10. if.... (1968)
Lindsay Anderson is one of the most underrated satirists in film history as his trilogy
of films following Mick Travis (if...., O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital) all
have an undercurrent of jet black humour and pointing out the foibles and utter stupidity
of some major British institutions. In the case of if...., Anderson targets the public
school system and, with Malcolm McDowell making his film debut, before he shot to
fame in A Clockwork Orange, had an actor who was keen to impress and was utterly
astonishing. (Apparently Kubrick cast him as Alex DeLarge because of his performance
in this film and wanted someone with the same attitude to play Alex. Furthermore,
when McDowell was unsure of how to play Mick, he contacted Anderson who gave him
direction.)
if.... is set in an unnamed English public school and follows Mick Travis, a renegade
sixth form student who turns up at the beginning of term sporting a moustache (with
facial hair very much against school rules), spends time in his dorm room looking
at pictures from around the world of various people, including rebels, and firing
darts from his air pistol. When he and his friend, Johnny, steal a motorcycle and
take off on a cross-
Filmed with a wonderful air of surrealism, fantasy and savagery running through it, if.... which, intentionally or not, tapped into the feeling of rebelliousness and unhappiness running through society, with many latching onto the French General Strike as a spark for major social change. With his moustache, devil may care attitude and rebellion against the authority figures at his school, Mick Travis became somewhat of a poster boy for the counterculture and the film still resonates in the 21st century.
9. Repulsion (1965)
If one were to forget names and reputations and just think of what a British film
from the 1960s about a Belgian beautician would be like, you'd see an end up in Carry
On territory. However, this was Roman Polanski who was then a rising talent, making
his first film in English after coming to critical attention with Knife in the Water.
After making films in his native Poland and France, he came to Britain during the
'swinging sixties' to make a film in London, produced by Gene Gutowski and written
with Gérard Brach, men with whom he would have an extremely productive working relationship,
he made a movie with a relatively unknown French actress and the result was so good
Hollywood came knocking.
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Ian Hendry, John Fraser and Yvonne Furneaux, Repulsion begins as a fairly ordinary drama about Carole, an unhappy Belgian beautician, who works well but seems uneasy at home where she lives with her sister, who is having an affair with a married man. Everything changes when they go on holiday to Italy leaving Carole alone. Overcome with sexual frustration and her own insecurities, she gradually retreat into herself, never leaving the apartment and sinking deeper into psychosis.
Clearly directed by someone with a keen eye for detail and with no hesitation to
go into extremely dark, macabre and disturbing territory, Repulsion was Polanski's
calling card to British and American production companies and it's no surprise Robert
Evans wanted him to direct Rosemary's Baby based on this. The story, by Polanski
and Gérard Brach (who would go on to write with Polanski in films including Cul-
8. The Wicker Man (1973)
Hacked up and hurriedly cut by the new management at British Lion, who didn't know
quite what to make of this bizarre horror film directed by Robin Hardy and written
by Anthony Shaffer, it wasn't seen as a film with any popular appeal by British Lion
who rushed it out as the B-
The film begins with police Sgt Neil Howie, an dogmatic, virginal and staunchly religious man, who receives a letter from Summerisle informing him of a missing child on the island. Vaguely aware of its strange owner and pagan beliefs, he takes a seaplane, flies to the island and lands in the harbour and, after taking a boat to the shore, can't find anyone who recognises the girl in the photograph. From there, he is driven insane with lust by the landlord's daughter and then finds himself in the middle of an uncooperative pagan community which goes against all his religious and social beliefs.
The film is spearheaded by a quite sublime performance by Edward Woodward, who is utterly convincing as Sgt Howie and his expression at the end accentuates the horror. As the island's owner, Lord Summerisle, Christopher Lee gives a commanding performance and there is great support by the whole ensemble cast, particularly Ingrid Pitt, Diane Cilento and Britt Ekland. The Wicker Man is a film which retains its power to shock and disturb and the soundtrack album is enough to send chills up your spine when you hear the islanders sing ' Sumer Is Icumen In'.
7. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
I first fell in love with this when I was about 10 years old and treasured the VHS
cassette my parents had recorded the film onto, when it was shown late at night on
BBC2, and have since bought it several times on VHS and DVD. I watched it so many
times I knew the script off by heart and, in my first year at secondary school, my
English teacher stepped out from minutes and returned to find me standing on a chair
pointing at about across the room and shouting "I fart in your general direction.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!" However, I based
this decision on its script, direction and acting rather than how much I like it.
Many people's favourite Monty Python film, and perhaps the most consistently funny, would be Monty Python's Life of Brian, but the one with the best writing, acting and directing, by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam, is Monty Python's second film (and their first 'proper' film following And Now That Something Completely Different), loosely based on the legend of King Arthur. Although Graham Chapman was a hopeless alcoholic at the time and had to read some of his lines from cue cards, his performance as King Arthur is brilliant in its absurd pomposity and sincerity, whether it's debating whether a swallow could carry a coconut, explaining (to some anarchists) that he is King because the Lady in the Lake gave him Excalibur or negotiating with Tim the Enchanter. The other Pythons appear in several roles each with myriad memorable lines and situations.
