Miranda

A charming fantasy in which a mermaid appears to a young husband who has got away from it all to go fishing: Glynis Johns shines in the lead as the playful miss with the fish's tail who starts to snare all the men she comes across. Griffith Jones is the man who starts to regret bringing his find back to his home and wife (Googie Withers), while David Tomlinson is appealing as the driver with big ears who Miranda seems particularly taken with.

Quite the best performance in this confection comes from the incomparable Margaret Rutherford, joyous as the ageing nurse who has always believed in the existence of magical creatures such as mermaids. With an amusing and intriguing ending (and a credit ‘ Tail by Dunlop'), ‘Miranda' is one of the highlights of 1940s British cinema. Johns and Tomlinson would appear together again memorably in 1964 as the parents in ‘Mary Poppins'. Jones was still acting on stage recently in his late eighties in small Shakespeare roles. And the mermaid story showed up in another guise with Daryl Hannah, Tom Hanks, and ‘Splash!' some 40 years after ‘Miranda'.