Two films had a seismic impact on Hollywood in 1967 and Gene Hackman was involved in both of them. However, he only made the cast of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde after producer Larry Turman and director Mike Nichols decided after three weeks of shooting that he was too young to play Mr Robinson in The Graduate. Yet, the pair seemed unconcerned that there were only six years between Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman, the actors they had cast as Mrs Robinson and her toyboy, Benjamin Braddock.

Then again, they knew they had already taken sizeable liberties in adapting Charles Webb's source novel, as Benjamin was clearly an athletic WASP variation on Holden Caulfield and, with this in mind, they had considered casting Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Anthony Perkins, Keir Dullea, Brandon De Wilde and Michael Parks after first choice Robert Redford had turned them down. They even auditioned Charles Grodin before taking a chance on an off-Broadway up-and-comer who hadn't popped by the age of 29.

After Nichols had realised that he couldn't work with Ava Gardner, he had also contemplated Doris Day, Jeanne Moreau, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Patricia Neal, Geraldine Page, Deborah Kerr, Shelley Winters, Eva Marie Saint and Ingrid Bergman for the past of Mrs Robinson, while Turman's wishlist for her daughter Elaine included Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret, Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Carroll Baker, Sue Lyon, Lee Remick, Suzanne Pleshette, Carol Lynley, Elizabeth Ashley, Yvette Mimieux, Pamela Tiffin, Patty Duke and Hayley Mills.

Ultimately, they plumped for Katharine Ross - who had been recommended to Nichols by Simone Signoret, her co-star in Curtis Harrington's kinky sex thriller, Games (1967) - while Murray Hamilton (who was a whole seven years older than Hackman) was hired to play Mr Robinson after Marlon Brando, Howard Duff, Brian Keith, Jack Palance, Frank Sinatra, Walter Matthau and Gregory Peck were supposedly in the frame. Each choice proved inspired, however, and Nichols and Turman struck lucky again in asking neophyte TV scripter Buck Henry to redraft Calder Willingham's pedestrian screenplay and folk duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel to perform four numbers on the soundtrack. One might say that the New Hollywood gods were smiling on them.

As he arrives back at LAX from his eastern college, 20 year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has seems lost in his own thoughts, as he glides along an automated walkway to `The Sound of Silence'. He seems no more animated, as he gazes at the model diver at the bottom of the fish tank in his bedroom. When his father (William Daniels) asks if anything is wrong, Benjamin confesses to being concerned about his future. But Mr & Mrs Braddock (Elizabeth Wilson) sweep him downstairs to a party being thrown in his honour.

They present him with a red Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 before reeling off his scholastic and extracurricular accomplishments before a gaggle of fawning friends. Mr McGuire (Walter Brooke) takes Benjamin to one side and urges him to consider a career in plastics. But he slips away instead to his room, where he is unexpectedly joined by Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the alcoholic wife of his father's business partner. She asks him to drive her home, as her husband (Murray Martin) seems set for the long haul. Reluctantly ushered inside, Benjamin quickly becomes uncomfortable as she tries to ply him with drink and asks what he thinks of her.

The camera peers through the crook of her leg as she reclines and Benjamin blurts out an accusation that she is attempting to seduce him. Rolling her eyes at his gaucheness, Mrs Robinson offers to show him a new portrait of her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). As he inspects the picture, however, she asks him to unzip her dress and stands in her slip while Benjamin blathers on about Mr Robinson walking in and finding them. Exploiting his unease, she asks if he would like her to seduce him and Benjamin flees. However, Mrs Robinson calls down for her purse and he is horrified to see her naked body reflected in the glass of Elaine's portrait.

As he tries to make his excuses, Mrs Robinson informs him that she is available to him at a time and place of his choosing. He keeps burbling as she explains that all he needs to make is a single phone call and he is mightily relieved to hear the tyres of Mr Robinson's car come screeching up the driveway. Seeing Benjamin is agitated, Mr Robinson offers him some avuncular advice and envies the fact that he has his whole life in front of him. As Mrs Robinson looms into sight, her husband encourages Benjamin to sew his wild oats and she concurs that he looks like the kind of man who would be fighting off the girls.

Rushing to his car with an invitation to call on Elaine when she returns from Berkeley, Benjamin escapes into the night. But his mood scarcely improves over the following days and he wanders through his 21st birthday party wearing scuba gear. Yet skulking at the bottom of the pool and viewing his parents' social group through his distorting goggles seems to help Benjamin reach a moment of clarity and he is next seen in a phone booth at the Taft Hotel inviting Mrs Robinson for a drink. She promises to be there in an hour and urges him to book a room. But nerves prompt him to drift through the lobby in a daze and he feels so intimidated by the desk clerk (Buck Henry) asking if he has come for an affair that he wanders into an upper-class family reception before opting to wait in the bar.

