It was the oddest thing. I had been invited to contribute to a panel discussion of The Red Shoes at the Central Film School in Clapham. Worried that I might miss the beginning of the movie, which was going to be screened beforehand, I was hurrying along the Merton Road to South Wimbledon tube station, when, miraculously, I came upon the Ballet Boutique. A mother and her daughter (I assume) were coming out of the shop just as I approached it. The daughter gave her mum a hug

“MUSSOLINI’S HOPE IN SCREEN,” ran the headline on the front page of Variety on 21 September 1927. “ This can bring the world together and end war, ” the Italian dictator said of his first appearance in talking pictures. Eight years later, Italy invaded Ethiopia. But in that “all talking” autumn of 1927, the delusions of the Jazz Age were still in full swing. I nside the same Variety issue was a review of Il Duce’s performance in the “first demonstration of Fox’s Movietone w

It was 1935. Only nineteen years old, Pat Jackson, who was assistant to the film’s co-director, Harry Watt, was waiting for the Night Mail with Watt and the cameraman Jonah Jones on the summit of Beattock. Over a thousand feet above sea level, the hill was the highest point on the West Coast Main Line. Pat – who would go on to direct the great wartime drama documentary Western Approaches – described the occasion in his memoirs: “It was cold, I remember, and we played ru