THE BEST OF BRITISH

By: Kenji

The Innocents

A longer list of essentials, which i hope gives a decent cross—section:

1888 Roundhay Garden Scene (Le Prince)

1899 The Kiss in the Tunnel (Smith)

1900 Grandma’s Reading Glass (Smith)

1901 Fire! (Williamson)
The Haunted Curiosity Shop (Booth)
A Photographic Contortion (Williamson)

1902 The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon

1903 Alice in Wonderland (Hepworth)
Desperate Poaching Affray (Haggar)

1904 The Maid of Cefn Ydfa (Haggar)

1906 The ? Motorist (Booth)

1911 The Strength and Agility of Insects (Smith)

1918 South (Hurley)
The Life Story of David Lloyd George (Elvey)

1924 The Great White Silence (Ponting)

1925 Jerry the Troublesome Tyke (Bilby, Griffiths)
The Open Road (Friese-Greene)

1926 The Lodger (Hitchcock)

1927 Hindle Wakes (Elvey)

1929 Blackmail (Hitchcock)
Tusalava (Lye)
A Cottage on Dartmoor (Asquith)
Drifters (Grierson)
Piccadilly (Dupont)

1930 Borderline (MacPherson)

1933 The Private Life of Henry VIII (A.Korda)

1934 Song of Ceylon (Wright)
Birth of the Robot (Lye)
Evergreen (Saville)

1935 The Thirty Nine Steps (Hitchcock)
Colour Box (Lye)
First a Girl (Saville)

1936 Rembrandt (A.Korda)
Night Mail (Wright, Watt)
Sabotage (Hitchcock)
Things to Come (Menzies)

1937 Oh, Mr Porter! (Varnel)
Trade Tattoo (Lye)
Eastern Valley (Alexander, Rotha)
Edge of the World (Powell)

1938 The Lady Vanishes (Hitchcock)
Pygmalion (Asquith)

1939 The Four Feathers (Z.Korda)
Goodbye Mr Chips (Wood)
The Stars Look Down (Reed)

1940 The Thief of Bagdad (Berger, Powell, Whelan)
Swinging the Lambeth Walk (Lye)
Gaslight (Dickinson)

1941 Listen to Britain (Jennings)
That Hamilton Woman (A.Korda)

1942 Went the Day Well? (Cavalcanti)
In Which we Serve (Coward, Lean)

1943 The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell, Pressburger)
Fires were Started (Jennings)
Millions Like Us (Launder, Gilliat)
The Man in Grey (Arliss)

1944 Henry V (Olivier)
A Canterbury Tale (Powell, Pressburger)
Western Approaches (Jackson)
The Halfway House (Dearden)
On Approval (Brook)

1945 Brief Encounter (Lean)
I Know Where I’m Going (Powell, Pressburger)
A Diary for Timothy (Jennings)
The Wicked Lady (Arliss)
Dead of Night (Cavalcanti, Crichton, Dearden, Hamer)
Madonna of the Seven Moons (Crabtree)

1946 A Matter of Life and Death (Powell, Pressburger)
Great Expectations (Lean)
Green for Danger (Gilliat)

1947 Black Narcissus (Powell, Pressburger)
Odd Man Out (Reed)
Brighton Rock (Boulting)
They Made me a Fugitive (Cavalcanti)
It Always Rains on Sunday (Hamer)

1948 The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger)
Fallen Idol (Reed)
Hamlet (Olivier)
Oliver Twist (Lean)
Whisky Galore (Mackendrick)
The Winslow Boy (Asquith)
The Small Back Room (Powell, Pressburger)
Spring in Park Lane (Wilcox)

1949 Kind Hearts and Coronets (Hamer)
The Third Man (Reed)
Passport to Pimlico (Cornelius)
The Queen of Spades (Dickinson)

