71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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Muriel Box
Muriel Box
British Film Institute
© British Film Institute
Henry Cass
UK  1945
83 min.
The Robinsons, a middle-aged British couple are scheduled to go off on a holiday cruise in the Mediterranean. When their children refuse to accompany them they decide to go to a British seaside holiday instead. They come back home earlier than expected to find their daughter embarked on a "trial marriage" and their son having an affair with a married woman.
Compton Bennett
UK  1945
94 min.
After attempting suicide, Francesca Cunningham, a world famed pianist, undergoes psychological treatment by Dr. Larsen. Larsen delves into her subconscious to find out the events and persons who drove her to her present situation. Francesca is forced to confront her feelings for Nicholas, her guardian and musical tutor, a controlling personality.
Compton Bennett
UK  1946
100 min.
A British officer and Member of Parliament who had been reportedly killed in action during the war unexpectedly returns to his family. His wife is about to marry again and to take his seat in the House of Commons and all must now readjust to the new situation.
Francis Searle
UK  1946
90 min.
A young inventor divorces a nagging wife and, to avoid all women, finds employment in a remote all-male department of the War Office. His peace is broken by a U.S. colonel's daughter, Gay, who is shell-shocked and has lost the power of speech. Charmed by her and by the contrast with his former talkative wife, Tony soon falls in love and marries her. However, once wed, Gay suffers a further shock and recovers her speech.
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Bernard Knowles
UK  1947
89 min.
19th-century smuggler Carlyon is the guardian of seaman Andrews. Andrews, who feels persecuted by his stern disciplinarian guardian, betrays the crew of Carlyon’s smuggling ship. Some of the smugglers are caught, but Carlyon escapes and then begins his search for Andrews. Andrews seeks refuge in the cottage of a girl named Elizabeth, who urges him to testify against the smugglers in court.
Arthur Crabtree
UK  1947
94 min.
Lee Warren returns from a trip abroad to find evidence that Vivien, his wife, has been unfaithful to him, and sets out to find her lover, kill him, and make it look like suicide. But immediately after, he discovers that they had broken up some time before and that she has a new lover, whom he tries to incriminate in order to shift the suspicions of the police from him.
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
David MacDonald
UK  1947
91 min.
Mary Lawson is a Scottish orphan who comes to Isle of Skye to work as serving girl for the Macraes. Her arrival reinflames the long standing conflict between two clans, the Macraes and the McFarishes, and causes an internal power-struggle between two brothers in the Macrae clan.
Kenneth Annakin
UK  1947
97 min.
The Huggett family goes to a holiday camp where they encounter many different people: a pregnant young girl and her boyfriend, a group of gamblers, a murderer seeking his next victim, a husband-seeking spinster and a middle-aged matron on her first holiday after years of taking care of her invalid mother.
Bernard Knowles
UK  1948
94 min.
The film is divided into four episodes that deal with the effect of winning a fortune in football pools on four different sets of people. A happy family is turned into an unhappy one until it is discovered the coupon apparently did not get posted. A mild-mannered clerk worries about how to tell his overbearing boss he is quitting. A double-bass player misses the orchestra he has left and some people are turned into criminals.
Compton Bennett
UK  1948
81 min.
Eddie, who works as a hangman under an assumed name, conceals this other job when he gets married and sets up home with his girl on a barge in the river Thames where he directs a barge business. Tragedy strikes when his assistant, Olaf, tries to seduce his wife and after a fight between the two men, the hangman is presumed drowned. The woman commits suicide and Olaf is sentenced to hang. 
British Film Institute
© British Film Institute
David MacDonald
UK  1948
92 min.
Miss Thorpe, the chairman of the Juvenile court, gives advice to troubled teenager Lyla Lawrence. Miss Thorpe tells Lyla that her life has a similar beginning to that of Gwen Rawlings. Gwen was a teenage girl who continually fell into the wrong crowd. Her father also beat her, so she left home and fell into trouble. She was sentenced to a reform school for three years.
Harold French
UK  1948
87 min.
The private secretary to Lord Brasted learns from a friend that his employer, an administrator of an International Relief organisation, has been converting funds to his private use. After many vicissitudes the secretary manages to expose his employer.  
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box, Bernard Knowles
UK  1949
89 min.
After World War II, various displaced people coming from concentration camps and forced labour camps, await transportation back to their homelands in a German theatre guarded by British soldiers. However, after years of union against fascism, fights erupt among the displaced people: Serb against Croat, Pole against Russian, resistance fighter against collaborator and everyone against the Jews. Two people, Jan and Lily, fall in love and decide to get married.
Terence Fisher
UK  1949
90 min.