As Life of Brian has already been given a Blu-
6. The Third Man (1949)
Based on the novel by Graham Greene, who also wrote the screenplay, and directed
by Carol Reed, this greatest of all British films noir is a testament to what happens
when you have great actors, a great composer, a great cinematographer, a great editor,
a great director and an art department all on top form. That it was released as Vienna
was in the condition depicted in the film made is extremely topical and audiences
at the time would no doubt have noticed the error of authenticity the stock footage
provides.
Set in post-
Most people will know the famous monologue by Orson Welles about the achievements
of the Borgias compared to the Swiss, but there is much more to The Third Man than
Orson Welles. Joseph Cotton, who starred alongside Wales at the beginning of the
decade in Citizen Kane, is a tremendous lead and, with Trevor Howard and Alida Valli
(as Holly Martin and Anna, respectively) putting in career-
5. Brazil (1985)
Unlike anything made by any of the former members of Monty Python, this satirical
black comedy is set in a dystopian future where almost everything is automated and
run by an all consuming bureaucracy, a horribly oppressive and yet extremely silly
industrial nightmare in which a single typographical error can mean the difference
between life and death. The opening scene illustrates this point when a dead fly
gets in the automated printing machine and, instead of issuing instructions for the
immediate arrest and detention of known terrorist Archibald Tuttle, sends the deadly
retrieval unit to the home of ordinary office worker Archibald Buttle. Sam Lowry,
a low-
Aside from the casting of Robert De Niro, who plays the renegade plumber and wanted
terrorist Archibald Tuttle, the film has a distinctive British feel with Jonathan
Pryce as Sam Lowry, the frustrated bureaucrat who tries to convince people the 'machine'
has got it wrong, something his boss, Mr Kurtzman, is keen not to happen. Ian Holm
is superb as Kurtzman, Katherine Helmand puts in an extremely memorable performance
as Sam's mother, a woman addicted to plastic surgery and who is generally seen with
her surgeon, Dr. Jaffe (brilliantly played by a suitably sleazy Jim Broadbent) and,
with Gilliam's former colleague Michael Palin as the mysterious Jack Lint, there
is a-
This is a better film than anything Terry Gilliam had made before or since (including
his Monty Python films and movies like The Fisher King) yet, just as with almost
every film Gilliam makes, it ran into difficulties as Universal Studios didn't like
his original 144 minute cut, wanting a film with a more upbeat ending (similar to
the difficulties Ridley Scott faced with Blade Runner, where the distributor thinks
audience members are idiots, demanding a narration by Deckard) and so released a
94 minute version, known as 'Love Conquers All', which did very badly at the US box
office and is generally hated by fans. With the different versions available on DVD
(and Blu-
4. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
The finest of all the great comedies made in the world-
Loosely based on Roy Horniman's novel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, this follows Louis Manzini, this shows Manzini studying the family tree and working out who he needs to kill in order to become the Duke of Chalfont. With births bringing bad news and deaths bringing good, the number eventually works out at eight – all of whom are played by Alec Guinness. The deaths are inventive, the screenplay (by Robert Hamer and John Dighton) is laced with acerbic black humour and Dennis Price steals the show with his superb portrayal of the scheming murderer and pitch perfect narration.
Robert Hamer's direction makes this one of the best crafted and most ingeniously
created films ever made on these shores, the performances are outstanding and the
costumes, production design, art decoration, make-
3. The Red Shoes (1946)
No list of the greatest British films would be complete without something by Powell
and Pressburger and I had such a difficult time ranking these films in order I could
probably give most of them different rankings in a week or so. This is one of the
true masterpieces of cinema, a hugely influential film which has impacted their careers
of directors as diverse as Martin Scorsese, Darren Aaronofsky and Dario Argento.
Together, Michael Powell and Emmerich Pressburger made numerous great films, the
best of which are Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes.
A simple story about the destructive nature of obsession and the perils of all consuming
art – something Michael Powell would later explore (with the emphasis on filmmaking
in Peeping Tom, another five-
This was very nearly not one of Powell and Pressburger's films as Emmerich Pressburger sold his script to producer Alexander Korda, who wanted his wife, Merle Oberon, to play the lead with a double doing the dancing scenes. However, Michael Powell wanted to make the film and he and Pressburger bought the script back from Korda. Anton Walbrook is superb as Boris Lermontov, the driven ballet impresario who wants to stage the ballet and the scenes between the two new members of his company, Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) and Julian Krasner (Marius Göring) is utterly compelling and plausible. Shearer, a Sadler's Wells ballerina is understandably mesmerising in the ballet sequences, but it's her acting which impresses the most and no doubt came as a welcome surprise to the two filmmakers.
It is a spectacular piece of filmmaking and the crowning glory in the long and distinguished partnership of Powell and Pressburger.
