Parky at the Pictures (DVD 9/2/2012)

Oh, there are films on television. But you have to be a cable or satellite subscriber or have a freeview box to see them. And, even then the diet varies little from the terrestrial channels, with only Film4 bothering with anything vaguely arty or cultish. However, even in this oasis of cinematic taste, it is still comparatively rare to find a monochrome picture, let alone a silent.

This is a sad situation, as it deprives audiences of the chance to watch the classics of film history and virtually banishes forever the studio Bs and homemade titles that once filled the schedules instead of cheap makeover, chat, quiz and reality shows. It's all very well for David Cameron to call for British cinema to produce films that people want to see. But sell-through fees are a key component of the average budget and, if the nation's TV stations continue to exhibit such a wilful disinclination to show anything but low-grade Hollywood pulp, the future of the national film industry looks very bleak indeed.

According to the futurologists, DVD and Blu-Ray will also become obsolete over the next few years, as we all begin to download our films from services like LoveFilm and Netflix. This is another depressing development, as there is still much pleasure to be derived from owning a physical copy of a favourite title, while the switch to digital access will signal the end of the extras that have become such a relishable part of the disc package. For the moment, however, the formats afford armchair moviegoers the only chance to see the minor gems and curios that were once small-screen staples.

CASTLE OF THE LIVING DEAD (1964).

Tigon always came a distant third behind Hammer and Amicus in the British horror stakes, but this is one of the company's more intriguing offerings. Directed by Warren Kiefer (after whom Donald Sutherland named his son) and boasting second unit footage by Michael Reeves (of Witchfinder General fame), this is an evocative amalgamation of literary tropes from Gothic fiction and the works of Edgar Allan Poe and visual ploys borrowed from the pictures of Terence Fisher and Mario Bava.

The story is set in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and centres on a travelling theatrical troupe plying its trade in rural France. Tensions are already running high between leader Jacques Stany and deposed star Luciano Pigozzi, who covets leading lady Gaia Germani, who has fallen for his successor, dashing former army captain Philippe Leroy. However, survival comes to matter more than romance when the troubadours accept the invitation of aristocratic scientist Christopher Lee to give a private performance in the shadow-strewn castle where he conducts experiments in the preservation of avian, animal and human specimens.

Shot by the great Italian cinematographer Aldo Tonti in a lowering black and white that makes art director Carlo Gentili's decoration of the Castello Odescalchi in Rome all the more forbidding, this is more a mood piece than a garish horror. Dressed as a Byronic dandy, Lee is typically imposing as Count Draco (who has more in common with Baron Frankenstein than any Transylvanian counterpart) and he forges a splendidly malevolent alliance with Mirko Valentin, as his cacklingly loyal valet. Ennio Antonelli also shows well as a resourceful dwarf. But the standout performance, if only for its eccentricity, comes from Donald Sutherland, who essays a jovial trooper, an old man and a crook-backed hag, whose predictions have a nasty habit of coming to pass.

CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960).

The decade following the Second World War saw a glut of `now it can be told' pictures commemorating deeds of derring-do that helped rid Europe of fascist totalitarianism. However, the Holocaust was still regarded as a tricky topic, as few were willing to depict its horrors with any authenticity. Those that did attempt to tackle it emulated director Ralph Thomas and producer Betty Box (who were best known for the Dirk Bogarde `Doctor' comedies) in acknowledging the courage of those who risked their own lives to keep Jewish fugitives out of the concentration camps. The majority of such movies were prone to stereotyping and sentimentality, but this well-meaning melodrama manages to avoid the more obvious pitfalls.

Despite the risk that so concerns the reticent Yvonne Mitchell, Mother Superior Lilli Palmer supports a plan to smuggle orphans out of the camp run by genial Italian major Ronald Lewis. Indeed, she is even willing to teach her charges about the connection between Judaism and Catholicism and allow rabbi David Kossoff to be smuggled into the cellars to conduct the Yom Kippur ritual. But, while Lewis is prepared to turn a blind eye to the occasional disappearance of around a dozen children (who are then entrusted to the underground for safe passage to Palestine), the situation changes drastically in 1943 when he is replaced in command by Nazi colonel Albert Lieven and his sadistic sidekick, Peter Arne.

Hiding its own secret in the credits (as Dale Pitt was a front for blacklisted scenarist Adrian Scott), this may be a touch trite in its insistence on Lewis having a crush on comely nun Sylvia Syms and Mitchell having her heartstrings tugged by melancholic waif, Rebecca Dignam. But Thomas ably judges the moments of suspense and inspiration and creates truly detestable antagonists in Lieven and Arne. The support playing of Michael Goodliffe as the local priest, George Coulouris as a go-between and Nora Swinburne, Megs Jenkins, Jenny Laird and Phyllis Neilson-Terry is also admirable, as they emphasise the humanity rather than the piety of the selfless sisters.

A DAY TO REMEMBER (1953).

