The way to the stars 1945 - Life around a British WWII air base

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: Anthony Asquith
Main Cast: Michael Redgrave, John Mills, Rosamund John, Douglass Montgomery, Stanley Holloway

"Originally released in England as The Way to the Stars, Johnny in the Clouds is the story of how the Battle of Britain affected the lives of combatants and civilians alike. Terence Rattigan's screenplay concentrates on three groups of people: an American pilot and his wife, a doomed British officer with a wife and child, and a young couple who plan to marry despite the precariousness of wartime romances. Most of the action takes place at an air base and the neighboring village, where the private citizens react to rationing and other restrictions with various degrees of nobility and selfishness. The American title of this film is derived from the poem 'Johnny in the Clouds', recited in tribute to the decease British airman; the U.S. version, which was released after the war, includes a prologue set in the deserted air base, with the bulk of the film offered as a flashback." - www.allmovie.com

DVD links:

The lady vanishes 1938 - The culmination of Hitchcock's British period

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030341/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Main Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty, Cecil Parker

"It's easy to forget, with all his successes, that Alfred Hitchcock's career suffered quite a few periods of commercial decline. Following his two international breakthroughs, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935), the director produced three films with relatively disappointing box-office returns. In 1938, he broke out of this slump with the popular and entertaining The Lady Vanishes. The director's penultimate movie before leaving England, it's a very light picture, more dependent on comedy than almost any of his previous films. A good deal of the humor comes from the interplay between the definitively British tourists Charters and Caldicott, played indelibly by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, that the actors would reprise in several other films. Despite (or perhaps because of) its 'Englishness', The Lady Vanishes made quite a splash in America, securing Hitchcock a place in Hollywood. The charming script by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat was based on the popular Ethel Lina White novel, The Wheel Spins." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-lady-vanishes-v28077/

DVD links: