What makes it a prototype film noir is the vein of unease missing from the two earlier versions of Hammett's novel. Filmed almost entirely in interiors, it presents a claustrophobic world animated by betrayal, perversion and pain, never - even at its most irresistibly funny, as when Cook listens in outraged disbelief while his fat sugar daddy proposes to sell him down the line - quite losing sight of this central abyss of darkness, ultimately embodied by Mary Astor's sadly duplicitous siren.

This romantic weepie is both moving and effectively stylish.

Lovely supporting performances from Rains, Horton (the anxiously over-zealous heavenly messenger who made the mistake in the first place) and Gleason (a hopelessly bemused fight manager); but the comedy of errors as Montgomery casts around for a new body in which to pursue his championship ambitions is rather uncomfortably tinged with the fey archness which so often came over Hollywood when envisaging an afterlife.

Despite some rather silly dialogue, scripted by the usually reliable Donald Ogden Stewart from a French play, Cukor's civilised handling of the actors and his often expressionist visuals lend credence to the tale, with atmosphere thick and juicy enough to cut with a knife.

There is plenty to relish, notably Newton and Morley hamming it up (as, respectively, the rumbustious Bill Walker and the overbearing tycoon), and Deborah Kerr in her debut; but it does tend to just sit there.

After a bright start, this hunkers down to serious hand-wringing... Coop's hick (none too convincingly hinted at as the new Messiah) turns out to be a bore, and Capra strains to accommodate political chicanery and his own half-baked idealism.

Very nearly perfection, and quintessential Sturges.

Given Robert Rossen's strikingly literate script, Sol Polito's wonderfully eerie camerawork, and Robinson's terrific performance - all pulling together to elaborate the Luciferian motto borrowed from Milton by which the captain lives, 'Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven' - this is one of Curtiz's best movies.

Less Hitchcock, however, than writer Norman Krasna, who at his best could twist conventional characters and plot patterns in such beguiling ways that you'd almost forget their antiquity. This comes near his best.

A delight from start to finish, with everyone involved working on peak form.

A superbly crafted melodrama, even if it never manages to top the moody montage with which it opens.

Disney's attempts at the visual illustration of Beethoven and Co - a dubious exercise anyway - produce Klassical Kitsch of the highest degree. Awesomely embarrassing; but some great sequences for all that, and certainly not to be missed.

Don't be misled by the Berkeley credit - this is no girlie extravaganza. Rather, it's the second of those musical concoctions designed for the strident, irrepressible Rooney to dominate with Garland tagging along.

It's the cattlemen vs homesteaders plot, present in all its particulars, but refracted through the star personae of Cooper and Brennan.

A thoroughly enjoyable affair, complete with some of his most memorable set pieces.

The first half has pace, and the wisecracking wit is often laid on thick and fast by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay's script, particularly in a scene with Ann Sheridan as a roadside café waitress. All the performances are good.

Surprisingly dry and droll. Aldous Huxley's contribution to the script undoubtedly helped, but it is the cast which carries it.

Leigh, in her first film since Gone With the Wind, is fresh, needy, poignant, while Taylor's unexpectedly assured restraint allows her to carry the film's surge of emotion.

Adapted from Thorne Smith's fantasy about sexual role reversal, this probably seemed daring once, but hasn't worn well.

Grant's habitual skill at playing the faint-hearted prig is such that one can almost overlook the moments of mawkish sentiment and gentle complacency about the country club milieu.

Somewhat tonally inconsistent; following the social comedy of Monte Carlo and suspense of Manderley, the pace slackens in the crime procedural of the final half-hour, which is all tell and no show. Still, Hitchcock shows superb technical control and attends to his trademark motifs, from monstrous mother figures to the fetishisation of clothing (strong foreshadowings of ‘Vertigo’).

Ford's film, shot by Gregg Toland with magnificent, lyrical simplicity, captures the stark plainness of the migrants, stripped to a few possessions, left with innumerable relations and little hope.

Pinocchio, in fact, probably shows Disney's virtues and vices more clearly than any other cartoon.

Playing superbly on the personae of his leads, Leisen creates a movie of warmth and immense style, which never quite trips over into excessive sentimentality.

It’s a film that makes you want to sharpen your barbs and sling sass with the adults.

For my money, this is Lubitsch’s masterpiece, an immaculate conflation of his sprightly shooting style, expertly layered wisecracking and bracing realism, all topped off with a romantic subplot that offers a nakedly joyous celebration of young, serendipitous love.

Impressive adaptation of Steinbeck's novel, made at the same time as The Grapes of Wrath (though released earlier) and matching Ford's harsh lyricism in its evocation of the Depression, the desperation of the migrant farmworkers, their pipedreams of a little place of their own some day.

The whodunit element is less gripping than the original's study in soaring megalomania, but Price's urbanely mellifluous voice makes him an admirable successor to Claude Rains, and John P Fulton's special effects are well up to par.