Top 50 British Films

While in London this summer I met two young filmmakers during a night out in Soho. She was from the Ukraine; he, I think, from Italy, and we discussed cinema and our favourite films, mine being largely Russian, Swedish, Italian, French and Japanese, with also, more recently, Iranian and Chinese. When the lamentable state of contemporary British cinema came up I told them that, although it’s been many years since anything other than cinematic dross and woke propaganda came out of these culturally barren isles, Britain does, in fact, have a cinematic tradition. They expressed their doubts about this, so I promised to send them a list of my Top 50 British films. I lost them in the small hours of the morning and never sent them the list, but on the off chance they manage to track me down, and for those interested in the cinematic past that’s being erased from the rewritten history of Britain, here is my list.

1. Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times, 1936
2. Laurence Olivier, Henry V, 1941
3. David Lean, Brief Encounter, 1945
4. Carol Reed, The Third Man, 1949
5. Anthony Asquith, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1952
6. Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo, 1958
7. Tony Richardson, The Entertainer, 1960
8. Karel Reisz, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960
9. Jack Clayton, The Innocents, 1961
10. Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow-up, 1966
11. John Schlesinger, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967
12. Ken Russell, Women in Love, 1969
13. Mike Hodges, Get Carter, 1971
14. Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
15. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Sleuth, 1972
16. Peter Hall, The Homecoming, 1973
17. Sidney Lumet, The Offence, 1973
18. Nicolas Roeg, Don’t Look Now, 1973
19. Fred Zinneman, The Day of the Jackal, 1973
20. Ken Loach, Days of Hope, 1975
21. John Huston, The Man Who Would Be King, 1975
22. Philip Saville, Count Dracula, 1977
23. Ridley Scott, The Duellists, 1977
24. Terry Jones, The Life of Brian, 1979
25. Peter Yates, The Dresser, 1983
26. Alan Bridges, The Shooting Party, 1984
27. Michael Radford, Nineteen Eighty-four, 1984
28. Terry Gilliam, Brazil, 1985
29. David Hare, Wetherby, 1985
30. Derek Jarman, Caravaggio, 1986
31. Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, 1987
32. Christine Edzard, Little Dorrit, 1987
33. Terence Davies, Distant Voices, Still Lives, 1988
34. Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, 1990
35. Neil Jordan, The Crying Game, 1992
36. Mike Leigh, Naked, 1993
37. James Ivory, The Remains of the Day, 1993
38. Danny Boyle, Trainspotting, 1996
39. Gary Oldman, Nil by Mouth, 1997
40. Lynne Ramsay, Ratcatcher, 1999
41. Winterbottom, Wonderland, 1999
42. Peter Watkins, La Commune (de Paris 1871), 2000
43. Tomas Alfredson, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, 2011
44. Steve McQueen, Shame, 2011
45. Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin, 2013
46. Richard Eyre, King Lear, 2018

I’ve restricted myself to one film per director, otherwise I’d include Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931); and Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963); and probably second films by several other directors: Olivier’s Richard III (1955), Richardson’s A Taste of Honey (1961), Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Lumet’s The Hill (1965), Loach’s Kes (1969), Russell’s The Devils (1971), Jones and Gilliam’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981); Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1996); Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000) and McQueen’s Lovers Rock (2020), which would push my list to 63 films.

As the examples of Chaplin and Hitchcock show, I’ve also been fairly loose with what constitutes a ‘British’ film. Although produced in the US, it’s the genius of their British directors that make these films great. The same applies to Watkins’ La Commune (de Paris 1871) (2000), a French film made by a British director. At the same time, I’ve claimed the genius of an Italian and an American director, Antonioni and Kubrick, for, respectively, Blow-up (1966) and A Clockwork Orange (1971), both of which are very British films that captured the London of the 1960s and 1970s. The same applies to the Swedish director, Tomas Alfredson, whose Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), set in England, has a screenplay by English writers and English actors. I suppose, in return, I wouldn’t object to the Italians (as if they needed more directors!) claiming Roeg’s Venice-set Don’t Look Now (1973). For me, Reed’s The Third Man, dominated by Orson Welles and with Joseph Cotten in the lead, is an American film, despite its British director; but I’ve included it anyway because Hollywood’s stolen so much of our talent and it’s nice to steal some back. Cleopatra, by the American director, Mankiewicz, despite starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is clearly a Hollywood blockbuster; but his last film, Sleuth (1972), starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine and written by an English playwright, is one of the great studies of the British class system, and is unthinkable, to me, as anything other than a British film. The same applies to Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975), an American-British co-production starring Michael Caine and Sean Connery. But I can’t extend my reach to the British director Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982), whose The Duellists (1977), however, starring Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine, has an ensemble cast of British actors to take the edge off its stars’ American accents in Napoleonic France.

Britain has a far richer theatrical tradition than cinematic history, and several of these films began as plays, but I’ve selected them for their qualities as films. This includes Olivier’s unparalleled adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V (1941), Asquith’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), Mankiewicz’s adaptation of Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth (1972), Hall’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming (1973), Lumet’s adaptation of John Hopkins’ This Story of Yours (adapted as The Offence, 1973); Stoppard’s adaptation of his own play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), and Eyre’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear (2018), the best version I’ve seen on stage or screen.

Strictly speaking, Ken Loach’s Days of Hope (1975) is a four-part television series, but in my opinion it’s the director’s best work, and far better than the rather sentimental films for which he’s known and celebrated. But I’ve stopped at adding the nine-part Our Friends in the North (1996), which is one of the best things the UK has produced. Philip Saville’s Count Dracula (1977) was made for television, but it’s easily the best adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, and a demonstration of how creativity can overcome a limited BBC budget. I’m afraid I’m not a fan of Powell and Pressburger, whose films usually rank high in such lists. Lists like this are always very personal, and these are my personal parameters.

Only one of my chosen films was made in the 1930s; three in the 1940s; two in the 1950s; seven in the 1960s; twelve in the 1970s; nine in the 1980s; eight in the 1990s; but only five in the new millennium, and none from this decade. This reflects, I think, not only my age and personal tastes in film but also the decline of cinema as an industry following the rise of online media, and its concomitant decline as an art form. As an example of which, I’ve only ever watched Peter Watkins’ La Commune (de Paris 1871) (2000) on YouTube and McQueen’s Lovers Rock on Netflix. There are, still, great films being made today, noticeably in Iran and China; but British cinema rarely rises above the woke propaganda to which all the arts have been reduced for some time now in the UK and, increasingly, across the West. You can read about this cultural decline in my latest book, Culture Wars: Art, Politics and Capitalism.