Parky at the Pictures (DVD 31/5/2012)

Sadly, the numerous newsreel crews on duty on 2 June 1953 missed the moment and the BBC's nascent television service was still not nimble enough to capture such a potentially iconic incident. However, the sight of the verger cartwheeling along the red carpet during the marriage of William and Kate at Westminster Abbey demonstrates how much things have changed in both the nature of royal events and in their coverage by the now mass media.

The ancient ritual at the same venue six decades earlier had been watched by 56% of the adult population of 36 million, with many households purchasing their first TV set specially for the occasion. A further 17 million listened on the radio. It will be fascinating to see how many view the Diamond Jubilee festivities in an age of internet feeds, i-players and digital video recording. One thing is certain, however, the footage won't find its way into a documentary feature to rival the Oscar-nominated A Queen Is Crowned (1953), which was produced Rank by Castleton Knight, who had been making films since the silent era and had been responsible for the official record of the 1948 Olympic Games.

Scripted by Christopher Fry and narrated by Laurence Olivier, this Technicolor treat has been restored and remastered from a print that arrived in global cinemas within a week of the event itself. A small army of technicians had been required to achieve a post-production feat that was unique in British screen history and it says much for Knight's planning that neither coherence nor spectacle was compromised by the need for speed. It's just a shame that nobody thought to credit the editors who caught the essential pomp and circumstance from the six hours of procession and ceremonial.

Opening with stock views of Welsh hills, Scottish mountains and sleepy English villages, the film seeks to show how the Coronation united a nation (how did the Northern Irish feel at being excluded from this whistlestop travelogue?). But the focus is firmly on the 27 year-old Princess Elizabeth, as she rode in the 200 year-old Gold State Coach being drawn by eight Windsor grays. Such was the discretion of the filming that it was not possible to pick out the floral emblems of the Commonwealth that had been embroidered onto the Norman Hartnell dress, but the cameras were there as guests and not by right and this reverential tone is reflected in Olivier's hushed delivery.

The same restricted access pertained to the rites performed in the Abbey's Henry VII Chapel. Thus, unlike last year, when lip readers were employed by the networks to translate what the royals were saying, there was no camera close enough to catch the princess asking Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher to `get me started', as the friction between her gown and the carpet brought her to a near standstill. However, the key moments were recorded (minus only the sacred anointing), as Elizabeth sat on King Edward's Chair to receive the symbols and trappings of monarchy before swearing her oath and having St Edward's Crown placed upon her head to the booming salute of `God save the Queen' from the entire congregation.

Despite the grandeur of the occasion, the human element is not totally neglected. The shots of Prince Charles and Princess Anne joining their mother seemingly unaware of the significance of what was going on around them are quite charming, while there is something touching about the Queen's radiance as she is applauded along The Mall by her new subjects. The beaming excitement of Queen Salote of Tonga is also infectious. But, perhaps the most poignant images are those of the Queen Mother, who must have thought back to her husband's coronation 16 years earlier and whose joy at her daughter's accession simply had to have been tinged with sadness at her own loss.

Ultimately, A Queen Is Crowned lost out at the Academy Awards to Disney's pioneering nature documentary, The Living Desert. Yet it remains a valuable historical artefact and it is presented here with Michael Ingrams's 1966 feature Palaces of a Queen, which offers tours of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, St. James's Palace, Hampton Court, Kensington Palace and Holyrood House, with narration by Michael Redgrave and a rousing score by Malcolm Sargent.

The first British monarch to appear before the cameras was also the first to celebrate 60 years on the throne and the footage captured by W. & D. Downey in the Highlands in 1896 leads off the selection in the BFI's A Royal Occasion: From Victoria to Elizabeth II. Intended as nothing more than a home movie to mark the visit of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, Scenes at Balmoral afforded the public the first opportunity to see the Queen Empress in motion, although she can hardly be said to be animated as she is pulled around in a buggy clutching her prized Pomeranian Turi. However, she was more suitably regal during the procession to St Paul's Cathedral to mark her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 and clips from RW Paul's record are included here.

Victoria only managed to survive 13 months of the new century and images of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at her funeral make for a sobering contrast with the celebrations of four years earlier. But Bertie very nearly missed his chance to reign, as he was struck down with appendicitis only two days before his coronation and there is as much relief as exultation in his expressions during the footage taken before and after the ceremony in 1902. The new king's popularity is evident from the striking scenes from the 1903 Delhi Durbar and the 1906 newsreel King Edward VII Launches HMS Dreadnought from Portsmouth Dockyard. But the event started the naval race that reached its conclusion with the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 and a clutch of titles show George V, his German-born wife, Queen Mary, and his Danish mother, Queen Alexandra, striving to boost morale during the Great War.

