B&W – Wimbledon Film Club

The Lady Eve

Barbara Stanwyck shines in this hilarious revenge rom-com: a con woman sets her sights set on a likeable rich boob (Henry Fonda). One of the finest achievements of Golden Age Hollywood’s first writer-director, Preston Sturges.
Paris, 13th District

Émilie meets Camille, who is attracted to Nora, who crosses paths with Amber … while they all try to figure out what to do with their lives.
Breathless

A classic of the French New Wave, A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) was Godard’s debut feature film, a career breakthrough for Belmondo and a career recovery for Seberg after her travails in Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse.
The Lighthouse

An hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers trying to keep a grip on their sanity and humanity on a remote New England island in the 1890s. “As with The Witch, it’s the atmosphere that seeps into you like sea brine. You don’t watch this film, you are submerged in it.” Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, Metro…
The Big Heat

Police Sergeant Bannion is investigating the apparent suicide of a policeman, when he is suddenly ordered to stop. Bent coppers and systemic corruption drive this classic Hollywood noir, incisively directed by emigré Fritz Lang, visionary creator of the dystopian Metropolis and disturbing M. Essentially a 1950s B movie, The Big Heat has since attained enduring…
Bait

Named by critic Mark Kermode as the best film of the last decade and holder of the record of most ever votes received in a WFC Members’ Choice vote, this quirky drama wowed critics who hailed it as an instant masterpiece. The culture / class clash between locals and well-heeled outsiders forms the heart of…
Love Affair

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and then… Often cited, most famously in Sleepless in Seattle, this instant hit was twice remade: in 1957 with Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Cathleen Nesbitt; and in 1994 with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katherine Hepburn. McCarey, who directed the first two, was a key figure in 1930’s Hollywood, mainly…
I Vitelloni

With his third film, 33-year old Fellini made his name and found his voice: evolving from Italian Neo-Realism into a freer, more poetic and episodic style.The narrative is sprinkled with many of his recurrent motifs: variété and carneval; storms and windswept beaches, the Catholic Church; the happy fool and the wise child – all bound…
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Nottingham writer Alan Sillitoe’s adaptation of his own novel is widely considered to be the most convincing of the British ‘angry young men’ dramas of the late Fifties/early Sixties. Middle-class Czech émigré and former documentary-maker Karel Reisz, directing his debut feature film on location in Nottingham and at Twickenham Studios, created an authentic atmosphere for…
Closely Observed Trains

Oscar-winning comedy-drama from Czech New Wave director and actor Ji?í Menzel (Larks on a String, I served the King of England). Set in German-occupied Czechoslovakia during WWII, a shy clerk at a village train station fails in his first attempt at making-love, leaving him feeling inadequate and despondent, but eventually succeeds beyond his or anyone’s…