Carol Reed, fresh off the success of Odd Man Out (1947) and The Third Man (1949), directs this crime thriller with James Mason and Claire Bloom in the lead roles. In post-war Berlin, Ivo Kern (Mason) is a man with a criminal past who participates in the accidental kidnapping of British citizen Susanne Mallison (Bloom) before seeking possible redemption. As per usual with Reed’s films, nothing is what it seems in this twisty drama with suspenseful sequences, dynamic editing, and two strong performances at its core.
Jack Clayton’s 1959 romantic drama tells the story of Joe (Laurence Harvey), a young and ambitious man who has just moved to Yorkshire to work for the Borough Treasurer’s Department. He instead becomes romantically involved with Alice (Simone Signoret in an Oscar-winning performance), and what en...
This lively Free Cinema short captures a night out at the Wood Green Jazz Club, where teenagers jive to trad jazz. Funded by the BFI Experimental Film Fund, it was filmed over the course of nine Saturdays by Karel Reisz, then programmer of the National Film Theatre, and a young BBC television dir...
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 ...
