The Director: One of the worlds most prolific and successful film makers and arguably the greatest film maker that the UK has ever produced (although not by my own reckoning). Alfred Hitchcock enjoyed a privileged status held by few directors (along with Steven Spielberg and possibly James Cameron) he is a household name.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 comedic spy thriller is a work of pure genius and proves that in his early years the London-born director really could make great movies.

Whilst others favour the tragedy of Hamlet, the comedy of Midsummer Nights Dream, or the manipulation of history in Richard III – I have always preferred the duality and complexity of King Lear above all other Shakespearean plays. It is the zenith of Shakespeare’s career for a number of reasons; James II vocally objected to plays being written about Kings, but he let Shakespeare do it, which in itself might say more than anything I could conjure in my prose.

Peter Brook's 1971 screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's famous tragedy. This relentlessly brutal film is an almost perfect merging of Shakespeare and Ingmar Bergman.

First written over four hundred years in the past, at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuary, Hamlet represents one of the most famous of William Shakespeares plays, only possibly superceded in that regard by Romeo and Juliet or Richard the III. It was popular in Shakespeare’s day and it remains popular today.

One of sixty six filmed versions of the Bard's greatest tragic play, this is the first sound version produced in 1948 and as such it has remained definitive, winning major awards for its director and star Laurence Olivier. It is arguably the best British film of the 1940's.

This week’s selection might seem like an unusual choice for Left Field Cinema, Get Carter is an iconic film, often considered a classic film, and in this episode I will not be tackling the subject from an unusual angle or with a specific analytical intention.

The first in the British masterpiece series, this week examining the Mike Hodges version of Get Carter.