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The Best British Films, As Chosen By High Rise Director Ben Wheatley

From The Shining to Withnail & I, the pick of the country's best filmmaking

By Paul Wilson
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"Oh God," says Ben Wheatley, "I've left out John Boorman. That's not good." The director of Kill List, High-Rise and the Free Fire has, to his consternation, neglected to discuss the director of Zardoz, Excalibur and Point Blank during a long, wide-ranging conversation about the British films he values the most.

If you watch as many films as Wheatley does, and are as busy making them (six features, with Free Fire, and an anthology segment, since 2009's Down Terrace), then you may forgive the oversight. He's tougher on himself. "I've been working this through in my head in the last couple of years, but it is definitely Boorman, Ken Russell and Nic Roeg who seem to be the pillars of my favourite types of British cinema. They don't get talked about as much as the world of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh and the kind of socio-realist, sensible film-making which gets pushed, mainly by the French. That's what our national cinema seems to be defined as, and it's not true. There's a massively wild British cinema, as wild or wilder than any other national cinema, and it's not all tales of council estates and tower blocks reflected in puddles."

Wheatley shines new light on cast-iron British classics — Get Carter, The Third Man — as well as choosing lesser-known wilder movies for his list. Born in 1972, he grew up in a time that was, he says, "the tail end of the period that if you missed something at the cinema or you were too young, it felt like you weren't ever going to see it. I didn't see The Empire Strikes Back because my parents wouldn't take me to see it, so I had to read the fucking novelisation and I didn't see it until the Christmas of '90, when it came out TV. Outrageous!"

When Wheatley talks about his own movies, or making them, he always says "we" not "I", referring to the core cinematic collaborators with whom he's made all his features: the producer Andy Starke, director of photography Laurie Rose and writer and editor Amy Jump, aka Mrs Wheatley. This list of films, however, is a moveable feast. "My favourite films change all the time," Wheatley says. " I thought everyone's do."

The Long Good Friday

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John Mackenzie (1980)

Thatcherite London gangster incurs wrath of IRA, irks Mafia, blows top.

"Massive scope; it's so big. Loads of detail and brilliant lines. The central performance of Bob Hoskins is incredible. It's also weirdly prescient, talking about the development of the docks, the rebuilding and reclaiming of London. This is a favourite from when I was a kid. One of those movies you start watching and your parents ask you what time it's going to end and you say it's going to end at 9pm and it doesn't end until 11.30pm. I actually watched this at my grandparents', upstairs, on my uncle's black-and-white portable telly. There were a lot of movies like that: I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in black-and-white as well, for the first time, on a tiny screen, and it was still brilliant. People moan about watching stuff windowed in YouTube, but that can be quite a big image when you think about what we used to watch telly on."

Performance

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Nicholas Roeg, Donald Cammell (1970)

Wanted thug taken in by Jagger-like rock star, played by Mick Jagger.

"The London crime scene is very well done. It feels more authentic than a lot of other films of its type. It captures that Kray Twins moment: sex, drugs, crime and celebrity all being churned into one big melting pot. So far ahead of its time, even now, and a movie, like with, Blade Runner, that every time I watch it I see something new. Incredible images, with cinematography that I still don't know quite how they did it. I actually came to this through Happy Mondays, and their album Bummed (1988), which has samples from the film [on the track "Mad Cyril"]. I always wondered what they were, so I looked into it. The idea of fractured time that we've done in all our films comes from this, from Roeg, but also Alan Moore's Watchmen comics."

Blade Runner

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Ridley Scott (1982)

Harrison Ford's future cop wrestles renegade androids and the human condition.

"I'm calling this British because it's the culmination of 10 years of ad-making in the UK [Scott made his name directing commercials]. I've bought every book about it and studied it, I buy every reissue and have seen it many, many, many times. It's just a brilliant film, the story's interesting and it still looks gorgeous. The special effects stand up: how that's possible, I don't now, because other films of the period look terrible now. Blade Runner is a definitive image of what the future is going to look like, it's kind of ruined all sci-fi in a way, because everything is a bit Blade Runner-y now — either that or it looks like it's been designed at Apple."

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The Ladykillers

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Alexander Mackendrick (1955)

Jet-black comedy: robbers dupe an old dear into their heist then plot to do her in.

