Ernst Lubitsch’s 1925 Hollywood version of Lady Windermere’s Fan is often misquoted as the first screen adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s enduringly popular 1892 play. In fact, the British got there first, with this early silent feature made nearly a decade before Lubitsch’s film. While the lack of actual dialogue may seem an affront to the Wildean cause, the pointed retorts and tortuous Victorian social mores of the source material are brought to life by a suitably overwrought cast and a smattering of spiky intertitles.
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Together
Italian director Lorenza Mazzetti borrowed techniques from the neorealist school to conjure this striking study of East End life, one of the original Free Cinema shorts. Following the ambling existence of two deaf-mute dock workers, Mazzetti crafts a poetic depiction of post-war London populated ...
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My Ain Folk
The second instalment of Bill Douglas’ revered Trilogy. Though life becomes ever harder for Jamie, so that he eventually end up in a none-too-comforting children’s home, the bold, uncompromising assurance of Douglas’ very personal brand of realism ensures that the film effortlessly avoids the pit...
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Peeping Tom
Much criticised at the time of its release, Michael Powell’s psychological study of a shy camera technician who films for his home movies the death throes of the women he kills is now widely regarded as a dark classic. Less a straightforward serial-killer thriller than a Freudian meditation on ...
