The 40 most popular 1950s british movies, ranked. Click any film for ratings, reviews, trailers, and where to watch.


The Bridge on the River Kwai
1957 · 2h 42m · UK
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.


Henry Moore
1951 · 26m · UK
A documentary on the work of artist Henry Moore.


Emperor Jones
1958 · 1h 6m · UK
Unscrupulously ambitious Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and through bluff and bravado finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.


Sapphire
1959 · 1h 32m · UK
Two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the detectives wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry.


Scrooge
1951 · 1h 26m · UK
Ebenezer Scrooge malcontentedly shuffles through life as a cruel, miserly businessman, until he is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve who show him how his unhappy childhood and adult behavior has left him a selfish, lonely old man.


Dracula
1958 · 1h 22m · UK
After Jonathan Harker attacks Dracula at his castle, the vampire travels to a nearby city, where he preys on the family of Harker's fiancée. The only one who may be able to protect them is Dr. van Helsing, Harker's friend and fellow-student of vampires, who is determined to destroy Dracula, whatever the cost.


Curtain Up
1952 · 1h 21m · UK
In a small town in the 1950s a repertory company meets on Monday morning to start rehearsing the following week's play. This is a ghastly thing written by the aunt of one of the theatre's directors. The producer doesn't try to hide his annoyance about it, and is further exercised when the authoress herself arrives to help. The cast have to try and sort out real-life problems that keep intruding as they wrestle with the play's dire dialogue.


Pasaporte al infierno
1956 · 50m · ES
A forger (Carpenter) flees to Spain but his daughter is kidnapped by a ruthless gang.


The Man Who Never Was
1956 · 1h 43m · UK
The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.


Escapade
1955 · 1h 27m · UK
An English pacifist's (John Mills) sons run away from school and hijack a plane to Vienna to petition for peace.


I Was Monty's Double
1958 · 1h 41m · UK
The incredible but true story of how an impersonator was recruited to impersonate General Montgomery to mislead the Germans about his intentions before the North Africa campaign.


The African Queen
1952 · 1h 45m · UK
At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.


Zarak
1956 · 1h 39m · UK
A notorious bandit develops a grudging respect for the English military man assigned to capture him.


Animal Farm
1954 · 1h 13m · UK
Animals on a farm lead a revolution against the farmers to put their destiny in their own hands. However this revolution eats their own children and they cannot avoid corruption.


A Night to Remember
1958 · 2h 3m · UK
The sinking of the Titanic is presented in a highly realistic fashion in this tense British drama. The disaster is portrayed largely from the perspective of the ocean liner's second officer, Charles Lightoller. Despite numerous warnings about ice, the ship sails on, with Capt. Edward John Smith keeping it going at a steady clip. When the doomed vessel finally hits an iceberg, the crew and passengers discover that they lack enough lifeboats, and tragedy follows.


Undercover Girl
1958 · 1h 8m · UK
Nightclub employee Joan Foster assists the brother of a murdered reporter to expose a drug ring.


The Curse of Frankenstein
1957 · 1h 23m · UK
Baron Victor Frankenstein has discovered life's secret and unleashed a blood-curdling chain of events resulting from his creation: a cursed creature with a horrid face — and a tendency to kill.


The Million Pound Note
1954 · 1h 30m · UK
An impoverished American sailor is fortunate enough to be passing the house of two rich gentlemen who have conceived the crazy idea of distributing a note worth one million pounds. The sailor finds that whenever he tries to use the note to buy something, people treat him like a king and let him have whatever he likes for free. Ultimately, the money proves to be more troublesome than it is worth when it almost costs him his dignity and the woman he loves.


Venetian Bird
1952 · 1h 34m · UK
Travelling to Venice to locate an ex-partisan on behalf of a French insurance company, a British private detective gets mixed-up in a political assassination conspiracy.


Innocent Sinners
1958 · 1h 35m · UK
A neglected girl in post-World War II London befriends street urchins who help her build a tiny garden in a bombed-out church.


Roadhouse Girl
1953 · 1h 10m · UK
A middle-aged garage owner's life is turned upside down when his new mechanics gets it on with his sexy younger wife.


Outcast of the Islands
1951 · 1h 42m · UK
After financial improprieties are discovered at the Eastern trading company where he works, Peter Willems flees the resulting disgrace and criminal charges. He persuades the man who gave him his start in life, the merchant ship captain Lingard, to bring him to a trading post on a remote Indonesian island where he can hide out.


