Three hours of the Paris theatre world of the 1830s, made in secret under the Occupation.
A farmer plans to drown his wife and falls back in love with her in the city; Murnau in Hollywood.
Dreyer's trial in close-up, with a performance from Renee Falconetti that has never been matched.
An RAF pilot argues for his life on a staircase to heaven; Earth in colour, heaven in black and white.
Chaplin eats his boot and dances with bread rolls in the Klondike.
Three prospectors in Mexico and what gold does to them; "we don't need no stinking badges".
Robert Mitchum cannot escape a woman or a past; the noir with the best cigarette lighting.
A married woman and a doctor meet in a railway tea room; the most restrained love story ever filmed.
Murnau's unauthorised Dracula, with Max Schreck's rat-faced count climbing the stairs in shadow.
A custody battle in which both parents are right, and the French toast scene.
Brando as the longshoreman who "coulda been a contender".
An insurance clerk lends his flat to his bosses for their affairs; Wilder at his most bitter and warm.
Bergman's Christmas: a theatrical family in 1907 Uppsala, then a bishop's cold house.
Popeye Doyle chases a heroin ring under the El; the car-versus-train chase.
George C. Scott in front of the flag, in the biography he refused the Oscar for.
A bawdy Georgian romp with the most famous eating scene in cinema.
A Black Philadelphia detective and a Mississippi sheriff solve a murder they cannot stand to share.
A Slovak carpenter is made "Aryan controller" of an old Jewish widow's button shop.
A young railway apprentice worries about sex and, by accident, the Resistance.
A police chief murders his mistress and leaves clues to prove he cannot be touched.
An actor sells his conscience to the Nazis for the stage; Klaus Maria Brandauer's great performance.
Three provincial girls in 1958 Moscow, and the same three twenty years on.
A racing driver and a script girl meet at their children's school in Deauville.
Robert Redford's directing debut: a suburban family after a drowning.
Tati's Monsieur Hulot against an ultra-modern house that hates people.
Thomas More refuses to bless Henry VIII's divorce and pays with his head.
Dickens as a musical: workhouse, pickpockets and "Consider Yourself".
Bergman's medieval revenge ballad; Wes Craven remade it as a horror film.
Belle Epoque Paris and a courtesan-in-training, in Lerner and Loewe songs.
The seven-hour Soviet Tolstoy, with the Red Army as extras at Borodino.
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