Victory was hard won in 1918 and the newly minted House of Windsor was the last of the Big Four European monarchies left standing. No wonder the Dufaycolor was broken out for Silver Jubilee (1935), which perhaps subconsciously sought to contrast the genuine joy of the British people with the regimented enthusiasm of the Germans depicted in Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda picture of the same year, Triumph of the Will. However, George V died the following year and it's noticeable that the only images of the short-reigned Edward VIII are confined to an extract from Through India and Burma with HRH The Prince of Wales (1922).

The Abdication Crisis of 1936 brought the Duke of York and his wife Elizabeth to the throne and the collection assembles copious clips of their early years together, including the birth of Princess Elizabeth in 1926. The pageantry of the coronation is also put on display, along with examples of wartime duty and a Royal Family outing to the site of the 1951 Festival of Britain. However, a conscious effort seems to have been made to avoid overly familiar footage and few of the expected events between 1936-52 are depicted. Similarly, coverage of the current queen is limited to Lord Wakehurst's alternative record of the coronation, Long to Reign Over Us, and a Dufaycolor record of the day, A Royal Occasion (both 1953).

Obviously, copyright issues and a desire to avoid offending the Palace must have played a part in the selection process. But it might have been nice to see some of the Kinemacolor coverage of the 1912 Delhi Durbar, as well as a reference to the Edward and Wallis saga and some footage from what remains (and will do so for many years to come) the New Commonwealth's first and only royal funeral.

Those looking for a more detailed account of the coronation era should seek out Pathé's Queen Elizabeth in the 1950s. As these were shown in British cinemas at a time of heightened patriotism, it's hard to ignore the exaggeratedly deferential tone. But they provide a fascinating snapshot of the nation as it passed from mourning a reluctant king whose devotion to his people had taken its toll on his health to celebrating the dawn of a new Elizabethan age. Nobody could have known that the new monarch would rule for so long, but one only has to compare the earnest, cut-glass-accented commentaries and discreet detachment of this quintet with the tabloid reverence of Andrew Marr's sound byte-stuffed BBC series, The Diamond Queen.

Chronicling Princess Elizabeth's life before the fateful visit to Africa that saw her return after just a few days as a grieving daughter rather than a constitutional figurehead, Long Live the Queen reveals how quickly Elizabeth II had to assume her new role, as she was forced to undertake engagements like handing out the Maundy Money at Westminster Abbey within a few weeks of her father's February funeral. Yet, as The Queen's Birthday (1952) shows, she had grown into the role by the time she became Colonel in Chief of the Guards regiments on her official birthday.

In the months leading up to the Coronation, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had become the toast of British society and Royal Review records their reception at the Epsom Derby, at the Guildhall and at Edinburgh Castle. But this pales besides Elizabeth Is Queen (also 1953), which focuses on the preparations of the Royal Guardsmen, the Household Cavalry and the royal coachmen for the ceremonials that dazzled the world on 2 June 1953. In addition to capturing the pageantry in full colour, this charming account conveys the excitement of the vast crowds who seized the opportunity to defy the drizzly weather and sing and dance in the streets lining the route.

Concluding the programme is Welcome the Queen (1954), which accompanies the new monarch on her first Commonwealth tour. Among the countries visited are Jamaica, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon, Uganda, Malta and Gibraltar, with plenty of attention being paid to what, then, would have been a unique insight into traditional dances, costumes and customs. However, times have changed considerably in the intervening half century and the sense of unease that arises while watching this film recurs throughout the BFI's COI Collection: Volume 7 - The Queen on Tour.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this two-disc set is what is missing. Despite travels to Africa and the Caribbean at a time of increased clamour for independence, there is virtually no sign of protest. Instead, the Queen and are her consort are welcomed with enthusiasm by the great and the good, while cheering crowds keen to witness the spectacle line the streets. Similarly, as these films were produced by the Central Office of Information with the full co-operation of Buckingham Palace, there isn't a hint of the political controversy caused by 1961 state visits to Pakistan and Iran (just eight years after Britain and the United States had backed a coup to instal the Shah) or by the 1971 visit to Turkey and the official reception accorded Emperor Hirohito and his wife, in the face of fierce opposition from those who had been POWs in barbaric Japanese camps just 26 years earlier.

