A successful actress employs a woman in exchange for her flattery, only to find her employee is scheming her way to the top at her own expense. An intelligent, bitchy script complements the fine acting, making this one of Time Out's top 100 films of all time. Won Best Picture at 1950 Academy Awards.

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Part 2, and surely the greatest, of Wajda's trilogy describes the last days of the failed 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis. The imagery of the sewers, to which the Polish fighters retreat, is superbly used to represent both their desperation and their new Soviet prison. Made in 1956 despite Stalinist censorship. find out more...

The catalyst is the mystery disappearance of a young girl on holiday, but the film concentrates on the burgeoning romance between the missing girl's lover and her best friend as the pair embark on a distinctly half-hearted search. Set against a desolate Sicilian landscape, this highly stylised drama was once considered the be all and end all of art house poseur, it's reputation has sunk but it's still a must see film classic. find out more...

Vittoria has just suffered the break-up of an imperfect relationship with a staunch intellectual when a brash young stockbroker makes his first tentative romantic advances, but the couple's innermost fears prevent their relationship from becoming a pure expression of their love. The winner of a Special Jury prize at Cannes, this exquisitely performed and photographed drama defines Antonioni's thematic preoccupation with the difficulties of communication and the impossibility of love; completing find out more...

Two womens' lives have become rituals around an absent man, one is the man's bedridden mother, who believes her imprisoned son is hitting the big time in America, and the other his wife, carefully sustaining the illusion in the old lady. find out more...

In the 17th Century a group of nuns claimed to be possessed by the devil with Joan, the convent head, leading the possession stakes with at least 8 demons on her slate. An innocent young priest, the latest in a long line sent to investigate, is going to have to go to hell and back to save her soul. Chronologically the film acts as a sequel to Ken Russell's 1971 shocker 'The Devils', and if you've seen that you'll know what a lying bitch Joan is. Superb black and white photography gives an expres find out more...

Bergman's fascinating and acclaimed allegorical search for a meaning for human existance. A disillusioned soldier returns from the Crusades to find plague ravaging Europe. Death arrives in person to take his soul, but by beating him at chess he earns a reprieve. Repressive, dark, medieval and superb! find out more...

Concentrating on the trial and torture of the young French warrior who provoked such fear in the church and state, a zealot in the eyes of those in power and one whose fate was sealed as soon as her capture was assured. Using historical records as the basis for the film, Bresson's The Trial Of Joan Of Arc has the feeling of a docu-drama and is reminiscent of the claustrophobic intensity of Arthur Miller's ‘The Crucible'. An emotionally harrowing and rewarding observation of untouchable faith and 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...

An entomologist, searching for insects in the desert, becomes trapped in a large escape-proof sandpit with a desirable, but inarticulate, woman, and a taught sexual tension gradually builds between them. On such a slight plot the film develops into an exploration of eroticism and the attraction between man and woman. An unusually cruel and suspense filled thriller. find out more...