It's generally acknowledged that the Master of Suspense disliked costume dramas, and Jamaica Inn-a rip-roaring melodrama drawn from a Daphne du Maurier pot-boiler, set in 1820s Cornwall-is about as costumed as they come. So what was he doing directing it? Killing time, essentially. In 1939 Hitchcock was due to quit Britain for Hollywood, but delays Stateside left him with time on his hands. Never one to sit idle, he agreed to make one picture for Mayflower Productions, a new outfit formed by actor Charles Laughton and émigré German producer Erich Pommer. An innocent young orphan (the 19-year-old Maureen O'Hara in her first starring role) arrives at her uncle's remote Cornish inn to find it a den of reprobates given to smuggling, wrecking and gross overacting. They're all out-hammed, though, by Laughton at his most corseted and outrageously self-indulgent as the local squire to whom Maureen runs for help. Since his star was also the co-producer, Hitch couldn't do much with the temperamental actor. He contented himself with adding a few characteristic touches-including a spot of bondage (always a Hitchcock favourite), and the chief villain's final spectacular plunge from a high place-and slyly sending up the melodramatic absurdities of the plot. Jamaica Inn hardly stands high in the Master's canon, but it trundles along divertingly enough. Hitchcock fanatics will have fun comparing it with his two subsequent-and far more accomplished-du Maurier adaptations, Rebecca and The Birds. [+]

Johnnie Byrne is a 40 year old Labour Politician representing a North country industrial town. When his party is swept into power, he has to choose between his career and the young woman with whom he has started an affair. Finch was a wonderful actor and moves smoothly through the film as this cynical, rather seedy character.

Carol Reed (The Third Man) directed this 1965 portrait of the relationship between Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) and Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison), who commissioned the artist to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Based on a novel by Irving Stone, the script of The Agony and the Ecstasy plods along, juggling the dynamics between the two men along with a somewhat perfunctory love story and distracting battle sequences. Reed seems more attuned to the nuances and great pains of the artistic process, as seen in sequences of Michelangelo working. But the overall focus of the film is unfortunately fuzzy. -Tom Keogh.

One of the landmark early films of the French New Wave, director Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless) weaves a tale of desperation and deceit. Anna Karina (Vivre Sa Vie) plays a stripper determined to have a child in the hopes that it will better her life. She tries in vain to convince her rough, selfish boyfriend (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to father the child, but he refuses. In desperation and sparked by anger she turns to his best friend to father the child, setting off a new round of recrimination and betrayal. Une Femme Est une Femme is one of Godard's first films and essential viewing for fans of the Nouvelle Vague, to chart the beginnings of the detached mood and style that influenced a coming generation of films. -Robert Lane, Amazon. com.

As Victor Norman, Clark Gable plays a returning World War II veteran looking for a job with an advertising agency. He succeeds, landing a good position with a nice salary, but soon finds out that ethics and integrity are in short supply in the rarefied world of corporate advertising. With a big soap account on the brink of leaving the ad agency, things get a bit desperate as the agency struggles to hang onto the company's business. They round up a war widow for an endorsement, and their client is temporarily happy, but soon Gable finds the man to be a harsh and demanding taskmaster. This acerbic comedy may seem a little thin by today's standards but some of the commentary on the gullibility of the American-buying public is still pretty fresh half a century later. Sydney Greenstreet excels as the tyrannical, somewhat disgusting head of the soap firm and Deborah Kerr makes her American screen debut as Gable's war-widow love interest in The Hucksters. -Jerry Renshaw.

The most acclaimed film in cinema history, Citizen Kane receives extra bolstering each time it tops a "greatest films ever" list. As a piece of filmmaking it ticks all the right boxes: a precociously talented director and lead actor in Orson Welles, Gregg Toland's innovative cinematography, a strong screenplay by Welles and Herman J Mankiewicz, rich scoring from Bernard Herrmann, and so on. For its time, it was technically groundbreaking, and laid out a blueprint for Hollywood filmmaking that's still influential. But, most importantly, as a viewing experience it's still one of the most mesmerising and beautiful films in existence. From its opening scenes-Kane's eerie Gothic mansion, his lone figure muttering the word "Rosebud" as he dies, journalists discussing the newsreel footage of his obituary-Kane lays out an enigma: who exactly was this man? Looping flashbacks build up a portrait of a contradictory figure who, despite living in the public eye, remained a mystery at heart. A testament to the corrupting influence of money, fame and the media and at its centre the tale of a man in search of love, Citizen Kane is a personal tragedy on an epic scale. Technically, it's a lesson in filmmaking in itself whose daring aesthetics nonetheless remain unobtrusive. It's doubtful that a debut director will ever be given such free reign by a studio again and even if this happened, it's doubtful that such a masterpiece would be created. On the DVD: Citizen Kane in this DVD special edition is beautifully remastered and comes with a feature illustrating the before and after of the restoration process. A 50-minute documentary, "Anatomy of a Classic", hosted by Barry Norman, delves into the making of the film as well as trying to deal with some of the myths that surround it, like the (untrue) rumour that Welles ran over both time and budget. [+]