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Of all the great films made by Stanley Kubrick, this is my favourite and most ingeniously
scripted, directed and well acted of any of Kubrick's superb cinematic achievements
including 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining or A Clockwork Orange (both 2001: A
Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange nearly made this list). During the height of
the Cold War when American nuclear armed B-
At the time, it was unheard of to satirise an ongoing war, much less one which could
end with the US and the Soviet Union in all out nuclear war, virtually guaranteeing
the end of life on planet Earth. Dr. Strangelove follows the crew of a B-
I have no idea what audiences in 1964 would make of such a plausible portrayal of
the state of affairs in Washington DC, the Pentagon and the skies around the world
and how easily a mistake could lead to a nuclear holocaust. According to many experts
and those involved at the time, there were several instances where the events depicted
really happened, or did and had to be rectified so, without knowing it, Kubrick wasn't
so much making a movie as a documentary! His direction is, as always, superb and
the razor sharp screenplay is outrageously funny with superb delivery by the entire
cast including Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens and Peter Sellers,
who plays Captain Mandrake, President Muffley and Dr. Strangelove – all with consummate
skill. Dr. Strangelove is one of the greatest comedies ever made in any country and
the greatest comedy made in Britain.the inclusion of Dr. Strangelove on this list
may be a little controversial as it’s ranked extremely highly in the AFI’s 100 Years
-
1. Don't Look Now (1973)
Although I have now seen (I think) every film Nicolas Roeg has made, there was a
time when I hadn't seen any of them and only knew his name because it was mentioned
in a review of The Wicker Man, the B-
From a technical standpoint, this is an outstanding work of art with exceptional cinematography by Anthony Richman who probably worked extremely closely with Nic Roeg, a man who began his career as a cinematographer and was always a master of mise en scène. Venice had never looked so sinister, creepy and dangerous and no film since has played on the seedier side of the unique and romantic holiday destination to such devastating effect. The cast is spearheaded by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie whose portrayal of a recently bereaved couple is incredible in its realism and authenticity, the notorious sex scene is equally authentic. Roeg's unique style of editing effortlessly fuses past, present and future into one, making time fluid so, as this is a film which deals with premonition, the trauma of past events and warnings from beyond the grave, you are generally kept guessing about what you see and whether it is the present, a flashback or a sign of things to come.
This is a technical masterpiece, a film with great performances by the entire cast (British, American and Italian), a superb score by Pino Donaggio and an ending which rocks you to the core, demanding a repeat viewing.
In every aspect of filmmaking, Don't Look Now is a true masterpiece and the greatest British film ever made.
There are times when I just sit in despair at the state of the British film industry,
when such dreadful movies, offences against cinema, come along such as Sex Lives
of the Potato Men, Lesbian Vampire Killers and Rancid Aluminium. It is then that
I think about all that is good with British cinema, going back decades. Having recently
reviewed such recently restored films as The Cruel Sea, Ice Cold in Alex and Don't
Look Now, all making their debut on Blu-
Britain may not have the cinematic history of Germany, France, Russia or the United States where one could almost make a top 20 list of the greatest films to come from those countries without even moving into the sound era. Pioneers like F.W. Murnau, Sergei Eisenstein, D.W. Griffith and George Méliès enabled what was then a novelty to burgeon into something that was not only groundbreaking, but extremely popular and profitable. Sadly, Britain didn't have the equivalent to a D.W. Griffith so we were much slower on the uptake than our European counterparts who, through dialectical montage, Expressionism and Impressionism, created some magnificent silent films.
What Britain may lack in cinematic heritage it more than makes up for in quality with several films by true masters of the medium like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Powell and Pressburger. If you just mention Ealing Studios or Hammer Horror to someone, they will likely compile a mental list of brilliant and memorable films, but Britain also has produced directors like Nicolas Roeg, Lindsay Anderson and Carol Reed (to name but a few) who have made groundbreaking films and introduced the world to some quite remarkable actors. I love Monty Python, both the Flying Circus TV show and the films they (and Terry Gilliam as a solo director) have made but this is where I have to be objective and not let my heart rule my head and judge films by their quality rather than how much I like them. If that were the case, this list would be very different and should be called 'My Top 10 Favourite British Films'.
Coming up with a list of the Top 20 British films will inevitably have much more contemporary material than a similar list from, say Germany. It is also quite difficult to determine what actually classifies a 'British film' as, especially in the last decade, films have multiple production companies, so a film can have several countries involved through their financial involvement. However, there are myriad films which are unmistakably British due to the nationalities of the cast, crew and production companies and that will apply to most other films on this list where they could quite easily be stamped 'Made in Britain'. Some are a little different with directors and cast members from overseas but were still made on these shores and entirely financed by British companies so, as money speaks in the film industry, I'll ultimately have to go with who came up with the cash and was the production company behind the film for the tiebreaker.
Creating this list has been extremely difficult and there are many great films that have missed the cut. They should be seen as a very good thing as it shows the depth of quality movies made in Britain. There is also a large degree of personal opinion here, so I may have chosen a film that someone else would have omitted, and they may have selected a film that I didn't think deserve to be on the list.
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