"This is probably the film I've watched more than any other. At one point as a kid we only had three Betamax tapes on which I'd taped , and . All the performances are incredible from an amazing ensemble cast, including Alec Guinness, Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers. It's really funny, but it's really sinister at the same time. For some reason, the funny and sinister have the same power, and that's rare, one usually undercuts the other. It's so scary. You think Guinness is out of his mind, a monster, the most dangerous one of all of them. So bumbling and silly, but also not: he's going to be a murderer."

Threads

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Mick Jackson (1984)

Controversial BBC film predicts what happens after Britain is nuked.

"A TV movie, but I'm going to count it. Threads pulls no punches. It should be double-billed with Max Max to show the reality of the post-apocalyptic world. It's not mohicans and motorbikes; it's all just misery, scrabbling around for potatoes when you've gone blind after the nuclear armageddon. I remember seeing that when it came out, it was so profound. I don't think anything was the same for me after."

Sitting Target

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Douglas Hickox (1972)

Wronged lag seeks revenge in pulp fiction of the lowest order/highest impact.

"Sitting Target is a grotty and weirdly influential crime film. It starts with Oliver Reed in prison with Ian McShane as his sidekick. He's visited by his wife, who tells him she's pregnant by another man and he tries to smash his way though the glass to get to her. Then he decides to escape and kill her. Oliver Reed is basically The Terminator; he ends up wearing the same clothes Arnie wears, and he moves in a robotic way through the film, dispatching people. Oliver Reed buys a gun, a Mauser; later, this gun ends up in Star Wars, literally, as Han Solo's gun. Watch the trailer and go, 'Fuck, that is Han Solo's blaster.' Oliver Reed and Ian McShane are always worth watching, but it's such a perversely brutal plot. Can you imagine the elevator pitch? 'And get this — she's pregnant!' I'd can that one right there."

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The Third Man

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Carol Reed (1949)

Exemplary film written by Graham Greene, set in Vienna, starring Orson Welles.

"A stone-cold classic with a perfect script, structurally, and shot so imaginatively. The image that sticks with me is of Welles' fingers going through the grate at the end of the great sewer chase – that's cinema. He's so close to escaping but can't get his freedom. He's a monster that you love. This film says everything about the reality of morals: life is not black hats and white hats, it's lots of very grey hats. Even a man who has poisoned children can come across as an alright bloke in the right circumstances in this movie! Also, the matter-of-factness of him not giving a fuck about anybody is so chilling: the money-for-lives speech on the Ferris wheel. It feels like that's how politicians think, how you can sacrifice loads of people and not care."

Withnail & I

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Bruce Robinson (1987)

Out-of work actors on a sozzled, sodden Lake District mini-break.

"I couldn't believe how funny it was first time I saw it. That kind of drinking culture is something I understood and had seen: bar wit and being able to swear in an incredibly hilarious and muscular way really appealed to me. It's so sharp, certainly for a movie where nothing happens really: the biggest thing they manage to do is go on holiday 'by mistake'. That's basically all that happens: they drive down a road, stay in a room and talk to each other and then come back! Just shows what you can do with virtually nothing: so thin, yet so brilliant. A joy. There are no jokes, just funny people being funny, characters with a sense of humour. And Richard E Grant: for a man who's a complete teetotal, it's one of the greatest drunk performances of all time. That wet-eyed, almost dissolved look he has throughout the whole film is just genius."

Star Wars

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George Lucas (1977)

Reluctant hero loses family, finds robots, saves galaxy, possibly fancies sister.

"Yes, this is more of a stretch, but for me it's British because of the technicians, the studio [Elstree Studios]; it's David Prowse, it's Don Henderson, Peter Cushing, all the stormtroopers. When you think about it, all the stormtroopers are probably all Cockneys, which is something that isn't talked about enough. They all came to London to make it, so that's why it gets on my list."

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Archipelago and Exhibition 

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Joanna Hogg (2010; 2013)

Double bill of middle-class mores with early Tom Hiddleston lead roles.

