The 39 Steps (1935)
The Film: Alfred Hitchcock’s British masterpiece (and still the best adaptation of John Buchan’s classic crime novel), Robert Donat stars as a man on the run – falsely accused of murder and tightly tangled in a knot of secrets and spies.
The Best Brit Bit: Hitchcock himself credits The 39 Steps with the invention of the MacGuffin. Said to be “a plot device that leads the audience off in the wrong direction”, it’s the entirely un-important plans for the airplane engine that send Richard Hannay (and us) down the wrong path – changing the way thrillers are made ever since.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: Pretty much everyone has tried to remake Hitchcock’s original (including The Cookie Monster in a great Sesame Street parody), but no one has ever come close to the master of suspense.
Peeping Tom (1960)
The Film: Made the same year as Psycho, Michael Powell’s study of violence, voyeurism and a very disturbed young man lifts the lens cap on an even darker side of the newfound slasher genre. Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) makes soft core porn by day and kills women by night using with a blade attached to his movie camera – filming their fear (and showing us his) with the same weapon he uses to finish them off.
The Best Brit Bit: In a scene set to be copied (and ruined) by a dozen found-footage horrors 40 years later, the opening shot is a POV prowling the backstreets of London – picking out potential victims and breathing heavily down the neck of the entire genre.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: It was barely made here – proving so controversial that it died a quick death in cinemas until uber-fan Martin Scorsese paid for a re-release in 1978.
Great Expectations (1946)
The Film: David Lean’s first literary adap tackles Dickens’ greatest novel: the story of a farm boy who has his fortunes transformed by an ex-con. John Mills, Jean Simmons and Alec Guinness all star in Lean’s spellbinding masterwork that sets the benchmark for the page-to-screen process.
The Best Brit Bit: The unforgettable opening scene on the misty marshes – a creaking tree, the whistling wind and Abel Magwich (Finlay Currie) looming into the frame as Pip (Anthony Wager) runs away in terror – is an exercise in slow-building atmosphere that’s rarely been topped.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: Charles Dickens is pretty much built into the British constitution. If we had a Mount Rushmore, he’d be on it (although, to be fair, so would Ant & Dec).
Nil By Mouth (1997)
The Film: Gary Oldman stepped behind the camera to direct this coruscating family drama that takes an utterly unflinching look at life in a South London estate. Ray Winstone seethes and roars in the role of Raymond – a man struggling to control his dysfunctional, junkie family as much as he is his own short fuse.
The Best Brit Bit: Robert De Niro gave a pretty hard stare across a bar in Goodfellas, but Winstone tops him with Nil By Mouth’s agonizing nightclub scene: yessing and nodding to his oblivious wife (Kathy Burke) whilst he stares down a bloke who dared to look at him twice. We know what he’s capable of – and that makes it all the worse when he walks away.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: Filmed around the estate where he grew up, Oldman’s only film as director is about as personal as they get.
Brazil (1985)
The Film: Ex-Python Terry Gilliam channels Kafka, Orwell and Fritz Lang in his sci-fi masterpiece – a dystopian comedy about a lowly clerk (Jonathan Pryce) who gets mistaken for a terrorist after a bug gets squashed over the wrong name in a government printer. Dreams, nightmares and angry plumbers collide in Gilliam’s dazzling, surreal comedy/horror.
The Best Brit Bit: Depending on which version you watch (there are three different cuts – each tailored to different audiences by non-plussed studio execs) the famous “happy ending” takes on a very different meaning. Without any spoilers: either everything is fine, or everything is definitely not fine…
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: If Gilliam ever tries to make anything like this again, he’s gonna have to pay for it himself.
Under The Skin (2013)
The Film: Anyone who went to see Under The Skin expecting a British Species with Scarlett Johansson getting naked would have been sorely disappointed. Although, to be fair, it is about an alien who uses her feminine wiles to sex the life out of hapless men (and Scarlett Johansson does get naked…) – but everything about Jonathan Glazer’s eerie art-house sci-fi is built to chill rather than thrill. Few films have ever had such power and design to etch themselves into our subconscious.
The Best Brit Bit: After driving around Scotland looking for a willing victim, Johansson’s unnamed alien seductress finally lures a man into her van. Walking him silently into a bedroom, Mica Levi’s discordant score starts to thump, both begin to undress – and whatever mad, frightening, surreal thing follows next will haunt you forever.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: Scarlett was filmed by hidden cameras as she walked around Glasgow and no one recognised her. Try doing that in Beverly Hills.
Kes (1969)
The Film: Bullied 15-year-old Billy Casper (David Bradley) lives a grim life on a deprived Barnsely mining estate, but everything changes when he finds a fledgling Kestrel and starts training it as his own. Director Ken Loach uses a largely non-professional cast of child actors in a social drama that somehow manages be heavy hitting and affectingly tender at the same time.
The Best Brit Bit: It’s hard to think of Kes (or ever dare to show it to your kids) without remembering the gut-punch ending. Grim, hopeless and one of the most undeniably powerful scenes in British cinema.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: After that ending, we don’t want it to made anywhere else.
Dont Look Now (1973)
The Film: Based on Daphne Du Maurier’s gothic novel and nightmarishly filmed by Nicolas Roeg, Don’t Look Now is the best British Horror movie ever made. A hypnotic mix of sound, colour and emotion, Roeg seizes your subconscious and doesn’t even let go after the film’s finished. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play the married couple who move to Venice after the death of their daughter only to be plagued by frightening visions.
The Best Brit Bit: The colour red plays a big part in Roeg’s psychological assault on the audience – never more so than the infamous moment Sutherland corners a red-coated figure (that he thinks is his dead child) that shuffles around to reveal its face…
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: America has The Shining, Britain has Don’t Look Now.
This Happy Breed (1944)
The Film: David Lean adapts a Noel Coward play into the seminal social film of the 40's – a deceptively simple tale of an ordinary family growing up in the interwar years – discreetly painting the first portrait of Britian’s new middle class. Robert Newton, Celia Johnson and John Mills star as the Clapham family who settle every conflict (from teenage spats to WWII) by putting the kettle on.
The Best Brit Bit: Learning that their son has died in a car accident, the family find out one by one as Lean’s camera gives them their privacy – silently tracking through the house slower than the news can travel in a dignified, heartbreaking shot that would be echoed again by everyone from Martin Scorsese to Michael Haneke.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: “This happy breed of men, this little world… this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”. If Shakespeare says so, it must be true.
This Sporting Life (1963)
The Film: The ultimate angry young man, Richard Harris soars and sears as Frank Machin – a disaffected Yorkshire minor who tackles tough on the rugby field, deliberately gets into barroom scraps and tries to bully his way into bed with his landlady. Lindsay Anderson’s New Wave masterpiece crackles with all the raw, untapped emotion of the era. The British On The Waterfront.
The Best Brit Bit: One of the best sports movies ever made as well as one of the best social dramas, This Sporting Life features some seriously brutal rugby action – with Harris (himself a talented player) throwing every ounce of himself into the role.
Why It Couldn’t Be Made Anywhere Else: American football players wear helmets.
