Thanks to the solid performances and fine camerawork, the film is not bad, merely professional.

The chemistry between Clift and Taylor is unmistakeable – this is one of the great cinematic portraits of untamed desire – and there’s a compelling sense of unavoidable destiny, of a societal trap slowly, inexorably snapping shut.

Ingeniously and inventively plotted, taut and unpretentious, the film dashes along at a furious pace, with a strong period feel and nicely understated performances, well served by Mann's straightforward direction.

Perhaps marginally less beguiling than Great Expectations, but still a moving and enjoyable account of Dickens' masterpiece, which gets off to a memorable start with Oliver's pregnant mother battling through the storm to reach the safety of the workhouse.

Very much in the manner of Meet Me in St Louis, though nowhere near as good. The charming golden oldie score, featuring an array of hummable standards to go with the title song, is a definite plus.

Significantly, Hitchcock didn't use much of Raymond Chandler's original script, because Chandler was too concerned with the characters' motivation. In place of that, Hitchcock erects a web of guilt around Granger, who 'agreed' to his wife's murder, a murder that suits him very well, and structures his film around a series of set pieces.

Set in the Broadway jungle rather than among the ‘sun-burnt eager beavers’ of Hollywood, Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film dissects the narcissism and hypocrisy of the spotlight as sharply as Wilder’s, but pays equal attention to the challenges of enacting womanhood.

It's all deliriously dark and nightmarish, its only shortcoming being its cynical lack of faith in humanity: only von Stroheim, superb as Swanson's devotedly watchful butler Max, manages to make us feel the tragedy on view.

Mann's first film with James Stewart, with whom he was to make a series of classic Westerns, this offers the clearest example of Mann's use of the revenge plot.

Magnificently directed and shot (by Arthur Miller), flawlessly acted by Peck and a superb cast, governed by an almost Langian sense of fate, it's a film that has the true dimensions of tragedy.

Thoroughly enchanting comedy.

Exciting and tautly directed – the lengthy robbery scenes are exemplary – it’s moody to the dying frame, emphasised by Harold Rosson’s lighting of trash-filled back-alleys and half-lit clip joints and Miklós Rozsa’s haunting theme music.

A fairly routine thriller, noted chiefly for its cheating flashback, though with much more to enjoy than its detractors - including Hitchcock - make out.

Embracing every level of French society, from the aristocratic hosts to a poacher turned servant, the film presents a hilarious yet melancholic picture of a nation riven by petty class distinctions.

As usual, everything is slightly glossy, soppy and hearty, yet not a string is left untwanged.

Dwan's deft handling of the action counteracts the dramatic clichés of the conflict between Wayne and his rebellious substitute son, Agar.

The sound-track bops along nicely with jazz-tinged standards.

Gun Crazy is a magnificently enjoyable film, distinguished by Joseph H Lewis’s restless, catch-all directorial style.

Great fun, provided you disregard the spirit of the original as comprehensively as Disney did. More uneven is the story of bumptious schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his nemesis the Headless Horseman. It's a trite, chocolate box picture of colonial days - until the Horseman shows up for one of those nightmare sequences with which Uncle Walt so relished terrifying his kiddie audience.

The most cinematic of film musicals and the one most given to dance, On the Town is exhilarating, brash spectacle, all rip-snorting, wisecracking attack, and maybe just a teensy bit unlikeable.

In a film in which everybody is acting - a point neatly stressed by the stylised staginess of Cukor's direction - the performances (not least from Wayne and Hagen) are matchless.

Passionate, lyrical, and imaginative, it's a remarkably assured debut, from the astonishing opening helicopter shot that follows the escaped convicts' car to freedom, to the final, inexorably tragic climax.

The centrepiece of Ford's cavalry trilogy (flanked by Fort Apache and Rio Grande) and a film of both elegiac sentiment and occasionally over-eloquent sentimentality, structured around a series of ritual incidents rather than narrative conflicts.

Slow, a mite predictable, and rather verbose, the film nevertheless has an elegance (thanks to long, sweeping takes) and a poignant romanticism that looks forward to Hitchcock's more pessimistic account of human relationships in Vertigo.

The Third Man remains among the most consummate of British thrillers: Reed and Greene’s sardonic vision of smiling corruption is deliciously realised with superb location work, a roster of seasoned Viennese performers and the raised eyebrow of Anton Karas’ jaunty zither score.

White Heat = Scarface + Psycho.

Taut and gripping.

Great blue moments in black-and-white from a director whose early work is still outstanding: the film burns with the humanity that Raging Bull never quite achieves, an expression of masochism mixed with futile pride that is the essence of boxing as a movie myth.