Arriving in a leopard skin coat, Mrs Robinson asks Benjamin if he has booked a room. Seeing he has the jitters, she offers to go to the desk. But he insists on going himself and endures an excruciating exchange with the clerk about the fact that he would rather leave his luggage in the car because he only needs a toothbrush. Scuttling back to the phone booth, he places a call to Mrs Robinson to inform her that all is well and that he has checked in as Mr Gladstone. But she still has to ask for the room number and agrees to meet him in No.568.

Placing the `Do Not Disturb' sign on the door, Benjamin turns off the lights as soon as Mrs Robinson arrives. In his eagerness to kiss her, he locks mouths before she has exhaled her cigarette smoke and then fusses over a coat hanger for her dress before making an impulsive grab for her right breast. Showing great restraint, Mrs Robinson ignores his ramblings about bedding a close friend of his parents and inquires whether he is a virgin. He tries to laugh off the accusation, but locks himself in the darkened bathroom, where `The Sound of Silence' plays again, as the scene dissolves to the light reflecting on the surface of the Braddock swimming pool, as Benjamin sunbathes on a black inflatable raft.

As `April Come She Will' begins, a sequence shows Benjamin flitting between family barbecues and hotel assignations. Sitting in her underwear, Mrs Robinson undoes the buttons of his crisp white shirt and slides her hand inside. But their trysts are devoid of passion and slick elisions and jump cuts suggest that Benjamin quickly comes to regard a session with Mrs Robinson as being no different from a night at home with a beer in front of the television. His father begins to worry about his indolence and browbeats him from the edge of the pool about choosing a grad school or a career. Similarly, Mrs Braddock asks about his nocturnal ramblings and hopes that he isn't doing anything foolish.

Feeling the need to take the relationship to the next level, Benjamin asks Mrs Robinson about her day. He tries to discern her feelings for her husband and is surprised when she reveals that she only got married because she was pregnant. Betraying his immaturity, Benjamin seems more interested in the car in which Elaine was conceived than about Mrs Robinson's feelings and she orders him not to talk about her daughter. Sensing he has hit a nerve, Benjamin demands to know why Mrs Robinson considers him suitable for a casual fling when she would forbid him from dating Elaine. Disliking the answer, he jumps up in high dudgeon. But she calms him down by flattering him into believing that their meetings are the only thing she has to look forward to.

Ironically, the Braddocks have reached the conclusion that Benjamin needs some company of his own age and arrange for him to go on a date with Elaine. Mrs Robinson glowers in the background as Benjamin calls to collect her daughter. But he is no more enamoured of the idea and upsets Elaine by taking her to a strip club. He tries to apologise when she bursts into tears and she sympathises with his sense of ennui while they scarf down junk food at a drive-in restaurant.

They get into an argument with some kids for playing `The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine' too loudly and repair to the Taft Hotel for a drink. Elaine is puzzled why people keep addressing Benjamin as Mr Gladstone. But, as they set off for home, Elaine asks Benjamin if he is having an affair and he confides in her about being duped by a voracious married woman who refuses to take `no' for an answer. Once again, she feels sorry for him and agrees to go for a drive the next day after he insists that the fling is over and that he is beginning to have genuine feelings for her.

As he waits for Elaine during a downpour, however, Benjamin is horrified to find Mrs Robinson getting into the car beside him. She threatens to tell everyone about their liaison unless he stops seeing Elaine. But he refuses to be blackmailed and storms up to Elaine's room to tell her the truth. However, she guesses the moment she sees her bedraggled mother in the doorway and screams in such anguish that Mrs Robinson orders Benjamin to leave.

Accompanied by `Scarborough Fair', a montage shows Benjamin trying to occupy his time and marshal his thoughts in the days that follow. A plan of action finally emerges after he watches Mr Robinson loading the car to take Elaine back to Berkeley and he heads north after informing his parents that he intends marrying a woman who no longer likes him. Renting a room from Mr McCleery (Norman Fell), he follows Elaine across the campus until he plucks up the courage to sit next to her on a bus. She is surprised to see him and confesses that she has started dating medical student, Carl Smith (Brian Avery).

Yet, a short while later, Elaine bursts into Benjamin's room while he is shaving and accuses him of molesting her mother. But, while he manages to persuade her that Mrs Robinson has demonised him, the shrieking causes McCleery to threaten him with eviction. That night, Elaine creeps back into the bedsit and asks Benjamin to kiss her. He responds by proposing marriage, but she stalls and continues to do so over the next few days, as he pursues her relentlessly across the town. Even the hint that she might have already become unofficially engaged to Carl doesn't deter Benjamin. Indeed, a direct order from Mr Robinson (who knows all about the affair) and a goodbye letter from Elaine only spurs him on and, as `Mrs Robinson' plays in the background, he criss-crosses California in a desperate bid to catch up with his beloved and prevent her from doing anything he might have cause to regret.