The Duke of Edinburgh's expedition to Antarctica and a solo jaunt by the Queen's proved less contentious, as Southward with Prince Philip and Princess Margaret in Mauritius and East Africa (both 1957) ably demonstrate. Similarly, the emphasis was firmly on cosy PR in Royal Destiny (1957), Life of a Queen (1960) and Royal Children (1961), which explore how a young woman became a wife and mother and had to juggle all this with being head of one of the largest political organisations in the world. Yet, even though it is easy to admire Elizabeth II's composure, stamina and extraordinarily high threshold for coping with functionary fawning, it is impossible to avoid a feeling of post-colonial guilt that creeps in with the first frame and rapidly becomes a torrent.

Humphrey Jennings, the great poet of the British Documentary Movement, didn't live to see Princess Elizabeth's accession. He was killed in Greece in September 1950 while scouting locations for a film for the European Economic Commission. However, such is his innate understanding of the national spirit that this seems the perfect weekend to consider The Complete Humphrey Jennings ,Volume 2: Fires Were Started, which concentrates on the films he produced during the Second World War. Complete with alternative versions and a booklet containing thoughtful essays, this is a typically excellent BFI release.

Narrated by the renowned American correspondent Edward R. Murrow, The Heart of Britain (1941) was much criticised on its release for presenting a picture of an embattled country. But this is very much a paean to the defiance of the population, as a Sheffield steel worker takes pride in the fact that he follows a hard day's graft with a stint as a plane spotter. Similarly, Liverpudlians assemble in a school playground to practice rescue drills, while women volunteers type up lists of those needing shelter and clothing because their houses have been bombed. Indeed, while the men are out protecting the streets, the womenfolk do their bit in the air-raid shelters by keeping up spirits with games and songs.

The artistic community also have a role to play in this regard and the scene shifts to Manchester to show Malcolm Sergeant conducting the Halle Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, German music that continues to play over shots of devastation caused by the Luftwaffe in cities like Coventry. But, as a choir from Huddersfield launches into the `Hallelujah Chorus' from Handel's The Messiah, the images of citizens scurrying to shelters and clearing bombsites are juxtaposed with scenes from an aircraft factory and the closing shot of a plane taking to the skies reflects the conviction that Britain can take the punishment and will retaliate with customary indomitability.

The blend of culture, courage and confidence recurs in Words for Battle (1941), which was originally released as In England Now and which Jennings always insisted was more about the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square as the British landscape and the people it had engendered. Clearly intended as a clarion call to viewers in the United States, it quotes from the Gettysburg Address to stress that Britain is not engaged in an imperialist conflict, but in a struggle between the forces of democracy and dictatorship. Thus, it is tempting to see the repeated use of shots suggesting God looking down from Heaven as more than a rhetorical device, but as a cinematic reclamation of the clouds from the opening sequence of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935).

Narrated by Laurence Olivier, the film begins with a passage from William Camden's Description of Britain that is accompanied by a montage of rolling pastures, the rugged coastline and traffic slinking through a provincial English town. John Milton's Areopagitica is read over a visit to Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey and footage of RAF recruits training to become the pilots who will defeat the parading Nazis. This sense of readiness is reinforced during a rendition of William Blake's `Jerusalem' by scenes of children being evacuated to the countryside, where they reconnect with the soil of their ancestors in looking forward to a better tomorrow.

The extract from Rudyard Kipling's The Beginnings confirms this hope for the future. But Jennings accepts in the shots of firemen and military policemen searching through rubble that much will have to be endured, both on the home front and in foreign fields, before victory can be secured. However, as Olivier reads Robert Browning's Home Thoughts on the Sea over images of Gibraltar and Royal Navy destroyers on patrol, it is clear that all the sacrifices will not have been made in vain. Nevertheless, while Winston Churchill avers in his famous `beaches' speech that Britain `will never surrender, he knows that support from across the Atlantic will prove crucial in turning the tide and the shots of tanks passing Lincoln's statue as Big Ben's chimes thunder out carries the dual message that not only is Britain ready for the fight, but also that the potential sight of Panzers rolling through Westminster would be as calamitous for America as it would for the land that had provided the world with such stirring literature.

Sharing the directorial credit with his faithful editor Stewart McAllister, Jennings continued to counterpoint the sights and sounds of war in Listen to Britain (1942), which was nominated for the inaugural Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. However, there was much consternation within the Ministry of Information before its release, as it was decided that lyrical, non-linear footage accompanied by quotidian sounds rather than a linking commentary would confuse audiences. Consequently, an introduction delivered by Canadian Leonard Brockington grandee was appended to the export version, which had a considerable impact on American audiences now allied to the cause.