Following the success of Gordon Parry's Innocents in Paris (1953), Ralph Thomas decided to put a working-class spin on the awayday saga with this adaptation of Jerrad Tickell's novel, The Hand and the Flower. As with most multi-story scenarios, the result is somewhat patchy. But there is enough wit and poignancy here to make this an amiable watch.

When Londoner Stanley Holloway enters his pub darts team in a tournament in France, the regulars eagerly sign up. For some, the trip to Boulogne will represent their first time abroad, but others are keen to revisit the places they knew in the war. Despite Holloway and landlord James Hayter trying to keep everybody together, their teammates inevitably slip away. Edward Chapman returns to the cosy hotel where he spent his honeymoon with late wife Brenda De Banzie, while Harry Fowler goes in search of watches he can smuggle back to Blighty and sell on the black market. Bill Owen also has a risky venture in mind, as he is tired of being taunted about his diminutive stature and he signs up for the Foreign Legion, in spite of kindly captain George Coulouris's attempts to dissuade him.

The most touching tale, however, concerns Donald Sinden, who has yet to come to terms with civvy street and has reached the conclusion that fiancée Joan Rice considers him something of a dull dog. While placing flowers on the grave of a fallen comrade, he bumps into Odile Versois, whom he knew as a child during the Liberation. She is now a radiant beauty and the besotted Sinden becomes increasingly enamoured over lunch with her farming family. However, even though she seems smitten with Sinden, Versois is engaged to lawyer Theodore Bikel and the romance seems doomed as a despondent Sinden heads back to the docks.

Despite the postcard views and the surfeit of sentiment in the final reel, this is a fascinating social document that deftly captures a time when foreign travel was still a novelty and postwar austerity was still gripping hard. The odd episode resorts to the kind of twist beloved of O. Henry and Roald Dahl, but the performances are spirited and it's always a pleasure to see the likes of Thora Hird, Peter Jones and Meredith Edwards in even a minor role.

DEADLINE AT DAWN (1946).

Now here's a genuine corker. Scripted by Clifford Odets from a novella written by Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym William Irish, scored by Hanns Eisler and photographed Nicholas Musuraca, this brisk noir was the only movie made by celebrated stage director Harold Clurman, who had collaborated with Odets in the Group Theatre during the Great Depression. The emphasis is always on the dialogue and the characterisation, but Clurman captures the atmosphere of nocturnal New York and the clash of despair, cynicism, innocence and exploitation involved in having a good time in a sombre postwar world.

Shore leave sailor Bill Williams wakes with a pocketful of cash and a missing hour in his memory. He returns to the dance hall where he spent part of the previous evening and hooks up with brassy dancer Susan Hayward, who suggests he accepts his good fortune and disappears. However, when she learns that good-time girl Lola Lane is dead, Hayward offers to help Williams retrace his steps and clear his name before he has to return to the Norfolk naval base in Virginia.

Although the central relationship between Williams and Hayward is splendidly played, the real fascination here lies in the peripheral characters, whose hard luck stories cast a melancholic pall that also enhances the aura of authenticity. In addition to blind pianist Marvin Miller, limping blonde Osa Massen, gloved stranger Steve Geray and frantic cat owner Roman Bohnen, the pair also encounter philosophical taxi driver Paul Lukas and Lane's shifty brother, Joseph Calleia, who had exploited her looks to lure unsuspecting saps into blackmailable flings. The twisting plot is also deeply satisfying and such is Clurman's grasp of pacing and camera movement that many will disagree with his verdict that the picture is barely mediocre and lament that he decided cinema was beneath his dignity.

EVERY GIRL SHOULD BE MARRIED (1948).

Although they credit Eleanor Harris with the story idea, director Don Hartman and co-scenarist Stephen Morehouse Avery fail to acknowledge the debt they owe to a couple of superior screwballs, Mitchell Leisen's Preston Sturges-scripted Easy Living (1937) and Garson Kanin's Bachelor Mother (1939). However, the real creative force behind this gentle romcom is Cary Grant, who fell in love with stage actress Betsy Drake on a transatlantic liner, coaxed RKO chief Dore Schary into signing her to a long-term contract and then agreed to be her co-star so he could coach her through her debut performance. Mercifully, she resisted his suggestion to emulate Katharine Hepburn's distinctive delivery style and acquits herself well in a picture that was a sizeable commercial hit on its release, even though critics have been a touch sniffy about it since.

Frustrated by her inability to find Mr Right and settle down to raise a family, shopgirl Betsy Drake enlists the help of best friend Diana Lynn to help her charm eminent paediatrician Cary Grant. However, the confirmed bachelor sees through her scheme to make him jealous by pretending she is dating her wealthy boss, Franchot Tone. But the much-married playboy is less than impressed when they are snapped kissing by a newspaper photographer and Drake begins exploiting their `liaison' to accept offers of a free car and a month in a model home. Yet he can't stop himself from proposing to her, much to the chagrin of her sweetheart from back home, Eddie Albert. However, Grant suspects this is a ruse, too.