Eventually, he reaches Santa Barbara on the day of the wedding and has to run the last few blocks to the church when his car runs out of petrol. Looking down on the bridal party from the balcony, Benjamin pounds on the glass in the hope of catching Elaine's attention. Ignoring her parents, she walks down the nave to the door and he fends off Carl and Mr Robinson, as they try to intervene. Mrs Robinson slaps her newlywed daughter twice across the face, but this only makes her more determined to rebel and she bundles through the doors, which Benjamin bars with a large crucifix. They dash into the street and flag down a bus. As they flop on the backseat, their problems seem to diminish behind them. But, as `The Sound of Silence' strikes up for a last time, it's clear that they are not guaranteed a happy ever after.

Ten years ago, Charles Webb (who now lives in Eastbourne) wrote a 70s-set sequel entitled Home School, in which Benjamin and Elaine enlist the help of Mrs Robinson in their campaign to teach sons Jason and Matt at home because the local school in Westchester County, New York doesn't meet their exacting standards. The reviews were decidedly mixed and there doesn't seem to have been an unseemly scramble for the screen rights. But, despite having given them life in the early 1960s, the characters of Benjamin, Elaine and Mrs Robinson (who was never granted a first name) ceased to belong to Webb the moment The Graduate became a box-office sensation and introduced the blend of nouvelle vague self-reflexivity and counterculture subversion that would do for the Production Code in 1968 and free American cinema from 34 years of conservative control.

Yet, Hollywood was no stranger to stories of older women using their wiles to ensnare younger men. Indeed, there are distinct echoes of Mae West inviting Cary Grant to `come up sometime and see me' in Lowell Sherman's She Done Him Wrong (1933) in Mrs Robinson's famous speech: `Benjamin. I want you to know that I'm available to you, and if you won't sleep with me this time...[Benjamin: Oh, my God.]...if you won't sleep with me this time I want you to know that you can call me up anytime you want and we'll make some kind of an arrangement. Do you understand what I...?' But everything changed with the flash of nudity, which was actually provided by an uncredited Sunset Strip stripper, while future Dallas star Linda Gray was paid $25 to flash her stockinged leg for the poster shoot.

Much changed, too, with the speed of the repartee between Hoffman and Bancroft, which (as Sam Kashner has pointed out in an excellent Vanity Fair article) owed much to the improvised banter that had made Mike Nichols and Elaine May the toast of the American comedy scene in the late 1950s. But, just as Buck Henry's script introduced a televisual zip that he had honed writing for shows like That Was the Week That Was and Get Smart (a zany spy spoof that was the brainchild of Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks), so Robert Surtees's photography, Richard Sylbert's Oscar-winning production design and Sam O'Steen's editing raised the bar.

Yet, dare we say that the picture loses much of its edge after Hoffman's fancy shifts from Bancroft to Ross? The Berkeley sequences would certainly have benefited from a little judicious trimming, as Elaine is too sketchily drawn to bear the burden of Benjamin's overnight obsession or his need to revolt against the mores of his caring, but crushingly conventional Eisenhowerian parents. She is also nowhere near as intriguing or alluring as her mother, who has remained the focal point of the numerous revivals of Terry Johnson's 2000 stage interpretation. But this is a minor quibble with a landmark denunciation of growing up that has retained much of its bite and bile. And how can you do anything but love a film with a last-reel getaway on public transport?

It's not often that an album prompts the reappraisal of a bygone film. But, such was the socio-cultural impact made by Beyoncé's Lemonade (2016) that critics fell over themselves to rediscover Daughters of the Dust, the 1991 feature that made LA Rebellion director Julie Dash the first African-American woman see her feature go on general release in the United States. This statistic would be shocking in itself were it not for the fact that so few black women have followed in Dash's footsteps. Cheryl Dunye, Neema Barnette, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Angela Robinson, Darnell Martin and documentarist Ava DuVernay may not be household names, but they continue to make an important contribution to American cinema, along with Dash, even though she has largely been snubbed by Hollywood and has had to subsist on teaching, music videos and teleplays like The Rosa Parks Story (2002).

As the opening credits explain, at the turn of the last century, descendants of `African Captives' known as Sea Island Gullahs lived off the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Isolated from the mainland, the Gullah retained a distinctive African-American language and culture that was deeply rooted in the lore of their ancestors. The setting here is Ibo Landing on Dawtuh Island on 18 August 1902 and, over an image of dirt blowing off the open palms of her younger self, 88 year-old Nana Peazant (Cora Lee Day) declares (in a passage from the gnostic Nag Hammadi gospels), `I am the first and the last. I am the honoured one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the barren one and many are my daughters. I am the silence that you can not understand. I am the utterance of my name.'

