BFI Screenonline: Seventh Veil, The (1945)
WEBOne of James Mason's most indelible contributions to British cinema was the moment in which he smashed his cane down on concert pianist Ann Todd's hands.Given the date (1945) and the motive (obsessive jealousy), it sounds as though it came from one of the many Gainsborough costume melodramas that helped establish Mason as the era's biggest British star, but The Seventh Veil was in fact made ...
BFI Screenonline: Seance On A Wet Afternoon (1964)
WEBSéance On A Wet Afternoon (d. Bryan Forbes, 1964) is easily the darkest, and maybe the finest, of the five films which Richard Attenborough and Bryan Forbes co-produced.Forbes adapted it from a 1961 novel by Mark McShane, a British-based crime writer whose penchant for odd titles resulted in such books as The Crimson Madness of Little Doom (1966), Ill Met by a Fish Shop in George Street (1968 ...
BFI Screenonline: Metro-Land (1973)
WEBMetro-Land is widely regarded as John Betjeman's television masterpiece, and it's easy to see why. Although it's based on what by 1973 was a very familiar formula, that of the newly-appointed Poet Laureate taking a train trip and examining points of interest along the way, the north-western branch of London's Metropolitan Line from Baker Street to Amersham and beyond offered an unusually large ...
BFI Screenonline: Hazell (1978-80)
WEBJames Hazell first appeared in the 1974 novel Hazell Plays Solomon, introducing himself as "The biggest bastard who ever pushed your bell-button."He was the creation of novelist and sports writer Gordon Williams and footballer-turned-manager Terry Venables, using the joint pseudonym 'P.B. Yuill'.In transferring his adventures to the small screen, producer June Roberts presented Hazell as a ...
BFI Screenonline: Looking For Langston (1989)
WEBWriter-director Isaac Julien describes Looking for Langston as neither documentary nor narrative, but a meditation on the gay black American poet Langston Hughes and the repressed lives of similar artists, as lived beyond the public gaze.. The film's opening is strikingly bold, starting with the words from Hughes' memorial mass over an image of the dead artist in his coffin (played by Isaac ...
BFI Screenonline: Big Pride, The (1961)
WEBScripted by Guyanese writers Jan Carew and Sylvia Wynter, The Big Pride is a powerful drama about the quest for freedom. Classically-trained American actor William Marshall and Senegalese-born Johnny Sekka play convicts, desperate to escape not just the physical bars of the prison cell but also an iniquitous social order that relegates them ...
Steptoe and Son (1962-74) - Screenonline
WEBSteptoe and Son (BBC, 1962-74) is among the most famous and influential programmes in the history of British television. Its popularity was such that, in the mid-1960s, half the UK population were regular viewers; in 1966, Harold Wilson pressured the BBC to move a transmission that he feared would affect the Labour election turnout.
Prime Suspect (1991-2006) - Screenonline
WEBGranada's BAFTA award-winning police drama is justifiably viewed as a benchmark in British television - the original's success paving the way for a string of similarly uncompromising TV crime series including Cracker (ITV, 1993-95), as well as five sequels.. Written by Lynda La Plante, the first Prime Suspect is above all a devastatingly effective suspense thriller which seeks to expose the ...
BFI Screenonline: March to Aldermaston (1959)
WEBThe Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's 1958 march from Trafalgar Square to the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Research Establishment. Show full synopsis. 1958's Easter march to Aldermaston enjoys landmark status in the annals of peaceful protest. Its filmed record is similarly recalled as a milestone for campaigning documentary.
BFI Screenonline: End of Part One (1979-80)
WEBThis surreal TV spoof came from the pens of Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, subsequently co-creators of Whoops Apocalypse (ITV, 1982) and Hot Metal (ITV, 1986-88). Although often described as a mix of sketch show and sitcom, End of Part One is really a sketch show in which the sitcom element is merely one of the sketches, albeit a recurring and extended one.