In the opening scenes of Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg's satire on the dangers of television and advertising, Griffith's virtuoso, likeably irreverent performance makes for genuinely amusing viewing; but once he's mixing with the bigwigs, the film-makers' political messages start flying thick and fast, and the drama soon becomes overheated and unconvincing.

Passion, certainly, is lacking, and being a 'town' Western, it's all very conventionally domestic.

Too few films take on the art of arguing as a subject; we could certainly use more of them, but until then, Lumet’s window into strained civic duty will continue to serve mightily.

Not merely the best of Arnold's classic sci-fi movies of the '50s, but one of the finest films ever made in that genre.

Hitchcock's most sombre film, unrelieved by his usual macabre humour; the black-and-white photography and the persecuted Fonda's sharply chiselled features lend an impressive documentary feel.

Its erotic content now seems tame indeed; but the grotesquely caricatured performances and the evocation of the baking, dusty, indolent homestead make for witty and compelling viewing.

The acting is dynamite, the melodrama is compulsive, the photography, lighting, and design share a bold disregard for realism. It's not an old movie; it's a film for the future.

The pace is so plodding, and the general effect so stultifyingly unsubtle, that one is left impressed only by the fine landscape photography and Dean's surprisingly convincing portrayal of a middle-aged man.

Mike Todd's inflation of Jules Verne, with Niven as Phileas Fogg and the Mexican comedian Cantinflas as Passepartout, becomes an interminable travelogue interspersed with sketches in which star-spotting affords some relief (there are cameos from hordes of luminaries ranging from Dietrich and Beatrice Lillie to Keaton and Sinatra).

Throughout Lust for Life, Van Gogh, brilliantly portrayed by Kirk Douglas as a man forever on a knife-edge, struggles to explain himself to his family and to Anthony Quinn's Gauguin. However, Minnelli, with the colours he chooses - which follow those of the paintings - and with his dramatic counterpointing of events in Van Gogh's life with his canvases, undermines all explanations.

1956 was way too soon for an unfettered treatment of the central premise: an 8-year-old serial killer. On the other hand it was too late in Mervyn LeRoy's career for him still to command enough speed and style to overcome the staginess of it all.

A slightly misbegotten musical, but with many pleasures and Louis Armstrong, growing into sweet avuncularity.

Poor songs (Hello Young Lovers, Getting to Know You), fair choreography, poor script, nice photography.

Lent a stout overall unity by Ray Bradbury's intelligent adaptation, by colour grading which gives the images the tonal quality of old whaling prints, and by the discreet use of a commentary drawn from Melville's text which imposes the resonance of legend, it is often staggeringly good.

Like a zip-gun, cheap and effective.

Characteristically Kubrick in both its mechanistic coldness and its vision of human endeavour undone by greed and deceit, this noir-ish heist movie is nevertheless far more satisfying than most of his later work, due both to a lack of bombastic pretensions and to the style fitting the subject matter.

This replaces the British version's tight, economic plotting and quirky social observations with altogether glossier production values and a typically '50s examination of the family under melodramatic stress.

There is perhaps some discrepancy in the play between Wayne's heroic image and the pathological outsider he plays here, but it hardly matters, given the film's visual splendour and muscular poetry in its celebration of the spirit that vanished with the taming of the American wilderness.

This ballad of destruction reveals itself as one of the most exciting, enjoyable and moving of them all.

It's amazing how impressive Richard Wordsworth's performance remains.

Robson tries vainly to give the movie the look of a thriller with lots of shadows and bleak lighting, but Yordan consistently returns it to the field of melodrama by setting his drama in the home - as Bogart and his wife Sterling agonise over his job of exposing the fixed fights - rather than in the boxing ring.

An ingenious script, excellent special effects and photography, and superior acting (with the exception of Francis), make it an endearing winner.

Kurosawa’s eclectic style is a delight: his striking, varied compositions reflecting the old man’s journey from darkness to some kind of light right until the moving finale.

Whether you take [Olivier's] central performance on its own terms (as a 'definitive' reading of the part) or as high camp, it's undoubtedly interesting as a phenomenon.

A finely wrought image of terminal stasis, national, political (Charles Barr suggests the gang as the first post-war Labour government), and/or creative (the house as Ealing, Johnson as Balcon?). Whatever, Mackendrick immediately upped for America and the equally dark ironies of Sweet Smell of Success.

A film steeped in psychological realism, its rigorously compact plotting and stark, noir-influenced photography perfectly complementing the mounting sense of clammy, metaphysical dread.

If the film was clearly a sincere castigation of the militarist fervour that swept Japan during the war, it nevertheless suffers from its rather deliberate heart-warming tone and a too leisurely pace that tends to over-emphasise moments of pathos. That said, it is hard not to be swayed by the pacifist sentiments.

Sirk's second ostensible triangle drama with Stanwyck is, like the earlier All I Desire, a brilliant example of his mastery of lacerating irony.