As Muslim Bilal Muhammad (Umar Abdurrahman) prays among the reads, Yellow Mary (Barbara-O) and her lover Trula (Trula Hoosier) return to the South Islands from the city for a final visit before the Peazant family relocates to the mainland. Their boat is met by Viola Peazant (Cheryl Lynn Bruce), who has become a devout Christian since moving to Philadelphia, where she found Mr Snead (Tommy Hicks), the photographer she has hired to record her family's move. He has brought a kaleidoscope with him and enthuses about the beauty and simplicity of its design, while Mary and Trula look through it and giggle.

The story is then taken up by the off-screen voice of the Unborn Child (Kay-Lynn Warren), whose parents are Nana's grandson, Eli (Adisa Anderson), and Eula (Alva Rogers). He is uncertain whether to migrate, but his mother is set against the idea and (as her protests are heard in the Geechee dialect), Iona (Bahni Turpin) reads from a letter from her Native American beau, St Julien Lastchild (M. Cochise Anderson), urging her not to leave. However, her mother, Haagar (Kaycee Moore), who is the driving force behind the move and who heartily disapproves of Mary and her relationship with Trula.

As young girls in white dresses dance in slow-motion on the beach, Eli finds his grandmother in the graveyard. He gives her a handful of chewing tobacco and she urges him not to let the fact that Eula was raped by a white man on the island diminish his love for her and their unborn baby. She also pleads with him to stay strong, as he will be responsible for keeping the family together up north and for ensuring that the traditions of the African past are not lost among the dreams of a better future. In his frustration at not knowing who to blame for Eula's shame, Eli smashes the glass bottles hanging from a fetish tree outside his blacksmith's forge and he struts off into the woods. A herd of horses gallops past him and stops him in his tracks, while Eula fails to feel her daughter tugging on her skirts.

The family go for a picnic and Eula uses a stereoscopic viewer to look at monochrome cityscapes that creakily come to life. Viola's mother (Geraldine Dunston) teaches the children some African words, but she breaks off to greet her daughter, as the boat lands. Haagar can barely disguise her contempt for Mary and Trula, but they are unconcerned. While Snead poses the menfolk for a photograph on the tideline (where he momentarily sees the Unborn Child through the lens), Viola reads from Scripture to a gaggle of intrigued children and she promises them that their sins can be washed away by believing in Jesus Christ.

Eula joins Mary and Trula, as they smoke against a gnarled tree. Mary tells Eula to keep the identity of her assailant secret, as it will only result in a lynching and she will be forced to raise her child alone. She recalls miscarrying her own baby and wetnursing for a wealthy family before homesickness prompted her to leave. As she pines for some old-fashioned gumbo, the Unborn Child reveals that she will have a struggle to convince Eli that he is her biological father, but she will never give him cause to doubt.

As Mary, Trula and Eula wander on the beach and find an old parasol rotting in the sand, Iona sneaks away from the women preparing the food to meet St Julien. Haagar wishes she had better control over her daughter and gets into an argument with Viola about Nana. Having married into the family, Haagar is eager to break with the old ways and wants her children to seize the opportunities presented by a new world. But Viola reminds her that Nana has devoted her life to the family and that Haagar should be more sensitive about her feelings, as everyone she loves is leaving her behind.

While the men erect a canopy against an approaching storm, Viola shows the young girls the correct way to sit on a chair, while Eli gambles with his pals and wrestles playfully with his newly married cousin (Malik Farrakhan). As he walks through the woods, Eli thinks he sees a young girl running and the Unborn Child returns to the slave times when exhausted bodies dyed cloth indigo in large stone vats. But she is distracted by an advertisement for a teddy bear in a sales catalogue (which Mary calls a `wish book') and everyone laughs when young Ninnyjugs (Jabario Cuthbert) declares that he would like every item on the page.

Viola goes to fetch Snead and she confides that the people have changed little in the 50 years since slavery was abolished, as they still give their children owned names. But, as they come together to eat, Nana recalls in voiceover how the 18th-century Africans kept track of their family ties, even when they were sold or forced to mate with their kinfolk. Addressing his relations, Daddy Mack (Cornell Royal) reminds them never to forget the lessons that Nana has taught them. As he speaks, Eula feels the spirit of her child move inside her and she recites a legend about the Igbo ancestors who took one look at their new home and began walking on the water to return to Africa. Eli joins her and walks on the water to release an African masthead that has become becalmed and it floats away. On returning to the shore, he kneels before his wife and clings to her.

Having tucked into a freshly cooked meal, everyone lounges around on the sand. Mary tells Eula about a case she once saw that would have been ideal for hiding past things she no longer wishes to contemplate. She dreams of living in Nova Scotia and admits that she needs to have new places and faces in her life. Snead takes lots of pictures and gathers the family into a single group before asking Viola to introduce him to Bilal, who has spurned a baptism ceremony in the sea to pray by himself. He tells Snead how he came from the French West Indies on a boat called The Wanderer after the slave trade had been officially abolished. Nana also harks back to the olden times, as she fears that those heading north will sever their links to the soil that sustained them and Eula echoes her words by urging everyone to remember the past, but also not to forget the shackles that kept them in this place and caused the scars that can only be healed by moving on.

