This magnificent, multi-faceted war-time drama remains a highpoint of the collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Ageing, buffoonish General Candy is revealed to be a more nuanced figure as we look back upon a life shaped by three different women (all played by Deborah Kerr), a lasting friendship with a German soldier, and the cruel passing of the Belle Époque.

Though Winston Churchill was famously tempted to suppress the film, it’s now acknowledged as a humanist testament and one of the finest British movies ever made (and one of cinema's greatest studies of 'Englishness'). A masterpiece.

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