Greatest British Movies? Lean, Reed Replace Caine Thriller

Get Carter with Michael Caine: One of the “Best British Movies of All Time.”

Best British Movies of All Time?

Ten years ago, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as a dangerous-looking London gangster, was selected as the United Kingdom’s best movie of all time according to 25 British film critics polled by Total Film magazine. To say that Mike Hodges’ 1971 thriller was a surprising choice would be an understatement. I mean, not a David Lean epic or an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller?

What a difference ten years make. On Total Film’s 2014 list, published last May, Get Carter was no. 44 among the magazine’s Top 50 best British movies of all time. How could that be?

Well, first of all, people would be very naive if they took such lists seriously, whether we’re talking Total Film, the British Film Institute, or, to keep things British, Sight & Sound magazine. Second, whereas Total Film’s 2004 Best British Films list was the result of a 25-critic consensus, its 2014 list seems to have been the work of one single film reviewer, Paul Bradshaw.

Lawrence of Arabia is no. 1

So, what are Total Film’s / Paul Bradshaw’s best British movies of all time? Here’s Bradshaw’s Top Twelve list, including director[s] and key cast members – and several Anglo-American productions:

1. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
   Director: David Lean.
   Cast: Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness.
2. The Third Man (1949)
   Director: Carol Reed.
   Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard.
3. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
   Director: Stanley Kubrick.
   Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee.
4. The Red Shoes (1948)
   Directors: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger.
   Cast: Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring.
5. Barry Lyndon (1975)
   Director: Stanley Kubrick.
   Cast: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson.
6. A Matter of Life and Death / Stairway to Heaven (1946)
   Directors: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger.
   Cast: David Niven, Raymond Massey, Kim Hunter, Marius Goring.
7. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
   Director: Robert Hamer.
   Cast: Dennis Price, Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Alec Guinness.
8. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
   Director: David Lean.
   Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa.
9. Trainspotting (1996)
   Director: Danny Boyle.
   Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle.
10. Brief Encounter (1946)
    Director: David Lean.
    Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard.
11. This Sporting Life (1963)
    Director: Lindsay Anderson.
    Cast: Richard Harris, Rachel Roberts.
12. This Happy Breed (1944)
    Director: David Lean.
    Cast: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, Stanley Holloway, John Mills.

What’s a ‘British Movie’?

On the list above, we can see Hollywood’s pervasive influence on the British film industry. Two of the listed “British movies” – A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon – were backed by Hollywood studios and were directed by an American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, while the David Lean epics Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai were distributed and partially financed by Columbia Pictures.

As for Carol Reed’s The Third Man, it was a joint effort between David O. Selznick’s U.S.-based Selznick International Pictures and Alexander Korda’s London Films.

Curiously missing from Total Film’s Top Twelve Best British Movies Ever Made is another Stanley Kubrick effort, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Perhaps the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release starring Americans Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood simply wasn’t considered British enough. Even though Barry Lyndon, starring Americans Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson, was.

Now, let’s compare the 2014 Total Film list to the one published in October 2004.

Top 10 Best British Movies of All Time: Old classics mostly ignored

Only three pre-1960 films were included on Total Film’s Oct. 2004 list of the Top Ten British movies of all time – which pretty much goes to show that British critics are as ignorant about film history as their American counterparts. Also worth noting is that every single movie on this particular Top Ten list revolves around men and their issues; not one features a woman in a central role. (On the other hand, Peter Bradshaw’s list had both The Red Shoes, with Moira Shearer, and Brief Encounter, with Best Actress Oscar nominee Celia Johnson, in addition to the gender-balanced This Happy Breed.)

Missing British movies: From Herbert Wilcox to James Ivory

Among the titles missing from both Total Film lists of Top Ten/Top Twelve best British movies of all time were the following classics and near-classics:

• Movies produced and/or directed by British film industry torchbearers Alexander Korda (e.g., The Four Feathers, The Thief of Bagdad) and Herbert Wilcox (Spring in Park Lane, Odette).
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938).
• Leslie Howard and Anthony Asquith’s Pygmalion (1938) and Asquith’s The Winslow Boy (1948).
• Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1946), and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1958).
• Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1945) and Best Picture Oscar winner Hamlet (1948).
• David Lean’s Blithe Spirit (1945), Great Expectations (1946), Summertime (1955), and A Passage to India (1984).
• Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), and Oliver! (1968).
• Alexander Mackendrick’s The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955).
• Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top (1959) and The Innocents (1961).
• Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963) and The Go-Between (1971).
• John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965) and Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971).
• Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.
• Lindsay Anderson’s If…. (1968).
• Ken Loach’s Kes (1969) and Land and Freedom (1995).
• Ken Russell’s Women in Love (1969), The Boy Friend (1971), and Tommy (1975).
• Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973).
• Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette (1985).
• James Ivory’s A Room with a View (1986), Howards End (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993).
• Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V (1989).
• Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes (1992).
• Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992).
• Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies (1995) and Topsy-Turvy (1999).

More Best British movies of all time: Anglo-American ‘The Third Man’ tops

For the record, according to a 1999 British Film Institute poll of about 1,000 film and television industry personnel, the Top Ten best British movies of all time – well, at least of the 20th century – are the following:

1. The Third Man
2. Brief Encounter
3. Lawrence of Arabia
4. Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935)
   Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll.
5. David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946)
   Cast: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Alec Guinness.
6. Kind Hearts and Coronets
7. Ken Loach’s Kes (1969)
   Cast: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher.
8. Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973)
   Cast: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie.
9. The Red Shoes
10. Trainspotting

Of note, some the best-known British movies ever made were directed by foreign-born filmmakers, among them: Alexander Korda (Hungary; Rembrandt), Alberto Cavalcanti (Brazil; Nicholas Nickleby), Roman Polanski (Polish-raised; Repulsion), Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy; Blowup), Fred Zinnemann (Austrian-raised; A Man for All Seasons), and Karel Reisz (Czechoslovakia; Isadora).

In addition to the following Americans: Alexander Mackendrick (The Ladykillers), Joseph Losey (The Servant), Robert Wise (The Haunting), Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night), Martin Ritt (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold), Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange), and James Ivory (A Room with a View).

British 2001: A Space Odyssey?

And among the U.K.-based Sight & Sound magazine’s most recent (September 2012) Top 50 movies of all time, only one film could possibly be considered in any way “British”: ironically, that’s Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But it may serve as consolation that the no. 1 movie on the list, the 1958 Hollywood production Vertigo, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, was directed by an Englishman: Alfred Hitchcock.

Get Carter remake, The Third Man ‘homage’ and the return of T.E. Lawrence

As an aside: Get Carter suffered an American remake in 2000; directed by Stephen Kay, the critical bomb starred Sylvester Stallone.

The Third Man hasn’t been officially remade – despite threats in 2009 that Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire would star in a reboot of Carol Reed’s film. However, there was a The Third Man “homage” found in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Best Picture Oscar winner The Departed: the cemetery scene, when Vera Farmiga is seen walking past Matt Damon.

To date, there hasn’t been an official Lawrence of Arabia remake, but T.E. Lawrence will shortly be back on the big screen in the form of Robert Pattinson, one of the stars of Werner Herzog’s Queen of Desert, also featuring Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell and James Franco as Henry Cadogan.

Note: Following suggestions from readers, I’ve added a few extra titles to the above lists of best British movies of all time.

Image of Michael Caine in one of the “Best British Movies Ever,” Get Carter: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Trailers of Best British Movies Lawrence of Arabia and The Third Man: Columbia and Selznick Pictures, respectively.