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: REBECCA (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)

Hitchcock ended his British career with the misjudged JAMAICA INN based on a novel by Daphne du Maurier and his Hollywood career began with another, REBECCA, and it remains one of his greatest - his only film to win the Best Picture Oscar.

Despite producer David O. Selznick's interference, Hitchcock's film is a triumph of sustained mystery.

A timid orphan, a paid companion to an overbearing American, is befriended in Monte Carlo by the suave widower Maxim de Winter who proposes to her; although he is occasionally remote, she accepts.

At his mansion Manderley, she finds everywhere the oppressive presence of Maxim's first wife Rebecca who drowned a year before.  Her nemesis is the disdainful, obsessed housekeeper Mrs Danvers who keeps Rebecca's bedroom as a shrine to her beloved mistress.

Vivien Leigh lobbied for the lead role but was considered too forceful a presence, leaving Joan Fontaine to triumph in it.

Shelf or charity shop?  An absolute keeper, for Hitchcock's masterly storytelling as well as Franz Waxman's swooning score, and the performances of Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, the wonderful Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers, sexy George Sanders as Rebecca's cousin and lover, and delightful support from Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce and Florence Bates.