"Actor: Esmond Knight"

• The Jessie Matthews Revue Volume 2 | DVD | (22/06/2015) from £8.08   |  Saving you £4.91 (60.77%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Throughout the 1930s Jessie Matthews was Britain's best-loved musical film star her dynamism and gamine charm captivating audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. With a string of box-office hits spotlighting her unique talent it's easy to see how she became so popular – and why she remains so to this day. Showcasing some the era's finest cinema talent – including directors Victor Saville and (in a change from his normal fare) Alfred Hitchcock actors Robert Young and Esmond Knight as well as comedy star (and Matthews' husband) Sonnie Hale – the two films on this volume are presented as transfers from the  original film elements in their as-exhibited theatrical aspect ratios. It's love again! A young actress secretly seizes the chance to play the part of an imaginary socialite invented by a gossip columnist. The enigmatic beauty becomes famous but the columnist is mystified when his fictional star appears in person! Waltzes from Viennna A pretty girl works in the bakery in which aspiring composer Johann Strauss is also forced to work by his father. Can she help him achieve his dreams despite his father's objections?

• Peeping Tom - Special Edition | DVD | (26/03/2007) from £14.95   |  Saving you £3.04 (20.33%)   |  RRP £17.99

  Enter the insane mind of a psycho-killer obsessed with recording on film the most intense fear as it registers on the faces of desirable women. His camera tripod is fitted with a long blade designed to penetrate victims through the neck. And while they watch their own deaths reflected in a mirror attachment he captures their last gasps on celluloid for his evil home movie collection.

• Criterion Collection: Black Narcissus | Blu Ray | (20/07/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Man In The Iron Mask | DVD | (28/07/2003) from £15.22   |  Saving you £-9.23 (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  Alexandre Dumas' classic tale of fraternal squabbling makes a more than satisfactory transition to celluloid with this 1976 made-for-television swashbuckler. Viewers familiar with the more recent Leonardo DiCaprio version may be stymied at first by the non-MTV pace and the rather unhip presence of Richard Chamberlain in the lead role(s). This well-lensed action film overcomes a somewhat poky first half to emerge as a terrific adventure, complete with plenty of derring-do, some sharply pointed dialogue, and a wonderful performance by the incomparably malevolent Patrick McGoohan. Rousing fun for burgeoning rapscallions of all ages. Director Mike Newell would later find success in a different genre with Four Weddings and a Funeral. Ian Holm, Louis Jordan, and Ralph Richardson round out the embarrassingly rich supporting cast. --Andrew Wright

• Criterion Collection: Red Shoes | Blu Ray | (20/07/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

• The Silver Fleet | DVD | (08/02/2010) from £6.98   |  Saving you £3.01 (30.10%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Jaap van Leyden is in charge of a shipyard in newly occupied Holland. At first he collaberates with the Germans because it is the easiest course to follow. Later a childs rhyme reminds him of his patriotic duty, but how best to resist the Nazis without endangering his wife and fellow workers ?

• Gone To Earth | DVD | (27/08/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Hazel Woodus is a peculiar young girl living on the Welsh border at the turn of the century. Dominated by superstitions and lore which she reads from a book she is devoted to her pet fox and to all the local creatures. One of the legends she reads says she must marry the first man who proposes. This turns out to be the mild mannered minister Marston and fearing the legend she agrees to marry him. Hazel feels no true desire for her husband and cannot resist the advances of the r

• Girls Will Be Boys | DVD | (07/07/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  This delightfully mischievous comedy was among the first films made in Britain by Paris-born director Marcel Varnel later noted for his collaborations with Will Hay Arthur Askey and the Crazy Gang. It also marked the British screen debut of Dolly Haas providing a typically androgynous role for the gamine German ingénue. Girls Will Be Boys is presented here in a brand-new digital transfer. The mere idea of a woman in his castle made the Duke of Bridgewater feel ill but behind his misogyny lay a family scandal that had left him irascible lonely and heirless. Much was his rejoicing when a letter arrived from abroad beginning 'Dear Grandfather' and signed 'Pat Caverley' it seemed to signal that the Duke had an heir after all and the old man promptly ordered Grey his secretary to fetch the boy. Much to Grey's horror however 'Pat' turned out to be 'Patricia'! Undaunted the impish Patricia cuts off her curls and dons trousers can she make everyone believe that she's a man..? SPECIAL FEATURES: [] Image Gallery

• The Red Shoes | DVD | (01/10/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  One of Powell and Pressburger's most famous films, "The Red Shoes" is the tragic and romantic story of Vicky Page, the brilliant young dancer who must give up everything if she is to become a great ballerina.