Such is his effortless screen presence that Grant is always a pleasure to watch, even in a slight confection like this. His exchanges with the equally assured Tone, as his old college pal and competitively lovesick rival, are tantamount to banter masterclasses. Drake also proves a capable comedienne, although she would only make eight more movies after marrying Grant the following year and becoming the longest lasting of his five wives.

GIRL ON APPROVAL (1961).

Few film-makers enjoyed such a varied career as Charles Frend. Having been the film critic of the student magazine Isis while at Oxford, he edited four Alfred Hitchcock pictures and the prestigious MGM trio of A Yank at Oxford, The Citadel (both 1938) and Goodbye Mr Chips (1939) before directing 11 films at Ealing before the studio closed in 1957, including the rural melodrama The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947), the heroic biopic Scott of the Antarctic (1949) and the war classic, The Cruel Sea (1953). But any suggestion that Frend was an old-school stalwart who was totally unsuited to a slice of social realism like Girl on Approval would do well to recall that he was a pioneer of the docudramatic style with such memorable wartime outings as The Foreman Went to France (1942), San Demetrio, London (1944) and Johnny Frenchman (1945).

Abandoned by her father, while her mother is serving a prison sentence, 14 year-old Annette Whiteley has become increasingly difficult for the local authorities to handle. It's with some reluctance, therefore, that Rachel Roberts and James Maxwell accept the suggestion of social worker Ellen McIntosh and agree to offer Whiteley a foster home. Having lost their own daughter, the couple are determined to do their best for the teenager and realise her behaviour is largely down to her tough upbringing. But, while youngsters John Dore and Michael Clarke introduce Whiteley to the family dog, Roberts has numerous stand-up rows with her (particularly after she is accused of bullying at school) and she even accuses her of flirting with Maxwell so he takes her side.

As in Thornton Freeland's rather patronising probation drama, Dear Mr Prohack (1949), everything works out in the end. However, this is more persuasively rooted in reality, even though it is always closer in tone to the kind of well-intentioned problem picture that Basil Dearden and Michael Relph had produced in the 1950s than harder hitting kitchen sink fare like Karel Reisz's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), in which Roberts had excelled opposite Albert Finney. She dominates the action and Whiteley does well to give the impression she could cause such a formidable woman any anguish. But she lacks the personality that enabled the slightly older Rita Tushingham to make such a credible rebel in Tony Richardson's Shelagh Delaney adaptation, A Taste of Honey (1961).

THE GREAT GAME (1953).

Despite it being the national sporting passion, football has always been poorly served by British film-makers. Thorold Dickinson persuaded Herbert Chapman to parade some superstars from his all-conquering side in the 1939 whodunit, The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, but the limited nature of Maurice Elvey's ambitions in adapting Basil Thomas's play, Shooting Star, is betrayed by the fact that he filmed at Griffin Park and could only muster a few Brentford players to add a touch of authenticity to a threadbare scenario.

Since becoming chairman of Burnville United, James Hayter has neglected his printing business and now both are facing a crisis. His beloved team are losing a relegation battle and his wheeling and dealing has alienated several members of the squad. However, in poaching striker Glyn Houston from United's deadliest rivals, he breaks rules that could have serious repercussions for the club. And things get no better when he is forced out to concentrate on his day job.

Although this is more a melodrama than a comedy, it's difficult to avoid making comparisons with the `Golden Gordon' episode of the cult TV series Ripping Yarns, in which Michael Palin plays a die-hard fan who summons veterans of the great 1922 XI to prevent Barnstoneworth United from going into liquidation after a derby clash with Denley Moor. Few will recognise such Bees stalwarts as Jackie Goodwin, Reg Newton and George Lowden, although some might spot future West Ham and England manager Ron Greenwood and player-manager Tommy Lawton. And who could miss Stanley Matthews (in the year of his famous FA Cup Final) in the Blackpool side lining up against Burnville?

Most eyes, however, will be on Diana Dors, as Hayter's voluptuous secretary (watch for John Lurie's expression when he first spots her in the crowd), although the real acting is done by Thora Hird, as his long-suffering assistant. Geoffrey Toone, Frank Pettingell and Meredith Edwards also show to advantage, as does Hayter who strays from his avuncular Pickwick-Kipling persona to play a buffoon, who is undone by his own self-serving pomposity.

HER PRIVATE HELL (1967).

Although Britain became the centre of the musical world in the 1960s, its film industry failed to keep pace. Despite starting the decade well with the social realist revolution and the launch of the James Bond franchise, the long-anticipated boom evaporated when the cash-strapped Hollywood studios withdrew their investment and indigenous producers were forced to emulate the Carry Ons or follow the likes of George Harrison Marks in trying to create a grindhouse scene similar to the one established in the United States by such nudie cutie pioneers as Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Joseph W. Sarno.

