Based loosely on a couple of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories, this thriller may not be one of Hitchcock's best English films, but it is full of startling set pieces and quirky characterisation.

Whale does superbly by this much-loved Kern-Hammerstein musical, abetted by modestly handsome sets and lustrous camerawork from John Mescall.

Marlene's best movie away from Sternberg, it's relaxed, funny and charming.

An exotic and gripping piece of Hollywood mythology, made with all the technical skill and gloss one associates with Irving Thalberg's MGM.

The third Astaire-Rogers movie (not counting Flying Down to Rio) and one of the best, with a superlative Irving Berlin score, and equally superlative Hermes Pan routines which spark a distinct sexual electricity between the pair.

Other English Hitchcocks may be more provocative, but few offer such a ripping good yarn.

An absurd script, without a hint of self-parody, and a nicely equipped set (moving walls, a razor-sharp pendulum that slowly lowers itself on to victims) make for entertaining if undemanding viewing.

Heavy-handed, humourless and patronising.

Whale's most perfectly realised movie, a delight from start to finish.

Vintage Hitchcock, with sheer wit and verve masking an implausible plot.

Fred'n'Ginge fans won't need a nudge, but the uninitiated should start with almost any of their other movies.

More character study than polemic, wonderfully warm and witty in its observation of two women (one black, one white) who not only crash the race barriers in their friendship but successfully go it alone in a man's world, Stahl's version of Fannie Hurst's novel makes fascinating comparison with Sirk's remake.

Having insured Fred's legs for the equivalent of £200,000, RKO producer Pandro S Berman launched the Astaire-Rogers musicals with this extensive revamp of Cole Porter's famous stage show.

What enchants, really, is the relationship between Nick and Nora as they live an eternal cocktail hour, bewailing hangovers that only another little drink will cure, in a marvellous blend of marital familiarity and constant courtship, pixillated fantasy and childlike wonder.

Every line of dialogue is calculated bliss, the chemistry between the leads is magnificent, and the backdrop of Depression-era America allows for a prescient and amusing subplot about how well-heeled urbanites are compelled to misbehave when they have no money in their designer pockets.

Fred and Ginger teamed for the first time as featured artists in the big production number, 'The Carioca': 'I'd like to try this thing just once' says Fred, launching the movies' greatest partnership. Otherwise notable mainly for the non-stop opticals which turn the film into a series of animated postcards.

The film was rushed out to capitalise on its predecessor, with none of the subtext, but the animation is up to scratch, the action and direction efficient, and there is a nice melancholy to Denham’s regret for his previous conduct, which aptly prolongs the mournfulness of the original’s ending.

Most of the blame must rest with McLeod, whose incredibly cackhanded direction piles on the whimsy by the bucket-load and can't come to grips with the absurdity at all.

Surely the definitive version of Louisa May Alcott's novel, sweet, funny, perfectly cast, and exquisitely evocative in its New England period reconstruction.

Genius just about covers it.

The real strengths of the movie are John P Fulton's remarkable special effects (Rains removing his bandages to reveal nothing, footsteps appearing as if by magic in the snow), lending much-needed conviction to the blatant fantasy; and the fact that we never see the scientist without his bandages until the very end of the film.

The honesty and robustness of the images prevents the movie from lapsing into pretension or preciousness; it remains extremely interesting as a source of Cocteau's later work.

By far the best part of the film is its first hour, fast, furious and funny as Cagney sets out to convince his nervous backers that his idea for live prologues to accompany talkies can be made to work.

Allegedly based on the career of Clara Bow (who, like Lola, had a parasitic family and a duplicitous private secretary), Bombshell is a prime example of Jean Harlow at her comic best.

Nary a tear-jerking trick is missed (our family loses one son to the Titanic, the other to World War I), and the strangulation is compounded by the staginess since the film, at Coward's insistence, slavishly followed the Drury Lane production.

If this glorious pile of horror-fantasy hokum has lost none of its power to move, excite and sadden, it is in no small measure due to the remarkable technical achievements of Willis O'Brien's animation work, and the superbly matched score of Max Steiner.

Reviving the musical's fortunes in one fell swoop, Bacon and Busby Berkeley's backstage saga set the benchmark for the putting-on-a-show subgenre not by means of plot (a thin and hackneyed affair about a young understudy finding stardom when she covers for the temperamental diva) but through sassy songs and dialogue and dazzling mise-en-scène.

Lightly brushing at least three separate genres, this good-natured yarn (from a story by Edmund Goulding and Benjamin Glazer) eschews conflict at every turn.