The opening sequence conveys the extent to which Britons are simply getting on with life, as Land Girls are shown helping to gather the harvest while Spitfires soar overhead in the late summer dusk. The singing of a unit of Canadian troops on a steam train gives way to images of dancers packing a ballroom floor and music lovers attending a concert for a moment of relaxation away from such vital war work as digging coal, building Lancaster bombers, making munitions or responding to emergency calls. But the radio broadcasts from London indicate that we are no longer alone in our noble enterprise, as messages are delivered in foreign languages against a backdrop of birdsong, which reinforces the notion of freedom and the mood of hope.

Whether it's pianist Myra Hess performing in the National Gallery or Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen crooning in a canteen boasting a menu of wholesome dishes, everything about this audiovisual masterclass seems to reaffirm the 1939 government exhortation to `Keep Calm and Carry On'. But what is most notable about this landmark film is the refusal to quit, even though exhaustion and uncertainty are etched into the faces of those at work, rest or play. Moreover, by focusing on the assured manner with which women handle heavy machinery, Jennings and McAllister posit a nation on the verge of a seismic social shift - albeit one that was delayed for another two decades by postwar austerity and entrenched chauvinism.

There were still jobs that women were not permitted to do, however, and Jennings focuses on one of the most dangerous in Fires Were Started (1943), which proved to be his sole feature. In paying tribute to the disbanded Auxiliary Fire Service, which had performed heroics during the Blitz, he drew heavily on the docudramatic tradition established in films like Harry Watt's Target for Tonight (1941) and Noël Coward and David Lean's In Which We Serve (1942). But, Jennings sought to recreate reality by employing those who had experienced the firestorms at first hand and his cast was made up of members of the newly established National Fire Service, who largely improvised their dialogue after discussion with the director.

New recruit William Sansom is greeted with a bucket of water being flung down the steps when he first arrives at substation 14Y. He is greeted warmly by the likes of newsagent Johnny Houghton and fellow leading firemen Fred Griffiths, John Barker, TP Smith and Loris Rey and is given a guided tour of their patch, which includes Trinidad Street and Alderman's Wharf, where a munitions ship is being loaded with a dangerous cargo. As their superiors discuss alternative sources in case of a water shortage, Sansom joins his new colleagues in relaxing over a game of snooker, a pot of tea and a singsong.

Outside, however, fire watchers are concerned that the wind is getting up amidst rumours that there will be a Luftwaffe raid. A chorus of 'One Man Went To Mow' is interrupted by the air-raid sirens and a call is received about incendiaries falling on the docks. With the 14Y crew preoccupied with a warehouse blaze, a fireboat is sent to cover the ammunition craft. Meanhile, Sansom is dispatched to find more water to maintain the hose pressure and he finds a sunken barge acting as a reservoir. But, as the raid intensifies, communications are disrupted as the station is hit and telephonists Betty Martin and Eileen White struggle to keep the lines open.

The situation becomes increasingly perilous at the warehouse and officers George Gravett and Philip Wilson-Dickson send Rey to fetch reinforcements. However, Gravett is knocked unconscious on a burning staircase and Houghton and Sansom have to lower him from the roof with a lifeline. Just as he reaches the ground, however, a wall collapses and Houghton falls as a fireball erupts into the night sky.

Next morning, as his wife listens to a radio reassurance that there had been few casualties, Houghton's helmet is found in the rubble. A passing local comments on the destruction and Griffiths snaps back that the munitions ship had been protected. But spirits have undeniably been dashed by the incident and, as Rey reads a passage from Shakespeare, Brown has to urge his mates to buck up because there is still a job to be done.

Jennings began the project with the barest outline, which was something of a reckless tactic, considering that he had never previously attempted a drama with a linear narrative and definable, individual characters. However, he was always more at home in the editing room than on location and he imparted a poetic power to his footage that not only made it persuasive propaganda, but also ensured it has endured as a masterclass in audiovisual authenticity.

By adopting a day-in-the-life structure, Jennings was able to educate viewers about how a station went about its business. Yet, the sequences showing the crew preparing their equipment in the calm before the storm also captures the mundanity of duty and how these everyday men and women cope with the constant pressure of laying their lives on the line for their country. Images of the basking dog and the blossoming tree only reinforce this impression of a country worth fighting for.

Yet, Jennings avoids a physical depiction of the Nazi enemy and resists any overt hostility towards them. Indeed, he treats the blaze that threatens the munitions ship almost as if it were a natural disaster to emphasise that the AFS would have responded with courage and professionalism regardless of the conflagration's cause. Consequently, this is an impeccably paced, precisely edited commendation of a classless community uniting in a selfless act of defiant resistance.

The fate of the Czechoslovak coal community of Lidice appalled the British public and Jennings commemorated the atrocity in The Silent Village (1943), in which miners from Cwmgiedd in South Wales play the 170 men who were executed in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, in June 1942. In addition to showing solidarity with their fallen comrades, the miners were also keen to demonstrate that such barbarism could have happened anywhere, including Britain, and that the eradication of such cynical cruelty was a just one of the many reasons why the Nazis had to be defeated.

As the story opens, the villagers are going about their business, with those not down the pit supping pints in the pub, while their wives and children are enjoying a night at the pictures. Behind this façade of normalcy, however, the local underground is printing Welsh-language newsletters and the rendition of `Men of Harlech' has a pride and ferocity that contrasts with the placid scenes of leisure.

Such routines are soon shattered, however, by radio announcements and the blaring warnings issued from a tannoy affixed to a car gliding sinisterly through the quiet streets. The population is forced to register in the village hall and the men are led away to be gunned down (off screen) against the wall of the chapel, while the women are separated from their children and led away to concentration or forced labour camps. Yet the pitiless act backfires on the Reich, as it succeeds only in uniting workers everywhere in renewed opposition.

Jennings had arrived in Ystradgynlais to plan this picture within two months of Lidice's plight becoming known. Although it took longer to organise, the project had the backing of the Czech government in exile and the South Wales Miners' Federation, whose members played their parts with a stiffness that some might find off-putting and yet which typified the wartime British cinema's commitment to the kind of non-professional authenticity that would become such a feature of Italian neo-realism. Indeed, the inertia reinforces the sense of oppression and anticipation that pervades the village after its occupation and it is only with the disdainful climactic rendition of `Land of My Fathers' that the realisation dawns that this crime will only make resistance stronger.

The year after this film was made, Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald was born to a career soldier in Germany. It's fitting, therefore, that Jennings's enduring legacy should inform Patience (After Sebald), Grant Gee's compelling companion to WG Sebald's 1995 novel, The Rings of Saturn, which not only brings the text to life, but also the landscape that inspired it, the method of its composition and the impact its themes and style have had on a range of erudite devotees.

On leaving his homeland, `Max' (as he was known to intimates) spent much of his adult life in East Anglia and his fascination with and affection for the place is readily evident in the book that resulted from his walk in August 1992 along the Suffolk coast between Lowestoft and Bungay. The sights and sounds Sebald encountered were merely the starting point for the prose, however, as anecdotes, digressions and meditations filled the pages that flit in and out of Gee's engrossing homage to an enigmatic man and his remarkable mind.

Engravings, photographs and maps compete with colour-drained vistas as Gee intersperses textual readings by Jonathan Pryce with the recollections and insights of writers Robert Macfarlane, Rick Moody, Barbara Hui, Dan Gretton, Marina Warner, Iain Sinclair and Christopher Woodward, poet Andrew Motion, editors Lise Patt and Bill Swainson, film-maker Chris Petit, theatre director Katie Mitchell, artists Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar, architect William Firebrace, journalist Arthur Lubow, publisher Christopher MacLehose and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. Yet, despite the occasional flash of preening intellect, this highbrow line-up proves far from intimidating.

Indeed, such is the enthusiasm of the contributors that aficionados will feel the need to revisit Sebald's work, while newcomers will surely be impelled to seek it out. The majority refer to the author's distinctive working methods or his discussion of such diverse topics as trawling for herring, silkworms, the Opium Wars, slavery in the Belgian Congo and the Holocaust. But, in the spirit of the source, it's equally intriguing to hear Katie Mitchell compare the shingle beach at Benacre Broad to a landscape in a Tarkovsky film, Tacita Dean recall the fact that her great-great uncle was the judge who sentenced Sir Roger Casement to death and Andrew Motion remember childhood holidays in Dunwich and the fate of the clifftop church of All Saints, which fell victim to erosion. Even the Google maps and flow charts of Barbara Hui and Rick Moody have an anoraky charm.

Yet, perhaps, the most poignant moment comes in the final moments, as Jeremy Millar lets off a firework at the spot where Sebald perished in a car crash in 2001 and Gee superimposes the lingering wisps of smoke onto a photograph of emphasising the writer's resplendent white moustache. In most circumstances, this would seem ineffably corny. But it feels like an ethereal seal of approval for a treatise that not only takes literature seriously, but also finds a new way to discuss it intelligently and cinematically.

A graduate of St Catherine's College, Gee has, thus far, been best known for his music videos and the rockumentaries Meeting People Is Easy (1999), about Radiohead, and Joy Division (2006). However, he takes a sizeable step forward here, and deserves credit for both the ambition of his project and the humility of his recognition that his film could only ever be an `aesthetic response' to the atmospheric beauty of the coastal scenery and the poetic density of Sebald's writing.

The hand of Jennings can also be detected in another treatise on the landscape and its occupants, John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses. Born in the Ghanaian capital Accra and raised in London, Akomfrah emerged as one of the pioneers of Black British cinema as the co-founder of the Black Audio Film Collective and the director of the landmark documentary Handsworth Songs (1986). A quarter of a century on from this visceral account of an inner-city riot, he has produced another remarkable film, this time about `those ghostly traces of lived moments, those pariah images and sounds that now occupy a unique space somewhere between history and myth'.

Taking Homer's The Odyssey as his exemplar, Akomfrah revisits the theme of postwar migration to these islands and juxtaposes a wealth of archival and newly photographed footage, together with readings from a challenging selection of authors, to journey through `a museum of intangible things'.

Having explained how the Muses were born of the union between Zeus and Mnemosyne (the Greek goddess of Memory), Akomfrah proceeds to divide the action into headed segments devoted to each one. The recurring figures of men in yellow, blue and black coats make their first appearance in Caliope - Muse of Epic Poetry, as Dewald Aukema's Red camera images of a frozen Alaskan landscape are intercut with shots of the Windrush immigrants arriving in London from the Caribbean to the accompaniment of lines about the Fall of Eden and Telemachus going in search of Odysseus at the end of the Trojan War.

Clio - Muse of History contains footage of black men taking menial jobs in kitchens and on the buses, as they attempt to become part of a society that regards them with suspicion, while Polyhymnia - Muse of Sacred Song follows a song about a child being a long way from home with Richard Burton's interpretation of Under Milk Wood, as the visual focus shifts to heavy industry and the appalling weather conditions to which the newcomers had to acclimatise. As the flashbacks show in Melpomene - Muse of Tragedy, they were soon joined by a wave of Asians, who arrived by plane into a country finally shaking off its postwar bleakness and showing signs of embracing modernity.

Against another Alaskan backdrop (to emphasise the alien nature of the climate and symbolise the continued frosty reception of the natives), the Euterpe - Muse of Music section hints at greater integration by showing a black man and a white woman listening to a classical recording together. Indeed, the migrants were now becoming firmly ensconced as citizens and, in Urania - Muse of Astronomy, Akomfrah shows families settling into cities like Liverpool (which had once been at the centre of the Atlantic slave trade) and kids thriving in schools and using sport to make their mark.

But, Thalia - Muse of Comedy opens with a speech by Enoch Powell and features vox pops by white working males opining that their country is being overrun. Yet, the images reveal the immigrants being housed in often derelict properties and still being forced to accept jobs that nobody else was willing to take. As `Let My People Go' plays on the soundtrack, the scene in Erato - Muse of Love changes to show the religious differences between the Muslim, Hindu and Christian communities. But the concluding entry devoted to Terpsichore - Muse of Dance suggests the cultural benefits of diversity as shots of people enjoying their leisure time are accompanied by Duke Orsino's `If music be the food of love' speech from Twelfth Night.

A stylish exercise in Strucuralism that succeeds in being cerebral, artistic, cinematic and accessible, this is an immersive and inspirational experience that wears its literacy and technical mastery with laudable lightness. The mix of spoken word and music (which has been selected from an impressive range of sources) is as rich as the editor Miikka Leskinen's visual blend that often dazzles with its audacity and aptness. Poetic and challenging in equal measure, this is apparently the first part of a trilogy and it will be fascinating to see where Akomfrah takes us next.

Akomfrah's dissertation draws on a wide range of literary sources, but the works of romance publishers like Mills & Boon and Harlequin are unsurprisingly absent. Julie Moggan seeks to redress the balance in Guilty Pleasures. However, she gives both the authors and the readers of pulp passion a disappointingly easy ride in. This isn't to suggest she should lampoon the ageing English gentleman who masquerades behind a number of female noms de plume or give the women in Britain, Japan and India a hard time for taking their life expectations from formulaic escapism. But the lack of focus (particularly in allowing the husband to take over the UK segment) and the absence of any overall thesis about either the literature or its audience leaves this fondly amusing picture feeling a touch trite.