Bankrolled by arthouse distributor Bachoo Sen and cinema owner Richard Schulman, Her Private Hell was the first UK attempt at narrative porn and was designed as much to test the waters with the British Board of Film Censors as make a fortune. But Norman J. Warren's directorial debut proved hugely popular with Soho audiences and it ran for over a year at the Cameo-Royal, a former newsreel venue in Charing Cross Road that had started showing exotic X certificate movies with the Brigitte Bardot vehicle Mam'selle Striptease in 1956.

Written by Glynn Christian (who would go on to be the resident chef on the BBC's Breakfast Time), the story is pretty crude. Italian beauty Lucia Modugno arrives in London hoping to become a fashion model, but falls in with sleazy operators Robert Crewdson and Pearl Catlin, who hook her up with photographer Terence Skelton. Any hope Modugno has of finding love and fame are quickly dashed when rival snapper Daniel Oliver makes a play for her and envious pin-ups Jeannette Wild and Mary Land are delighted when a topless shot gets into the public domain and Modugno seems certain to be dragged into the seedy milieu of excess and exploitation.

Although she had debuted as a partisan in Roberto Rossellini's General della Rovere (1959), Lucia Modugno had been restricted to bit parts such as the wounded saloon girl in Sergio Corbucci's Navajo Joe (1966), the drug guinea pig in Massimo Mida's LSD - Inferno per pochi dollari (1967) and a nurse and a prostitute in the Mario Bava pairing of The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and Danger: Diabolik (1968). She plays the naïf capably here, although the screenplay has her make too many recklessly foolish decisions for this to feel like a completely authentic insight into the skin trade. The support performances are solid rather than inspired, but Peter Jesson's camerawork and John Scott's first time score are as notable as the direction, although Warren would quit smut for gore after completing Loving Feeling later the same year.

THE HIGH BRIGHT SUN (1964).

Although pictures like Basil Dearden's Victim (1961) and Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963) and King and Country (1964) had shown audiences a different side of Dirk Bogarde, he was still considered the Rank Organisation's No1 pin-up. Consequently, he continued to be cast in prestige projects like this adaptation of a novel by Ian Stuart Black, which examined the EOKA uprising against the British administration of Cyprus in the 1950s. But, while Ralph Thomas was a laudably versatile director, his commercial instincts prompted him to focus more on the melodramatic romance than the contentious politics.

Arriving on the Mediterranean island to visit friends, American archaeology student Susan Strasberg is surprised to find they are harbouring freedom fighter George Chakiris, who is wanted as a terrorist by the British authorities. Intelligence officer Dirk Bogarde suspects that Strasberg knows the fugitive's whereabouts, but his questioning convinces Chakiris that she has betrayed him and he threatens to kill her. Bogarde offers Strasberg sanctuary in his quarters. But his superiors discover the arrangement and have him transferred to Greece, only for Strasberg and Chakiris to follow him.

As one would expect of a Betty Box production (which was also variously known as McGuire Go Home! and A Date With Death), this looks splendid. Cinematographer Ernest Stewart captures the harsh beauty of the Cypriot landscape without reducing it to postcard vistas, while the cast remains watchable, in spite of the clash between Strasberg's Method mannerisms and the more classical screen naturalism of Bogarde and Chakiris. But the dialogue is heavy with portentous expository speeches and few modern viewers will identify with Thomas's sympathetic attitude to colonialism.

HUNTED (1952).

Dirk Bogarde retained a soft spot for this cross-country thriller, which bears more than a passing resemblance to regular collaborator Ralph Thomas's The Clouded Yellow (1951) - which, itself, owed more than a little to Alfred Hitchcock's John Buchan adaptation, The 39 Steps (1935). Ironically, the 1993 Kevin Costner vehicle, A Perfect World, borrowed from Charles Crichton's picture (which was released Stateside as Stranger in Between), which only goes to prove that there are very few original ideas where movies are concerned.

Terrified of being punished by foster parents Kay Walsh and Frederick Piper for accidentally setting light to the kitchen curtains, six year-old orphan Jon Whiteley flees across a London still pocked with wartime bombsites. In his panic, he stumbles into Dirk Bogarde, who is disposing of the body of wife Elizabeth Sellars's lover. Realising he can't leave a witness to murder behind, Bogarde plays on Whiteley's conviction he has burned the house down to coax him into heading north and the boy slowly comes to trust the stranger as they pass through Stoke en route to the Scottish coast and a passage to Ireland.

Briskly directed by the ever-capable Crichton, this errs too much towards sentimentality in the last reel to convince entirely. But Eric Cross's use of landmark and shadow gives the action a noirish feel that is reinforced by the unfussy depiction of the police pursuit led by Geoffrey Keen. Initially treating the other with watchful disdain, Bogarde and Whiteley forge an increasingly credible bond, as the extent of their mutual reliance dawns. They would reunite four years later on what proved to be the boy's final feature, The Spanish Gardener, but they couldn't replicate the affecting chemistry that had contemporary audiences reaching for the tissues when Bogarde sacrifices himself to save his ailing companion.

