ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT (1957, b/w)
BBC Two, 12.35pm
A daredevil true story inspired this Second World War drama, one of the last collaborations between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Dirk Bogarde and David Oxley play undercover British officers sent to rally the resistance on occupied Crete, where they kidnap a Nazi general.
Real events are simplified but not distorted, although the scenic Cretan landscapes were actually shot in France and Italy. Powell and Pressburger tell a more straightforward adventure than usual, but they still bring their trademark visual flair to a stirring yarn. (104min)
Advertisement
MultiChannel
HOWARDS END (1992)
Film4, 6.25pm
The last of the Merchant- Ivory team’s sumptuous E. M. Forster adaptations almost feels like a greatest hits collection, with an all-star cast of regulars, including Emma Thompson, Anthony Hopkins, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave. Forster’s wryly observed social drama concerns two Edwardian families, the snobby Schlegels and the nouveau-riche Wilcoxes, thrown together by ill-fated romance and a grand old house on which both claim ownership.
Thompson’s understated performance and the screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s crisp, economical screenplay both won Oscars. (140min)
THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952, b/w)
BBC Four, 11.10pm
Advertisement
A classic love-hate exposé of behind-the-scenes Hollywood that ranks alongside Sunset Boulevard and The Player, Vincente Minelli’s melodrama stars Kirk Douglas as a movie producer who rises to the top on hollow promises and back-stabbing betrayals.
Mostly told in flashback by a trio of embittered former colleagues (Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan and Dick Powell), The Bad and the Beautiful earned Oscars for the screenwriter Charles Schnee and Douglas’s co-star, Gloria Grahame. (118min)