DVD/150: CRANFORD (Simon Curtis/Steve Hudson, 2007, tv)

"You're not in London now, you're in Cranford"

In 1842, the residents of the Cheshire market town of Cranford know their place in Victorian society and in God's eyes.  But slowly the modern world is coming...

The formidable spinsters and widows of Cranford spend their days seizing on any gossip and the sight or two women walking quickly usually means new scandal.  The arbiter of moral rectitiude is Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who lives with her younger, more gentle sister Matty but both can be relied upon to do the right thing.

The spinsters welcome in Mary Smith, the daughter of an old Manchester friend, when she is forced out by her step-mother and, together they experience new neighbours, new joys, but also new sadnesses because for all of them, death can come unexpectedly. 

Heidi Thomas' adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill's novellas is a superb mix of comedy, tragedy and class.

Shelf or charity shop? Definite shelf.  Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin's production would have seemed a natural for the BBC but it was hit by the corporation's budget cuts, postponed for a year and having to thin down from 6 episodes to 5 and then changing directors halfway through filming but luckily they persevered.  It goes without saying that the cast give excellent performances but they also provide a seamless ensemble: Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Lisa Dillon, Francesca Annis, Barbara Flynn, Deborah Findlay, Lesley Manville, Emma Fielding, Jim Carter, Philip Glenister, Michael Gambon and Alex Etel are all memorable.

DVD/150: REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

During a heatwave, LB 'Jeff' Jefferies is chafing in his Greenwich Village apartment: a magazine photographer, in a few days he will finally have a plaster cast removed from his left leg after being injured on assignment, and his socialite fiancée Lisa is pressing him about marriage although he refuses to sacrifice his globe-trotting.  Bored, Jeff starts watching his unknown neighbours around the large tenement courtyard...

One night he hears a woman scream from one of the windows, and starts watching - first with binoculars, then his zoom-lens camera - the apartment of Lars Thorwold, a salesman whose bedridden wife has gone. 

Jeff slowly manages to convince Lisa and his insurance company nurse Stella that Thorwald has murdered his wife but his NY detective friend remains unconvinced.

With Thorwald obviously about to leave, Jeff allows Lisa and Stella to put themselves in harm's way, but this leads Thorwald to Jeff's door.

Shelf or charity shop? Spying on the other DVDs in my storage box REAR WINDOW is one to keep.  Filming on a huge sound stage, Hitchcock keeps the action centred mostly in Jeff's small apartment making us co-voyeurs along with his hero.  A masterpiece in thriller storytelling, Hitchcock also shades James Stewart's everyman screen persona to one of vague unlikeability - a forefunner of his morally ambiguous 'Scottie' in VERTIGO.  Grace Kelly is a sparkling presence as Lisa, mirrored perfectly by Thelma Ritter's astringent nurse Stella.  It is interesting how Hitchcock makes his killer Raymond Burr almost sympathetic in his final confrontation with Stewart - a mix of threat, helplessness and bafflement.  John Michael Hayes' excellent script is based on a Cornell Woolrich short story.

DVD/150: GREAT EXPECTATIONS (David Lean, 1946)

There had already been two films of Dickens' novel but David Lean's version has reigned supreme ever since, despite two more screen adaptations and six TV versions.

Lean had only seen a 1939 stage version, written by Alec Guinness who also played Herbert Pockett.  Seven years later, Lean cast him in the same role; he also cast that production's Miss Haversham, the wonderful Martita Hunt.

Lean wrote the film script with his producers Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, other writers included Cecil McGivern and Lean's actress wife Kay Walsh who wrote the final scene.  It's a text-book adaptation.

Academy Awards deservedly went to Guy Green's cinematography and John Bryan's art direction; they deliver a believable world with a wonderful sense of place, the desolate Kent marshes of Pip's unhappy childhood, the bustling Chancery Lane of his life as a 'gentleman', the gothic decepitude of Miss Haversham's crumbling mansion.

Shelf or charity shop?  A definite keeper - it's a classic for a reason.  Lean's subtle direction works wonders with his wonderous cast: Guinness (in his first major screen role) is delicious as Herbert Pockett while John Forrest is perfect as teenage Herbert, Martita Hunt's magnificent ruin of Miss Haversham, Finlay Currie's scary but dignified Magwitch, Francis L Sullivan's Jaggers, the conceited spite of Jean Simmons' young Estella and Anthony Wager's sad young Pip.  Valerie Hobson is well cast as the brittle older Estella while John Mills - although too old for the role - is a personable Pip.

DVD/150: THAT HAMILTON WOMAN! (aka LADY HAMILTON, Alexander Korda, 1941)

Of the three films Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier made together, THAT HAMILTON WOMAN is the most watchable but it's obvious patriotism almost sinks it today.

Filmed in Hollywood in just five weeks, Korda made propaganda depicting Britain fighting a war against a European aggressor.  So what if Bonaparte was French?  It's patriotism that counted! 

Churchill's favourite film was made on a reduced budget although the lavish art direction by Vincent Korda belies it.

Destitute alcoholic Emma Hamilton is thrown in a Calais jail and she recalls her life in flashback.

As young Emma, it feels at times like Vivien was told "Just do it like you played Scarlett" as she pouts and teases her way into the dour Lord Nelson's affections but she is a total delight and rises to Emma's lonely end.

She deserves her top-billing; sadly Olivier's Nelson is as animated as the Trafalgar Square statue.

Shelf or charity shop?  A keeper for glorious Vivien who, despite Olivier's stolidness, makes their scenes together spark.  The standouts in the supporting cast are Gladys Cooper as Nelson's neglected wife Lady Frances and Sara Allgood as Mrs Cadogan-Lyon, Emma's gauche social-climbing Irish mother.

DVD/150: MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, 1945)

Where Melodrama meets Film Noir you'll find Mildred Pierce!

Shots ring out on a rainswept night, a tuxedo'd man dies saying "Mildred".  Later Mildred, swathed in fur, considers leaping from a pier but instead lures a former business partner to the scene of the crime, putting him in the frame. 

Mildred recounts to the police the past four years that has led her from a housewife to the owner of a restaurant chain and, in flashbacks, we see how she sacrificed and bettered herself for the love of her spoilt, snobbish daughter Veda.

Michael Curtiz had not wanted Joan Crawford but she was so determined to play it that she agreed to screen-test for it, her first film under contract with Warner Brothers.

Cleverly playing on her 1930s MGM persona - the shop or factory girl who makes good - Joan is truly magnificent, rightly winning the Best Actress Academy Award.

Shelf or charity shop?  On a dark shadowy shelf as befits the Academy Award-nominated Film Noir cinematography of Ernest Haller, MILDRED PIERCE is a glorious film that delivers the hard-edged Warner Brothers style with Curtiz' firm direction, Max Steiner's over-the-top score, the marvellous supporting cast of wolfish Jack Carson, smooth Zachary Scott, nasty Ann Blyth and wise-cracking Eve Arden (the latter both earning their Academy Award nominations) and of course, Joan at her most iconic.