MERMAIDS OF TIBURON (1962).

John Lamb made his name as an underwater photographer on such hit TV shows as Sea Hunt and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. However, he also had ambitions to become a director and this low-budget flesh fest launched him on a career that would see him periodically adopt the pseudonyms MC von Hellen, Harry Z. Ross and John Haynes in realising such salacious offerings as The Raw Ones (1965), Mondo Keyhole (1966), Little Women Get Ahead (1970) and Sexual Liberty Now (1971). Mermaids of Tiburon remained his favourite, however, as he returned to it twice to add new footage of topless models bobbing about in rubber tails.

The story is merely a pretext for the nudity. Marine biologist George Rowe is sceptical when ageing scientist John Mylong shows him a colour-changing flame pearl he claims came from the waters off La Pez in Mexico. When Mylong disappears (leaving only a cracked monocle behind), Rowe suspects foul play and heads south of the border to investigate. However, in addition to making the acquaintance of Mermaid Queen Diane Webber, Rowe also falls foul of the grasping Timothy Carey, who has tracked him from Mylong's house and is even prepared to feed sidekick Jose Gonzales-Gonzales to a shark if it means discovering the secret location of the pearl beds.

By all accounts, there was little nudity in the original release, as Lamb indulged his passion for photographing marine life. But he returned to the movie in 1964 and used newly inserted shots of Gaby Martone to promote his retitled opus, The Aqua Sex. Twenty-three years later, Lamb plumbed the depths by adding previously unseen images of Webber alongside acolytes Nani Morrissey, Judy Edwards, Vicki Kantenwine, Jean Carroll and Diana Cook. One presumes this is the `Nude Version' proclaimed in the credits, although it's far from clear.

What is evident, however, is that Carey is the only member of the cast who can act, even though he is either inebriated, disinterested or both. The underwater imagery is undeniably accomplished and it could be argued that there is something hypnotic and even balletic about Webber and Martone's solo spots. But this is grindhouse fodder, pure and simple.

MR DISTRICT ATTORNEY (1947).

Peter Lorre is one of those actors whose mere presence can enliven even the most mundane movie. William Morgan's Mr District Attorney is a case in point, as before Lorre makes his entrance, this is a lightweight legal romp that appears to be drifting into romcom territory before the lugubrious Hungarian turns it into something altogether darker.

Profiting from a family connection, Harvard Law graduate Dennis O'Keefe lands a job with DA Stanley Ridges and quickly incurs the wrath of his colleagues when his courtroom blunder results in gangster Ben Welden being freed on a technicality. He is assigned a closed case involving vanished politician Peter Lorre and some embezzled public funds.

But, when marked dollars turn up at the local racetrack, Ridges recognises an opportunity to nail both Lorre and society lawyer Minor Watson and the sideline O'Keefe finds himself teaming with reporter Florence Rice to investigate a charge of assault brought by Joan Blair against her bank teller boyfriend, Charles Arnt. Naturally, the cases are linked and the bungling O'Keefe succeeds only in smoking Lorre out of his lair to go on a killing spree that culminates in his own dockside shooting by deceived wife Helen Brown and a cross-town car chase that sees O'Keefe and Rice emerge as unlikely heroes.

Inspired by a radio series penned by Phillips Lord, the action is brisk enough and O'Keefe (who never really built on his `discovery' by Clark Gable and ended up in television) makes a serviceable lead. But the shift from the playful Thin Man-like tone of the opening to the increasingly murky noirishness of the climax is somewhat cumbersome. Moreover, it keeps the mesmerising Lorre off the screen for far too long.

MISS TULIP STAYS THE NIGHT (1955).

Half a century before she appeared in this misfiring comedy whodunit, Cicely Courtneidge made her West End debut and six years later she fell for co-star Jack Hulbert. In the 1930s, Courtneidge and Hulbert were among the most popular double acts in British show business. But, by 1955, all eyes were on Diana Dors, who was making her last appearance in a low-budget Adelphi picture en route to becoming Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe.

In fact, Dors has little to do here but pout and preen as the plot largely passes her by. She plays the wife of crime writer Patrick Holt, who extends hospitality to Courtneidge after she knocks on the door of a remote country cottage in the dead of night. She asks Holt to look after a gun and some jewellery, but both are missing the following morning. Moreover, Courtneidge has been murdered.

Inspector Joss Ambler arrives to investigate with sergeant George Roderick and Hulbert's slow-fitted plod, who immediately accuses Holt of the crime. However, he is utterly flummoxed when Courtneidge's twin sister turns up out of the blue and is grateful for Holt's assistance in identifying the culprit.

