HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by John Ford

The story of a Welsh valley's turn-of-the-century descent from pristine paradise to despoiled coal mining region, is told in flashback form by Huw Morgan, an old man who has decided to leave the valley forever. Huw (Roddy Mcdowall) is the youngest in a family of six brothers and one sister and the film centers on his struggle toward manhood amid conflicting demands of faith, economics, education and family loyalty in a Wales caught in an irreversible shift from a pastoral to an industrialized society.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Writing/Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Art Direction- Interior Decoration (Black and White), Best Film Editing, Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture and Best Sound Recording

Won 5, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography (Black and White) and Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration (Black and White)

DVD Special Features:

None

WEST SIDE STORY (1961)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise

Musical adaptation of Shakespeare's famous love story, Romeo and Juliet. The musical set in the late 1950s New York city where rival street gangs (the Jets and the Sharks) battle for territory and respect. Love blossoms between former Jets leader Tony (Richard Beymer), and Maria (Natalie Wood), sister to Sharks' leader Bernardo (George Chakiris), supported by Anita (Rita Moreno)

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director x 2, Best Supprting Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Fim Editing, Best Score and Best Sound

Won 11, Best Picture, Best Director x 2, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Score and Best Sound

Academy history was made with two awards presented in the Best Director category

DVD Special Features:

None

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Frank Capra

A spoiled heiress, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) running away from her family, is helped by a man (Clark Gable) who's actually a reporter looking for a story. But then he falls in love with her

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

Made Academy History by winning a clean sweep of the main categories for which it was nominated

Was also the first film to win the five major categories, later joined by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

...And the two leads winning their Academy Awards in the same picture. Later joined by

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Network (1976)
Coming Home (1978)
On Golden Pond (1981)
The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
As Good As It Gets (1997)

DVD Special Features:

Frank Capra Jr. remembers....It Happened One Night

Radio broadcast featuring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert

LA REGLE DU JEU (1939)

Directed by Jean Renoir

Renoir's look at bourgeois life in France at the onset of World War II. An assorted cast of characters - the rich and their poor servants - meet up at a French chateau for various reasons and the result is murder

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special Features:

Image par image - French television documentary

ELMER GANTRY (1960)

Directed by Richard Brooks

Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) salesman, teams up with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) evangelist, to sell religion to America in the 1920's. Both are seduced by fame and blind faith over common sense, and fate deals them a crushing blow

Nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Score

Won 3, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

DVD Special Features:

None

THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

Directed by John Huston

In Africa during WW1, a gin-swilling riverboat owner/captain,Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) is persuaded by a strait-laced missionary, Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) to use his boat to attack an enemy warship whilst ferrying supplies to villages in East Africa.

Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Writing - Screenplay

Won 1, Best Actor

Humphrey Bogart's deserved win prevented an acting sweep by the acclaimed drama, A Streetcar Named Desire(1951)

DVD Special Features:

Feature length audio commentary by Cinematographer, Jack Cardiff

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961)

Directed by Val Guest

After the super-powers accidentally set off H-bombs simultaneously, the staff at Fleet Street's Daily Express report dramatic changes to the world's climate.
As London swelters and the Thames starts to run dry the paper's staff finally get the Government to admit that the earth's axis has shifted. Eventually they discover that the full truth is far worse.

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special features:

An Interview with the late Leo Mckern

Director's feature length audio commentary

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (1949)

Directed by Robert Hamer

Louis Manzzini's mother belongs to the aristocratic family, D'Ascoyne.
She ran away with an opera singer and she and Louis were rejected by the D'Ascoynes. Once adult, Louis decides to avenges his mother and his birthright by becoming the next Duke in the family. Murdering every potential successor is clearly the safest way to achieving his goal.

The title refers to the following lines from Tennyson's 1842 poem "Lady Clara Vere de Vere": "Kind hearts are more than coronets, and simple faith than Norman blood."

