Rent or Buy

Loach admits himself that he lost his way during this period. But he regained his focus with Riff-Raff (1991), which restored the reputation he had forged in the 1960s for uncompromising, but compassionate insights into ordinary people simply trying to get by. However, this fallow phase is long overdue reappraisal and the BFI has issued a digitally rejuvenated version of Black Jack on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Transferring the book's action from London to North Yorkshire, this is a spirited adventure that occasionally feels more like something produced by the Children's Film Foundation than the maker of Land and Freedom (1995) or The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006). It might have been a very different picture had Loach exploited Burt Lancaster's eagerness to play the hulking French sailor. But Chris Menges's photography is still typically evocative and the performances of the juvenile leads (who were plucked from obscurity in Barnsley) are enthusiastically engaging, if not always wholly convincing.

When Tolly (Stephen Hirst) witnesses the hanging of Black Jack (Jean Franval) in the summer of 1749, he is appalled by the inhumanity of so-called justice and the baying of the crowd around the gallows. But when he realises that the Frenchman is not dead and that he is now responsible for helping him survive in the hostile countryside, he wonders what he has let himself in for. However, the fugitives are soon joined by Belle (Louise Cooper), who has runaway from the asylum to which she was dispatched by her aristocratic family. Quickly recognising that she is far from mad, Tolly begins to fall for Belle, as they join a carnival for added protection, while staying on the move.

Making splendid use of locations in Ripon, Fountains Abbey and Whitby, Loach ably captures the bustle, grime and brutality of Georgian England. But, for all its historical authenticity and social insight, the story never quite seizes the imagination. Thus, while this may have won the Critics Prize at Cannes, it's never clear who it is aimed at - which was also the case recently with From Time to Time, Julian Fellows's ambitious reworking of Lucy M. Boston's The Chimneys of Green Knowe (whose central character was also called Tolly), which has so far failed to find a distributor.

A mariner cut from a very different jib finds himself on an even more perilous journey in John Huston's The African Queen (1951), which is also being reissued in a pristinely restored state. Long cherished for the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, this would almost certainly have not gone down in movie history had the leads been Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester (as Columbia had intended in 1938) or had Warners teamed Bette Davis with either John Mills, David Niven or James Mason in the late 1940s. Hepburn may have hated every second of the location shoot in the Belgian Congo and Uganda - whose discomforts and boorishness Clint Eastwood immortalised in White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) - but this enduring charmer earned her a first Best Actress nomination in a decade and brought Bogart the sole Academy Award of his career.

When the Kaiser's forces destroy the German East African village where Rose Sayer (Hepburn) has been working alongside her missionary brother, Samuel (Robert Morley), she reluctantly accepts a passage to the coast from uncouth Canadian tramp steamer captain, Charlie Allnut (Bogart). However, the trip along the Ulonga-Bora river soon turns fractious, as the prim spinster takes exception to Charlie's drinking and cussing and relations between the pair are scarcely improved by her nocturnal decision to pour his booze overboard.

But the prospect of passing a German fortification and then encountering the gunboat Louisa prompts them to forge an effective alliance, as Rose massages Charlie's ego as he pulls his creaking tub through leech-infested waters and then navigates a safe course through some treacherous rapids. All seems lost, however, when the now besotted twosome are captured. But, during an impromptu wedding ceremony aboard the imperial vessel, The African Queen manages to spring an explosive surprise.

Impeccably scripted by James Agee and an uncredited Peter Viertel from a 1935 novel by CS Forester, this is the kind of film that Hollywood doesn't make any more because of its aversion to middle-aged co-stars. That said, Alexander Korda warned producer Sam Spiegel six decades ago that he would go bankrupt if he pursued such a reckless and resolutely non-commercial project. Ultimately, the picture made a $4.3 million return on its $1.3 million budget and it has remained a firm favourite ever since.

