Over 180 years ago, six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset were transported to Australia for administering oaths. The names of George and James Loveless, Thomas and John Standfield, James Brine and James Hammett are hardly renowned. But, each year, the Trades Union Congress commemorates their courageous and pioneering efforts to establish combinations to represent the interests of the proletariat. Moreover, Bill Douglas provided a magnificent memoir of their crusade in his 1986 masterpiece, Comrades: A Lanternist's Account of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

Despite the acclaim for his autobiographical trilogy about his travails as an illegitimate child in a 1940s Scottish mining village, Douglas struggled to finance this epic tribute. My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home (1972-78) were regarded as difficult films. Yet Ismail Merchant was sufficiently impresssed to agree to bankroll Comrades in 1979, only for the pair to quarrel and Douglas to be left begging and borrowing capital between periodic bouts of amending his screenplay. As he sought backers, he witnessed the Thatcher government gird itself for a battle against the unions that culminated in the Miners' Strike of 1984-85. Consequently, the story of some farm labourers protesting against their harsh conditions and meagre wages acquired a contemporary resonance, as Douglas strove to highlight the continued existence of exploitation and social hypocrisy. However, the unforced realism of his approach and the superb performances of an estimable ensemble kept the drama firmly rooted in its period.

Coming just two years after the passage of the Great Reform Act, the verdict against the Tolpuddle Six provoked such outrage that the men were pardoned and returned to Britain. It took three years for them all to make it home, and while only Hammett remained in the village after his confreres emigrated to Canada, they came to symbolise working-class solidarity in support of the People's Charter of 1838 and beyond.

Douglas is ably supported in his determination to produce the most naturalistic portrait of life in a Georgian agricultural community by production designer Michael Pickwoad and cinematographer Gale Tattersall. The contrasts between the colours of the changing seasons and the interiors of the peasant cottages and grand residences are conveyed with a restraint that is matched by a cast that sets comparative newcomers like Robin Soans, Keith Allen and Imelda Staunton alongside such familiar faces as James Fox, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens and Barbara Windsor. Special mention, however, should be given to Alex Norton, whose 13 roles link past and future with their references to dioramas, magic lanterns, silhouettes and photographs.

Three years after he had vigorously pursued the Martyrs' prosecution as Home Secretary, Lord Melbourne found himself acting as a prime ministerial mentor to a new monarch. He was affectionately portrayed by HB Warner in Herbert Wilcox's centenary celebration, Victoria the Great (1937). But Paul Bettany plays him more rakishly in Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria (2009), in order to awaken the teenage queen's sensual side in time for her to fall in love with her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The early proceedings centre primarily on the conspiratorial efforts of the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her ambitious adviser, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), to dupe the under-age Victoria (Emily Blunt) into establishing a regency. But once she ascends to the throne, the action settles into period romance mode, with Victoria's crush on the solicitous Melbourne giving way to a full-blown passion for Albert (Rupert Friend), after he ditches the airs and graces he had been urged to exhibit by his scheming Belgian uncle, King Leopold (Thomas Kretschmann), and reveals his true personality.

Despite droll turns by Jim Broadbent as William IV and Michael Maloney as Sir Robert Peel, history is referenced only to facilitate plot points. Coronations and constitutional crises succeed each other amidst a plethora of captions and expositionary devices. But while it occasionally resorts to platitudes and smugly literate aphorisms, Julian Fellowes's screenplay eschews sentimentality and largely avoids being novelettish or trite. One presumes much of this is down to Martin Scorsese (who co-produced alongside the Duchess of York), as Vallée seems content to glide Hagen Bogdanski's camera through the stately sets to the strains of Ilan Eskeri's grandiose score before pausing to fix its gaze on the latest of Sandy Powell's exquisite costumes.

To her great credit, Emily Blunt rises above her director's Masterpiece Theatre aspirations and borrows traits devised by Anna Neagle in Victoria the Great and Sixty Years Glorious Years (1938) and by Judi Dench in Mrs Brown (1997) to show how the widow's flaws were latent in the young bride. She also sparks charmingly with Friend (who hails from Stonesfield) and Bettany. However, the production missed a trick in giving her a BBC accent, as such was Victoria's submersion in all things Germanic that she never wholly mastered English and spoke with Teutonic lilt.

One of the bleakest moments of Victoria's reign is recreated in Douglas Hickox's Zulu Dawn (1979), a prequel to Cy Endfield's Boy's Own classic, Zulu (1964), that chronicles the calamitous Battle of Isandlwana, which took place on 22 January 1879, just hours before the heroic rearguard action at Rorke's Drift.