"I watched these as part of the due diligence for working with Tom on High-Rise, having avoided them for possibly small-minded and spiteful reasons: because they were critically lauded and I was probably jealous — I can be a bit snide like that — and because I didn't think I would like them. When I watched them, I thought they were brilliant. I liked the play of manners and the resolutely British feel of them, and the achingly fucking horrible atmosphere. It's oppressive, but it's also people trying to be good, trying their best but failing. They weren't the middle classes making films about the working classes, which seems to be a lot of British arthouse cinema. For Joanna Hogg to talk about her own life and world in that detail is refreshing. I like the thing of people self-starting, making films outside the system pretty much. She was a director on and stuff like that, so what she's doing is an independent cinema that's truly independent. No matter what funding you get further down the line, starting off your own back and making something is really good."

Get Carter

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Mike Hodges (1971)

Up from London, a hoodlum scours Newcastle and Gateshead for his brother's killers.

"I heard about it at school; everyone saw it and was talking about it, and it sounded like the greatest film ever, so evil and perverse and horrific, when it's described to you by a 12-year-old. I was probably 17 or 18 when I eventually saw it. Michael Caine's central performance is so hard, and there's something sweaty and sleazy and Seventies about it. It doesn't feel like they were playing; they weren't acting, they were just being. The whole film feels like a hangover. Caine walking around naked but not being ripped – you can't imagine a modern actor looking doughy like that now. He didn't give a fuck what he looked like because he was a complete geezer. The pace of it as well: a proper heart-pounding B-movie. It's a cowboy movie as well as a revenge drama. If they all put hats on and did it on horses, they wouldn't have to change much of it. Except for the pornography subplot. And, of course, it's endlessly quotable, if badly, not quite right. 'You're a big man but you're out of shape but for me it's a full-time job.' I'm not sure that's right; that's the one people always get wrong. [The line is: 'You're a big man, but you're in bad shape. With me it's a full-time job.'] Ha ha ha! Anyway, so much good stuff."

Scum

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Alan Clarke (1979)

"This only occurred to me the other day, while watching The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), which I hadn't seen since I was a kid. When you watch it, you go, 'Hang on, this is , really'. He won't conform so he ends up being put in the borstal and you're thinking, 'Will they break him?' And he will not be broken and then he fights through, which is basically the plot of Scum. A Clockwork Orange is very similar as well, except you don't see the crimes that they commit in Scum but you see them in A Clockwork Orange — which is mainly two bits: him being bad then him being in prison and the consequences. It's an idea that's being worked though in those three movies with slightly different outcomes. I saw in school — showing people in school is pretty bad! This is, as with a lot of Alan Clarke films, about incredible turns of tone, terrifying you fundamentally. Not just scaring you with a vampire or something, but showing you something that makes your blood go cold. You physically feel the fight-or-flight response with his films, like you have to get out of the room it's so horrible. I get that from Scorsese's stuff as well: , , . The violence that's palpable. It isn't the same as popcorny karate movies, where it's dynamic and exciting. Here, it's not exciting at all, it's sickening, and I've always thought that's how it should be."

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The Shining

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Stanley Kubrick (1980)

Jack Nicholson's finest, fiercest hour as the caretaker of a malevolent hotel.

"You can make an argument for The Shining as a British film because Kubrick lived here and was de facto a British director. When I found out it was all shot on massive sets, that the Overlook Hotel [interior] wasn't real, that it was built at Elstree? Blew my mind."

Robbery

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Peter Yates (1967)

Great Train Robbery fictionalised, with half-hour-long great train-robbery sequence.

"Peter Yates also directed Bullitt, which is not a British film, but we could put it in brackets on this list. Robbery is absolutely phenomenal. It's got some of the best car chases ever shot in London by a country mile. Obviously, someone saw it and goes, "Why don't you do Bullitt?" The massive car chase in Bullitt, which everyone remembers, and is a cultural moment, comes from this film about London gangsters based on the Great Train Robbery. It's a very modern film; Yates is a super-modern film-maker. And if you watch Robbery, then watch Bullitt, and then Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), you start to understand the career of Michael Mann. The end of Bullitt is the end of Mann's Heat (1995) — all comes from Robbery. So it's quite an important film in that respect, and very enjoyable."

Brazil

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Terry Gilliam (1985)

Dystopian dreams and Orwellian nightmares in a mechanised, imperfect future.

"I don't think there has ever been a film as visually dense as this, before or since. The retro-future look is really gorgeous. One shot, pulling back from Jonathan Pryce to show him inside a massive cooling tower just before he's tortured, is unbelievable. I remember just seeing that made me love cinema, thinking, "God, Gilliam had that idea, he knows how to move a camera, he knows when a wide-angle lens is going to make something look totally unique and incredible." It's packed full of amazing performances [Robert De Niro, Michael Palin, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins et al] and feels like it's plugged straight into Gilliam's brain, just all these ideas pouring out. I love that kind of cinema."