1950 Gone to Earth (Powell, Pressburger)
The Happiest Days of your Life (Launder, Gilliat)
Night and the City (Dassin)

1951 The Lavender Hill Mob (Crichton)
The Man in the White Suit (Mackendrick)
Outcast of the Islands (Reed)
The African Queen (Huston)
Scrooge (Desmond-Hurst)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Lewin)

1952 The Importance of Being Earnest (Asquith)
The Cruel Sea (Frend)
Mandy (Mackendrick)

1953 Genevieve (Cornelius)
O Dreamland (L.Anderson)

1954 Hobson’s Choice (Lean)
The Dambusters (M.Anderson)
The Holly and the Ivy (O’Ferrall)
The Belles of St Trinians (Launder)

1955 The Ladykillers (Mackendrick)
Summertime (Lean)
Richard III (Olivier)

1957 Bridge on the River Kwai (Lean)
Night of the Demon (Tourneur)
Amelia and the Angel (Russell)
The Little Island (Williams)

1958 Dracula (Fisher)
Ice Cold in Alex (Lee Thompson)
Look Back in Anger (Richardson)
The Horse’s Mouth (Neame)
A Night to Remember (Baker)

1959 Room at the Top (Clayton)
I’m Alright Jack (Boulting)
Tiger Bay (Lee Thompson)
The Square Peg (Carstairs)

1960 Peeping Tom (Powell)
Saturday and Sunday Morning (Reisz)
The League of Gentlemen (Dearden)
The Criminal (Losey)
The Entertainer (Richardson)
Tunes of Glory (Neame)

1961 The Innocents (Clayton)
The Guns of Navarone (Lee Thompson)
Whistle Down the Wind (Forbes)
A Taste of Honey (Richardson)
Victim (Dearden)

1962 Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)
Dr No (Young)
Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Richardson)
Lolita (Kubrick)
Elgar (Russell)
Eva (Losey)
A Kind of Loving (Schlesinger)

1963 The Great Escape (Sturges)

The Servant (Losey)
From Russia with Love (Young)
Billy Liar (Schlesinger)
This Sporting Life (L.Anderson)
The Haunting (Wise)
Tom Jones (Richardson)

1964 Dr Strangelove (Kubrick)
Goldfinger (Hamilton)
The Pink Panther (Edwards)
The Pumpkin Eater (Clayton)
Zulu (Endfield)
Becket (Glenville)
Culloden (Watkins)
A Hard Day’s Night (Lester)
King and Country (Losey)

1965 Doctor Zhivago (Lean)
A Shot in the Dark (Edwards)
Repulsion (Polanski)
The War Game (Watkins)
Carry on Cleo (Thomas)
The Ipcress File (Furie)
Darling (Schlesinger)
The Spy who Came in from the Cold (Ritt)
The Hill (Lumet)
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Forbes)
King Rat (Forbes)

1966 Blow Up (Antonioni)
Cathy Come Home (Loach)
Cul de Sac (Polanski)
A Man for all Seasons (Zinnemann)
Alfie (Gilbert)
It Happened Here (Brownlow, Mollo)
Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (Reisz)

1967 The White Bus (L.Anderson)
You only Live Twice (Gilbert)
Accident (Losey)
The Devil Rides Out (Fisher)
Far from the Madding Crowd (Schlesinger)
Privilege (Watkins)
Marat/Sade (Brook)
Cineblatz (Keen)

1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
If (L.Anderson)
Yellow Submarine (Dunning)
Witchfinder General (Reeve)
Carry on up the Khyber (Thomas)
Oliver! (Reed)
The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus (Lindsay-Hogg)

1969 Kes (Loach)
The Lion in Winter (Harvey)
The Italian Job (Collins)
Women in Love (Russell)
The Bed Sitting Room (Lester)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Neame)
Mare’s Tail (Larcher)

1970 Performance (Cammell, Roeg)
The Railway Children (Jeffries)
Ryan’s Daughter (Lean)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Wilder)
King Lear (Brook)
Deep End (Skolimowski)