Eula embraces Mary and Nana, whose mind wanders back to when her younger self (Sharria Johnson) let dust slip off her fingers and Daddy Mack (Leroy Simmons, Jr.) had reassured her that everything was going to be fine. She makes a totem containing a piece of her own hair and ties it to Viola's Bible. As Haagar rails against her for trying to put people off leaving, Nana invites her relatives to kiss the amulet and receive her blessing and even Viola joins in. But Trula is upset by the sight of Mary on her knees and she runs away, while Iona pleads with her mother not to spoil a poignant moment. She also breaks her heart by stepping off the boat taking the migrants to the mainland and riding into the woods with St Julien. Much to Trula's distress, Mary also remains behind, as the craft glides slowly into the dusk light, and the film ends with the Unborn Child describing how she arrived in time for Nana to see her and grew up in the land of her ancestors.

Inspired by the transit of Dash's paternal family and originally conceived as a dialogue-free short in 1975, this remarkable film took a decade to develop, during which time Dash produced Illusions (1982), a probing insight into the status of black actresses in 1940s Hollywood. Unable to secure studio backing, Dash received $800,000 from the American Playhouse strand of the Public Broadcasting System and completed the shoot in 28 days on St Helena Island and Hunting Island. Collaborating with production designer Kerry Marshall and costumier Arline Burks Gant, she created an Edenic version of Gullah society that was made all the more authentic by the dialect coaching of Sea Island specialist, Ronald Daise. The wondrously elliptical editing took a further year, during which time John Barnes composed the stirring score that made extensive use of drums, as well as such instruments as the African bata and the Middle Eastern santour.

Intense, intricate and mesmeric, this is not an easy film to fathom on a single viewing. Weaving myths, motifs and rhythms with the finesse of a griot, Dash challenges the viewer to surrender to the sights and sounds of a culture that had been preserved for so long with such reverence and which must have seemed a million miles away from the experience of most African-Americans trapped in poverty in the urban sprawls of the post-industrial north. But there is also something Chekhovian about the cadenced drama that unfolds in a non-linear manner through the eyes of two narrators and the lens of cinematographer Arthur Jafa.

Often viewed in tight close-ups that focus on their facial expressions, the female members of the cast do much of the talking, as they seek to put a post-colonialist spin on the hopes and fears of the emancipation era. First seen emerging from the salt water, Cora Lee Day's proud matriarch shares the narrative duties with Kai-Lynn Warren's Unborn Child. But Dash also gives memorable speeches to Alva Rogers, Kaycee Moore and Barbara-O, whose relationship with Trula Hoosier is intriguingly ambiguous until the little wave that the latter gives from the boat reveals the depth of their connection. It would be fascinating to see what became of Trula and Yellow Mary, but Dash shifted her focus to Elizabeth Peazant when she published a novelised sequel in 1992. This was also called Daughters of the Dust. But, despite the recent revival of interest in Dash and her oeuvre, one suspects that many hurdles would have to be negotiated before a screen version ever appeared.

Completing the trio of `oldies' is David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), a neo-noirish Hollywood allegory that has launched a thousand interpretations. This compellingly cryptic puzzle is well worth watching repeatedly. Yet, even though Lynch has overseen the recent restoration and 4K digital transfer and notwithstanding the fact that it topped a BBC Culture poll of 177 critics from 36 countries to find the best film (to date) of the 21st century, this reissue seems a bit previous. Consequently, we shall content ourselves with a bit of background and a brief overview and leave you to carry on following the dream-logic to wherever you feel it leads.

Having won a jitterbug contest in Deep River, Ontario, aspiring actress Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) pays a visit her aunt's apartment in a Los Angeles building superintended by Coco Lenoix (Ann Miller). However, she is surprised to find the shower occupied by a brunette amnesia victim who has taken the name Rita (Laura Harring) from a poster for the 1946 Rita Hayworth drama, Gilda. On finding $50,000 in cash and a blue key in the stranger's bag, Betty vows to help her rediscover her identity.

Meanwhile, gangster Vincenzo Castigliane (Dan Hedaya) puts pressure on director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) to cast Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) in his new movie. When he finds his wife Lorraine (Lori Heuring) cheating on him with the pool cleaner (Billy Ray Cyrus) and his bank account closed, Adam listens when a shadowy figure named The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery) advises him to do as he's told, if he knows what's good for him. The next day, however, Adam sees Betty when a casting agent brings her to the set of The Sylvia North Story. But he is too busy auditioning Camilla as she sings Linda Scott's 'I've Told Ev'ry Little Star' to speak to her before she rushes off to find Rita, who has been prompted to remember the name Diane Selwyn by a chance encounter at Winkie's diner.