Sixtysomething Roger Sanderson worked as a college lecturer before borrowing his wife Gill's name and embarking upon a writing career that has seen his 50+ novels sell well over three million copies in 26 countries. He specialises in medical stories and taps around 5000 words into his laptop every day, when he is not running writers workshops, sitting in libraries watching who borrows his tomes or attending the annual conference of the Romantic Novelists' Association, where he is always something of a hit, as he is Mills & Boon's sole male contributor.

Across the Atlantic, Stephen Muzzonigro also makes a handsome living from romantic fiction, as he has posed as the chiselled hero for countless covers. He rarely reads the contents, as he devotes so much of his time to keeping his torso in rippling shape. Yet, he quite likes the idea of featuring in his own love story and winds up walking out with a woman who finally seems to get him.

Back in Warringon, Shirley Davies is delighted that she found mechanic husband Phil, as her first marriage had been such a disaster. But, rather than exploring what Shirley gets out of the Mills & Boons she reads so voraciously, Moggan becomes preoccupied with the bluff Phil's views on life, the universe and everything, as well as his sweetly simple attempts at doting on his wife. Consequently, we get an intimate insight into Shirley's home life and Phil's recurring bouts of depression, but learn very little about her reading habits.

The section on Tokyo housewife Hirocho Honmo also rather drifts away from the page to concentrate on her burgeoning passion for ballroom dancing and the hope that she can save up enough money to enter a competition with her handsome instructor, Mr Ijima. Rising to the challenge, however, chivalrous husband Seiich takes some lessons of his own and helps Hirocho fulfil her dream.

But there are no happy ever afters for Shumita Didi Singh, whose hopes of winning back the affections of ex-husband Sanjay seem destined to founder on the twin rocks of a Porsche-driving mid-life crisis and his overweening vanity. Nevertheless, Shumita keeps pampering herself at local salons and pottering along to the nearby bookstore to stock up on the paperbacks that never break their promise to provide eternal love.

Caught between realism and fantasy, Moggan rather wastes her opportunity to investigate the phenomenal popularity of books that are widely considered to have little literary merit and even less connection with the mundane worlds inhabited by their devotees. Yet, there is a genuine warmth to her affection for the female readers and a gentle amusement in her benevolence towards the slightly self-obsessed males. Consequently, while it shies away from any disconcerting questioning and leaves numerous commercial, artistic and psychological topics untouched, this is resolutely non-patronising infotainment and as effortlessly digestible as the guilty pleasures it describes.

The same cannot be said of Angelina Maccarone's The Look, which frequently borders on the pretentious as it seeks to present `a self-portrait through others' of the British actress Charlotte Rampling. Staged as a series of themed tête-à-têtes with friends (the majority of whom happen to be artists who take themselves extremely seriously), this is less a biographical profile than a personality quest, as the German director of such accomplished features as Unveiled (2005) and Vivere (2007) follows her subject from Paris to London and New York in a bid to capture the distinctive beauty and fierce intelligence that has characterised her enigmatic and often highly contentious screen career.

Although it is supposed to encapsulate Rampling's free spirit and encourage frank discussion, the format is actually fatally constricting. Each segment opens with a headword and features footage of Rampling at large in a metropolis or conversing in a tastefully decorated room with the off-camera Maccarone before she makes contact with a friend or former collaborator - none of whom are identified on screen, even though they are hardly recognisable to any but the most ardent culture vulture. The ensuing conversation is illustrated with clips from one of Rampling's more celebrated pictures, although she only occasionally refers to them in the discussion and some scarcely feel suited to the chosen topic.

Yet, in spite of these structural shortcomings, Rampling emerges as a complex, compelling and sometimes contradictory character, whose strong opinions make for intriguing viewing. However, her greatest talent is for concealment and she gives precious little away in a project that often feels as though it is being directed as much from in front of the camera as it is from behind.

By far the most accessible and revealing, `Exposure' pairs Rampling with photographer Peter Lindbergh and they chat about the heavy-lidded eyes that have facilitated the smouldering `look' for which Rampling is renowned. In between the glossy portraits that Lindbergh presents, Maccarone inserts a couple of scenes from Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980), including the Bergmanesque montage in which Rampling courageously runs through a gamut of emotion in unflinching monochrome close-up. Following this remarkable display of posing to order, the pair's impromptu shoot feels flat, even when Rampling reverses the roles and snaps a couple of portraits of Lindbergh, who claims never to have been photographed in this manner before.

