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Locarno Film Festival · 2025

Locarno Film Festival 2025

Retrospective

Programme

11 films · 11 reviews

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The Fallen Idol

Review preview for The Fallen Idol

The Fallen Idol is overshadowed by Reed and Greene's The Third Man but is in many ways a precursor for the later film, not least in visual terms.

Rebecca Naughten · 3.5 out of 5
A butler working in a foreign embassy falls under suspicion when his wife falls to her death and the only witness is a child.

(Country: UK; Year: 1948; Director: Carol Reed; Writer: Graham Greene, Lesley Storm, William Templeton; Stars: Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, Bobby Henrey, Denis O'Dea, Jack Hawkins, Walter Fitzgerald, Dandy Nichols, Joan Young, Karel Stepanek, Gerard Heinz, Torin Thatcher, James Hayter, Geoffrey Keen, Bernard Lee)

Full review

The Happiest Days Of Your Life

Review preview for The Happiest Days Of Your Life

As you would expect with actors of this calibre, there are some delightful sequences where the two leads display their acute comic timing by playing off each other.

Rebecca Naughten · 4.5 out of 5
A mix-up at the Ministry sees a respectable girls' school evacuated to the all-male Nutbourne College, much to the horror of their respective headteachers.

(Country: UK; Year: 1950; Director: Frank Launder; Writer: Frank Launder, John Dighton; Stars: Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, John Turnbull, Richard Wattis, John Bentley, Guy Middleton, Percy Walsh, Arthur Howard, Edward Rigby, Harold Goodwin, Gladys Henson, Muriel Aked, Bernadette O'Farrell, Myrette Morven)

Full review

Hell Drivers

Review preview for Hell Drivers

Hell Drivers is a gem.

Andrew Robertson · 4.5 out of 5
An ex-con trucker tries to expose his boss's rackets.

(Country: UK; Year: 1957; Director: Cy Endfield; Writer: John Kruse, Cy Endfield; Stars: Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, Patrick McGoohan, William Hartnell, Wilfrid Lawson, Sidney James, Jill Ireland, Alfie Bass, Gordon Jackson, David McCallum, Sean Connery, Wensley Pithey, George Murcell, Marjorie Rhodes)

Full review

Mandy

Review preview for Mandy

The pace is deliberately slow to give time for these fears and passions to settle in a civilised way.

Angus Wolfe Murray · 3.5 out of 5
A teacher tries to help a deaf and mute child to communicate.

(Country: UK; Year: 1952; Director: Alexander Mackendrick; Writer: Nigel Balchin, Jack Whittingham, based on the novel by Hilda Lewis; Stars: Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins, Terence Morgan, Godfrey Tearle, Mandy Miller, Marjorie Fielding, Nancy Price, Edward Chapman, Patricia Plunkett, Eleanor Summerfield, Colin Gordon, Dorothy Alison, Julian Amyes, Gabrielle Brune, John Cazabon)

Full review

Night And The City

Review preview for Night And The City

The film has style, created as much by Max Greene’s atmospheric camerawork as Widmark’s bravura acting.

Angus Wolfe Murray · 4 out of 5
A small time American hustler in post war London takes on the hoodlum who runs the wrestling rackets.

(Country: UK; Year: 1950; Director: Jules Dassin; Writer: Jo Eisinger, based on the novel by Gerald Kersh; Stars: Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Hugh Marlowe, Francis L Sullivan, Herbert Lom, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Mike Mazurki, Charles Farrell, Ada Reeve, Ken Richmond)

Full review

Obsession (The Hidden Room)

Review preview for Obsession

This neatly packaged film noir is proof that you don't need violence to create tension.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A man plots revenge against his wife's lover.

(Country: UK; Year: 1949; Director: Edward Dmytryk; Writer: Alec Coppel, based on the novel A Man About A Dog; Stars: Robert Newton, Phil Brown, Sally Gray, Naunton Wayne, Michael Balfour, Olga Lindo, Ronald Adam)

Full review

Odd Man Out

Review preview for Odd Man Out

Even if almost all of Johnny's journey into darkness takes place on foot, only his first steps are truly pedestrian.

Anton Bitel · 3.5 out of 5
An injured IRA man goes on the run in the forbidding back streets of Belfast.

(Country: UK; Year: 1947; Director: Carol Reed; Writer: F.L. Green, R.C. Sherriff, from the novel by F.L. Green; Stars: James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, Kathleen Ryan, F.J. McCormick, William Hartnell, Fay Compton, Denis O'Dea, W.G. Fay, Maureen Delaney, Eleyn Brook-Jones, Robert Beatty, Dan O'Herlihy, Kitty Kirwan, Beryl Measor, Roy Irving, Joseph Tomelty, Arthur)

Full review

The Passionate Friends (One Woman's Story)

Review preview for The Passionate Friends

Every performance in this film is spot on.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
A tragic love triangle spanning two decades.

(Country: UK; Year: 1949; Director: David Lean; Writer: Eric Ambler and Stanley Haynes, based on the novel by H.G. Wells.; Stars: Ann Todd, Claude Rains, Trevor Howard, Isabel Dean, Betty Ann Davies)

Full review

Peeping Tom (Face Of Fear)

Review preview for Peeping Tom

Peeping Tom is a film all about watching and identification, a film whose real horror hinges on the way it implicates the audience in its dark voyeurism.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
A young photographer becomes fascinated by expressions of fear, with deadly consequences.

(Country: UK; Year: 1960; Director: Michael Powell; Writer: Leo Marks; Stars: Karlheinz Böhm, Moira Shearer, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Brenda Bruce, Miles Malleson, Esmond Knight, Martin Miller, Michael Goodliffe, Jack Watson, Shirley Anne Field)

Full review

Simon and Laura

Review preview for Simon and Laura

While Simon and Laura may predict the reality TV genre, its take on it can't really be called prescient or telling.

Keith Dudhnath · 1.5 out of 5
A bickering couple get the opportunity to revitalise their careers by starring in a reality TV show.

(Country: UK; Year: 1955; Director: Muriel Box; Writer: Peter Blackmore, Alan Melville; Stars: Peter Finch, Kay Kendall, Ian Carmichael, Maurice Denham, Thora Hird, Richard Wattis, Muriel Pavlow)

Full review

Whisky Galore! (Tight Little Island)

Review preview for Whisky Galore!

Commentators have dismissed Mackendrick's comedy about the islanders of Todday as stereotypical, patronising and tame, but it is outrageously funny and highly subversive.

Brian Pendreigh · 4 out of 5
Classic Ealing comedy where a group of Scottish islanders rescue and hide a shipwrecked cargo of whisky.

(Country: UK,; Year: 1949; Director: Alexander Mackendrick; Writer: Compton MacKenzie, Angus MacPhail, based on the novel by Compton MacKenzie; Stars: Basil Radford, Catherine Lacey, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood, Wylie Watson, Gabrielle Blunt, Gordon Jackson, Jean Cadell, James Robertson Justice, Morland Graham, John Gregson, James Woodburn, James Anderson, Jameson Clark, Duncan Macrae, Mary MacNeil, Nor)

Full review