Three lesser-known gems in Jamie Graham's top 65 British films

Jamie Graham has drawn up his list of the top 65 British films. When I saw that he had A Canterbury Tale at number 2, I feared for him. I have learnt to my cost that this is not a film you should slight in any way.

Then someone explained that the films are listed in chronological order and that, with a few gaps early on, there is one choice for each year from 1939 onwards

The usual way of reviewing such lists is to complain about the omissions. Why is there room for X but not Y? Why no It's Grim Up North when room has been found for Carry on Concorde?

But the way this list has been chosen, which also includes a decision to allow each director only one film, means that would take some research. So let me just flag up three a few films in Jamie's list that you may not be familiar with.

Sapphire (1959) an early treatment of racial tensions in London. Sapphire is a mixed-race girl who discovered  she could pass as white and is found murdered at the start of the film. The obvious suspect is her white boyfriend, but the worldly detective Nigel Patrick is not so sure. There is some lovely colour footage of a London still recovering from the war, and the treatment of the Caribbean community is sympathetic. Perhaps the mystery Patrick solves is no more difficult than those tackled by Inspector Lewis several times a day on ITV3, but it keeps you watching. And Sapphire does indeed obey the first law of that channel: any group of children seen playing in the woods at the start of a film will discover a body.

Guns at Batasi (1964) also catches Britain at a point of change: this time it's the end of the Empire. It deals with a fact-finding delegation to a newly independent African nation, whose members include Flora Robson as a Labour MP, the pop star of the day John Leyton and Mia Farrow. The star is Richard Attenborough, who has great fun playing a martinet of a regimental sergeant major. When the country's democratic regime is overthrown by the army, Attenborough organises the defence of his base against the rebels, only to receive orders from London to surrender. The head of the army, who is loyal to the democratic regime and so arrested when it is overthrown, is played by Earl Cameron, who was a doctor and Sapphire's brother in the film above.

Deep End (1970), like Blow-Up, gives us a Continental director's take on London in the days when it was swinging or at least still trying to. Here it is the Pole Jerzy Skolimowski and the results are unnerving. The Sixties child star John Moulder-Brown plays a hormonal young teenager who becomes obsessed with a radiant Jane Asher, who is in her twenties and out of his league. The situation begins comically, including an unforgettable cameo from Diana Dors, but ends in tragedy.

You can see Richard Attenborough as the RSM in Guns at Batasi in the video clip above. In fact,  whole of that film and of Sapphire are to be found on YouTube, but don't tell them I sent you.