griggs's - Martin Scorsese’s Favourite Movies: 84 Films the Director Wants You to See List

Show moreShow less

From the legendary filmmaking duo Powell and Pressburger, 'The Small Back Room' is the story of the troubled love affair between a tormented back room scientist and a beautiful secretary, told against a background of ministerial intrigue and empire building.

Sammy Rice (David Farrar) was the army's finest bomb disposal officer until he was injured in the war and left with a false foot. Now part of a specialist 'back room' team, he dismantles the booby-trapped devices being dropped by Nazi bombers. He falls in love with Susan (Kathleen Byron), a colleague, and the two begin a secret affair. However, embittered by life, he feels inferior; inferior as a lover, inferior as a man unable to wear uniform; inferior in his work for, although a brilliant scientist, he allows himself to be exploited by his power-hungry boss. Haunted by his past, he drowns his sorrows in whiskey. Sammy's life is descending into disarray when the news comes; a bomb has exploded with catastrophic consequences, and another has been found. Faced with the biggest challenge of his career, Sammy must confront his demons and take his own life in his hands to solve the mystery of the bomb's lethal mechanism.

Show moreShow less

Trapped on her family's isolated farm, Pearl (Mia Goth) must tend to her ailing father under the bitter and overbearing watch of her devout mother.

Lusting for a glamorous life like she's seen in the movies, Pearl finds her ambitions, temptations, and repressions all colliding in this stunning, technicolor-inspired origin story of X's iconic villain.

In 1980s Hollywood, adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.

Show moreShow less

In a vast and opulent hotel, an unnamed man (Giorgio Albertazzi) attempts to persuade a similarly unnamed married woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they have not only met before, but they were also romantically involved and had planned to escape together.

The woman recalls no such encounter and so begins a sensual and philosophical examination into the uncertainty of truth.

Show moreShow less

Zulu is one of the great movies, an epic adventure of courage in the face of incredible odds. Based on a true story it tells the amazing tale of 100 British soldiers who stood fast against an overwhelming force of 4000 of the Zulu nation's mightiest warriors in the defence of Rorkes Drift in 1879.

Set amongst the stunning South African scenery, 'Zulu' is a landmark action film and a fitting tribute to some of the most magnificent acts of heroism in the history of warfare. Michael Caine's role as the arrogant but courageous Lt. Bromhead brought him international fame, and there are powerful performances from other great British actors including Stanley Baker and Jack Hawkins.

This true life story follows the struggles of T.E.Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) in uniting the hostile Arab factions and leading them to victory over the ruling Turkish Empire during the First World War.

Show moreShow less

"Lola Montes" is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol.

With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts the course of Montes's scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she has ended up performing. Ophuls's final film, 'Lola Montes' is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

Show moreShow less

Sergio Leone's monumental epic 'Once Upon a Time in the West' ranks among the five or six all-time Western masterpieces. The picture itself is as big as its Monument Valley locations, as grand as its fine, distinguished cast. Henry Fonda plays the blackest character of his long career.

He's Frank, the ruthless, murderous psychopath who suffers conscience pangs after annihilating an entire family. Jason Robards is the half-breed falsely accused of the terrible slaughter. Charles Bronson plays the harmonica playing man who remembers how his brother was savagely tortured.

Show moreShow less

Set in a detention camp in Hungary 1869, at a time of guerrilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians, Jancso (János Görbe) deliberately avoids conventional heroics to focus on the persecution and dehumanisation manifest in a time of conflict.

Filmed in Hungary's desolate and burning landscape, Jancso uses his formidable technique to create a remarkable and terrifying picture of war and the abuse of power that is still very relevant today.

Show moreShow less

On the brink of Civil War, King Henry IV (John Gielgud) attempts to consolidate his reign while fretting with unease over his son's seeming neglect of his royal duties.

Hal (Keith Baxter), the young Prince, openly consorts with Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) and his company of "Diana's foresters, Gentlemen of the shade, Minions of the moon". Hal's friendship with the fat knight substitutes for his estrangement from his father. Both Falstaff and the King are old and tired; both rely on Hal for comfort in their final years, while the young Prince, the future Henry V, nurtures his own ambitions.

Show moreShow less

One morning, Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is arrested without knowing the charges against him. Completely stunned, K. slowly finds himself trapped in a dehumanised nightmare and realizes he is the victim of a grotesque plot.

He is accused by everyone, friends and enemies, until, worn down, he ends up doubting his own innocence...

Show moreShow less

How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O'Neal) the answer is: any way he can! His climb to wealth and privilege is the enthralling focus of this sumptuous Stanley Kubrick version of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel.

For this ravishing, slyly satiric winner of four Academy Awards, Kubrick found inspiration in the works of the era's painters. Costumes and sets were crafted in the era's designs and pioneering lenses were developed to shoot interiors and exteriors in natural light. The result? 'Barry Lyndon' endures as a cutting-edge movie that brings a historical period to vivid screen life like no other film before or since.

Show moreShow less

Roberto Rossellini and co-writer Federico Fellini lovingly render the very spirit of Franciscan teaching in this extraordinary fresh and simple film - largely unappreciated at the time of its release, but now regarded as one of his greatest.

Shot in a neorealist manner with non-professional actors (including thirteen actual Franciscan monks) it avoids the pious cliches of haloed movie saints with an economy of expression and a touching, human quality.

Show moreShow less

Based on the Ed McBain novel, 'High and Low' is a gripping police thriller starring Toshiro Mifune.

Wealthy industrialist Kingo Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising choice when a ruthless kidnapper, aiming to snatch his young son, takes the chauffeur's boy by mistake - but still demands the ransom, leaving Gondo facing ruin if he pays up. An anatomy of the inequalities in modern Japanese society, High and Low is a complex film noir, where the intense police hunt for the kidnapper is accompanied by penetrating insight into the kidnappers state of mind. Kurosawa's virtuoso direction provides no easy answers, and in short, intense sequences, he portrays the businessman, the police and the criminal as equally brutal but nonetheless human.

Show moreShow less

In this Vincente Minnelli-directed backstager, Fred Astaire dazzles in numbers set in a train station (By Myself), a penny arcade, a backlot Central Park and a smoky cafe, the latter two with the incomparable Cyd Charisse.

And when he, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan play infants who "hate each other very much!" in the merry Triplets, it's one more reason to love this movie very, very much. As the hallmark song which originated here goes, That's Entertainment!