The evident playful fondness between these two contrasts with the more respectful bonhomie that exists with novelist Paul Auster, as they sit at the table in his cramped New York kitchen and discuss `Age'. His flattery is sincere, but she is keener to talk about having to play a character 10 years older than herself in Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969) and how he advised her to act more with her eyes, as they are the window to the soul and the soul is ageless. This encounter leads into the only solo spot, as Rampling contemplates `Beauty' and accepts that her looks have opened several doors during her 65 years. She explains the nature of Ludovine Sagnier's alter ego character in relation to her own frustrated novelist in François Ozon's Swimming Pool (2003) and hopes that while her face might change, the sparkle in her gaze never disappears.

In `Resonance', Rampling explores the idea that people have got the wrong impression of her from her public persona. She conducts a parroting improvisation in a boxing ring with director Barnaby Southcombe (who just happens to be her son) and Maccarone intercuts clips from Silvio Narizzano's Georgy Girl (1966) showing her to be a bitch and a bad mother. She explains how her acting technique depends on taking truth to the edge and how she could never be prolific because each role burns her out.

However, as the Louis XV series of 28 photographs she did with a mostly naked Juergen Teller demonstrates, she remains fearless when it comes to selecting projects. She speculates about the need for danger to unleash her creativity and recalls how her performance as a sado-mascochistic concentration camp survivor in Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974) would never have been possible without the support of co-star Dirk Bogarde and how it earned her the undying disapproval of feminist critics like Pauline Kael. While sitting on a staircase mulling over `Taboo' with Teller, Rampling recalls the pain she endured following the suicide of her 23 year-old sister and how she felt liberated by her first nude shoot with Helmut Newton. Yet they never quite get to the bottom of why she seems to plump for work that entails both risk and security.

As she drives through Paris in a black Mini, Rampling considers `Desire' and concludes that many people experience such yearning in the cinema and it is her job to project it onto the screen for them. She meets up with Franckie Diago, who was the production designer on Laurent Cantet's Heading South (2005), in which Rampling plays an ageing teacher seeking a summer fling with a handsome local in Haiti. They joke over a bottle of wine that Diago did the physical research on the picture while Rampling settled for a more cerebral approach and they wonder why women always fall for the ugly guy standing next to the hunk and why monks are able to channel their carnal lusts into celestial devotion.

In order to go to the opposite extreme of `Demons', Rampling crosses the Atlantic to stroll in Central Park and snap the neon hoardings on Broadway. She duets on a poem with Frederick Seidel about dark matter and what we don't know and cannot ever know in the cosmos and states around footage of Paul Newman slapping her in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982) that we all need a marking point at certain junctures in our lives or we learn nothing from them. However, the train turns back towards spirituality in `Death', as she admits that she is prepared to accept there might be a God because science has not yet been able to explain what she terms `miracles'. She walks through a cemetery with painter Anthony Palliser and around extracts from Ozon's sublime study of bereavement, Sous le sable (2000), she concedes that she has thought about dying, but can't work out how she is most likely to go.

Just for a moment, Rampling lets her guard down, as she opines that the hardest thing about losing someone is the sense of abandonment and the need to cling to memories to compensate for losing the unique feeling that you had from being with that person. She also suggests that we only begin to live well once we understand that we are going to die. But, as she confides to Cynthia and Joy Fleury, as they sit rather self-consciously on a large double bed for `Love', she hopes she is still capable of finding and feeling passion and clearly enjoys being recognised by a group of elderly gentlemen in a Parisian park. As Maccarone mischievously illuminates the discussion with clips from Nagisa Oshima's Max, Mon Amour (1986), in which Rampling played a sophisticate who becomes enamoured of an ape, she reasons that the most perfect relationship would be with someone who understood the need for companionship within solitude. But she concludes by averring that the best gift we can give anyone is not love, but the willingness to listen to their story.

Complete with a specially composed track by ex-husband Jean-Michel Jarre, this is a perplexing picture. Maccarone is to be commended for taking such a novel approach to profiling a nonconformist who takes such evident delight in confounding expectation. Rampling's vitality, curiosity and wit are never in question and too few of the friends fail manage to make much of an impression beside her. But only rarely does she allow glimpses of the real Rampling rather than the stand-in she wishes us to see. Thus, while this is always eminently watchable, it betrays the fact that Rampling never quite trusts her director enough to stop performing and be herself.