Having found Diane's address in the phone book, Betty and Rita pay her a call, only to find a dead body in the bedroom. Detectives McKnight (Robert Forster) and Domgaard (Brent Briscoe) believe she is the latest victim of a serial killer who keeps eluding them. On returning home, Betty allows panic and lust to get the better of her and she sleeps with Rita, who is now wearing a blonde wig. At 2am, Rita suggests they go to Club Silencio, where The Magician (Richard Green) announces that everything is an illusion before Rebekah Del Rio (playing herself) lip-synchs to a Spanish rendition of the Roy Orbison hit, `Crying' before collapsing.

Betty finds a blue box in her bag and they go home to fetch the key. But Betty suddenly disappears and something distinctly odd happens when Rita opens the box. Meanwhile, Diane (Watts) is woken by The Cowboy in the bedroom where Betty and Rita had found the corpse. She turns out to be a struggling actress who is still coming to terms with her break up with Camilla (now played by Harring), who had secured her small speaking parts when they were an item. But Camilla had tired of Diane and had started flirting with Adam on the set of The Sylvia North Story. In order to humiliate her, Camilla invites Diane to a dinner party hosted by Adam and his mother Coco, where he announces his engagement to Camilla. She kisses another woman (Melissa George) to cement her triumph and Diane is crushed.

She returns home to find a blue key on her coffee table. This was the sign she had arranged with a hitman named Joe (Mark Pellegrino) to confirm that he has killed Camilla. Tormented by hallucinations of a black-skinned creature, Diane shoots herself in the head before the police can arrest her. As she dies on the bed where Rita and Betty found the decomposing corpse, a blue-haired woman at the club whispers, `Silencio'.

Lynch had first conceived Mulholland as a Twin Peaks spin-off for Sherilyn Fenn's character, Audrey Horne. However, it had withered on the drawing-board and remained in the files until Tony Krantz had pitched the concept to ABC in 1998. While a pilot episode was filmed, the network bigwigs were so baffled that they declined to take up the series option. But Studio Canal's Pierre Edelman was intrigued enough to buy the rights and give Lynch an extra $7 million to polish the pilot to feature standard. Ultimately, he only required 18 new pages of script to earn himself an Oscar nomination and a share of the Best Director prize at Cannes with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There.

Lynch mischievously billed the picture `A love story in the city of dreams.' But it was the enigmatic nature of the sinuously surreal storyline that captured the imagination of audiences and critics, who recognised a companion piece to Lost Highway (1997), in which Bill Pullman's jailbird had mysteriously morphed into Balthazar Getty. Directing with typical audacity and finesse, Lynch is superbly served by a wonderful ensemble led by Laura Harring and Naomi Watts (who modelled Betty on Doris Day, Kim Novak and Tippi Hedren), as well as by production designer Jack Fisk, cinematographer Peter Deming, editor Mary Sweeney and composer Angelo Badalamenti, who also has a cameo as Dan Hedaya's mobster brother. But the most vital component of this thrilling concoction is the viewer, as the secret to the film's success lies in the curiosity and confusion that coerces each person watching into devising their own reading of what has unfolded before their very eyes.

Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, has already inspired a Dimitri Shostakovich opera and films by Andrzej Wajda and Valery Todorovsky. Now it provides the basis for theatre director William Oldroyd's feature debut, Lady Macbeth, which sees playwright Alice Birch relocate the action from Tsarist Russia to Victorian Northumberland. Although the ruthless streak shown by the anti-heroine owes something to Shakespeare, the influence of Madame Bovary, Thérèse Desqueyroux and Lady Chatterley is also readily evident. But Oldroyd has taken most of his cues from Andrea Arnold's 2011 interpretation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, with the result that this feels more like a heritage picture from the Amber Collective than from Merchant Ivory.

On her wedding day, Katherine (Florence Pugh) looks around the empty parish church while singing a hymn and realises she is quite alone. The parents who settled a debt with the local mine owner, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), by marrying him off to his son and heir, Alexander (Paul Hilton), are notable by the absence. Yet, Katherine informs her black maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), that she is not afraid of becoming the mistress of a large house while still in her teens and is not intimidated by the fact that her new husband is twice her age. When he strides into her bedroom, however, Alexander reminds her not to get ideas above her station and recommends that she stays indoors to avoid catching cold on the moors. He looks her up and down with indifference and orders her to strip before climbing into bed and falling asleep.