Alec Guiness famously played eight different members of the family

No Academy Awards or Nominations

DVD Special Features: None

THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946)

Directed by Lewis Milestone

In 1928, young heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) fails to run off with friend Sam Masterson, and is involved in the fatal death of her Aunt. Years later, Sam returns to find Martha the power behind Iverstown and married to "good boy" Walter O'Neil (Kirk Douglas), now district attorney.
At first, Sam is more interested in displaced blonde Toni Marachek than in his boyhood friends but they draw him into a convoluted web of plotting and cross-purposes

Nominated for 1 Academy Award, Best Writing - Original Story

DVD Special Features:

None

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)

Directed by David Lean

The film based on the Nobel prize winning, bestseller by Boris Pasternak, about the life of surgeon-poet Yuri Zhivago before, during and after the Russian Revolution.
Zhivago is torn between fidelity and passion. He is married to a upper-class girl,Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin) who is devoted to him, yet in love with an unfortunate woman, Lara (Julie Christie)
The story is narrated by Zhivago's half brother Yevgraf(Alec Guiness) to a young woman he believes may be the long lost daughter of Lara and Zhivago

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography(Color), Best Film Editing, Best Art/Set Decoration(Color), Best Costume Design(Color) and Best Sound

Won 5, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography(Color), Best Art/Set Decoration(Color) and Best Costume Design

The first film in the Academy's history to win the highest number of Awards in one year, without winning Best Picture.

DVD Special Features:

Doctor Zhivago: The Making of the Russian Epic

Zhivago: Behind the Camera with David Lean

David Lean's Film of Doctor Zhivago

Moscow in Madrid

Pasternak

New York Press interviews with Julie Christie

New York Press interviews Omar Sharif

LES BARBARES INVASIONS (THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS) - 2004

Directed by Denys Arcand

The sequel to LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN (THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE)

Having a difficult time accepting the reality of death and feeling regretful of his past, a man dying of cancer tries to find peace in his last moments. His estranged son, ex-wife, ex-lovers and old friends all come to him to share his last days

Nominated for 2 Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language film(Canada) and Best Original Screenplay

Won 1, Best Foreign Language Film

The first sequel to win the foreign language Academy Award

DVD Special Features:

Denys Arcand (Writer/Director) Audio Interviews -

With Francine Stock for Front Row, BBC Radio 4

Interview recorded at the Times BFI London Film Festival

LE DECLIN DE L'EMPIRE AMERICAIN (THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE) - 1986

Directed by Denys Arcand

Four university teachers gather to prepare dinner while discussing sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Their female guests are at a gym also discussing sex, the female body and men. They later meet and carry on the same discussion revealing themselves and their society as the evening goes by

Nominated for 1 Academy Award - Best Foreign Language Film (Canada)

DVD Special Features:

None

L' HISTOIRE D'ADELE H.(THE STORY OF ADELE H.) (1975)

Directed by Francois Truffaut

Halifax,1863 Adele Hugo,(Isabelle Adjani) the second daughter of the great French Writer comes to Halifax in search of Lt Pinson, with whom she is madly in love. The Lt does not recipocate her love, saying it is hopeless.
Adele becomes obsessed and stays in Halifax, chasing and harassing him.
A tale of obsessive love and self destruction told from the real Adele Hugo's diary.

Nominated for 1 Academy Award, Best Actress

At 20, Isabelle Adjani was the youngest nominee in the Lead Actress category until 2004's nomination of Keisha Castle - Hughes's for WHALE RIDER at 13

DVD Special features:

None

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Based on the Tennesee Williams play and set in the 1930s New Orleans.
A rich widow, Mrs. Venable (Katharine Hepburn), plans to fund a hospital building for a state asylum, if Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift) will perform a lobotomy on her niece Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor). Mrs. Venable is distraught over the death of her son Sebastian last summer and is convinced Catherine went mad the day he died under mysterious circumstances.