Even with AE Matthews, Ida Patlanski and Brian Oulton bolstering the cast, this is a pretty feeble affair. Veteran director Leslie Arliss allows his ageing stars to mug at every opportunity and fails to generate an iota of suspense. But there are a couple of knowing nods at the reliance of mystery authors on contrivance and cliché, with the poison pen subplot suggesting the barbs were aimed more at Agatha Christie than such contemporaries as Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.

NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL (1955).

The sound of rattling guns, screeching tyres and snappy slang made the gangster movie a firm favourite in the early sound era. However, the enforcement of the Production Code after 1934 meant that crime could no longer appear glamorous, let alone profitable, and tough guys like Rico Bandello (Little Caesar), Tom Powers (The Public Enemy) and Tony Camonte (Scarface) disappeared from American screens. The Estes Kefauver hearings on organised crime in the early 1950s allowed Hollywood to focus on a new breed of mobster, however, and the Syndicate picture was born.

Adapted by Clarence Greene from a 1948 bestseller by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, Russell Rouse's pacy study of East Coast chicanery forms a link between the Warners cycle and Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy in showing how power no longer lay with mavericks and kingpins, but with ruthless empires that respected the code of the old Sicilian families until it became bad for business. Even more damningly, it highlighted the connection between the underworld and Washington and how policies could be made or marred by graft.

Broderick Crawford is an old-fashioned gang boss, who is too set in his ways to notice that the tide has started turning. He lives in luxury with mother Celia Lovsky, wilful daughter Anne Bancroft and mistress Marilyn Maxwell and expects goons like J. Carroll Naish and Mike Mazurki to do as they are told. Even new bodyguard Richard Conte (whom he hires on the recommendation of Chicago rival Onslow Stevens) is expected to obey orders. Thus, he resists the attentions of both Bancroft and Maxwell and disciplines a couple of bungling palookas after they botch a hit on political lobbyist William Forrest, after he bails on a lucrative shipping deal. But, both Crawford and Conte know the score when Mazurki evades their clutches and squeals to the Feds.

Production Designer Fernando Carrere, cinematographer Eddie Fitzgerald, editor Grant Whytock and composer Joseph Mullendore may not be familiar names, but they make accomplished contributions to this effective exposé that puts a Greek tragic spin on a Five Boroughs melodrama. Crawford is in typically blustering form as the loose cannon undone by his inability to control Bancroft and his grief at her car crash death. But it's Conte's chilling downplaying as the corporate assassin that most impresses, especially as Rouse makes his dispassionate efficiency all the more chilling by shooting it in a coolly detached manner that contrasts starkly with the flash-cut shakicam montages that modern directors have imported from video games in the mistaken belief they are somehow more visceral and closer to life.

THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER (1949).

The British Board of Film Censors insisted on a change to the ending of Anthony Pélissier's adaptation of DH Lawrence's novella. Yet it retains much of the original's disgust at bourgeois cupidity and imprudence and its reissue in the depths of a recession seems particularly timely.

Dismissing husband Hugh Sinclair's admonition for blithely exceeding the family budget, Valerie Hobson borrows from wealthy brother Ronald Squire in order to keep up appearances and sustain her sense of superiority over her neighbours. However, everyone at Squire's club knows that his sister is in debt and son John Howard Davies is so mortified by her reaction to a visit from bailiff Cyril Smith and a trip to Charles Goldner's pawnshop that he vows to find a means of satisfying her petulant demand that `there must be more money'. But, while handyman John Mills is initially willing to help the boy place bets on the winners he predicts while riding his rocking horse, he comes to recognise the enormous physical and psychological strain he endures in bankrolling his mother's excesses.

Sandwiched between eponymous turns in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) and Gordon Parry's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951), this is easily the best performance that John Howard Davies gave during his brief career as a child star before he became a producer of pioneering television comedy. He is aided considerably by Pélissier's inspired use of subjective perspective, which was achieved by John Seabourne's deft cutting between the canted angles employed by cinematographer Desmond Dickinson in capturing both facial close-ups and the fleeting glimpses of Carmen Dillon's disconcertingly stylised sets. His adult co-stars are also admirable, with Hobson particularly impressing as the spendthrift whose snobbery blinds her to the misery she inflicts upon those who love her most.

Once hailed as an exemplar of how to adapt a literary property, this also supports Graham Greene's contention that short stories were more suitable for translation from page to screen than novels. Slight criticism can be levelled at John Mills for exploiting his position as producer to have his part as the kindly menial expanded, especially as his portrayal seems overly influenced by that of Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol (1948), Carol Reed's take on Greene's tale of another servant befriending a young charge (albeit for an altogether more sinister reason).

THE SHAKEDOWN (1959).

Complete with a brassy Philip Green score that sounds lifted from a Hollywood noir, this is a sturdy second feature from John Lemont that centres on the same cheesecake racket explored eight years later from the model's perspective in Her Private Hell. Given the easy accessibility of pornography in the Internet era, it's intriguing to see the risks that outwardly respectable gentlemen were prepared take to indulge their interest in amateur photography. Yet, for all its bristling sense of seediness and insight into what now seems a rather quaint world of lust and exploitation, this is necessarily a formulaic exercise in ensuring that crime does not pay.