In truth, there are longueurs and Huston's direction isn't always as precise as it might be. Nevertheless, Jack Cardiff's Technicolor imagery is sublime and Allan Gray's score tactfully chronicles the emotional shifts between the bibulous skipper and the `psalm-singing, skinny old maid'. Following Bogie's advice and modelling her character on Eleanor Roosevelt, Hepburn proved again that she could avoid being box-office poison without the assistance of Spencer Tracy, while Bogart relishes the opportunity to play against type by tempering his trademark tough guy scowls with a touch of craven charisma. For the next five years, he would coast along on the new-found admiration of his peers, even reprising his Oscar-winning role in a cameo opposite Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Bali (1952). Sadly, however, he would die in January 1957 after a long battle with throat cancer.

Moving forward 18 years to 1932 and shifting the scene to the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Maggie Smith plays another woman with entrenched opinions in Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). However, her bid to alter the mindset of those in her orbit has a less felicitous outcome.

A free spirit engaged in `the business of putting old heads on young shoulders' and turning all her girls into `the crème de la crème', Jean Brodie is adored by her students, lusted after by married art teacher Teddy Lloyd (Robert Stephens) and widowed music master Gordon Lowther (Gordon Jackson), and despised as a dangerous influence by conformist headmistress, Miss Mackay (Celia Johnson). In thrall to Mussolini and his Fascists, Miss Brodie fills the heads of her classes with romantic misconceptions about history and culture. But even members of the feted Brodie set begin to doubt the sagacity of her progressive ideas and feckless actions and, eventually, one of the intense and intelligent Sandy (Pamela Franklin), the pretty, but flighty Jenny (Diane Grayson), the over-emotional Monica (Shirley Steedman) and the orphaned and impressionable Mary (Jane Carr) feels compelled to betray her.

Based more on Jay Presson Allen's stage play than Muriel Spark's source novel, this is a ceaselessly fascinating film that provides a much-needed counterbalance to the selfless inspirationalism evinced by just about every screen teacher from Robert Donat's Charles Edward Chipping in Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939) to Julia Roberts's Katherine Anne Watson in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). Smith thoroughly merited her Academy Award for an exceptional display of blinkered arrogance and heedless machination that is subtly shaded during her encounters with Franklin, Stephens (who was then her husband) and the outstanding Johnson, in what proved to be her final screen role. But John Howell's production design, Ted Moore's Technicolor imagery and Neame's discreet direction root the performance in a tangible time and place that makes Miss Brodie's behaviour and the tragedy it precipitates all the more dismaying.

Towards the end of the 1960s, Enzo G. Castellari enhanced Italy's reputation for imparting new spin on established genres by pioneering the Macaroni Combat picture. Interest has been revived in these rousing Second World War adventures by the success of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and Castellari's explosive 1969 outing, Eagles Over London, is now available on disc.

The action opens in Northern France in June 1940, as British troops fight a rearguard against the Wehrmacht in order to stage an audacious evacuation from Dunkirk. Captain Federick Stafford dauntlessly risks his life against the bulldozing Panzers, but it's his discovery of a squadron of murdered Tommies, missing their ID discs and paybooks, that most piques his attention. Yet, he suspects nothing when he pals up with Lieutenant Francisco Rabal, who is one of the Nazi spies who have infiltrated the retreating units to sabotage a network of radar stations back in Blighty.

Sheltered by London barmaid, Teresa Gimpera, Rabal's men rendezvous with Major Luigi Pistilli, who explains that they need to acquire new cover identities before embarking on their mission to knock out the warning systems and leave the RAF powerless against the Luftwaffe. However, the killing spree alerts the secret service to the Nazi threat and Stafford is detailed to root out the impostors as the Battle of Britain begins to rage.