Nominated 3 Academy Awards including Best Actress for the two leading ladies and Best Art/Set Decoration(Black and White)

DVD Special Features:

Video Photo Montage

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

An expert on surveillance (Gene Hackman) is hired to record the conversations of two employees in a large company. Some years previous, the same expert's work directly led to the murder of three people and he now has reason to fear it will happen again.

Nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Sound

DVD Special Features:

Close-up on 'The Conversation'

Audio Commentaries by Director, Francis Ford Coppola and Editor, Walter Murch

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Jonathan Demme

A psychopath known as Buffalo Bill is kidnapping and murdering young women across the midwest of America.
Believing it takes one to know one, the F.B.I. sends Agent Clarice Starling ( Jodie Foster) to interview a demented prisoner (Anthony Hopkins) who may provide psychological insight and clues to the killer's actions.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Film Editing and Best Sound

Only the third movie to win all five major Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. The others were IT HAPPENDED ONE NIGHT (1934) and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)

DVD Special Features:

Inside The Labryinth - The Making Of The Silence Of The Lambs

Original Featurette

Deleted Scenes, Outtakes and Trailers

THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE (1969)

Directed by Ronald Neame

Film based on the Novel by Muriel Spark in which a fascist romantic young schoolteacher, (Dame Maggie Smith) at an Edinburgh girls' school in the period between the two wars, instructs her girls on the ways of life, love, politics and art.
Her troubled personal affairs endanger her job and one of her girls, rebels by asserting her own discoveries about life and love

Nominated for 2 Academy Awards including Best Actress and Best Original Song

Won 1, Best Actress

DVD Special Features:

Feature length Audio commentary by Director, Ronald Neame and Actress, Pamela Franklin

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

The ultimate exploration unfolds when Mankind finds a mysterious obelisk buried on the moon.
A team of astronauts and the intelligent computer HAL, set off on a quest into human destiny.

Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art/Set Decoration and Best Visual Effects

Won, 1 - Best Visual Effects

DVD Special Features:

Interview with writer, Arthur C. Clarke

THE GODFATHER: Part III (1990)

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

After a 15 year gap, this is the final instalment of the Godfather Trilogy. The aging Don Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) seeks to legitimize his family's interests and remove himself from the violent underworld but is kept back by the ambitions of the young.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Art/Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing and Best Original Song

Also made Academy history by being the first time, the third part of a trilogy earned a Best Picture nomination

A distinction later joined by the LORD OF THE RING TRILOGY
in 2001, 2002 and 2003

DVD Special Features:

Feature Length Audio Commentary by Francis Ford Coppola

Behind the Scenes:

The Godfather family : A Look Inside
On Location - By Production Designer, Dean Tavoularis
Francis Ford Coppola's Notebook
Music of The Godfather - Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola
Coppola and Puzo on Screenwriting
Gordon Willis on Cinematography
Storyboards - Godfather Part II
Storyboards - Godfather Part III
The Godfather Behind The Scenes 1971

THE GODFATHER: PART II (1974)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The continuing saga of the Corleone crime family tells the story of a young Vito Corleone growing up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. It also follows Michael Corleone's attempts to expand the family business into the West Coast and Cuba in the 1950s

Nominated 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, 3 Best Supporting Actors, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Score, Best Art/Set decoration and Best Costume

Won 6, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art/Set Decoration and Best Original Score

The first sequel to win the Academy's top award

The third time there were three nominees from the same film in the Best Supporting Actor category.

DVD Special Features:

Feature Length Audio Commentary by Francis Ford Coppola

THE GODFATHER (1972)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Based a novel and screenplay by Mario Puzo, it is a tale of a Mafia boss' s innocent son becoming involved in the bloody family business when his father is critically wounded in a mob hit

It starred Marlon Brando in the best role of his career and a cast including James Caan, Al Pacino, Diane keaton and many others and is regarded as one of the best gangster films ever made

Nominated for 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, 3 Best Supporting Actors, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score (later withdrawn as unoriginal) and Best Sound

Won 3, Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor

The second time there were three nominees in the Supporting Actor category from the same film.

