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Stdiocanal is delighted to announce the release of a brand-new 4K restoration of Ealing Studios’ classic Blitz set comedy drama, The Bells Go Down, that is available to own on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital now. We’re giving you the chance to win a copy on Blu-Ray.

An important part of Ealing Studios’ legacy, The Bells Go Down, directed by Basil Dearden and produced by Michael Balcon, is a masterful and vividly authentic depiction of the work of the A.F.S (The Auxiliary Fire Service) that, in a revolutionary move, utilized genuine footage of London in the grip of the Blitz.

Starring the music hall hero Tommy Trinder in a rare straight role, a young James Mason, Philip Friend and even a future television Doctor in William Hartnell, the film captures the urgency of the era and serves as a rare historical document of a city in the grip of war.

Sue Milliken and Bruce Beresford (centre) with the cast of ‘Ladies in Black.’

Bruce Beresford’s Ladies in Black has grossed $11.4 million in seven weeks, encouraging Sony Pictures, which acquired the worldwide rights, to start devising plans to release the comedy-drama in offshore markets.

“The film was always required to establish itself here first before leveraging that success internationally,” Sony Pictures Releasing executive VP Stephen Basil-Jones tells If.

Produced by Sue Milliken and Allanah Zitserman, the 1959-set film is heading for $13 million here and in New Zealand is about to surpass $NZ1 million, which Basil-Jones rates as a superb result, particularly considering Oz films often struggle when they cross the ditch.

In Los Angeles last week he discussed with his colleagues rolling out the film, which stars Julia Ormond, Angourie Rice, Rachael Taylor, Ryan Corr, Alison McGirr, Noni Hazlehurst and Vincent Perez, in the UK and North America. Also he...

A True Original: Alberto Cavalcanti is showing from September 9 – October 12, 2018 in the United States.Champagne CharlieIf Dickensian fiction story of Nicholas Nickleby were to be filmed today, he’d be a young man incessantly searching Craigslist and wondering what college education is really good for. At least that’s the impression one gets watching Alberto Cavalcanti’s lively adaptation, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947), which perfectly captures the angst of urban youth fitted with stellar education and plenty desire for work, but dire economic prospects—an apt topic both today and at a time when Cavalcanti made his British fiction films, during and immediately after the Second World War.In his native Brazil, Cavalcanti has been celebrated for his avant-garde modernist films, including his debut, Nothing But Time (1926), and his collaboration with Walter Ruttman on Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927), which serves as an important reference in the...

'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...

Popular stalwart of film classics such as The Browning Version and Fanny By Gaslight

Jean Kent, the fiery, sexy, red-haired bad girl of British movies in the 1940s, who has died aged 92, was a fine actor, and clearly enjoyed life, her work and – while it lasted – her cinema fame. While never a top star, she gained a considerable following, and from the 1960s appeared regularly on television. Her film breakthrough came as a result of stage work: after the revue Apple Sauce, starring Vera Lynn and Max Miller, reached the London Palladium in 1941, she was offered a long-term contract, and the first of her Gainsborough Pictures appearances came in It's That Man Again (1943), with another wartime entertainer, the radio comic Tommy Handley.

It took another four films for her to make her first real mark as Lucy, the friend of Phyllis Calvert in the title role of the melodrama Fanny By Gaslight,...

My father, Stanley Dent, who has died aged 95, swapped the world of accountancy for running Adelphi Films, which produced British feature films throughout the 1950s – comedies, romances, dramas and horror, cheap and cheerful, but good entertainment, featuring stars such as Peter Sellers, Diana Dors, Sid James, Max Bygraves, Tommy Trinder and Dora Bryan.

Stanley was born in London, one of the three sons of Arthur Dent, a successful and charismatic film salesman, and his wife Hettie. He went to Kingsbury county school (now high school), and then qualified as an accountant. During the second world war, he was a gunner in Egypt and Syria. He enjoyed the outdoor desert life, where he learned to steer his jeep by the stars.

Arthur acquired Adelphi Films in 1949 and Stanley joined the company as business director, with his brother David as a producer. Their brother, Harry, had been killed during the war. Adelphi...

He was behind the Ealing films and made a handful of the most polished, imaginative and enjoyable movies of the 1940s. It's time the name of Alberto Cavalcanti was better known, argues Kevin Jackson

'Directed by Cavalcanti" runs the last of the black-and-white title credits. Back in the 1940s, the ordinary chap in the Odeon's ninepenny stalls is baffled, even annoyed. Who on earth is this jumped-up foreigner, thinking he's so bloody famous that he doesn't need a first name? (In fact, Cavalcanti was widely seen as one of the most self-effacing, charming men ever to have worked in film.) And why is a bloody Eyetie in charge of a British film – let alone an Ealing film, the most British productions of all? (In fact, Cavalcanti was Brazilian.) But those in the audience who had noticed the unusual credit once or twice before settled deeper into their red plush seats,...