The following morning, Katherine endures the discomfort as Anna straps her into a corset and brushes her long hair. But, with Alexander and Boris attending to their business, she has nothing to do all day but stare out of the window or sit primly on the drawing-room sofa. Eventually, she dozes off, only to be woken by her disapproving father-in-law, who growls that she has a duty to attend upon her husband whenever he requires her. Boris is equally unimpressed when Katherine excuses herself from a dinner party and sends Anna to ensure that her mistress stays awake. However, when a drunken Alexander blunders into her room some hours later he prefers to masturbate while his naked wife faces the wall than consummate their union.

Clearly dismayed by the calibre of man she has married, Katherine is relieved when Alexander is called away to deal with an explosion at the colliery. She is even more delighted when Boris travels to London and she is able to sleep late and explore the moors. On one occasion, she dresses as a maid so that Anna can accompany her and she takes advantage of her solitude to curl up on the sofa in bare feet for a nap.

The peace is disturbed, however, when Katherine hears a commotion in an outhouse and has to rescue Anna from the burly farmhands who have stripped her and hung her from the rafters in a blanket in order to `weigh the sow'. Taking exception to the cod deference of Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), Katherine orders him to set Anna free and makes the others turn their backs while the frightened servant flees. Holding her nerve, Katherine admonishes the men for wasting her husband's time and money. But she is intrigued by Sebastian and is taken aback when he sweeps her into his arms after she asks if he can gauge her weight. Pushing him away, Katherine promises that she will keep her eye on all of them before rushing back to the house to ask Anna for the insolent fellow's name.

It transpires that Sebastian is the new groomsman and, after a restless night, Katherine is delighted when their paths cross the next morning as she sets out for the moors. On returning, however, she scolds Anna for making her bath too hot and demands that she stops fussing and staring at her. As she dries herself by the fire in a silk robe, there is a knock at the door. She is surprised to see Sebastian and suggests that he focuses on his work when he impudently asks if she needs some help to relieve her boredom. But, as she tries to close the door, he calls her by her first name and barges his way into the room. Katherine bites his finger, but he forces a kiss upon her and, when he closes in for another, he allows her to push him down on the bed before rolling her over for animalistic sex that leaves them both gasping for breath. The following morning, Anna is shocked to find the robe on the bedroom floor and is embarrassed to discover that Katherine has slept naked. She holds her counsel, however, and slips away after opening the blinds to the sound of Katherine cackling with relish. The cat eats her breakfast, as she engages in vigorous intercourse with Sebastian before a deft cross-cut shows her taking tea with the vicar (Cliff Burnett). But she is not amused when he asks if ill-health has been preventing her from attending the Sunday service and dares to suggest that she spend more time indoors in quiet contemplation and less in striding through the countryside. Thus, she snatches the cup from the cleric's hand and immediately goes in search of Sebastian to satiate her lust.

One morning, while Anna is picking mushrooms in the woods, she bumps into Sebastian. She admonishes him for the way he has been treating the master's dogs and he smiles sardonically when she mentions a bitch that needs to be kept on a short leash. However, he is in no mood to take advice from someone he deems to be beneath him and makes sure that he fixes Anna's gaze later that night when she peeps through the keyhole at the fornicating couple. But Anna seems to have the last laugh, as Boris returns the next day and Katherine once more submits to being laced into her corset. However, she drinks expensive red wine while dressing and demands to know what is detaining Alexander when Boris tries to play the heavy father at supper. But her moment of triumph comes when Boris sends Anna to fetch a bottle of Fleury and, when she returns empty handed, he makes her crawl on all fours like an animal for not taking better care of his property Not to be outdone, Anna tattles to Boris, who thrashes Sebastian with his stick and locks him in a shed. When Katherine comes to find him, Boris slaps her across the face for shaming the family name and they argue over her failure to give Alexander a child. They exchange words again at breakfast when Katherine demands the key to the shed. But she calms down after Boris smashes a cup and goes to finish his meal in an adjoining room. Indeed, she props a chair against the door handle and invites Anna to sit at the table for a coffee and tell her about her family, while she waits for the poisonous mushrooms to take effect. Only when Boris's cries for help die down does she open the door and send Anna for the doctor. In her absence, however, Katherine rushes to the courtyard and kisses Sebastian's bruised back before taking her place as the grieving daughter-in-law.

The pious and dutiful Anna sobs on her bed and is so distressed at being forbidden from serving meals that she becomes mute. By contrast, Katherine lets the cat sit in Boris's chair and takes Sebastian back to her bed before posing for a photograph in full mourning beside her father-in-law's open casket. She assures her lover that Alexander will never return, as he hates her as much as he detested Boris. Moreover, she vows to follow Sebastian `to the cross, to the prison, to the grave and to the sky' rather than lose him. But Alexander makes a surprise return in the middle of the night and Katherine only just manages to smuggle Sebastian out of her room before protesting that she has been waiting chastely for her husband to come back to her.

