Movies: British National Films

Depressing and realistic family drama about the struggles of unemployment and poverty in 1930s Lancashire. The 20-year-old Kerr gives an emotionally charged performance as Hardcastle, one of the cotton workers trying to make life better. Interlaced w...

Twenty years removed from Alice Barlow's murder by a thief looking for her jewels, newlyweds Paul and Bella Mallen move into the very house where the crime was committed. Retired detective B.G. Rough, who worked on the Barlow case, is still in the ar...

During the Second World War, a German spy goes on the run, carrying important news about a U-Boat campaign. The ship he is traveling aboard is hit by a torpedo. The spy winds up on a lifeboat with other survivors, one of whom is a counterintelligence...

During the Allied Bombing offensive of World War II the public was often informed that "A raid took place last night over ..., One (or often more) of Our Aircraft Is Missing". Behind these sombre words hid tales of death, destruction and derring-do. ...

A fisherman begins studying to be an osteopath. Although he isn't finished with medical school, he begins treating his landlady's daughter who is believed to have a chronic illness. He seems to cure her, and the case draws a lot of attention, some of...

Bedelia Carrington is living happily, it appears, in Monte Carlo with her husband Charlie Carrington. But a cultivated young artist, Ben Chaney, begins probing into her past with curious concern. Chaney, who is really a detective, learns that Bedelia...

Small-time jewel thief Leo Martin is deserted by his partners-in-crime, club owner Gus Loman and driver Hatchett, when the robbery they are committing goes wrong. After serving his prison sentence, Leo emerges with an intricate plan for revenge. Leo ...

Charters and Caldicott are touring the Middle East. After visiting Saudi Arabia they find themselves in Bagdad where they are mistaken by a group of German spies for the messengers who are to carry a song record by beautiful singer La Palermo which c...

The Agitator is a 1945 British drama film directed by John Harlow and starring William Hartnell, Mary Morris and John Laurie. Its plot follows a young mechanic who unexpectedly inherits the large firm where he works and tries to run it according to h...

Set in Claverly Village, it follows the fortunes of the Rookebys (Clements) and the ne'r-do-well Appleyards (Williams) from the time of the Normans, 1588, 1804, 1914, and 1940. Made to support morale during the war, its message is basically that you ...

Opposing ends of a pantomime horse where the 'head' dates a society lady while the 'tail' is unhappily married....

When a British pilot is hospitalized after a plane crash, the woman he loves sits by his bedside and remembers, in flashbacks, key episodes from their life together....

Eccentric Cambridge archaeologist Horatio Smith takes a group of British and American archaeology students to pre-war Nazi Germany to help in his excavations. His research is supported by the Nazis, since he professes to be looking for evidence of th...

Old Mother Riley gets involved in a plot to steal an invention...

An out-of-work comedian persuades a drunken nobleman to join a protest against the closing of a village hall....

A night watchman is being bludgeoned, as a safe is cracked open in the offices of the District Food Controller. A list of wartime foods to be rationed is stolen, and the police fear gangsters are planning to sell the foods on the black market. As the...

The famous detective and his trusty side-kick, Tinker, are called in by the War Office to find some important papers that were stolen from a man killed during an air raid....

An operation of counterfeit five pound notes is discovered at a variety theater, leading to murder during the performance....

Nazi spies infiltrate a British film studio with the intention of sending coded messages in the films they produce....

When a neutral Danish merchant ship is forced to put into port after trying to evade British wartime contraband control, its captain becomes involved in a beautiful British Naval Intelligent agent's efforts to capture a group of German spies operatin...