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British Film Institute's top 100
(99 titles)
Early in 1999, the British Film Institute produced a selection booklet and sent copies to 1,000 people embracing all strands of the film, cinema and television industries throughout the UK - producers, directors, writers, actors, technicians, academics, exhibitors, distributors, executives and critics. Participants were asked to consider (and vote for up to 100) 'culturally British' feature films, released in cinemas during the 20th century, which they felt had made a strong and lasting impression. Altogether, more than 25,700 votes were cast, covering 820 different films.
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The Third Man
on DVD
(1949)
Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Trevor Howard
Director: Carol Reed
Certificate: 
This classic noir mystery, from the team of Carol Reed and Graham Greene, is generally considered to be the best filmwork of both of these estimable talents. THE THIRD MAN features Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a pulp novelist who has come to post-WWII Vienna with the promise of work from his ..read more »
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75%
from 17,398 members
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Brief Encounter
on DVD
(1945)
Starring: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway
Director: David Lean
Certificate:
David Lean adapts Noel Coward's heartbreaking tale of two ordinary people caught up in the extraordinary power of love. Laura (Celia Johnson) is a seemingly happy, middle-class housewife who meets the equally married physician Alec (Trevor Howard) at a London railway station, and so begins a chaste ..read more »
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73%
from 10,161 members
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Lawrence Of Arabia
on DVD
(1962)
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn
Director: David Lean
Certificate: 
David Lean's masterpiece--perhaps the greatest of screen epics--stars Peter O'Toole in one of the most electrifying debuts in film history. The film is less an ordinary adventure than an experience that leaves an overwhelming sense of the struggle between two powerful forces: the Arabian deserts, ..read more »
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74%
from 19,334 members
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The 39 Steps
on DVD
(1935)
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Certificate: 
A classic British spy mystery, and one of Hitchcock's best, THE 39 STEPS is the story of an innocent man who struggles to prove his innocence. Robert Donat gets more than he bargained for when he brings home a mysterious woman who confesses to be a British agent on the hot trail of a dangerous spy ..read more »
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70%
from 8,929 members
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Great Expectations
on DVD
(1946)
Starring: John Mills, Alec Guinness, Jean Simmons
Director: David Lean
Certificate:
David Lean directs this definitive version of the Charles Dickens classic about an orphaned boy befriended by a mysterious benefactor who enables him to become a gentleman of means. In the gloom of a country graveyard, the young boy encounters an escaped convict, and a chance meeting years later ..read more »
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71%
from 4,314 members
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Kes
on DVD
(1969)
Starring: Colin Welland, David Bradley, Brian Glover
Director: Ken Loach
Certificate:
Rebellious Billy Casper (David Bradley) finds that training a kestrel takes his mind off his troubled home life and the bullies at school. Set in the Northern English town of Barnsley, the film is a gritty slice of working-class life in the �60s. Based on the Barry Hines novel A KESTREL FOR ..read more »
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69%
from 10,035 members
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Don't Look Now
on DVD
(1973)
Starring: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Certificate: 
Nicolas Roeg's third film--after the brash PERFORMANCE (1970) and meditative WALKABOUT (1971)--is a haunting thriller that confirmed the director's status as a true visionary. Based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier, DON'T LOOK NOW follows a grieving English couple to Venice, where the past continues ..read more »
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62%
from 10,683 members
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The Red Shoes
on DVD
(1948)
Starring: Marius Goring, Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook
Director: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Certificate:
This seminal dance film, created Powell and Pressburger, in which an impresario takes a ballerina under his wing, deftly combines interpretive dance with drama. This acclaimed adaption of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale results in a marked triumph of artistic collaboration and modernity. More ..read more »
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69%
from 3,501 members
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Trainspotting
on DVD
(1995)
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd
Director: Danny Boyle
Certificate: 
Smart, funny, sickly and sometimes just plain unconscious, Mark Renton is a hero of our times. Set in an underbelly of Edinburgh the city fathers never dreamed of, this is the story of Mark and his so-called friends--a bunch of losers, liars, psychos, thieves and junkies. This tragi-comedy charts ..read more »
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75%
from 54,798 members
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The Bridge On The River Kwai
on DVD
(1957)
Starring: Alec Guinness, William Holden, Jack Hawkins
Director: David Lean
Certificate:
One of the all-time great war films, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is yet another classic from the marvelous David Lean (LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, DR. ZHIVAGO). The film is an outstanding, psychologically complex adaptation of Pierre Boulle's 1952 novel, a classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to ..read more »
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71%
from 14,571 members
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If....
on DVD
(1968)
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Arthur Lowe, David Wood
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Certificate:
Filmed at the time of the 1968 student uprising in Paris, Lindsay Anderson's IF. . . is one of the seminal films of the era of student revolt. The characters' direct psychological and emotional displays are an allegory for how individuals must either conform to or rebel against the autocratic ..read more »
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70%
from 3,907 members
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The Ladykillers
on DVD
(1955)
Starring: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Alice Krige
Director: Alexander Mackendrick
Certificate: 
Alexander Mackendrick's last Ealing comedy and certainly one of the best, William Rose received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Alec Guinness stars in one of his most vivid disguises, in this killingly funny black comedy gem. The villains plot to kill the old lady who discovers ..read more »
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72%
from 8,549 members
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Brighton Rock
on DVD
(1947)
Starring: Richard Attenborough, Carol Marsh, Hermione Baddeley
Director: John Boulting
Certificate:
In this vivid adaptation of Graham Greene's novel about the seedy British underworld, Richard Attenborough appears in top form as petty gangster Pinkie Brown. The manipulative thug rashly commits a murder and uses a waitress (Carol Marsh) to provide his alibi with unexpected consequences.
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68%
from 4,336 members
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Get Carter
on DVD
(1971)
Starring: Michael Caine, John Osborne, Ian Hendry
Director: Mike Hodges
Certificate:
A man out to avenge his brother's death enters the world of pornography and crime. Based on the novel 'Jack's Return Home' by Ted Lewis.
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70%
from 12,726 members
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Henry V
on DVD
(1945)
Starring: Robert Newton, Laurence Olivier, Leslie Banks
Director: Laurence Olivier
Certificate:
The definitive call to arms, Laurence Olivier's Henry V is a patriotic saga awash with pageantry, battles, romance and political chicanery. Intended to rally Britain during the darkest days of World War II, the film shows how the star of England sought to stake an ancestral, royal claim on the soil ..read more »
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62%
from 2,509 members
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The Long Good Friday
on DVD
(1979)
Starring: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Dave King
Director: John Mackenzie
Certificate:
John Mackenzie's rabidly engaging, complex gangster film concerns a dominant English racketeer, Harold (Bob Hoskins), who is about to change his image and go straight. While negotiating a deal with an American organised crime organisation to develop the barren Docklands section of London, his ..read more »
Rate this:
71%
from 8,118 members
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