The near-incomprehensible plot (something about French and American agents trying to find out more about a Russian undercover group, directly involved with Cuba and working within the French security network) might appeal to devotees of Le Carré et al, but it certainly doesn't make for dramatically exciting cinema, especially given Hitchcock's flat, seemingly uninterested direction.

Only Streisand's second movie, but already (as co-star Matthau grumbled) she was hogging the screen. The trouble is that there isn't much to hog in this elephant which gave Star! a helping hoof in burying the Hollywood musical.

The widescreen effects are first-rate, as is Peck as the embattled controller, and the suspense builds remorselessly to a neat conclusion.

The acting is strident and overblown, the narrative technique gimmicky and obvious, and the implication that the competitors' situation is a microcosm of a wider-reaching American malaise (though safely distanced by the period and the flash-back-and-forth narrative technique) rather pretentious.

The recreation of the murder and the subsequent investigation uses the techniques of an American thriller to gripping effect, though conspiracies are so commonplace nowadays that it's hard to imagine the impact it made at the time.

It's all stirringly traditional stuff, with a lively supporting cast, and made very easy on the eye by William Clothier's camerawork.

Incredibly bloated remake, with Mrs Chips an ex-showgirl (allowing for some vacuous songs), a continental holiday (allowing for a travelogue wallow), and Herbert Ross (his first film as director), trying to match Wyler's choreographed camera movements on Funny Girl but failing to make them serve any meaningful purpose.

It is much better and funnier than the "The Sting" precisely because it allows the two stars to play off each other.

Pakula's debut as a director, two years before making Klute, is one of those rare American films which manage to be gently observational without succumbing to the Europeanism of Mazursky or Cassavetes.

Logan's rotund version of Lerner and Loewe's musical Western may lack actors (Presnell excepted) who can actually sing, but that's compensated for by a solid plot involving a farcical discovery of gold, and the growth of a mining town (No Name City) that develops from amoral shantydom to respectability and a holocaust.

Too often dismissed as modish, it's in fact a mostly very funny, insightful, gently romantic account of well-meaning couples.

The quintessential British caper film of the 1960s, The Italian Job is a flashy, fast romp that chases a team of career criminals throughout one of the biggest international gold heists in history.

A fascinating though not wholly successful fusion of cinéma-vérité and political radicalism.

Never very popular by comparison with Easy Rider probably because it suggested that dropping out was mere escapism, it has far greater depth and complexity to its curious admixture of feminist tract and pure thriller.

In purely cinematic terms, the film is a savagely beautiful spectacle, Lucien Ballard's superb cinematography complementing Peckinpah's darkly elegiac vision.

A nicely extravagant tale of horror.

It’s mostly Wayne all the way. He towers over everything in the film – actors, script [from Charles Portis’ novel], even the magnificent Colorado mountains. He rides tall in the saddle in this character role of ‘the fat old man.’

Treasure of the Sierra Madness.

A fringe Siegel Western (he spent two weeks finishing it off). The theme of a law and order marshal who has tamed a frontier town, only to become an embarrassment to the 'civilised' community, is sufficiently interesting for one to wonder what it would have been like if Siegel had done the whole thing.

A landmark American documentary, Salesman captures in vivid detail the bygone era of the door-to-door salesman.

One by one, all the Western clichés are turned upside down and reinvented, with William Bowers' fine script proliferating enough invention and wonderful gags to make one forgive the occasional sag.

From the moment the picture wobbles reluctantly on to the screen, this clearly demonstrates that the Baltimore boy was ahead of his time when it came to punk aesthetics and shock for shock's sake.

Herbie and his plucky stunt drivers steal the show in this agreeable family entertainment.

It may be devoid of significance of any sort, but it is nevertheless passably entertaining, and certainly better viewing than most MacLean adaptations

No masterpiece, but a generally underrated musical all the same.

A monumental hospital soap opera which looks exactly as though Kurosawa had taken a long look at Ben Casey and Dr Kildare, and decided that anything they could do he could do better.

Ken Adam's sets are inventive, but the special effects are shoddy, the songs instantly forgettable, and the leisurely length an exquisite torture.

Reed is craftsman enough to make an efficient family entertainment out of Lionel Bart's musical, but not artist enough to put back any of Dickens' teeth which Bart had so assiduously drawn.