1971 The Go-Between (Losey)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
Walkabout (Roeg)
Macbeth (Polanski)
10 Rillington Place (Attenborough)
Get Carter (Hodges)
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Schlesinger)
The Devils (Russell)

1972 My Childhood (Douglas)
Sleuth (Mankiewicz)
The Other Side of Underneath (Arden)
A Day Out (Frears)
The Offence (Lumet)
The Ruling Class (Medak)

1973 The Wicker Man (Hardy)
Don’t Look Now (Roeg)
Day of the Jackal (Zinnemann)
O Lucky Man (L.Anderson)
Theatre of Blood (Hickox)

1974 Murder on the Orient Express (Lumet)
Penda’s Fen (Clarke)
Aerial (Tait)

1975 Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
The Man who would be King (Huston)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Jones, Gilliam)
Requiem for a Village (Gladwell)

1976 The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Edwards)
The Man who Fell to Earth (Roeg)
Nuts in May (Leigh)
The Omen (Donner)
Central Bazaar (Dwoskin)
Sebastiane (Jarman)

1977 Providence (Resnais)
The Spy who Loved me (Gilbert)
Abigail’s Party (Leigh)

1978 Midnight Express (Parker)

1979 The Life of Brian (Jones)
Tess (Polanski)
Scum (Clarke)
Quadrophenia (Roddam)
Anti Clock (Arden, Bond)
The First Great Train Robbery (Crichton)

1980 The Shining (Kubrick)
The Elephant Man (Lynch)
Hopscotch (Neame)
Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (Roberts)
Gregory’s Girl (Forsyth)
The Falls (Greenaway)
Flash Gordon (Hodges)
The Long Good Friday (Mckenzie)
Radio On (Petit)

1981 Sredni Vashtar (Birkin)
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Reisz)
Excalibur (Boorman)
An American Werewolf in London (Landis)
Chariots of Fire (Hudson)
Moonlighting (Skolimowski)
Stonebridge Park (Keiller)

1982 The Draughtsman’s Contract (Greenaway)
Gandhi (Attenborough)
Made in Britain (Clarke)

1983 Local Hero (Forsyth)
Heat and Dust (Ivory)
The Killing Fields (Joffe)
Educating Rita (Gilbert)
The Gold Diggers (Potter)

1984 Company of Wolves (Jordan)
Another Time Another Place (Radford)
Threads (Jackson)
Squaring the Circle (Hodges)
A Passage to India (Lean)
Comfort and Joy (Forsyth)

1985 Brazil (Gilliam)
Comrades (Douglas)
A Room with a View (Ivory)
A Zed and Two Noughts (Greenaway)
Letter to Brezhnev (Bernard)
My Beautiful Laundrette (Frears)
Turtle Diary (Irvin)
Insignificance (Roeg)
Zina (McMullen)

1986 Street of Crocodiles (Quay bros)
Mona Lisa (Jordan)
The Mission (Joffe)
Caravaggio (Jarman)
The Singing Detective (Amiel)
Withnail and I (Robinson)
When the Wind Blows (Murakami)

1987 Hope and Glory (Boorman)
Little Dorrit (Edzard)
The Last Emperor (Bertolucci)
Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
On the Black Hill (Grieve)

1988 A Fish Called Wanda (Crichton)
Looking for Langston (Julien)
Distant Voices Still Lives (Davies)
Testimony (Palmer)
The Last of England (Jarman)

1989 The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (Greenaway)
Henry V (Branagh)
Elephant (Clarke)
My Left Foot (Sheridan)
A Grand Day Out (Park)

1990 The Sheltering Sky (Bertolucci)
Hidden Agenda (Loach)
Truly Madly Deeply (Minghella)
The Krays (Medak)
Life is Sweet (Leigh)
Reflecting Skin (Ridley)

1991 Prospero’s Books (Greenaway)
Edward II (Jarman)
Riff Raff (Loach)
The Commitments (Parker)
Omozap (Keen)

1992 Howards End (Ivory)
Hedd Wyn (Turner)

Orlando (Potter)
The Crying Game (Jordan)
The Long Day Closes (Davies)
A Sense of History (Leigh)