A German professor sees a portrait in an art gallery which looks exactly like his daughter, who is assumed to have died in the war. The girl, who is an amnesiac, has been living in Europe under the protection of a wanted Nazi war criminal. A British army major in Occupied Germany tries to cut through red tape and an espionage plot to rescue the girl.
British Film Institute
© British Film Institute
David MacDonald
UK  1949
98 min.
Using a letter of introduction from Queen Isabella's former confessor, Christopher Columbus gains access to the Spanish court where he tries to convince authorities to support him in his proposed voyage to reach to Far East by sailing west. He overcomes intrigue at court and convinces the Queen that his plan is practical.
Muriel Box
UK  1952
86 min.
The Lord family – a husband and wife with several children – owns a grocery shop close to the Festival Hall which is under construction. Lillian Lord runs the shop, while Henry is a train driver who is just about to retire. One day Mr. Filch, a senior civil servant announces that, due to an error by one of the planners, the Lords' shop and house will have to be demolished to build a road, assuring them that they will be financially compensated and will be moved to a new house..
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box
UK  1953
94 min.
The daily work and routine of women police built around three story lines. The first involves an 18-year-old girl who is picked up for shoplifting. The second story tells of a female deserter who becomes involved in bigamy. The third is about a baby who is mistreated by its father and step-mother, but is reunited, through police work, with its mother. 
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box
UK  1954
82 min.
Mr. Gray is the new British Resident of the Welcome Islands. The only other Europeans are the brother-sister missionary team of Martha and Owen Jones, and the Honourable Ted - a hard-drinking, social outcast whose English family pays him to stay away. Martha and Ted are forced to collaborate when cholera threatens the islands and they must do their best to stop its spread.
Muriel Box
UK  1954
79 min.
In order to earn an inheritance of 2 million dollars from her uncle, an American woman travels to Britain to prevent her ex-husband having any more children. She will receive the money if her husband does not have any male heirs by a certain date. But his new wife is pregnant.
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box
UK  1955
87 min.
In the 1950's, a producer has the idea of basing a BBC family series on a real-life happily married actor couple. He chooses the Fosters, who need the money and so do the show, although in reality their marriage is far from happy.
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box
UK  1956
82 min.
Lucy has a fight with her husband and runs out of the house. She goes to the cinema where she sees a couple of crooks who are robbing the cinema's safe and kill the manager. In her haste to escape the thieves, she is knocked down by a passing bus, and is taken to the local hospital. The two crooks follow her, and wait for a chance to finish her off, and thus eliminate the only person who can tie them to the murder.
Cinémathèque Suisse
© Cinémathèque Suisse
Muriel Box
UK  1957
97 min.
A woman novelist writes of a lady's affair with an Italian chauffeur, and her own Italian chauffeur reads the manuscript and jumps to conclusions.
Cinémathèque Suisse
© Cinémathèque Suisse
Muriel Box
UK  1957
100 min.
Sir Humphrey Tavistock recalls his relationship with the women he loved to his son-in-law, unable to understand his wife and women in general, to help him to appreciate them as well.
Cinémathèque Suisse
© Cinémathèque Suisse
Muriel Box
UK  1959
87 min.
A military doctor in Berlin is falsely accused of illegal dealing in drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs. He takes shelter in the flat that his wife has sublet to cabaret singer Lilli Hoffman, whom he persuades to help him prove his innocence.
AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
© AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
Muriel Box
Ireland  1959
81 min.
The film explores the traumatic legacy of the Irish Civil War. A small Irish town wants to erect a statue to an Irish Republican Army man killed during the Irish War for Independence, but the son of the Colonel who killed the rebel objects.
Cinémathèque Suisse
© Cinémathèque Suisse
Muriel Box
UK  1960
81 min.
A teenage girl is accused by a neighbour of receiving adult men at home. She is brought to a juvenile court before a kind and understanding judge. She recounts her story to him. Due to parental neglect and lack of guidance she gets in with the wrong crowd and, after an affair with a sailor, she has an abortion and is eventually arrested for teenage prostitution.
Muriel Box
UK  1962
62 min.
During the Napoleonic Wars child refugees become involved with a Pyrenean escape route and the problem of whether to save a wounded enemy who is a danger to their own safety.
Cinémathèque Suisse
© Cinémathèque Suisse
Muriel Box
UK  1964
96 min.
Percy Winthram comes to London from Manchester for the Cup Final. After the game he and his companions go to a Soho strip club. Percy is innocent and shy. One of his friends bets he won't take a blonde home and sleep with her. Percy accepts. Cyrenne, the blonde, who has overheard the bet, accepts too. Cyrenne tells him of her aristocratic background. Impressed, he boasts of his conquests and their mutual trust and liking grows.
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