Movies: Laurence Olivier

BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with ...

A film biography with a difference, Sir John Mills' Moving Memories charts the life of one of Britain's most distinguished actors. Compiled from interviews with the man himself and with his family and friends, it traces his career from humble beginni...

Documentary about the famed Hollywood director....

Ivan Kouznetsoff, a Russian engineer, recounts during World War II his stay in England prior to the war working on a new propeller for ice-breaking ships. Naïve about British people and convinced by hearsay that they are shallow and hypocritical, Iva...

Her story is well-known — the lonely child who yearned for affection and approval which she finally seemed to find as Hollywood's greatest love goddess. But even though she scaled heights few could even dream of, she was one of the loneliest of stars...

A film about the life and work of the master comedy filmmaker, Charles Chaplin....

In 2001 Jack Cardiff (1914-2009) became the first director of photography in the history of the Academy Awards to win an Honorary Oscar. But the first time he clasped the famous statuette in his hand was a half-century earlier when his Technicolor ca...

An aging actress and socialite, Jessica Medlicott has ended her engagement with a younger man and is now being sued by her former fiancé. Esteemed barrister Sir Arthur Glanville-Jones is assigned to represent Jessica in the lawsuit, and he also happe...

A schoolteacher plagued by alcoholism and his refusal to serve in World War II, Graham Weir inspires contempt in almost everyone around him, including his bitter wife, Anna. When the lovely young Shirley Taylor, one of Weir's students, falls for her ...

Talented and enduring Academy Award-winning star, Gregory Peck, tells how it was when studios ruled and a shy boy from a broken family could rise to become a famous leading man. Unfashionably modest, Peck describes his fascinating journey from early ...

Set in the rarefied world of West End boutique owners and fashion designers, The Collection takes as its departure point the moment when four elegant lives are suddenly shaken by the suggestion of infidelity. The sinister anonymous phone call that di...

Documentary with an affectionate look back at the classic Granada TV dramatisation of Evelyn Waugh's famous novel "Brideshead Revisited"....

An aging King invites disaster when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters and rejects his one loving, but honest one....

After Larry Darrent accidentally kills his lover's blackmailing husband, someone else is arrested for the crime. When he is found guilty, Larry and Wanda have just three weeks together before he must give himself up or let an innocent man go to the g...

Paying homage to two of Hollywood's central icons, the film creates an unparalleled portrait of two very different personalities amidst the demise of the studio system....

A young couple decide to marry under the condition that they agree never to disagree. That agreement is soon put to the test when the husband finds himself attracted to a beautiful young woman....

A made for TV movie of the Charles Dickens' classic novel, turns Dickens' picaresque tale into an extended flashback, with David Copperfield Robin Phillips as a young man, brooding on a deserted beach, recalling his youth. The characters are all trot...

A staid, dull Englishman abruptly deserts his wife and children to become a painter in the South Seas....

This 1940 presentation features highlights of earlier (1928 onward) Oscar ceremonies including Shirley Temple and Walt Disney, plus acceptance speeches for films released in 1939 with recipients and presenters including Vivien Leigh, Judy Garland, Ha...

In the best play of 1912, the conventional morals and manners of a North England mill town are overthrown by a young woman with ideas far ahead of her time....