1993 The Wrong Trousers (Park)
Remains of the Day (Ivory)
Blue (Jarman)
Shadowlands (Attenborough)
Naked (Leigh)
In the Name of the Father (Sheridan)
The Cement Garden (Birkin)
Can’t Go Wrong Without You (Quay bros)
Anchoress (Newby)

1994 London (Keiller)
The Madness of King George III (Hytner)
Shallow Grave (Boyle)
Four Weddings and a Funeral (Newell)
Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy (Munro)

1995 Pride and Prejudice (Langton)
Land and Freedom (Loach)
Institute Benjamenta (Quay bros)
Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee)
Small Faces (Mckinnon)
Vietnam: The Last Battle (Munro)
Persuasion (Michell)

1996 The English Patient (Minghella)
Trainspotting (Boyle)
Breaking the Waves (Von Trier)
Hamlet (Branagh)
Secrets and Lies (Leigh)
Brassed Off (Herman)

1997 Flatworld (Greaves)
Wings of the Dove (Softley)
Feeling my Way (Hodgson)
Mrs Brown (Madden)
Nil by Mouth (Oldman)
The Full Monty (Cattaneo)
Gallivant (Kotting)
Robinson in Space (Keiller)

1998 The General (Boorman)
Gods and Monsters (Condon)
Shakespeare in Love (Madden)
My Name is Joe (Loach)
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (Ritchie)
Croupier (Hodges)
Following (Nolan)
Elizabeth (Kapur)
Pleasures of War (Lingford)

1999 Topsy Turvy (Leigh)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Ratcatcher (Ramsay)
The Man with the Beautiful Eyes (Hodgson)
A Room for Romeo Brass (Meadows)
The Talented Mr Ripley (Minghella)
One Day in September (Macdonald)
Wonderland (Winterbottom)
Solomon & Gaenor (Morrison)

2000 The Claim (Winterbottom)
Last Resort (Pawlikowski)
Timecode (Figgis)
Billy Elliot (Daldry)
Chicken Run (Park)
Intolerance (Mulloy)
Sexy Beast (Glazer)
Snatch (Ritchie)
28 Days Later (Boyle)

2001 Eldra (Lyn)
Gosford Park (Altman)
Iris (Eyre)

2002 The Magdalene Sisters (Mullan)
In this World (Winterbottom)
Sweet Sixteen (Loach)
Morvern Callar (Ramsay)
The Hours (Daldry)
Dirty Pretty Things (Frears)
An Eye for an Eye (Lingford)

2003 Touching the Void (Macdonald)
Young Adam (Mackenzie)

2004 Stealing a Nation (Pilger, Crotty, Martin)
The Power of Nightmares (Curtis)
While Darwin Sleeps (Bush)
Dead Man’s Shoes (Meadows)
Shaun of the Dead (Wright)
My Summer of Love (Pawlikowski)

2005 The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (Quay bros)
Curse of the Were-rabbit (Park)
The Descent (Marshall)
The Constant Gardener (Meirelles)
Black Sun (Tarn)
Bleak House (Chadwick, White)

2006 Red Road (Arnold)
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Loach)
Vera Drake (Leigh)
Children of Men (Cuaron)
Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky (S.Curtis)
The Last King of Scotland (Macdonald)
This is England (Meadows)
The Queen (Frears)
Casino Royale (Campbell)
Road to Guantanamo (Winterbottom)
London to Brighton (Williams)

2007 Atonement (J.Wright)

Sleep Furiously (Koppel)
The Pearce Sisters (Cook)
Control (Corbijn)
Battle for Haditha (Broomfield)
Unrelated (Hogg)

2008 Slumdog Millionaire (Boyle)
Hunger (McQueen)
Of Time and the City (Davies)
Man on Wire (Marsh)
The Reader (Daldry)
In Bruges (McDonagh)
Happy-go-Lucky (Leigh)
Summer (Glenaan)
Better Things (Hopkins)

