Charles Crichton

  • Charles Crichton – The Battle of the Sexes (1960)

    1951-1960Charles CrichtonComedyCrimeUnited Kingdom

    Angela Barrows is a man-eating business woman sent by her American employer to investigate their export opportunities in Edinburgh. En route she meets Robert MacPherson a businessman who asks for her help to bring his company into the 20th Century. The staff, led by Mr Martin has other ideas though, and a battle between the old and new business methods soon breaks out.Read More »

  • John Frankenheimer & Charles Crichton – Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

    1961-1970Charles CrichtonClassicsDramaJohn FrankenheimerUSA

    Synopsis:
    In 1912, the notorious and violent prisoner Robert Franklin Stroud is transferred to the Leavenworth Prison convicted for murdering a man. When a guard cancels the visit of his mother, Elizabeth Stroud, due to a violation of the internal rules, he stabs and kills the guard and goes to trial three times. He is sentenced to be executed by the gallows, but his mother appeals to President Woodrow Wilson who commutes his sentence to life imprisonment. However, the warden, Harvey Shoemaker, decides to keep Stroud in solitary for the rest of his life. One day, Stroud finds a sparrow that has fallen from the nest in the yard and he raises the bird until it is strong enough to fly. Stroud finds a motivation for his life raising and caring for birds and becomes an expert in birds. He marries Stella Johnson and together they run a business, providing medicine developed by Stroud. But a few years after, Stroud is transferred to Alcatraz and has to leave his birds behind.Read More »

  • Charles Crichton – The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953)

    1951-1960Charles CrichtonClassicsComedyUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    The first Ealing Studios comedy shot in color, Titfield Thunderbolt takes place in a tiny British village serviced by a branch railway line. When the government plans to close the line down, the locals are in a panic—except for a group intending to set up an expensive bus service. The local vicar (George Relph) concocts a scheme with the town’s wealthiest man (Stanley Holloway) for the villagers to run the rail line themselves; in this way they hope to prove to the railway inspectors that their branch is still worth keeping. When the bus interests attempt to sabotage this undertaking, the villagers respond by stealing a stray locomotive—and when this proves cumbersome, they reactivate a 19th century train engine from the local museum.Read More »

  • Charles Crichton – Against the Wind (1948)

    1941-1950ActionCharles CrichtonUnited KingdomWar

    Brief synopsis
    Philip Elliot, refugee Belgian priest, reports to a secret school in London for spies and saboteurs behind German lines. After training, he and two others parachute into Belgium to help destroy a records office. This mission leads to German capture of an important resistance leader; four more agents (Emile, Max, Scotty, and Michele) go in on a rescue mission. But one of them is a traitor; and other things go wrong…Read More »

  • Charles Crichton – The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

    1951-1960Charles CrichtonComedyCrimeUnited Kingdom

    Wikipedia wrote:
    The Lavender Hill Mob is a 1951 comedy film from Ealing Studios, written by T.E.B. Clarke, directed by Charles Crichton and starring Alec Guinness, Stanley Holloway and Sid James as gold bullion thieves. The title refers to Lavender Hill, a street in Battersea, a district of South London, in the postcode district SW11, near to Clapham Junction railway station.

    Audrey Hepburn made an early film appearance in a small role as Chiquita near the start of the film.Read More »

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