Film Index

British cinema: 1940s

49th Parallel (1941)
Michael Powell

Early in WWII, a German U-boat surfaces off the east coast of Canada. Only six members if its crew survive when RCAF bombers destroy the submarine in a fierce raid...   [More...]

A Canterbury Tale (1944)
Michael Powell

One summer during WWII, three complete strangers are thrown together when they get off a train one evening at Chillingbourne village, several miles from Canterbury...   [More...]

A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Michael Powell

During WWII, an RAF fighter pilot Peter Carter is returning to England after a raid over Germany when his plane is hit. Realising his has no parachute, he sends one last radio message, which is received by a young American radio operator, June, before bailing out to certain death...   [More...]

Anna Karenina (1948)
Julien Duvivier

Whilst visiting her brother Oblonsky in Moscow, Anna Karenina, wife of a career politician, meets and falls in love with a young solider, Vronsky...   [More...]

Black Narcissus (1947)
Michael Powell

At the invitation of General Toda Rai, Sister Clodagh leads a group of Anglican nuns to a remote part of India to start a convent...   [More...]

The Black Sheep of Whitehall (1942)
Basil Dearden

Will Davis is the proprietor of a correspondence college that prides itself on its academic excellence, even if it has difficulty competing with the better known academic institutions...   [More...]

Blithe Spirit (1945)
David Lean

To gather material for his next book, writer Charles Condomine invites a local mystic, Madame Arcati, to hold a séance at his house, in the presence of his wife Ruth and two guests...   [More...]

Brief Encounter (1945)
David Lean

Each Thursday, housewife Laura Jesson treats herself to a day in the nearby town of Milford, to do some shopping and watch a film at the cinema...   [More...]

Brighton Rock (1947)
John Boulting

Beneath its quaint, tourist-friendly surface impression, Brighton of the 1930s is a squalid town where gangland crime is rampant...   [More...]

Britannia Mews (1949)
Jean Negulesco

As a child, Adelaide Culver would gaze in fascination from her bedroom window at the slum alley Britannia Mews which ran behind her family's house in London...   [More...]

Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Gabriel Pascal

During his conquest of Egypt, Julius Caesar takes time off to soliloquise beside the great Sphinx. As he does so, he is beguiled by a young woman of extraordinary beauty...   [More...]

The Captive Heart (1946)
Basil Dearden

In August 1940, a German prisoner-of-war camp receives a fresh intake of captured British soldiers. These include Captain Hasek, a Czech soldier who, after escaping from a Nazi concentration camp, stole the uniform and papers from a dead British soldier named Captain Mitchell...   [More...]

Champagne Charlie (1944)
Alberto Cavalcanti

In 1860, Joe Saunders and his brother Fred give up their mining jobs and try to find work in London. Joe immediately gets a job as a bar singer in a public house...   [More...]

The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift (1944)
Laurence Olivier

London, 1600. At the Globe Theatre, players are performing Shakespeare's Henry V to a packed house. The play opens in 1415...   [More...]

Contraband (1940)
Michael Powell

November, 1939. Captain Andersen is on his way back to Denmark when his cargo ship is impounded by British Contraband Control...   [More...]

Convoy (1940)
Pen Tennyson

In 1940, Royal Navy cruiser HMS Apollo returns to base only to be immediately reassigned for a special mission: to escort a convey of merchant ships across the North Sea...   [More...]

Cottage to Let (1941)
Anthony Asquith

When Mrs Barrington puts her cottage up for let she gets far more than she bargained for. It is wartime and the cottage serves as a military hospital, although the only patient being treated on the premises is Flight Lieutenant Perry, who injured himself when he parachuted from his Spitfire...   [More...]

Dead of Night (1945)
Alberto Cavalcanti

Wanting to make some changes to his farmhouse, Eliot Foley invites the architect Walter Craig to spend the weekend with him and his family...   [More...]

The Fallen Idol (1948)
Carol Reed

Eight-year old Philippe is the only child of a London-based ambassador. With his parents away from home, Philippe is looked after by the kindly butler Baines, whom he comes to idolise...   [More...]

Fanny by Gaslight (1944)
Anthony Asquith

In the 1880s, Fanny Hopwood returns to her home in London after spending ten years at a boarding school. Her reunion with her parents and sister is shortlived, however...   [More...]

Fiddlers Three (1944)
Harry Watt

England, 1943. Tommy and the Professor, two sailors in the Royal Navy, are on their way back to their Portsmouth base when they see a WREN, Lydia, being molested by a man...   [More...]

The Foreman Went to France (1942)
Charles Frend

June 1940. With the German armies poised to sweep into France, Fred Carrick, the foreman at a British munitions factory, takes it upon himself to recover three special purpose machines that have been loaned to the French...   [More...]

Gaslight (1940)
Thorold Dickinson

Not long after moving into her new home, a grand London mansion, Bella Mallen becomes convinced that she is starting to lose her mind...   [More...]

The Ghost of St. Michael's (1941)
Marcel Varnel

During WWII, William Lamb travels to the Isle of Skye in Scotland to take up the post of a science teacher at school that has temporarily relocated to Dunbain Castle...   [More...]

The Ghost Train (1941)
Walter Forde

When a party of rail passengers bound for Cornwall miss their connection they find themselves stranded at a railway station, four miles from the nearest village...   [More...]

The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947)
Vernon Sewell

In the spirit of fostering greater understanding between humans and the deceased, the Ghost Society hooks up with the BBC to broadcast a special conference...   [More...]

Great Expectations (1946)
David Lean

Orphan boy Pip lives with his bullying sister and her kindly blacksmith husband, Joe, in a small house on the coast of Kent...   [More...]

Green for Danger (1946)
Sidney Gilliat

August 1944. A postman injured in a V1 bombardment of southern England dies during an operation at a country hospital. No one takes seriously the suggestion that foul play is involved until a second murder is committed...   [More...]

The Halfway House (1944)
Basil Dearden

June 1943. Ten disparate individuals badly in need of a rest arrive at a small hotel, The Halfway House, lost in the Welsh valleys...   [More...]

Hamlet (1948)
Laurence Olivier

One night, atop the ramparts of Elsinore Castle, the ghostly apparition of the recently deceased King of Denmark appears to his son Hamlet to reveal that he was murdered by his brother, Claudius, so he could usurp his throne and his wife, Gertrude...   [More...]



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