Jenny Agutter and little Sally Thomsett are the film’s cornerstones, but a special mention to Bernard Cribbins’s archetypal British stationmaster. With a sudden urge to start life over in the country, the remaining family members – mother Dinah Sheridan and her three children – up sticks and settle alongside a quaint Yorkshire railway line where the film slowly begins to work its very English charm. 🎥 The 100 best movies of the 20th century so farĬast Dinah Sheridan, William Mervyn, Jenny AgutterĪs warm and cosy as a cup of Horlicks, Lionel Jeffries’s 1970 adaptation of E Nesbit’s Edwardian children’s novel centres on a well-to-do London family torn apart when its patriarch is arrested on suspicion of treason. Written by Dave Calhoun, Tom Huddleston, David Jenkins, Derek Adams, Geoff Andrew, Adam Lee Davies, Paul Fairclough, Wally Hammond, Alim Kheraj, Matthew Singer & Phil de Semlyen Unsurprisingly, the results are as diverse as the country itself. In compiling this list of the best British movies of all-time, we surveyed a diverse array of actors, directors, writers, producers, critics and industry heavyweights, from Wes Anderson, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Sam Mendes and Terence Davies, David Morrissey, Sally Hawkins and Thandiwe Newton. Thrillers? Comedies? Period dramas? Movies about drugs? Movies that seem to be on drugs themselves? The UK film industry has produced them all, each displaying a distinctly English slant. In the market for a smaller, more personal drama? Try Joanna Hogg or Shane Meadows. Want a widescreen epic? Go straight to the work of David Lean or Powell and Pressburger.

In terms of the stories it tells, it’s basically limitless.

But the essential qualities of the best British movies are as wide-ranging as the Commonwealth itself. Okay, so the accents usually give it away. How exactly does one define British cinema? It’s more difficult to nail down than it seems.

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