"It’s got romance, it’s got national pride, it’s got good vs. evil, it’s got history — again! It’s just wonderful. Unfortunately it was a sad ending; I wish it (wasn’t). It’s based on history and William Wallace did go down and it’s a tribute to a good life, a changing life, and how education can change your life and travel and things and then he comes back to right the wrongs. Plus I did love the French queen, Sophie Marceau."

"Powell and Pressburger’s ballet-oriented film of Offenbach’s opera of Hoffmann’s tales . . . as rich and strange a confection as the cinema ever produced, with astonishing work from Moira Shearer as the dancing automaton Olympia (whose absurd demise,with broken springs coiling out of her severed head, I always find shocking and sad) and Robert Helpmann as Hoffmann’s multifaced archenemy. With effects technique that could have been used by Méliès and gorgeous color art direction, costuming, and cinematography."