The war movie has changed considerably in the four decades since this bullish romp was released. Yet while shaky cam and CGI are supposed to have introduced a new visceral authenticity to conflict footage, there is still something to be said for the old-fashioned kind of military choreography that Castellari employs here. The ground sequences have a sense of scale that belies their meagre budget and, if the slaughter lacks the hideous realism of Saving Private Ryan, it still conveys the courage of combatants on both sides. Unfortunately, the aerial exchanges are much less convincing, with Van Johnson's performance as an American air marshal being as spurious as the back projections and mocked-up cockpits.

However, what fascinates most here is Castellari's use of Alejandro Ulloa's camera, particularly as it incorporates props into the compositions to bring a touch of visual novelty. Castellari also employs split screens, forced perspectives and colour filters to good effect and if the mattes and miniatures aren't as impressive as the massed ranks of extras, this still makes for bracing entertainment.

Recalling the role of 617 Squadron in Operation Chastise during May 1943, Michael Anderson's The Dam Busters (1955) is a much more traditional war movie. Yet this laudably restrained account of the famous bouncing bomb attack on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany's industrial heartland remains compelling as both a study in scientific ingenuity and as a tribute to the courage of the RAF crews who accepted the suicidal task of hindering munitions production and transportation along the Ruhr.

In the spring of 1942, Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) takes a sabbatical from the Vickers armaments company to begin working on a dam-destroying `earthquake' bomb at the Ministry of Shipping's testing tanks at Teddington. However, the concept of skimming a projectile across the surface of the water to cause maximum damage keeps being confounded by unstable casing and Wallis is all set to abandon the project when a meeting with Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris (Basil Sidney) leads to a call from Downing Street for Wallis to find solutions to his problems within two months.

Meanwhile, Harris has instructed Wing Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) to handpick a squadron and begin Lancaster training runs over reservoirs across the British Isles. The enterprise remains top secret and a green light is by no means a certainty. But Gibson's faith in Wallis's ability is finally rewarded when a trip to the theatre inspires a method of using spotlights to ensure precision bombing at low levels. Nevertheless, the mission proves to be predictably perilous, with eight of the 14 aircraft being lost. Already saddened by the loss of his beloved black Labrador, Gibson returns to discuss the raid with Wallis before heading to his quarters to write some letters of condolence.

Michael Anderson spent two years researching his subject and kept a close eye on the models being created by George Blackwell's special effects team. He also commissioned the construction of five Lancaster replicas and supervised the building of a studio variation that could be used for cockpit interiors as the planes banked and swooped. Moreover, he also insisted that Erwin Hillier photographed the picture in monochrome so that original footage of the trials to be included.

Drawing on books by Gibson and Paul Brickhill, RC Sheriff's controlled screenplay allowed Anderson to produce more of a docudrama than a triumphalist tale of derring-do and the circumspect performances reinforce this sense of duty to be done. Yet Leighton Lucas's celebrated score provides the occasional rousing flourish and there is a hint of patriotic satisfaction in the shots of the submerged countryside (which were actually taken specially for the film while the Ruhr was in its annual flood). Nevertheless, Anderson wisely concludes by remembering lost lives and the sacrifices made by the war's unsung heroes.

Two decades on from VE Day, Britain was in the grip of the Swinging Sixties. But there was often a chasm of difference between the hip happenings depicted in the media and the more quotidian reality experienced by everyday folks. This dichotomy is encapsulated in the latest entries in the BFI's Flipside series.

Withheld for three years, The Party's Over was released in 1965 without a named director, as Guy Hamilton had objected so vociferously to the decision of John Trevelyan's British Board of Film Censors to cut 18 minutes of `explicit' action. However, the excised footage has been restored for this long-overdue edition, which may remind many of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960) and Joseph Losey's The Damned (1963), which also starred Oliver Reed as a cocky youth confronting a visiting Yank.

