Great British Icons

Enjoy some of the finest actors of the silver screen who gave us countless unforgettable performances over rich and illustrious careers.

  • The Mirror Crack'd

    When a Hollywood movie company arrives, stars in tow, to make a picture, the village of St Mary Mead is delighted. However, when a local woman is murdered, and the poison seems to have been intended for a visiting movie star, local detective Inspector Craddock (Edward Fox) turns to his Auntie, Mi...

  • The Fallen Idol

    Carol Reed followed the success of Odd Man Out (1947) with this adaptation of Graham Greene’s short story, The Basement Room. Young Felipe (a revelatory Bobby Henrey) is a son of a diplomat who is never around, who instead forms a friendship with his butler Baines (Ralph Richardson). Baines impre...

  • Kind Hearts and Coronets

    Dennis Price plays Louis, a young man snubbed by his aristocratic family as a result of his mother's marriage. When she's killed, Louis becomes determined to inherit the family title, and won't let anything or anyone stop him. With an unforgettable performance by Alec Guinness as all eight remain...

  • Evil under the Sun

    Peter Ustinov stars as Agatha Christie's immortal detective, Hercule Poirot, in this star-studded murder-mystery. Poirot is tying up some loose ends on a shimmeringly beautiful Adriatic island when he's dragged into the case of an actress' strangling. In typical Christie style, everyone on the be...

  • The Lion in Winter

    Christmas 1183. An elderly King Henry the Second (Peter O'Toole) is torn over naming his successor. He wants the young Prince John (Nigel Terry), one of his three sons, to take over, however, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) wants another of his sons, Prince Richard the Lio...

  • The Gold Diggers

    The ground-breaking first feature from the director of Orlando and The Tango Lesson, The Gold Diggers is a key film of early '80s feminist cinema. Made with an all-woman crew, featuring stunning photography by Babette Magolte and a score by Lindsay Cooper it embraces a radical and experimental na...

  • Two Way Stretch

    In Huntleigh prison, a group of cellmates (Peter Sellers, Bernard Cribbins and David Lodge) plan the perfect burglary. By escaping the day before their release, then breaking back in again, they will have the perfect alibi when they rob a maharajah's palace of its diamonds - they will seemingly n...

  • Darling

    When she meets a hip television director, a young woman is swept into the world of London's lavish sixties nightlife. However, her lust to belong to the scene doesn't even begin to quench her thirst for fun, as she drifts from clique to clique looking for an unattainable sense of belonging.

  • Brighton Rock

    Richard Attenborough is unforgettable as ‘Pinkie’, the brutal gangster who seduces and grooms a simple waitress, Rose (Carol Marsh) in the belief that she could incriminate him in a murder.

  • An Inspector Calls

    It is 1912, and the shadow of war looms over a wealthy family. As they celebrate their eldest daughter's engagement in their lavish Yorkshire manor, they're interrupted by an ominous police detective who is investigating a young woman's suicide, and what role each of them played in her death.

  • Friendship's Death

    Friendship (Tilda Swinton) has been sent to Earth on a peace mission. Heading for MIT, she inadvertently lands in Amman, Jordan during the 1970 ‘Black September’ war and is ushered to safety by journalist Sullivan (Bill Paterson). Holed up in a hotel as the conflict rages outside, the pair enter ...

  • Hobson's Choice

    The eldest daughter of a bullish shoemaker decides to set up a rival business with her father's best boot-hand, whom she also intends to marry. Charles Laughton and John Mills play off each other brilliantly as the bullish shop owner and gentle but confident boot-hand in this clever romantic come...

  • The Man Who Haunted Himself

    Conservative executive Harold Pelham (a harrowing and atypical performance by Roger Moore) is involved in a car accident and declared momentarily dead. When he's eventually released from the hospital, Pelham discovers that an exact double of him has recently been seen in places that he's never be...

  • London

    The first in Patrick Keiller’s highly imaginative trilogy of psycho-geographic journeys charts a trip through (and history of) London, as undertaken by our unseen narrator (Paul Scofield) and his companion, Robinson.

  • Robinson in Space

    Robinson in Space again finds Patrick Keller pushing the limits of British cinema to fascinating degrees with a rewarding and unparalleled pay-off. Robinson and his unseen companion, a narrator voiced by Paul Scofield, have been commissioned to investigate the 'problem' of England. The journey ta...

  • Robinson in Ruins

    Newly released from prison Robinson has been haunting the Oxfordshire countryside with a cine camera. Film cans and a notebook are later discovered. Shot during the 2008 financial crisis, this film-essay is a fictional account of a real project. Inspired by the work of Karl Polanyi, the film unse...

  • Zulu

    A gutsy tale of grace under pressure, Zulu celebrates true British grit in the hour of need. Stanley Baker and Michael Caine lead a depleted contingent of Welsh infantrymen in defending Rorke's Drift missionary station from the attack of 4,000 Zulu warriors. Released in the final months of the Br...

  • The Boys from Brazil

    The Boys From Brazil is a terrifying film about the perpetuation of a new race of Hitlers, based on Ira Levin's thrilling book of the same title. In the setting of 1970s South America, a notorious Nazi War criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), gathers a group of former Nazis to work on a co...

  • Magic

    A productive collaboration with William Goldman as writer and Anthony Hopkins as actor results in an unusually small-canvas story - a thriller on the theme of the ventriloquist whose dummy becomes a lethal alter ego. Director Richard Attenborough described it as ‘A game of creating characters and...