Marlon Brando famously refused his Oscar by proxy

DVD Special Features:

Feature Length Audio Commentary by Francis Ford Coppola

ALFIE (1966)

Directed by Lewis Gilbert

Alfie (Michael Caine) is cockney philanderer, wonderfully successful with women although he rarely gets emotionally involved with them. He is encountering a series of life changing reversals. His health is threatened, he has a child adopted by another man and he must help procure an abortion for a married woman whom he gets pregnant. Finally, when he decides to settle down, he is rejected for a much younger man.

This film made Michael Caine an international star and is considered one of the best British films of the 1960s

Also famous for the song "what's it all about, Alfie" written by Burt Bacharach, sung by Cher

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Song


DVD Special Features: None

A TASTE OF HONEY (1961)

Directed by Tony Richardson

Based on a West End and Broadway play telling the moving story of a plain young girl (Rita Tushingham) who becomes pregnant by a black sailor, befriends a homosexual (Murray Melvin), and gradually becomes a woman

Controversial and groundbreaking for its time, this film is an example of the British New Wave Cinema which began in the 1960s

No Academy Nominations

Winner of Best Actor and Actress at the Cannes Film festival 1962

DVD Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan and Murray Melvin

Video Essay narrated by Cinematograher, Walter Lassally

THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE (1968)

Directed by Robert Aldrich

Based on the successful stage play of the same name in which George( Beryl Reid) lives with her lover, Childie( Susannah York) and plays a cheerful district nurse in a BBC soap opera in which her character is to be killed off.
George's life begins to fall apart when she realises that the only other job she can get is the voice of a cow in a children's tv programme.
Things get even worse for Georgie, when Childie embarks on an affair with a predatory tv producer.

A film which caused outrage and controversy when it was released.

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special Features:

None

THE SERVANT (1963)

Directed by Joseph Losey

This film takes a sharp look at British class relations via a dramatic turning of the tables between a dainty Oxbridge bachelor (James Fox) and his contemptuous manservant (Dirk Bogarde)

No Academy Award Nominations

DVD Special Features:

None

BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)

Directed by David Lean

Screenplay written by Noel Coward and based on his play "Still Life" AKA Noel Coward's Brief Encounter

On a cafe at a railway station, a housewife, Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) meets doctor Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard).
They gradually fall in love and continue to meet every Thursday on the small cafe, whilst knowing their love is impossible

Nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay


DVD Special Features:

'A Profile of Brief Encounter' Documentary

GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1946)

Directed by David Lean

The best of the four film adaptations of the famous novel by Charles Dickens where a humble orphan, Pip (John Mills) becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Art/Set Direction (Black and White)

Was the first time a British-produced film was nominated in the Best Picture category

Won 2, Best Art and Set Decoration (Black and White) and Best Cinematography

DVD Special Features: None

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

WINNER OF THE ACADEMY AWARD FOR BEST PICTURE

Directed by Elia kazan


The Waterfront Crime Commission is holding hearings on underworld infiltration of the unions . Worker is turned against worker and Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has to take a stand when he inadvertently participates in the murder of a fellow longshoreman

After the success of GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT (1947) and STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951), Elia Kazan received widespread critical praise for this work and went on to direct other acclaimed films such as EAST OF EDEN (1955) and SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961) but fact that he agreed to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, haunted his career until his death in 2003.

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, 3 Best Supporting Actors, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art and Set Decoration ( Black and White), Best Cinematography (Black and White), Best Film Editing and Best Original Score

Won 8 :
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art and Set Decoration ( Black and White), Best Cinematography (Black and White) and Best Film Editing

Was the first time there were three nominations in the Best Supporting Actor, from the same film

DVD Special Features:

Audio Commentary by Richard Schickel, the author of " Elia Kazan - a Director's Journey" and Biographer, Jeff Young

Interview with Director, Elia Kazan

Contender - Mastering the Method Featurette