Desmond Dew

Highlighted works

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  Henry V

  Conceived as a wartime morale-booster, Laurence Olivier’s groundbreaking reimagining of Shakespeare combines cinematic sweep with patriotic fervour.

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  A Canterbury Tale

  Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s underrated tale of the mysterious ‘glue man’ is one of their most moving films.

• Yellow Canary

  There’s romance among spies in this thrilling drama starring Anna Neagle as a Nazi sympathiser.

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  Brief Encounter

  Turbulent passion and middle-class restraint combine in uniquely English style when a married woman falls for a doctor she meets at a railway station.

• The Demi-Paradise

  Penelope Dudley-Ward and Laurence Olivier star in this mix of propaganda and romantic comedy.

• Great Day

  A visit to a small English village by Mrs Roosevelt provides the catalyst for the women to pull together.

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  The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

  Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesy star in this wondrous British Technicolor classic – one of cinema’s greatest studies of ‘Englishness’.

• English without Tears

  A lady who finds herself in service to her ex-servant in this comedy, scripted by Terrence Rattigan and starring Penelope Dudley-Ward.

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  A Matter of Life and Death

  In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s audacious Technicolor fantasy, WWII airman David Niven finds himself summoned to heaven after surviving a plane crash that should have killed him.

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  Hamlet

  Laurence Olivier triumphed as actor and director in this stark and imposing screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama of tragic uncertainty.