2009 Bright Star (Campion)
Fish Tank (Arnold)
Moon (D.Jones)
An Education (Scherfig)
Perestroika (S.Turner)
Terrorism Considered as One of the fine Arts (Whitehead)
In the Loop (Iannucci)

2010 The King’s Speech (Hooper)
Another Year (Leigh)
Archipelago (Hogg)
The Nine Muses (Akomfrah)
Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (S.Fiennes)
The War You Don’t See (Pilger)
Ghost Writer (Polanski)
The Arbor (Barnard)
Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
Oranges and Sunshine (J.Loach)
Separado! (Goch, Rhys)
Monsters (Edwards)
Submarine (Ayoade)
Never Let me Go (Romanek)
Treacle Jr (Thraves)
127 Hours (Boyle)
Made in Dagenham (Cole)

2011 The Story of Film: An Odyssey (Cousins)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Alfredson)
Jane Eyre (Fukunaga)
Shame (McQueen)
Senna (Kapadia)
Luv’in the Black Country (Carter)

2012 The Angels’ Share (Loach)
Berberian Sound Studio (Strickland)
Ginger and Rosa (Potter)

2013 The Spirit of ’45 (Loach)

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Black Narcissus (Powell, Pressburger)

Michael Powell
A one time studio gofer, still photographer, and comic actor, Michael Powell became one of the most celebrated and controversial directors ever to come out of England. Born in Canterbury, Powell became enamored of films while still a teenager and, after a start in the mid-’20s and a stint shooting stills and serving as a co-scenarist with Alfred Hitchcock in the early sound era, Powell broke into directing in low-budget British thrillers and comedies. After directing and writing his first notable movie in 1937, The Edge of the World, he moved to London Films where he began working with Emeric Pressburger, a gifted young author and screenwriter. Their two-decade association began shortly after they left London Films (where they collaborated on The Spy in Black and Powell co-directed The Thief of Bagdad). The wartime thrillers Contraband and Forty-Ninth Parallel, the latter attracted much attention (including Oscar nominations for Best Picture and best original story), resulted in the creation of The Archers, an independent production company.

Powell and Pressburger went on to jointly write, produce, and direct The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I’m Going, and Stairway to Heaven during World War II. The idiosyncratic humor and point-of-view of these films alienated many British critics, but delighted audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. After the war, Powell and Pressburger made a series of movies that emblazoned their names around the world: Black Narcissus, a story of nuns who are nearly destroyed by their own passions while trying to found a convent in the Himalayas; The Red Shoes, a phenomenally successful film about the life and death of a ballet dancer, whose multi-year run in America and multimillion-dollar success made possible such pictures as An American in Paris and The Tales of Hoffmann, an opera/ballet amalgam of unprecedented stylistic flare and daring.

The early ’50s saw a decline in fortunes for the filmmakers, and their partnership dissolved in 1956. Powell continued to make movies of a fiercely personal nature until 1960, when the critical reaction to Peeping Tom, about a man who mixes voyeurism, cinema, and murder, and is now considered a classic, ended his career in England. He worked for American and European television during the 1960s and ’70s, and was rediscovered in the late ’70s with the help of Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who regarded Powell as one of the most important influences on their individual work. Museum retrospectives, restorations, and reopenings of his classic films followed, along with a multi-volume autobiography that he completed prior to his death in 1990.
(Allmovie.com)
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wikipedia article CINEMA OF THE UNITED KINGDOM

Related lists: 19th Century Britain, The Welsh Connection, Welsh Actors and Actresses, Bonnie Scotland. See also Cat’s Contemporary British Film and England, Ozufan’s list Scotland on Film, and Lights in the Dusk’s list The Other Side of the Underneath: Britain’s “Hiddden” Cinema

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The Pumpkin Eater

Below are my favourites. Special mention to BBC TV documentary series Around the World in 80 Days, The World at War, Life on Earth and others by David Attenborough.