• The Element Of Crime | DVD | (29/07/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Way, way before he dreamt up his famous Dogme manifesto, Lars von Trier launched his feature-film career with The Element of Crime and proved that, 400 years after Hamlet, the Danes can still do melancholy like nobody else. Less a film noir than a film jaune sale, this ultra-enigmatic thriller is shot entirely in tones of grimy sepia in a world where nightfall seems to be an unceasing condition. A police detective, Fisher (Michael Elphick), is summoned from Cairo to "Europe" (the location never gets any more specific than that) to investigate a series of gory child-murders. He comes to suspect that the killer may be a mysterious character called Harry Grey and sets out to retrace Grey's movements. The film takes its title from a treatise written by Fisher's old mentor Osborne (Welsh actor Esmond Knight, a veteran of Powell and Pressburger's films), but it might as well refer to water. Von Trier conjures up a world not only permanently benighted, but dank, sodden and dripping both indoors and out, cluttered with mouldy, antiquated industrial machinery. There are echoes (or pre-echoes) here of half-a-dozen other movies--Blade Runner, City of Lost Children, Tarkovsky's Stalker, Welles' The Trial--and at times it feels as though von Trier has just set out to show he can do art house as well as anybody and possibly better. The plot makes no sense whatever and clearly isn't meant to, and Elphick's bemused expression, one suspects, derives from the actor as much as from the character he's playing. As always with von Trier you can't help wondering if whole thing isn't an elaborate put-on, especially since the director himself shows up, epicene and shaven-headed, playing a personage called "Schmuck of Ages". But what it lacks in coherence (either narrative or visual) Element of Crime makes up for in atmosphere, which it has, literally, by the bucketful. This release, incidentally, is the English-language version. --Philip Kemp

• Black Narcissus | DVD | (26/09/2005) from £22.94   |  Saving you £-2.95 (-14.80%)   |  RRP £19.99

  When Bernardo Bertolucci went to the Himalayas to film Little Buddha, so the anecdote runs, he was disappointed by the scenery. Somehow, the real thing didn't quite live up to what he'd been led to expect by Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus. It's not hard to see why he felt let down. Their film is almost ridiculously gorgeous--a procession of saturated Technicolor, Expressionist angles, theatrical lighting and overwrought design. It has a good claim to being the high watermark of lushness in the British cinema (and, incidentally, every original foot of it was actually shot in Britain). No wonder it took the Oscar for colour cinematography (shot by Jack Cardiff) as well as for art direction and set decoration (created by Alfred Junge).Audiences loved it on its first release, but the critics were cooler: hadn't the story been upstaged by the baroque images? Well, probably, but that's not altogether a bad thing, since the plot--quite faithful to Rumer Godden's popular novel --isn't wholly free of corn. A group of five Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) establish a school and hospital in a former harem among the Himalayan peaks. The wind blows, the drums pound, the Old Gods stir, and one by one the celibate sisters succumb to unchaste thoughts, above all Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron, terrific in the role), so consumed by erotic yearning for the one Englishman in sight (David Farraar) she puts on crimson lipstick, wears her wimple-free tresses like an early Goth and takes a downward turn. (Black Narcissus features the greatest scene involving a nun and a high place this side of Hitchcock's Vertigo and Jacques Rivette's La Religieuse.) Silly, to be sure, but also sublime at times and as curiously entertaining as it is picturesque. --Kevin Jackson

• French Part 1: The Standard Deviants | DVD | (30/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

• The River | DVD | (31/07/2006) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Director Jean Renoir's entrancing first colour film shot entirely on location in India is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden the film eloquently contrasts the growing pains of three young women with the immutability of the holy Bengal River around which their daily lives unfold. Enriched by Renoir's subtle understanding and appreciation for India and its peoples The River gracefully explores the fragile connections between transitory emotions and everlasting creation.

• The Prince And The Showgirl | DVD | (09/12/2002) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £49.99

  One of the later films of her notably stellar career The Prince and The Showgirl teams Marilyn Monroe with the world's most respected thespian Sir Laurence Olivier in a humorous romp of a stately prince charming and his love for a humble but incredibly infectious performer. A fairy tale born in the Hollywood dream factory this film continues to be a lasting favourite. This Deluxe Series box set will include: DVD of 'The Prince And The Showgirl' DVD documentary 'The Legend Of Marilyn Monroe' a film Senitype'' (image from the film and 35mm film frame) US one sheet movie poster and an exclusive commemorative 16-page picture book of rare Marilyn images.

• The Halfway House | DVD | (25/11/2019) from £7.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A group of travellers, all with something to hide in their past, take shelter from a storm in an old inn. The inn-keeper seems a little mysterious...