A penniless pianist learns that contract-killing target Alfredo Garcia is already dead and sets out to recover his head and claim the bounty. Perhaps Peckinpah's most complex and critically controversial film, an eclectic mix of existensial quest, gothic tale, political critique of American involvement in Latin America and a love story of two losers challenging destiny. Set in Mexico. find out more...

Returning to themes he had touched upon in his earlier films Polanski develops the idea of Pinter's "two people in a room and then a third enters" with a couple on a remote island invaded by two on-the-run gangsters. Gradually the power positions shift... underlined with great black humour. find out more...

The moody 28-year-old Mifune is the violent gangster whom boozy doctor Shimura diagnoses as suffering from TB ('a hole in the heart,' says the sour 'angel', ruefully). The movie breathes the polluted air of post-war pessimism, dissipation and poetic fatalism, symbolised in the shots of the oily, malaria-ridden swamp of a Tokyo dockside, but it is dramatically qualified by Mifune's suggested redeemability and Shimura's stoical humanism. Fascinating, highly enjoyable and filled with great scenes - find out more...

Melville's masterful take on the American crime thriller perfectly combines the Hollywood gangster film with his uniquely French style. Alain Delon as a master thief, Yves Montand as an alcoholic ex-cop and Gian-Maria Volonte as an escaped criminal plot a daring heist of an upmarket Parisian jewellery store against impossible odds. find out more...

Superbly stylish 60s gangster movie from renegade Japanese director Suzuki Seijun. While the plot is fairly bog-standard, a hitman returns to Tokyo to sort out some strife between two rival gangs, the film is elevated above the norm by sheer eccentricity. Vibrantly colourful with some very bizarre sets, surreal jokes and a powder-blue-suited assassin who bursts inexplicably into song before moving in for the kill! Truly ahead of its time. find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...