Ignoring the warnings of local Boer farmers and Bishop Colenso (Freddie Jones), Sir Henry Bartle-Frere (John Mills) and Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole) sanction a raid from Natal into Zululand, confident that modern weaponry will allow the 3000-strong force to prevail. As Colenso's daughter Fanny (Anna Calder-Marshall) bids adieu to suitors Colonel Durnford (Burt Lancaster) and Lieutenant Vereker (Simon Ward), quartermaster Bloomfield (Peter Vaughan) confides his doubts about the suitability of inexperienced officers like Pulleine (Denholm Elliott) and Hamilton-Browne (Nigel Davenport), while Colour Sergeant Williams (Bob Hoskins) and Colonel Crealock (Michael Jayston) ready their troops for action against King Cetshwayo (Simon Sabela) and his 40,000 asegai-brandishing warriors.

Although Endfield's screenplay is based on fact, this is as much a Vietnam allegory as a meticulous recreation of one of the most ignominious episodes in British military history. The preamble to the expedition bristles with posturing machismo, as the imperialists exhibit the contempt for the enemy that would ultimately prove their downfall. But the battle dominates, with Malcolm Cooke cutting Ousama Rawi's visceral imagery to the nerve-jangling bombast of Elmer Bernstein's score.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Ronald Lacey cameoing effectively as The Times correspondent on the sharp end of an O'Toole broadside on the eve of operations. But what makes this so memorable is the sheer scale of the production and it's the knowledge that the massed ranks are real people not pixel puppets that will always give these epics of yesteryear the edge over today's supposedly superior CGI spectacles.

While O'Toole had a tendency to go to extremes, James Mason was one of the most natural screen actors this country has ever produced. In his 1940s heyday, he was a smouldering pin-up. But he refined the dastardly charm exhibited in the Gainsborough bodice rippers that made his name to become a consummate character actor, whose mellifluous magnetism enabled him to steal scenes (and often entire pictures) with seemingly effortless ease.

Anne Bancroft, for instance, won the Best Actress prize at Cannes and drew an Oscar nomination for her work in Jack Clayton's The Pumpkin Eater (1964). But it's Mason's performance that nags at the memory, as he exploits a drinks party to insinuate to the already mentally fragile Bancroft that her screenwriter husband (Peter Finch) is having an affair with his starlet wife (Janine Gray). Having sewn the seeds, Mason then uses a day at the zoo - as Bancroft is recovering from an abortion - to spring the appalling news that Finch and Gray are expecting a child together. But it's not enough for Mason to expose Finch's secret: he wants cruel revenge and suggests to Bancroft that they could ease their mutual pain by embarking upon an affair of their own.

Penelope Mortimer's semi-autobiographical novel had examined the plight of a wronged wife from a first-person perspective. However, scenarist Harold Pinter decided to present a more detached chronicle of the serially pregnant Bancroft's relationship with Finch, from their first meeting (when she was already on her second marriage to musician Richard Johnson) to their tentative reconciliation. Thus, he was able to explore the concept of female entrapment, while also passing judgement on middle-class mores and the creative psyche.

Moreover, this modish approach to modern marriage enabled Clayton to emulate the master of bourgeois ennui, Michelangelo Antonioni. But while the undervalued Clayton clearly seems intent on impressing the continental arthouse crowd, scenes like Bancroft's collapse in Harrod's and Yootha Joyce's unexpected assault at the hairdresser's are quintessentially British and suggest that this frequently disconcerting saga is a suburban female companion piece to Clayton's classic angry young man outing, Room at the Top (1959).

There's also a hint of Italian aesthetic about Joseph Losey's Boom (1968), as his use of zoom lenses recalls both Antonioni and Roberto Rossellini. Yet, notwithstanding its Sardinian setting, Tennessee Williams's adaptation of his own stage flop, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, remains steeped in his trademark Southern Gothic style.

This might have been a very different film had Williams managed to persuade Sean Connery to play the poet known as the Angel of Death for his habit of latching on to rich women shortly before their demise. But Elizabeth Taylor was paired for the eighth time with Richard Burton and the fact that she was too young to play a much-married, substance abusing recluse and he was too old to play a gold-digging free spirit fatally undermined the drama. Nevertheless, it's always fascinating to watch Burton and Taylor sparring on screen and the picture benefits enormously from their familiarity with the Williams milieu - she from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); he from The Night of the Iguana (1964), with which this story has much in common.

Coolly designed by Richard Macdonald and handsomely photographed by Douglas Slocombe, this is an undeniably atmospheric chamber piece. Losey overdoes the allusions to Greek mythology, Indian mysticism and Christian iconography. He also struggles to prevent swathes of dialogue from sounding like declamation instead of conversation. But the performances are compelling.

Noël Coward cameos effectively as the camp gossip (`the Witch of Capri') who comes to dine on `sea monster' and roasted pig, while Burton exudes cynical charisma as he recites Coleridge's `Kubla Khan' in his borrowed samurai robes. But it's Taylor who dominates proceedings. She seems oblivious to Williams's furtive humour. Yet she personifies grande damery, as her ailing widow insults her servants, belittles secretary Joanna Shimkus (as she dictates her memoirs) and lustily tilts her coral head-dress at the messianic stranger, who swims to her island intent on providing her with an easy passage out of her miserable existence.

