Part 1 of Wajda's trilogy of wartime films, the hopeful one, is set in Wola, a working-class area of Warsaw in 1942, and deals with the graduation of a bunch of semi-delinquent street kids, through individual acts of defiance and courage, into a youth resistance group. The heroism is not simple, neither loyalties nor self-sacrifice are assured, but united they will be. find out more...

A dramatic re-telling of Violette Szabo's role as secret agent in occupied France during the Second World War. Captured by the Wiermarcht and handed over to the Gestapo who eventually send her to Ravensbruck concentration camp and from there to the firing squad, Carve Her Name With Pride is a powerful and moving story of one woman's unbreakable spirit and unfaltering heroism. find out more...

A stirring re-telling of ten commandos from the Royal Marines who canoed across 70 miles of open water to an occupied French port during World War II to blow up German battleships. find out more...

A flight surgeon and a navy pilot overcome personal differences to work on solving the problem of dive bombers blacking out and dying. Another adrenalin fuelled collaboration between Flynn and Curtiz, based on a true story, but more interested in the suicidal/heroic white knuckle world in which so many early experimental pilots seemed to live. find out more...

One of the very finest epics produced, equally impressive in terms of script and spectacle. Heston is aptly heroic as the 11th Century patriot destined to die in the fight to evict the Moors from Spain, Mann's direction is stately and thrilling and Miklos Rosza's superb score perfectly complements the crisp and simple widescreen images. Sobriety and restraint, in fact, are perhaps the keynotes of the film's success, with the result that a potentially risible finale, in which Cid's corpse is born find out more...

A moving and dramatic (if Hollywood) retelling of the Zionist struggle to reclaim their ancient home land and create the independent state of Israel in the aftermath of WW2, focusing in particular on the actions Ari Ben Canaan, a commander in the Israeli underground, as he attempts to bring 600 Jews ‘home'. An epic bit of propaganda. find out more...

Fritz Lang, one of the masters of the German expressionist cinema, turns his sinister imagination and shadowy techniques to a web like take of wartime espionage. Set in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation, the film depicts an Eastern Europe populated by spies, traitors and revolutionaries, a deadly funhouse of political intrigue in which every personal encounter brings with it the threat of betrayal. Much of the nightmarish quality of Hangmen Also Die is attributable to playwright Bertolt find out more...

English General Charles George Gordon, a devout Christian, is appointed military governor of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by Prime Minister Gladstone. Ordered to evacuate Egyptians from the Sudan, General Gordon stays on to protect the people of Khartoum, who are under threat of being conquered by Mohammed Ahmed el Mahdi, "the Expected One," the head of the Muslim forces. An out-and-out action spectacle sealed with stunning cinematography. find out more...

Supposedly a biography of Michelangelo, it is much more that of Pope Julius II, who, when not on the battlefield uniting Italy, nags Michelangelo, in an engaging and witty script, to speed up his painful work painting the Sistine Chapel, and wonders when he will finsh. The transformation of the chapel ceiling, which was originally dotted with stars, to an opulent statement of high renaissance is engrossing. find out more...

Guinness restores the morale of British PoWs by building a bridge which is of military value to the Japanese, and then attempts to thwart the RAF's destruction of it! A classic film which swept 7 Oscars including "Best Picture". find out more...