Night of the Demon
1957 · 1h 36m · UK
American professor John Holden arrives in London for a conference on parapsychology only to discover that the colleague he was supposed to meet was killed in a freak accident the day before. It turns out that the deceased had been investigating a cult lead by Dr. Julian Karswell. Though a skeptic, Holden is suspicious of the devil-worshiping Karswell. Following a trail of mysterious manuscripts, Holden enters a world that makes him question his faith in science.


Smiley
1956 · 1h 37m · UK
Smiley Greevins is a cheeky, mischievous, imaginative little boy who lives in the small town of Murrumbilla in the Australian outback. His father Bill is a poor drover who is often away from home. Much to the exasperation of his overworked wife, Ma Greevins, Bill is also very fond of the drink. Smiley is determined to buy himself a push bike and so he takes on odd jobs in an effort to save up enough money. But Smiley always seems to get caught up in some sort of misadventure. Smiley is a classic Australian film that will delight audiences of all ages.


Night and the City
1950 · 1h 35m · UK
Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.


The Ladykillers
1955 · 1h 31m · UK
Five oddball criminals planning a bank robbery rent rooms on a cul-de-sac from an octogenarian widow under the pretext that they are classical musicians.


Bitter Springs
1950 · 1h 29m · UK
A family buy land set around a water hole in a remote location, that is occupied by native Australians. The two groups clash.


Captured
1959 · 1h 5m · UK
Directed by cult British director John Krish, the film was sponsored by the Army Kinematograph Corporation. This tightly plotted drama shows British POWs enduring brainwashing and torture during the Korean War, thereby revealing what a soldier could expect if he was ever captured by enemy forces.


The Hound of the Baskervilles
1959 · 1h 27m · UK
When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, detective Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.


Another Sky
1954 · 1h 26m · UK
After a puritan youth, a young English woman discovers her sensuality in North-Africa.


The Square
1957 · 16m · UK
Old man of class and character living in a London square after both have suffered from time. Before his house is pulled down the residents surprise him with a party.


Barbados Quest
1955 · 1h 10m · UK
Special investigator Duke Martin is in London to investigate the authenticity of a rare postage stamp called the Barbados Overplate. Someone is willing to commit murder to get his or her hands on the stamp, which puts a crimp in Duke's efforts to romance every beautiful woman he meets.


The Battle of the River Plate
1956 · 1h 59m · UK
In the early years of the World War II, the Royal Navy is fighting a desperate battle to keep the Atlantic convoy routes open to supply the British Isles, facing the great danger posed by the many German warships, such as the Admiral Graf Spee, which are scouring the ocean for cargo ships to sink.


Golden Salamander
1950 · 1h 37m · UK
An archaeologist stumbles into the territory of an evil crime syndicate and struggles to set things right.


A King in New York
1957 · 1h 44m · UK
A recently-deposed "Estrovian" monarch seeks shelter in New York City, where he becomes an accidental television celebrity. Later, he's wrongly accused of being a Communist and gets caught up in subsequent HUAC hearings.


Final Appointment
1954 · 1h 5m · UK
A pair of reporters try to discover the link between three unsolved, seemingly isolated murders. The only connection between them is they all took place on the same day in three successive years. The police don't trust their instincts - but as 10th July nears again, a solicitor has started receiving threatening letters...


Distant Trumpet
1952 · 1h 3m · UK
David Anthony, a Harley Street physician, swaps duties with his brother, a medical missionary in Africa.
The Genie
The Genie
1953 · 1h 15m · UK
A young woman discovers her grandfather owns the true Aladdin's lamp and discovers it's handsome Genie inside as well.


Assignment Redhead
1956 · 1h 19m · UK
An American army officer working for British intelligence comes to post-war Berlin to solve a murder. His investigation is compromised when he falls for a nightclub singer, not realising she is an agent of the criminal mastermind he is on the trail of.


Room at the Top
1958 · 1h 55m · UK
An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman.
1950s cinema fought television with everything it had: widescreen formats, colour, and spectacle. Underneath the scale, it was also the decade of Japanese cinema's international breakthrough and the birth of the modern art film.
British cinema spans Ealing comedies, kitchen-sink realism, Hammer horror, and the long-running national institution that is the Bond franchise. It's also functioned for decades as a production base and talent pipeline for Hollywood.