This was The Thief (1952), a cold war spy film devised by the writer-director Russell Rouse in the style of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) as a sound film entirely without dialogue.
As if to turn the screw again and again, the film devises a scenario in which violence is meted out against a victim who is in some sense a consenting partner, and whose submissive love survives even after the full horror is disclosed.
Known for his his work on Radiohead's Lotus Flower video, British choreographer Wayne McGregor's latest dance production, "Atomos", was heavily influenced by an iconic '80s sci-fi film, devised around its dancers' biological rhythms, and developed with the help of a computer-based dancing creature known as "Becoming". .
Set deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside and surrounded by 16ft-high fences topped with razor wire, lies Hanslope Park, home of Her Majesty's Government Communications Centre, where teams of scientists – real-life versions of Q, the fictional boffin of the James Bond films – devise technical aids for the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6.
The Star Trek franchise (it later became a cartoon and series of films), devised by the brilliant Gene Roddenberry, reflected its creator's optimism, with different nationalities, races and species happily co-existing.
There is a London retrospective planned for June and July, but nothing comparable in New York; even the current MOMA season of Rex Harrison films, devised as a toast to his centenary, finds, among its many splendors, no room for "Blithe Spirit," which Harrison made with Lean in 1945.
This came first in television plays - notably in Abigail's Party, his cringe-making 1970s classic of suburban ghastliness - and then in the late 80s and 90s in feature films, devised like all his work through improvisation and typified by what fans see as vivid neo-Dickensian life, and detractors dismiss as mere caricature and miserablism.
Indeed, the current system of movie ratings to classify the age appropriateness of films devised by the Motion Picture Association of America was intended to allow parents to protect their children from content deemed inappropriate for young viewers.
The Louxor will offer courses on film, and devise schemes to entice local residents through its doors, especially the young.The intention behind a project which has cost a lot of money at a time when cash is short is as much social as artistic, according to Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris.
"You err on the side of being very sensitive," said Dennis Rice, a film marketing consultant who, when he was Disney's chief film marketer, devised the "Apocalypto" strategy but now counsels caution.