Keen to let off steam before marrying Clifford David (who works for her industrialist father, Eddie Albert), American heiress Louise Sorel begins hanging out with The Pack, a group of Chelsea beatniks led by the dashing, but dangerous Oliver Reed. When David crosses the Atlantic to claim his fiancée, Reed's acolytes lead him a merry dance and David becomes increasingly drawn to Sorel's friend, Katherine Woodville. Eventually, Albert comes to investigate his daughter's disappearance and the truth about her fate following Mike Pratt's wild party is revealed in a couple of devastating flashbacks.

Confidently scripted by Marc Behm (who would go on to co-write Help! for The Beatles) and photographed in the social realist manner by Larry Pizer, this is very much a film of its time. The prevalence of uncleared bombsites shows how slowly Britain had recovered from the war and suggests the conservatism of a society that could be so affronted by the antics of squatting bohemians who now seem rather tame and quaint. Certainly the gyrations to John Barry's jazzy score during the decadence sequences feel very prosaic. But this is a deceptively daring film, with Maurice Browning's character clearly being gay at a time when homosexuality was still illegal and the references to necrophilia retaining their power to disconcert.

Reed is moodily magnificent and one is left to lament the fact that his off-screen foibles and the weakness of the UK film industry prevented him from becoming a national icon akin to Alain Delon or Gérard Depardieu. The rest of the cast pales beside him. But that is rather the point and there is perhaps also some mournful post-imperial symbolism in the British likely lad being forced to face reality by the American tycoon.

West London is also the setting for Gerry O'Hara's The Pleasure Girls (1965). But while it seemingly provided the inspiration for the BBC's 1969 series, Take Three Girls, this is a much less remarkable picture, despite its occasional insights into the first stirrings of women's liberation and the mundanity of life in a country supposedly basking in the glow of a white hot technological revolution.

Arriving in the capital from East Grinstead to try her hand at modelling, Francesca Annis moves into a flat with best friend Anneke Wills and her roommates Rosemary Nichols and Suzannah Leigh. Also resident in this large Kensington edifice are Australian Colleen Fitzpatrick and the sole male, Tony Tanner, who has just embarked upon a clandestine relationship with Jonathan Hansen. Annis quickly catches the eye of photographer Ian McShane. But, while he keeps trying to lure her into bed, he is the perfect gentleman beside Mark Eden, Nichols's predatory gambling beau, and Klaus Kinski, a scurrilous slum landlord who exploits his West Indian tenants and cheats on his wife with Leigh.

Eventually, matters come to a head. Kinski is assaulted by some thugs hired during a rent dispute, while Annis gives McShane an ultimatum over her virginity. But it's the pregnant Nichols who proves the most heroic, as she discovers that Eden (who has been insisting that she has an abortion) has frittered away the money she raised by pawning a family heirloom and not only dumps him, but also decides to raise her child alone.

Slickly designed by Peter James and photographed by Michael Reed to capture the mood of a nation on the cusp of a socio-cultural upheaval, this witty, but politically acute drama confirmed the promise that O'Hara had shown with That Kind of Girl (1963), following a 17-year apprenticeship as an assistant director. However, he had originally settled for a scriting credit for a story that had been inspired by the Profumo Affair and his own dealings with Polish émigré landlord Peter Rachman. Indeed, he was reportedly only brought in to direct what was then called The Time and the Place after producers Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger fell out with Clive Donner over the lack of some suitably spicy action. A fabled orgy scene failed to make the final cut, however, and some may still find the picture's attitude to free love a touch timid.

Yet there's no doubting the quality of the performances, with Annis's chaste bourgeois making for an intriguing comparison with Diana Scott in John Schlesinger's Darling, which appeared the same year and earned Julia Christie the Oscar for Best Actress. Moreover, those entranced by Carey Mulligan's display in Lone Scherfig's An Education will also find much to reflect upon here - not least the fact that Peter Rachman (played by Luis Soto) featured en passant in the latter, among the celebrities Mulligan meets while revelling in the tawdry glamour to which she is exposed by shifty paramour, Peter Skarsgaard.