Newly released from a three-year stretch for pimping, Terence Morgan heads back to Soho to demand his share of the business that has been appropriated in his absence by Harry H. Corbett. Undeterred by threats of reprisal unless he makes himself scarce, Morgan steals Corbett's takings and hires alcoholic photographer Donald Pleasence to run a model school in the studio he uses as a front for blackmailing the members of a saucy snaps club run from Eddie Byrne's bar.

Convinced that Morgan is up to no good, Scotland Yard inspector Robert Beatty sends Hazel Court undercover to investigate and she quickly catches the boss's eye. However, he is distracted from her snooping by the discovery that Corbett has also planted a mole in the agency and the reluctance of shaken down bank manager John Salew to pay for the negatives of peephole shots depicting him posing a half-naked blonde. With no hard evidence to go on, Beatty becomes concerned for Court's safety and his hand is forced when Morgan's oppo (Bill Owen) learns she's a WPC.

Somewhat surprisingly containing a peekaboo topless photo and a couple of swearwords, this is definitely a little racy for its day. Moreover, there's a knowing toughness about the performances of Morgan, Corbett and Owen that compensates for Beatty's rather laboured flatfooting and the amusingly demure demeanour of Court's companions on the modelling course. Thus, while the plot offers few surprises and the denouement is somewhat far-fetched, this has a ring of tacky authenticity that could easily be updated by an enterprising director to accommodate websites, laptops and smartphones.

THE SPY IN BLACK (1939).

Released just days before the Nazi invasion of Poland, this gripping tale of Great War espionage marked the first outing of one of the greatest teams in British cinema history. No one inside Alexander Korda's London Films was particularly enthusiastic about Roland Pertwee's adaptation of J Storer Clouston's 1917 novel. So Korda commissioned a second draft from fellow Hungarian Emeric Pressburger and his ideas coincided so closely with those of director Michael Powell that each recognised a kindred spirit. Powell already had 25 titles to his credit, while Pressburger had enjoyed moderate success in his domestic industry and in Paris. But, as The Archers, they would be responsible for some of the most visually striking pictures ever produced in this country.

With its emphasis on the worthy German adversary, this anticipates themes that would recur in both 49th Parallel (1941) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). However, neither Eric Portman nor Anton Walbrook quite matched the sense of dogged devotion to duty exhibited by Conrad Veidt as the U-boat commander sent from Kiel to the Orkneys to sink a British convoy. Yet Veidt allows personal feelings to blunt his purpose after he falls for Valerie Hobson, whom he presumes is the contact who has replaced kidnapped schoolteacher June Duprez. In fact, she is the wife of Sebastian Shaw, who is posing as the naval lieutenant whose disaffection has prompted him to betray secrets to the enemy. But their plan to lure Veidt into a trap is confounded by the accidental meddling of a couple of clergymen and all seems lost when he commandeers a ferry and sets course for a rendezvous with his crew.

From the opening exchanges between Veidt and comrade Marius Goring, it's clear that this is more a study of the military mind than a simplistic exercise in flagwaving propaganda. Veidt excels and is splendidly supported by an expert cast and the usually prissy Hobson, as the plucky heroine. But it is Pressburger's eschewal of caricature that makes the action so persuasive, while the psychological complexity of the villain, as well as the shifts between wry humour and pulsating suspense, are positively Hitchcockian. Moreover, Powell makes evocative use of the island setting, which knew from Edge of the World (1937) and would entice him back again for I Know Where I'm Going! (1945).

THE STORY OF SHIRLEY YORKE (1948).

Adapted from the largely forgotten HA Vachell play The Case of Lady Camber, this hoary melodrama probably felt antediluvian on its first release. Yet the cast is so earnest and Maclean Rogers directs with such guileless conviction that the flashbacking story sneaks past the trash detectors to make highly engaging viewing.

Flicking through the pages of her journal, Dinah Sheridan recalls the train of events that resulted in her being accused of murder. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, she was engaged to the handsome Derek Farr, who was about to be posted to India with his regiment. However, when her father is accidentally killed during Farr's farewell fox hunt, he abandons her on realising she has inherited nothing but debts.

Despondent at being unable to find a job, Sheridan is only prevented from stumbling in front of a London bus by a watchful policeman, who takes her to a nearby café for a restorative cup of coffee. Embarrassed at being unable to pay, Sheridan accepts the charity of Margaretta Scott, who urges her to train as a nurse at the hospital where she is a matron. Relieved to have found a worthwhile vocation, Sheridan excels at her duties and is made a sister at Bruce Seton's field clinic during the war.

