A landmark in the history of the cinema; it was ranked Number 1 in the American Film Institute's 100 greatest films of all time in two polls (1998 and 2007) of more than 1,500 film industry movers and shakers and again by UK directors in a BFI poll. "Citizen Kane" narrates the rise and fall of a newspaper tycoon driven by a childhood obssession and is loosely based round the life of William Randolph Hurst, who tried to have it banned, but incorporates elements from the lives of other fat cats il find out more...

At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...

Pudovkin's account of the 1917 Revolution was commissioned as part of the celebrations to mark its 10th anniversary and this silent epic stands as an example of the grandiose nature of early Russian film-making. The spirit of the masses is represented by a single, proto-typical worker-hero, and his view of the revolution. find out more...

A disturbing Danish film, reanacting witchcraft trials from the 15th and 16th on till the early 20th Century. Mixing scenes of reanactment, animation and illustrated slideshows to depict events of alleged real-life events and possessions, we are shown images of extreme cruelty which smack of the experimental edges of medical research. This must have been tantamount to the work of the devil when it first came out. Sick-minds they had back in 1922! The DVD has a choice of soundtracks, the best of find out more...

Truffaut's much-admired portrait of a twenty year menage a trois that has Moreau playing the enchanting Catherine in one of her finest film roles. She holds her two boyfriends in thrall, as their relationship develops over the years. Worth watching for the inimitable style and panache alone! find out more...

Vincent Minelli directs this biopic that, unusually for Hollywood, doesn't subsume the subject's achievements in a fictionalised life-story, explaining one not in terms of the other, but fully celebrating both. Douglas is superb as the artist living on the edge. Not just for art aficionados.

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The Soviet Revolution in all its glory as the events of Red October unfold on an epic scale. The storming of the Winter Palace in Leningrad is one of the great set pieces of cinema history. Eisenstien practicaly invented the art of editing and this is the movie in which he did it! Brilliant. find out more...

First installment of "The Apu Trilogy". Apu, the young son of an impoverished family, begins life in a small Bengali village. Here he tastes his first experiences of the world some happy, some sad, but always portrayed with compassion and a realism that's almost painful. Poetic and stunning. find out more...

One of Stanley Kubrick's earliest films, Paths of Glory is a seminal anti-war movie. Set during the First World War, the French general staff give the order for Colonel Dax (Douglas) and his men to attack a particularly well fortified German position. The order is little more than authorised suicide and when the remanants of Dax's men return, the high command, looking for something to distact from their murderous incompetence, decide to court-martial three of the surviving soldiers. The outra find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...