Visconti's stunning feature debut transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice to the endless, empty lowlands of the Po Delta. There, an itinerant labourer (Girotti) stumbles into a tatty roadside trattoria and an emotional quagmire. Seduced by Calamai, he disposes of her fat, doltish husband (De Landa), and the familiar Cain litany - lust, greed, murder, recrimination - begins. 'Ossessione' is often described as the harbinger of neo-realism, but the pictorial beauty is pure Visconti, while the ble find out more...

A stunning portrayal of innocent and erotic obsession based on Wede-kind's 'Lulu' plays. Lulu's guilelessly provocative sexuality leads her from a gaggle of Berlin lovers and admirers, a lesbian countess, a newspaper editor, the latter's son, etc, to a squalid garret in London, where she finds her Thanatos in the shape of Jack the Ripper. Louise Brooks's legendary performance and Pabst's brilliantly acute direction both remain enthralling. Haunting and unforgettable, a superbly atmospheric film. find out more...

After Renoir's reluctant addition of a couple of titles to satisfy the producers desire to expand to feature length, this masterpiece was finally released in 1946. On an idyllic country picnic, a young girl briefly leaves her family and fiance and succumbs to an all-too-brief romance. The careful reconstruction of period (around 1860) is enhanced by a typically touching generosity towards the characters and an aching, poignant sense of love lost, but never forgotten. And, as always in Renoir, find out more...

A more intimate and low key affair than much of Murnau's other work. Using the technique of film within film, Murnau gives a contemporaneous setting to the classic Molière play. A devious housekeeper sets about persuading her master to re-direct his sizable inheritance away from his loving grandson and instead bequeath his wealth elsewhere. But the lad charms his way into the household disguised as a travelling projectionist and plays Tartuffe in the hope that his Grandfather will see the light. find out more...

Pinter's first full-length play, brought to the screen ten years after its frostily received one week West End run. A loner living in a run-down seaside boarding house is terrorised by two sinister visitors whose seemingly inane chat starts to take a terrifyingly intimidating turn. find out more...

The middle part of Pasolini's trilogy of Life is a suitably bawdy adaption of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', a series of stories that pretty much wanders through all the 'Seven Sins' and, in particular, the cast of characters sexual peccadillos. Lush and enjoyable. find out more...

Lon Chaney takes the title role in this silent, black and white version of Gaston Leroux's classic tale. What starts as a seemingly plodding melodrama soon turns to grotesque Gothic horror, with Chaney making quite the most hideous phantom ever. Mary Philbin is equisite as Christine, the hapless heroine, who unwittingly drives the phantom into disastrous despair, while the gripping climax, accompanied by a crashing musical crescendo, is truly awesome. find out more...

The nightmare begins when Joseph K awakes to realise that a police inspector is at the foot of his bed. So it begins, but where will it end? A superb allegory for the life of modern Man, as K tries desperately to justify his existence to an uncaring judiciary. From the novel by Kafka by way of that well known late sherry merchant, Orson Welles. "Like a dog..." find out more...

One of the world's greatest filmmakers, Kurosawa, adapts Shakespeare's Macbeth to 16th Century Japan - the loss in language being more than compensated for by the misty and forbidding locations and the clever incursions of Japanese culture. find out more...

This is late Buñuel, mockingly sensible black comedy, set in Toledo in the early 1930s, in which an old guardian (Rey) seduces his young ward Tristana (Deneuve), but is unable to possess her, betrayed by surrealist lurches in time and reality and by Tristana's changing 'nature'. Rey is brilliant as the Mephistophelean, anti-clerical Socialist, dandy and outmoded master of social graces: father, lover and husband all in one. His passion ruins and softens him, but (caught as she is in the chauvini find out more...