. It alienated much of his fanbase and put a full stop on his career in British film. It?s the story of a Teutonic loner named Mark (the ultra-creepy Karl Böhm) who carries on the work of his father by seducing women, luring them in front of his camera and dispatching them with a giant metal spike. But nudge the lurid Technicolor brutality aside and what you have is a film which depicts the act of consuming the moving image as a way of psychologically participating in the acts of those on screen. That?s right kids, this sick puppy is saying that we can?t be disgusted as we?re all voyeurs at heart and deep down we?d like nothing more than the thrill of witnessing someone getting clobbered to death with a broom handle right in front of us. DJ"

I have not seen this, but Rogue has, and he tells me it is a great film. Sounds like a deconstruction of "Rear Window", and it ended Powell's career, probably because it was entirely too frank for the zeitgeist. Still, might as well go out thumbing your nose. Good on you, Michael.

 

risqué subject matter for its time. pretty good film, too.

 

I love this film.

 

The Wicker Man (1973)

Dir Robin Hardy (Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland)

Sun, sex and satanic Scots

"The pagan folk revival of the late 1960s and early ?70s was easy to express in music: all you needed was a cape, beard, acoustic guitar and a crumhorn player in winklepickers. In film, it was a different matter: what sane production company was likely to shell out thousands for tales of earth-worship and mystic rites, especially when the target audience was a) notoriously cash-strapped and b) largely confined to rambling country cottages miles from the nearest picture palace? To be fair, Robin Hardy did his best to make ?The Wicker Man? a commercial prospect, roping in Hammer legends Christopher Lee and Ingrid Pitt, TV icon Edward Woodward and tabloid eye candy Britt Ekland to help pull in the punters. That the resulting film was still compulsively weird, highly atmospheric and a total financial disaster is testament to Hardy?s misjudgment of the marketplace. That its rediscovery continues to gather pace almost four decades later is testament to his skill as a filmmaker. TH"

I haven't seen this one, either, but Rogue has, and again gives it a thumbs up.

 

it's really great. the ending is still as horrifying as it was back in the day.

 

Agreed. It is definitely worth watching at least once. Edward Woodward is excellent, as is Christopher Lee's "Lord Summerisle." Sinister vs idealistic? Outsider vs insider? Even if you know how it ends, the strength of these 2 keep you in the story until the conclusion. If there is any weakness, it does get rather long in the tooth in the middle, but I think that is also a sign of the differing eras of films. But yeah, thumbs up.

 

The Bill Douglas Trilogy (1972, 1973, 1978)

Dir Bill Douglas (Stephen Archibald, Hughie Restorick, Jean Taylor-Smith)

Our town

"It would be easy to dismiss ?My Childhood? (1972), ?My Ain Folk? (1973) and ?My Way Home? (1978) ? the trilogy of short-ish films made by the late Scottish director Bill Douglas ? as textbook examples of the glum social realism that so often besmirches the name of British cinema. These films capture a rare poetry in their depiction of wayward youth, the death of industry and the small, diligent ways in which the downtrodden are able to retain hope and ward off constant darkness. Set during the 1940s in Douglas?s own birthplace (the dead-end mining town of Newcraighall) the emotional focal point of these films is Jamie (Stephen Archibald), an inquisitive, defensive young scamp whose day-to-day existence is a fight for survival and friendship. Filmed with great care and precision in piercing monochrome and with barely any dialogue to drown out the intense expressiveness of the people and the landscapes captured on camera, Douglas has often been cited as Britain?s answer to France?s Robert Bresson. It?s an accolade that makes total sense. DJ"

Not seen, nor heard, of this one.

 

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)

Dirs Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger (Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey)

The lady and the laird

?Will you do something for me before I go away? I want you to kiss me!? It might be Joan Webster?s (Wendy Hiller) first unplanned move in all of Powell and Pressburger?s film, a witty and characteristically eccentric romance filmed largely in the Western Isles of Scotland about a headstrong young woman who heads north from London to a remote island to marry a wealthy man she barely knows. It?s not just a physical journey for Joan, but a spiritual one, as P&P maroon their heroine on a neighbouring island where she must wait until the weather dies down before continuing her trip. By the time Joan is battling a storm and a whirlpool in a tiny boat, her ?heart of stone?, as one islander calls it, is finally cracking and she?s woken up to a less material and more honest world represented by the Scottish folk ? including Roger Livesey?s local sailor ? she meets, a world the filmmakers are happy to celebrate in a fashion that?s unsentimental but still stirring." DC

Surprised this film ranked so high; it's slight, but utterly charming.

 

Great Expectations (1946)

Dir David Lean (John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Martita Hunt)

The lady?s not for turning

"The chocolate-box social politics and borderline anti-semitism of David Lean?s other Dickens adaptation ?Oliver Twist? hasn?t worn so well in the new millennium, but there are no such drawbacks with ?Great Expectations?. This is a film so deeply ingrained in the national psyche and so widely referenced in popular culture that seeing it for the first time feels like a nostalgic experience, albeit a slightly discomfiting one: for all the film?s rosy-cheeked, aspirational cheer, the dark undercurrents of the novel are never ignored. The way Lean weaves elements of Universal horror and film noir into his depiction of nineteenth-century London is breathtaking, and his treatment of Miss Havisham as a giant time-ravaged spider-queen wrapped in a crumbling web of dust and rotting lace finds unexpected echoes in everything from ?Psycho? to ?Aliens?. TH"

I still prefer "Oliver Twist", despite the drawbacks. This film starts well and then goes to hell on the back of Very Bad Casting (John Mills and Valerie Hobson).

 

+10,000 concerning Mills - I like him as an actor, but he was 38 when he played the role here (Pip is supposed to be early 20s at most). It didn't help that Mills always looked 'older' than he really was.

Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket was quite good though.

 

Brazil (1985)

Dir Terry Gilliam (Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond)

Have you got a 27B/6?

"Thank God for Universal Studios. Not only did they finance Terry Gilliam?s one and only undisputed masterpiece, but thanks to the machinations of short-sighted studio supremo Sid Sheinberg, who ordered a re-cut, they managed to ensure that ?Brazil? became a critical cause célèbre and cult classic, with Gilliam the poster child for the battle between art and commerce. The film would have endured either way, but its abject failure might have brought Gilliam?s career to a juddering halt sooner than it otherwise did. Grim, confusing and scattergun it may be, but ?Brazil? is a film rich in deep and diverse pleasures, many of them uniquely British: Jonathan Pryce?s nervy, utterly isolated performance, cameos from the likes of Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Jim Broadbent, Michael Palin, Simon Jones and Gordon Kaye, the oppressively beautiful, wholly London-ish architecture, and a pervasive, post-war, proletarian sense of utter helplessness and bureaucratic desperation from which the only escape is sweet oblivion. TH"