Europe must have been in existential crisis in 1967. A lot of the early New Wave films were dark affairs. But they also had a playfulness, a joie-de-vivre, and sense of hope. But in 1967 Bresson gives us the tragedy of Mouchette; Godard went apocalyptic in Weekend. Even Rohmer dripped in toxic masculinity in La Collectionneuse. And in the UK, Losey gives us Accident. It is a brilliant, complex but immensely bleak view of the English middle class. If art…

I go along with the broad critical consensus – that between 1960-1967 Jean-Luc Godard created an incredible body of work: innovative, daring, exciting, controversial, sexy, funny, beautiful, challenging and unique. I want to write these words in red, white and blue capitals. Maybe split them across a page or two: and of course accompany the texts with the sound of a gunshot. That would be Godardian. He created such a distinctive visual style – it becomes difficult to use words…

Most of the films that first came to mind to watch on Brexit Day were too bleak for a Friday night: Children of Men popped into my head or perhaps Battle Royale?

But I settled on this glorious Ealing comedy instead: an unexploded bomb presents a small London community with the opportunity to declare independence from the austerity of rationing and many of the frictions of life in post-war Blighty.

But the bliss of temporary isolation and freedom from a…

It is a shame that Frank Capra’s stock seems to be in decline. The term Capra-corn is dismissive – it points to schmaltz and sentimentality. He certainly could be guilty of this, particularly in some of his later work. But at his best Capra is as good as anyone has been. There is It’s a Wonderful Life: a celebration of community as film noir; never has so much despair lay beneath the surface of a happy ending. Here is the…

There is much to ire in Swing Time. It is perhaps the best of the nine RKO Astaire-Rogers musicals. It is certainly a better picture than Top Hat. It is funnier, pacier and the song and dance routines are more dazzling and elegant. And the plot is less annoying – and more importantly so is Fred Astaire.

You see I have always found the characters Astaire plays a little too smarmy. There is always an air of deception and mistrust…

Oh Jean Gremillon's place in cinema history was a victim of those small cameras you would take onto the streets of Paris.…

I do love the 60’s New Wave Films. There is vitality to the best of them – a sense of artistic curiosity and adventure. It must have been fun as a director on those streets of Paris or Prague - with a sense that cinema has a rediscovered energy and purpose. All of a sudden unshackled from the conventions of studios, professional actors and tightly scripted dramas. There is a freedom to the films of the 1960's. And Milos Forman’s…

Some countries are placed in the most disadvantaged of places; and Ukraine seems to have been surrounded by and in dispute with larger powers for most of its history – whether that was Poland in the 14th Century, Cossacks and Tatars in the 16th and 17th, the Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, and of course Russia in more recent times. This is a land in which much blood has been spilled on its fertile soils.

Zvenigora is a tremendous work of imagination.…

Noir means more than just black and white film stock, stylised lighting and the American underworld. Noir is about a stinking and stifling atmosphere. It brings a sense of isolation and entrapment to the urban landscape. The finest noir has desperation. The terror comes from men who have no way out. It depicts a world in which the darkness inside good men is forced out - as evil acts are the only way to get ahead. Good guys don’t just…

Les Croix De Bois is a deeply moving portrait of a group of soldiers thrown together in the midst of World War I. To modern eyes its approach is familiar. We have seen this before – to follow a band of brothers through the trenches and gun-fire. It has become the standard mode of entry into the battlefield. Everything from Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Apocalypse Now; countless others have taken this template. And because of this Les Croix De Bois…

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is funny - very funny. Betty Hutton plays Trudy Kockenlocker. See you are laughing already just reading her character’s name. Now watch the film and see if you can keep a straight face. And that’s before we get to the soldier with a Z in his name. But what sticks in the memory are not the gags, not really, but the sheer outlandish pace of it all.

This film is frantic. Groucho Marx would surely…

Scott of the Antarctic is a quintessentially English film. It pushes the notion of the stiff upper lip to the point of parody – certainly to the modern eye. But it is also an exciting, surprisingly complex and ultimately moving tale of Scott’s failed 1910 expedition to be the first man to make it to the South Pole.

The film is based on Scott’s own diaries. It feels authentic. It traces Captain Scott (John Mills) as he builds a team,…