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A Clockwork Orange

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Stanley Kubrick (1971)

The vicious circle of ultra-violence in a near-future totalitarian England.

"I went to Paris just to see this, in a cinema where it played for a long time. It was definitely worth it, though. You couldn't see it in the UK [between 1973 and 2000; director Kubrick prevented screenings, possibly due to accusations of the film causing copycat violence]. You could only see it on VHS copies otherwise, really fucked copies. I had one and I just couldn't stand watching it: 'this is horrible!' It's a weird one, because A Clockwork Orange ended up closing the Scala, which was my favourite cinema in London. They showed it during the ban, under a title like A Zesty Mechanical Treat, and they got prosecuted and went bust. I went [there] so much as a kid, and it was genius. Bunk off school and watch triple bills in the day. We'd go to the all-nighters too, take loads of speed and watch five movies in a row."

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

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Peter Greenaway (1989)

Arthouse dramedy breaking boundaries of taste and film grammar.


"Greenaway's stuff is so painterly, and I really like that. It feels composed, like you're trapped inside a painting or inside a careful piece of clockwork. It is a different kind of cinema, a different eye at work, a different way of representing stories. More like a novel, but moving, tableau-y and flat, which I really like. There's stuff in his movies, like time-lapse photography, which I was so naive about. It seemed like magic to me, I didn't understand how it could even happen. This film blows your mind with so many things that I think are amazing and effortless. Michael Gambon and Helen Mirren's performances. Whenever Mirren goes in a different environment, her clothes change colour. The music [by Michael Nyman]. I ended up buying the album, and then whenever we had a dinner party we'd play that and just feel more intelligent."

The Devils

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Ken Russell (1971)

A 17th-century priest is tried for witchcraft. Contains: medieval torture, nun orgy.

"Just a phenomenal film that looks like nothing else in British cinema. It looks like it costs all the money in the world. I last watched it in 2013 because I got to programme it at Fantastic Fest in Austin, when we were doing screenings of A Field In England. They said, 'What film should you put on to warm people up for ?' The Devils is not a film to put your film next to because it's so fucking good, but doing that was worth it just to be in a room full of 30-year-old film bloggers who had never seen anything like it. Possibly Oliver Reed's greatest performance, although I'll make a case for . That was the first time I had seen it in a cinema, having seen it on DVD a lot. It's transcendental, it transports you somewhere completely other, in a way that very few films can."

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Culloden and The War Game

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Peter Watkins (1964; 1965)

Ground-breaking BBC docudramas (or mockumentaries?) of war and post-war.

"Culloden, as far as I understand it, invents docudrama, and it's such a brilliant idea, that you use a TV news crew to report history [the Battle of Culloden, 1746]. Using something so utterly modern and 'now' to make the past seem much more vivid, it shouldn't work, it's counterintuitive, entirely, and yet it's brilliant. Culloden is massively influential in the things I do: jumping in and out of trying to be real, and then lots of artifice, backwards and forwards. The War Game — is also brilliant. The BBC banned it for 20 years but it won the 1967 Best Documentary Oscar. Some incredible lines in the voiceover: 'the blast wave from a thermonuclear explosion has been likened to an enormous door slamming in the depths of hell.' I mean, it doesn't get much better than that."

The Charge of The Light Brigade

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Tony Richardson (1968)

Epic and intimate retelling of infamous botched Crimean War attack.

"I came to this really late, about three or four years ago. I think there was a really unfair thought I'd had, where somehow the film was bad because the idea of failure had jumped across from the actual charge of the Light Brigade to the film. It's weird: in a world where Kubrick gets a free pass for everything — which is fair enough; his films are brilliant — that seems to be the high watermark of where arthouse-mainstream cinema should be. But then you've got something like The Charge of The Light Brigade , so finely made and interesting, with brilliant performances, on a giant scale, and political. It's great film, full stop. There's a cultural curtain that sweeps behind us, about 10 or 20 years behind, wiping everything out so only a few things remain and they become canon. Tony Richardson's films don't seem to be part of that group of things that are saved."

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