He is not to be duped, however, and brands his wife a whore for cuckolding him with a mixed-race underling. She offers to make tea, but he accuses her of growing fat and malodorous and warns her that she will mend her ways after Sebastian is sent away. But Katherine has no intention of remaining indoors with a prayer book and strides to the cupboard where Sebastian has been hiding and straddles him on the bed in full view of the outraged Alexander. He slaps her and a fight breaks out that ends when Katherine caves in Alexander's skull with a poker.

Gambling on no one else knowing that Alexander had returned, the lovers bury his body in the woods and Katherine personally shoots his white horse and bathes in the lake after digging its grave with her own hands. She dresses Sebastian in her husband's finest clothes. But his conscience prevents him from sleeping and she has to reassures him that he will receive the respect she feels he deserves from eveyone, including the silent Anna, who is allowed to wait on them at breakfast.

Months pass and the white horse starts to decay in the undergrowth. But Katherine's hopes of being able to enjoy her ill-gotten gains are jeopardised by the arrival of Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel), a refined black woman who claims that Alexander fathered a son, Teddy (Anton Palmer), with her late daughter. She presents documents proving that Alexander had made the boy his ward and, thus, she demands the right to take up residence. Sebastian dismissed Agnes as a gold-digger. But she lets Katherine know that Alexander had informed her of his plans to return to the manor and intimates that she would have no qualms in going to the authorities unless she and Teddy are given the best rooms in the house. While Katherine maintains a frosty civility towards Agnes, she seems to warm to Teddy, who is impressed that she knows the names of all the birds when they go walking together. But Katherine is upset with Sebastian for returning to his billet and for dressing in his working clothes. She is also envious of Anna, as he has started following her to the woods when she picks mushrooms and he admits to being terrified that he will hang if Katherine's crimes are uncovered. Thus, even when she comes to tell him she is expecting his baby, Sebastian ignores her and Katherine is so crushed to see him consorting with Anna that she makes Teddy cry by pushing him over in her desire to follow her beau.

Teddy is also hurt when Anna barges past him playing cricket with maids Mary (Rebecca Manley) and Tessa (Fleur Houdijk) and he runs away. A search party is dispatched and Sebastian eventually finds him shivering by a waterfall. He carries the boy into the drawing-room, only for Agnes to reprimand him for treating the place as though he owned it. Tired of being bossed around by women, Sebastian threatens to leave. But Katherine pleads with him to trust her and, having persuaded Agnes to get some rest while Teddy sleeps on the sofa, she opens the window for Sebastian to hold the boy down while she suffocates him with a cushion.

While Sebastian waits for her signal, Katherine sheds crocodile tears when Anna finds her beside the lifeless corpse. She tells the doctor (Bill Fellows) that she must have fallen asleep and woke to find Teddy dead. But the physician notices bruises on the body and a policeman (Ian Cunningham) is summoned. Beside himself with remorse, Sebastian stumbles into the room and confesses to killing the child before accusing Katherine of murdering Boris and Alexander. He laments allowing her to pester him into submission and denounces her as an evil disease.

Without turning a hair, however, Katherine dismisses his charges as lies and suggests that he had been in cahoots with Anna, who is the only member of the household to pick mushrooms. Agnes consoles Katherine, as she recalls that Boris perished the day after he had beaten Sebastian and, when Anna proves unable to contradict her, she is bound to Sebastian and they are taken away in a cart. Mary and Tessa leave soon afterwards. But Katherine has no intention of moving out and, clad in black, she resumes her place on the sofa and stares unflinchingly into the lens.

Filmed at Lambton Castle in Durham for under £500,000, this is an intelligent period noir that dispenses with the trappings of the costume genre to examine attitudes to race, class and gender that continue to blight modern society. Alice Birch sometimes allows her revisionist slant on Victorian melodrama to drift towards penny dreadful territory. But her dialogue is crisp and economical, with Florence Pugh's terse exchanges with Christopher Fulford being particularly revealing. Yet the thud of boots on the bare floorboards in Jacqueline Abraham's sparsely furnished rooms proves equally effective in conveying the shabby grandeur of a setting that Oldroyd and cinematographer Ari Wegner often view with a Vermeer-like surface serenity that belies the seething passions being held in by Holly Waddington's restrictive frocks.

Despite the contrasts between the formal symmetry of the interiors and the Romantic wildness of the moors, Pugh is anything but a damsel in distress. Admirably nailing the Geordie accent, she flashes laden glances like a young Emmanuelle Béart as she holds her own against Fulford and Hilton, exudes contempt for Ackie and Rosheuvel, and simmers with lust for Cosmo Jarvis. In only his second dramatic role, the part-Armenian singer-songwriter fares better as a brash stud than he does as a remorseful victim. But sparks fly with the 19 year-old, Oxford-born Pugh, who builds on her outstanding start in Carol Morley's The Falling (2014) with a display of self-possessed socio-sexual mutiny that turns the exploitative hypocrisy of a patriarchal system against itself in order to flout it.