Dead of Night (1945)

Extremely unusual Ealing Studios curio.

It features a series of short stories framed within one wider narrative. Each of these tales deals with some kind of supernatural occurrence. The best of these, by some distance, is the one featuring Michael Redgrave as a ventriloquist whose dummy takes on a life of its own. It's chilling and unnerving, unlike the other segments, which seem a little too mannered and silly to really work – with hammy acting that doesn't help. There's also a "comical" story about a deceased golfer who returns to haunt his rival.

You have to admire the ambition of this construction, even if not all of it works.

The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

During World War II, members of the resistance sabotage the Germans’ attempts to create an atomic bomb at the Vemork Norsk Hydro plant in Telemark, Norway. 

Probably the worst lighting I’ve ever seen in a film. It lurches from dim and grainy, with a “glow” around objects on the screen, to brighter but still somehow “wrong”-looking, and then back again.

It’s supposedly based on real-world events, but it’s very difficult to believe some of these episodes are true, especially when cartoonishly stupid Nazis are so easy to evade and outwit. None of the guards ever seem to look round. 

Kirk Douglas does his best with the material, and his charm just about survives, but there’s no character for him to explore. 

Too many scenes consist of our heroes running about in the snow – and for far too long, with minimal dialogue – as if the script was never actually completed. Likewise, there are lingering, ponderous scenes of them setting up a bomb, fiddling with wires, applying tape and generally pottering around. These go on and on, without dramatic tension, and end up being unintentionally funny. 

Richard Harris is appallingly wooden as resistance leader Knut Straud. Michael Redgrave is completely unnecessary as a seemingly random uncle: I knew his character would die because he had no dramatic function in the story whatsoever. Ulla Jacobsson is passable as Kirk Douglas’s ex-wife, but she’s still given minimal personality and even less function in the narrative. 

Despite this somehow appearing on lists of the greatest war films, it’s a long way from essential. But it might give you a good chuckle.

The Go-Between (1971)

Brilliantly evocative and resonant adaptation of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Dominic Guard is Leo, the 12-year-old spending the summer of 1990 with the Maudsley family in their large Norfolk country house. He finds himself becoming a go-between for Marian Maudsley (Julie Christie) and Ted Burgess (Alan Bates), the local farmer she’s secretly having an affair with.

Like the book, it focuses on issues of social inequality. Marian’s affair transgresses class boundaries and is therefore taboo. It also probes into sexuality and how naive young Leo’s own consciousness of adult relationships is crippled by the way he is used to facilitate a union he cannot understand.

Julie Christie is excellent as the charming-but-manipulative Marian. Edward Fox is also strong as the posh-but-dull Hugh, unable to compete with the “savagery” of Ted.

The hot summer is expertly conveyed and you can feel the heat building to the inevitable storm that marks the climax. As child actors go, Guard is right up there (he was also in Picnic at Hanging Rock). The music, by Michel Legrand, is perfectly judged – sometimes lovely, often foreboding.

With the vivid way it’s shot and soundtracked, at times it has the feel of a horror film. But the horror turns out to be an emotional one. Rather than manifesting itself in sudden scares, it’s a terror that echoes down through the decades.