Martin Scorsese Selects: Hidden Gems of British Cinema

Martin Scorsese Selects: Hidden Gems of British Cinema

A selection of classic films, hidden gems, and unheralded treasures, taken from a watchlist Scorsese recommended to filmmaker Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) during the Covid lockdown. Enjoy this cinematic journey into the heart of British film, curated by one of cinema’s greatest champions.

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Martin Scorsese Selects: Hidden Gems of British Cinema
  • Went the Day Well?

    In the middle of World War II Cavalcanti provocatively imagined a postwar England in which the failure of the threatened German invasion could be safely seen in flashback, thanks to the resourceful villagers of Bramley End. Once the ostensibly British troops in their village are revealed as Nazis...

  • The Mind Benders

    A distinguished physiologist Professor Shapey commits suicide and Hall a security officer then reveals evidence of treason against him. He has been experimenting with Isolation, the study of what happens to a man when all sensation-touch, taste, sight, smell and hearing - is removed. A colleague,...

  • The Sound Barrier

    Asked by director David Lean to write a script about the development of new high speed jet aircraft, esteemed playwright Terence Rattigan (The Browning Version) was reluctant. But a visit to Farnborough Air Display and meeting test pilots fired his imagination. The result, about the troubled rela...

  • The Halfway House

    A disparate group ñ a couple whose marriage is breaking down, a terminally ill conductor, grief-stricken parents ñ arrive at a Welsh country inn and discover that they have a year's grace to resolve their difficulties. WW2 witnessed the birth of the fantasy mini-genre where the supernatural admin...

  • It Always Rains on Sunday

    The British New Wave came a decade earlier than advertised with Robert Hamer's downbeat postwar thriller. In a dank East End of ration-book misery, dosshouses and black marketeering, a world-weary housewife is shaken by the sudden reappearance of an old lover, now an escaped convict on the run. R...

  • The Queen of Spades

    The distinguished British film director Thorold Dickinson (1903-1984), made only nine features in a chequered but remarkable film-making career which began in 1936 and ended in 1955. He subsequently became Britainís first Professor of Film at the Slade School of Art and wrote the much re-printed ...

  • Hue and Cry

    The bomb-torn streets of postwar London are the stage for a ripping boys'-own adventure in this buoyant classic, the first of the great 'Ealing comedies'. When schoolboy dreamer Joe discovers that robbers are planning their crimes using secret codes in a children's comic, the police are unconvinc...

  • The Blue Lamp

    Basil Dearden directs this classic cop thriller which gave rise to long-running TV drama Dixon of Dock Green and influenced a swathe of British crime dramas. Jack Warner is PS George Dixon, the steadfast bobby approaching retirement, who has to contend with a new breed of criminal in the form of ...

  • Pink String and Sealing Wax

    Two worlds collide in this melodrama set in Victorian Brighton: a repressive household, run by a tyrannical chemist, and a sleazy tavern, presided over by a passionate landlady. The chemist's son (Gordon Jackson) finds himself, understandably enough, in thrall to the landlady (Googie Withers). Hi...

  • Yield to the Night

    Inspired by the tragic life and death of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in the UK, this was the Siren from Swindon's bid for a serious acting career. Desperate to shake off her buxom dumb-blonde image, Dors brought compassion and sensitivity to the role, but this didnít stop the studio...