Michael Caine's intentions towards Shirley MacLaine are scarcely more honourable in Ronald Neame's comedy thriller, Gambit (1966). Neatly lampooning such precision heist capers as Rififi (1955), this marked Caine's Hollywood debut and demonstrated once again MacLaine's genius for enchanting kookiness.

Caine's small-time thief has latched on to MacLaine's Hong Kong tea-room hostess because she bears an uncanny resemblance to a priceless Chinese bust that Caine plans to purloin from Arab art collector Herbert Lom, who purchased it because it reminded him of his late wife. However, any hope Caine might have had that MacLaine would meekly play her part in the meticulously planned burglary he outlines to French sculptor John Abbott are dashed the moment she opens her mouth. Yet such is MacLaine's instant devotion to the crooked Cockney that she agrees to pose as an English aristocrat checking into Lom's hotel and even manages to keep her head when the scam is rumbled, she is abducted and a duplicate statuette appears.

The undoubted highlight of this slick and hugely enjoyable romp is the contrast between the clockwork scheme that Caine describes to his partner in crime and the cackhanded blag that actually ensues. However, the byplay between the leads is also relishable, as robbery evolves inevitably into romance.

The following year saw Joseph L. Mankiewicz return behind the camera four years after the debacle of Cleopatra (1963). Unfortunately, The Honey Pot (1967) hardly suggested that he had returned to the form that had seen him win back-to-back writer-director Oscars nearly two decades before. This reworking of Ben Jonson's Volpone came via Thomas Sterling's novel The Evil of the Day and Frederick Knott's play Mr Fox of Venice. The idea of having millionaire Rex Harrison test the loyalty of former lovers Edie Adams, Capucine and Susan Hayward by pretending to be dying is just as wicked as Jonson intended. But the intricate comedy is hamstrung by the contrived murder mystery that imposes the ever-hammy Adolpho Celi upon proceedings.

Gianni Di Venanzo's photography is a delight and Maggie Smith is eminently diverting as Hayward's nurse. But there's no chemistry between Harrison and his scheming secretary, Cliff Robertson, and Mankiewicz's dialogue has none of the original's musicality and wit. There are few sadder cinematic sights than that of a director struggling to recapture past glories and Vittorio De Sica and Otto Preminger find themselves sharing Mank's woes in The Voyage (1974) and Rosebud (1975).

Adapted from a novel by Luigi Pirandello, the former was the last film made by the onetime matinee idol who became the respectable face of neo-realism. Shooting was briefly interrupted while the lifelong smoker underwent surgery for emphysema. But it was De Sica's sentimental streak rather than his deteriorating physique that was ultimately responsible for undermining this turn-of-the-century Sicilian saga, which is riddled with such penny dreadful contrivances as an automobile with unreliable brakes and an incurable disease that allows the victim to suffer beautifully while living in the lap of luxury. The miscasting of Richard Burton and Ian Bannen as brothers competing for the affections of seamstress Sophia Loren hardly helped the cause, either. So, while De Sica and cinematographer Ennio Guarnieri succeeded in suffusing the action with sub-Viscontian grandeur, this was a sorry way for a dazzling career to fizzle out.

However, it's infinitely preferable to Preminger's penultimate offering, a take on Joan Hemingway and Paul Bonnecarrere's thriller that he co-scipted with Erik Lee Preminger (his son by Gypsy Rose Lee). This is a rabidly Zionist tirade that is only made bearable by the regrettable presence of such stalwarts as Peter O'Toole, Raf Vallone, Claude Dauphin and Peter Lawford, as well as such stars-in-the-making as Isabelle Huppert and Kim Cattrall. O'Toole is the notional hero, as a CIA maverick posing as a Newsweek journalist to investigate the kidnap by the Palestine Liberation Army of the daughters of five international powerbrokers, who just happened to be holidaying on the same yacht. Shuttling between various exotic locations, O'Toole hooks up with West German spy Klaus Löwitsch and Mossad agent Cliff Gorman to rescue the girls from a Corsican farmhouse. But it's Richard Attenborough who steals the show with a bizarre display as a cave-dwelling Muslim convert with demented plans for a jihad against Israel.

Even though it was made in the wake of the Munich Olympic massacre, this is wince-inducingly xenophobic and, even though it exerts a grim fascination, one's time would be much more profitably spent reading Theodore Gershuny's account of the making of the movie, Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture, which recalls, among other things, how Robert Mitchum feuded with Preminger and Lalla Ward (the onetime Mrs Tom Baker, who is now married to Richard Dawkins) before stalking off the set.