Here, she is reunited with the wounded Farr and believes his excuse that his letters must have been misdirected after his unit was transferred to Aden. But Sheridan finally realises what a cad he is when she returns home to discover he has married heiress Beatrix Thompson. Encouraged by Scott to dedicate herself to medicine, Sheridan accepts a post as assistant to doctor John Robinson, who is conducting final tests on a miracle heart drug. However, when she arrives at a rambling country pile to administer a course of treatment that could give the cure the publicity it requires, Sheridan is horrified to discover that her prestigious patient is none other than Thompson, whose possessive cousin, ?? Couper, suspects a past connection between the attentive nurse Thompson trusts so implicitly and her now-ennobled husband.

There's no point denying that the narrative feels as though it has been plucked from a penny dreadful or that the acting occasionally dips below amdram standards. But Eleanor Summerfield and Charles Hawtrey show well in the wartime sequence, while Sheridan and Farr play the hackneyed roles of waif and bounder with laudable gravitas. Even more fascinating are the performances of Thompson and Couper, with the former demonstrating a gift for mimicry that facilitates a wondrous plot contrivance and the latter doing her level best to match the simmering fury exhibited by Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940).

At the outset, Renown apologises for the quality of the print. But such is the guilty pleasure to be had from this unabashed potboiler that most viewers will forgive the odd fuzzy image and missing frame.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1935).

Alexandre Dumas's classic novel had been filmed several times during the silent era, with the most notable version being the 19??20 Douglas Fairbanks vehicle. Unfortunately, the first sound adaptation proved to be much less memorable, with Rowland V. Lee occupying the director's chair that had been vacated by either John Ford or John Cromwell, depending on which source you read. The replacement of the dashing Francis Lederer with the prosaic Walter Abel as D'Artagnan similarly enervated a project that trots through the familiar story with precision, but never panache.

Bound for Paris with the ambition of becoming a King's Musketeer, D'Artagnan falls foul of the Comte de Rochefort (Ian Keith) in protecting Milady de Winter (Margot Grahame) from highwaymen. Moreover, no sooner has he arrived in the capital than the swaggering Gascon challenges a trio of Musketeers - Athos (Paul Lukas), Porthos (Moroni Olsen), and Aramis (Onslow Stevens) - to simultaneous duels. He is fortunate, therefore, that they are amused by his mettlesome braggadocio and agree to assist when he learns from his landlord's ward Constance (Heather Angel) that De Rochefort is plotting to accuse Queen Anne (Rosamond Pinchot) of conspiring with her lover, the Duke of Buckingham (Ralph Forbes), to cause a war between France and England. With Milady blackmailed into aiding De Rochefort, everything depends upon D'Artagnan retrieving the queen's purloined diamonds not only to allay the suspicions of Louis XIII and his minister, Cardinal Richelieu, but also to preserve their power.

D'Artagnan is a plum role, but the willing Abel simply lacks the gymnastic geniality of a Gene Kelly, the tousled elegance of a Michael York or the ?? of a ??. Sadly, Lukas, Olsen and Stevens are hardly a supporting dream team, either. Consequently, apart from some competent sword stunts, Keith's bullish villainy and the Oxford-born Angel's trusting sweetness, this has little to recommend it.

VIOLENT PLAYGROUND (1958).

As is frequently stated in this column, Basil Dearden was the doyen of the postwar problem picture and he took Reg Johnson's camera to Gerard Gardens in Liverpool for this early example of the juvenile delinquency drama. Hollywood had resisted suggesting that teenagers were no longer rascally Andy Hardys or swooning bobbysoxers, but the success of features like The Wild Ones (1954), The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (1956) revealed the box-office potential of kids with attitude and James Kennaway finally unleashed their British equivalents in this typically sincere slice of Dearden realism, which was inspired by an actual initiative by Merseyside police in 1949.

Copper Stanley Baker has volunteered to become a Juvenile Liaison Officer, but while kindly parish priest Peter Cushing supports his softly softly approach towards the waifs and strays on his patch, it has incurred the disdain of Sergeant John Slater, Superintendant Moultrie Kelsall.and Chief Inspector George A. Cooper. Twentysomething Anne Heywood also responds positively to his benevolence when he apprehends her shoplifting siblings Brona and Fergal Boland. However, their brother,.David McCallum, is a more unregenerate tearaway and Baker faces a struggle to handle things his own way when his colleagues become increasingly convinced that McCallum is behind a spate of arson attacks.

Despite capturing the mood of a city still bearing the scars of Luftwaffe air raids, Dearden and Kennaway rather soft soap what should have been an uncompromising study of street life in a tough port feeling the brunt of postwar austerity. Moreover, they miss the irreverent wit that has long been a Scouse trademark in peddling the community policing concept that Dearden had done so much to promote in The Blue Lamp (1950). Nevertheless, the performances are credible and, in including Michael Chow and Tsai Chin among the likely lads, they also provide what was then a rare insight into the status of immigrants in urban neighbourhoods. It should also be noted that Dearden gave an acting debut to one Fred Fowell, who would go on to find fame as madcap comedian Freddie Starr.