A fine and sumptuous adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic story finds the plane Jane of the title finding happiness as the governess at Thornfield Hall, and love, in the arms of its brooding master, Mr Rochester. Full of passion, pain, loss, hope and redemption, Jane Eyre is a worthy example of what the Beeb does best. find out more...

A fine and sumptuous adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's classic story finds the plane Jane of the title finding happiness as the governess at Thornfield Hall, and love, in the arms of its brooding master, Mr Rochester. Full of passion, pain, loss, hope and redemption, Jane Eyre is a worthy example of what the Beeb does best. find out more...

The first of Visconti's series of films exploring the mechanisms of class and family in the context of historical change. Set during the 1860s Austrian occupation of Italy, Alida Valli plays Countess Lidia, a married Venetian aristocrat who falls in love with a young Austrian officer, Franz. Lidia sacrifices everything for love, but the narcissistic materialism of Franz becomes apparent, sadistically exploiting his own looks and her masochism, submitting her to one humiliation after another and, 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...

Allie and Noah are teenagers in love, and that's real love not the first crush of youth puppy love stuff, but they live in a society ruled by class and are from different sides of the railway track. Reunited several years later it quickly becomes obvious that the fire is still very much alive and Allie finds herself forced to choose between the man she loved, fought and spent a summer of love with as a teenager or a handsome upper class fiancee, a rich and decent man, whom she likes a lot, and w find out more...

Cotton plays Sam Flusky, a native Briton banished to Australia for murder. Bergman is his wife, Henrietta, the disturbed sister of the man Flusky was convicted of killing. When a new governor arrives, he brings with him his cousin Adare, an old friend of Henrietta's, who sets out to help her conquer her demons and return her life to normal, but there are complications. Is Henrietta going insane, or is someone trying to drive her mad? Is she merely an alcoholic, or is someone trying to poison her find out more...

Back in 1914 the young Ida Dalsar fell in love with an ardent young socialist, the future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. She sold her shop to finance his career, possibly married him, had his child, got dumped, but kept coming back for more before being incarcerated in a mental institution. In other words this is the story of a girl who fell for the wrong man (and a country that fell for the wrong politics).
Particularly well received in France this was considered a serious contender fo find out more...