1. 1938 Pygmalion |  | Shaw's play in which a Victorian dialect expert bets that he can teach a
lower-class girl to speak proper English and thus be taken for a lady. Director: Anthony Asquith Stars: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller |
2. 1941 49th Parallel |  | A young and idealistic woman, who has adopted the Salvation Army and
whose father is an armament industrialist, will save more souls
directing her father's business. A comedy with social commentary. Director: Gabriel Pascal Stars: Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison |
3. 1941 Major Barbara |  | This "story of a ship," the British destroyer HMS Torrin, is told in flash backs by survivors as they cling to a life raft. Director: David Lean Stars: Noel Coward, John Mills |
4. 1942 In Which We Serve |  | When Nazi anti-aircraft fire damages a British bomber, its crew bails out and seeks help from the Dutch underground. Director: Michael Powell Stars: Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman |
5. 1942 One of Our Aircraft Is Missing |  | When Nazi anti-aircraft fire damages a British bomber, its crew bails out and seeks help from the Dutch underground. Director: Michael Powell Stars: Godfrey Tearle, Eric Portman |
6. 1946 Great Expectations |  | A humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor. Director: David Lean Stars: John Mills, Valerie Hobson |
7. 1948 Oliver Twist |  | Oliver Twist is about an orphan boy who runs away from a workhouse and
meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. Oliver is taken in by the
pickpocket and he joins a household of young boys who are trained to
steal for their master. Director: David Lean Stars: Robert Newton, Alec Guinness |
8. 1936 As You Like It |  | A duke usurps his brother's land and power, banishing him and his
retinue into the forest of Arden. The banished duke's daughter,
Rosalind, remains with her cousin Celia. Director: Paul Czinner Stars: Elisabeth Bergner, Laurence Olivier |
9. 1954 Hobson's Choice |  | Henry Hobson runs a successful bootmaker's shop in nineteenth-century
Salford. A widower with a weakness for the pub opposite, he tries
forcefully to run the lives of his three unruly daughters. Director: David Lean Stars: Charles Laughton, John Mills |
10. 1955 Summertime |  | A lonely American woman unexpectedly finds romance in Venice, Italy. Director: David Lean Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi |
11. 1957 The Bridge on the River Kwai |  | After settling his differences with a Japanese PoW camp commander, a
British colonel co-operates to oversee his men's construction of a
railway bridge for their captors - while oblivious to a plan by the
Allies to destroy it. Director: David Lean Stars: William Holden, Alec Guinness |
12. 1962 Lawrence of Arabia |  | Follows a brilliant, flamboyant and controversial British military figure and his conflicted loyalties during wartime service. Director: David Lean Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness |
13. 1965 Doctor Zhivago |  | The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to
another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences
hardship during the First World War and then the October Revolution. Director: David Lean Stars: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie |
14. 1970 Ryan's Daughter |  | Set in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, a married woman in a small
Irish village has an affair with a troubled British officer. Director: David Lean Stars: Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard |
15. 1984 A Passage to India |  | Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British
colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to
marry a city magistrate, and an English educator. Director: David Lean Stars: Judy Davis, Victor Banerjee |
16. 1933 The Ghost Camera |  | When a photograph is taken at the scene of a murder, the camera is
tossed out of a castle window to destroy the evidence and lands in the
back of a passing car belonging to chemist John Gray who becomes amateur
sleuth after developing the film and goes in search of the woman
captured by the photograph. Director: Bernard Vorhaus Stars: Henry Kendall, Ida Lupino |
17. 1934 Java Head |  | The port city of Bristol, England, in the 1800s is home to Java Head, a sailing ship line company. Director: Thorold Dickinson Stars: Anna May Wong, Elizabeth Allan |
18. 1934 The Secret of the Loch |  | A batty Scottish professor attempts to prove the existence of the Loch
Ness Monster, but everyone thinks he's crazy. Meanwhile, a foolish young
reporter attempts to get a scoop on the story. Director: Milton Rosmer Stars: Seymour Hicks, Nancy O'Neil |
19. 1934 Tiger Bay |  | A young Englishman abroad, Michael, visits the local low-life spot of
Tiger Bay to test his assertion that the spirit of human romance
survives even in the most unpromising of circumstances. Director: J. Elder Wills Stars: Anna May Wong, Henry Victor |
20. 1935 The Crouching Beast |  | In Constantinople in 1915, Gail Dunbar, an American newspaper reporter,
gets entangled in a spy network. Ahmed Bey, the head of the Turkish
secret service,is trying to recover the stolen plans of the Dardanelles
fortifications. Director: Victor Hanbury Stars: Fritz Kortner, Wynne Gibson |
21. 1937 Dreaming Lips |  | The wife of a violin player in a famous orchestra,
falls in love with her husband's friend and, tragically, drowns herself. Director: Paul Czinner Stars: Elisabeth Bergner, Raymond Massey |
22. 1937 The Last Adventurers |  | A skipper's daughter falls for a humble fisherman rescued by her father. Director: Roy Kellino Stars: Niall MacGinnis, Roy Emerton |
23. 1937 The Wife of General Ling |  | John Fenton, a British secret-service agent in China, is given the
assignment of learning how smugglers go undetected while delivering guns
into the interior for General Ling, a ruthless war lord. Director: Ladislao Vajda Stars: Griffith Jones, Valéry Inkijinoff |
24. 1940 Spies of the Air |  | Set just before the outbreak of WWII, this is the story of a test pilot
who works for the (unnamed) enemy. Made in 1939, by the time it was
released in 1940, war had been declared. Director: David MacDonald Stars: Barry K. Barnes, Joan Marion |
25. 1944 This Happy Breed |  | Noel Coward's attempt to show how the ordinary people lived between the
wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the
suburbs. Director: David Lean Stars: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson |
26. 1945 Blithe Spirit |  | Adapted from a play by Noel Coward, Charles and his second wife Ruth,
are haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira. Medium Madame Arcati
tries to help things out by contacting the ghost. Director: David Lean Stars: Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings |
27. 1945 Brief Encounter |  | Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband. Director: David Lean Stars: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard |
28. 1949 The Passionate Friends |  | The Passionate Friends were in love when young, but separated, and she
married an older man. Then Mary Justin meets Steven Stratton again and
they have one last fling together in the Alps. Director: David Lean Stars: Ann Todd, Trevor Howard |
29. 1950 Madeleine |  | The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she
delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her
long-standing affair with a Frenchman. Director: David Lean Stars: Ann Todd, Norman Wooland |
30. 1952 The Sound Barrier |  | Fictionalized story of British aerospace engineers solving the problem of supersonic flight. Director: David Lean Stars: Ralph Richardson, Ann Todd |
