Cinema Essentials

Is Paris Burning? is an all-star World War II epic, patterned after the success of the 1962 blockbuster The Longest Day .  The film tells the story of the liberation of Paris by Allied forces in August 1944. The commander of the German forces in the city, General von Choltitz (Gert Fröbe), has been charged by Hitler with defending Paris against the advancing A llied armies in the weeks after the invasion of Normandy. Von Choltitz is ordered to ruthlessly suppress the city and its population. And if the Germans are no longer able to hold off the Allied advance, then they must destroy Paris as they retreat. Meanwhile, the various resistance groups in Paris are growing restless. The Allies have landed in France, but it seems that they have every intention of bypassing the city. Despite its symbolic importance as the French capital, the Allies regard it as of limited strategic significance.  Some of the resistance groups want to start taking over the city themselves, street by street. Oth

So we've reached the end of our odyssey through the St. Trinian's films. And what have we learned?  Well, if a new teacher arrives at St. Trinian's School and she looks like Joyce Grenfell, then she's definitely a police spy. Also, never go on a foreign holiday or a "cultural tour" if it's organised by Cecil Parker - especially if Sid James is involved. Will they never learn? 

14 years after the last film in the series, The Great St. Trinian's Train Robbery in 1966, Frank Launder returned to write and direct one more film featuring the troublesome girls of St. Trinian's School,  The Wildcats of St. Trinian's in 1980. This time the St. Trinian's girls decide to form a union, so that they can go on strike. To increase their bargaining power, their partner in crime, former school boot boy Harry (Joe Melia), encourages them to infiltrate the top schools in the country, so that they can form a "closed shop" and bring all of the other schools out on strike as well. The St. Trinian's girls begin to infiltrate other schools by kidnapping pupils and replacing them with one of their own. But one girl they kidnap is a princess, the daughter of the ruler of an oil-rich Middle Eastern state, something that threatens a diplomatic incident. So the civil servants at the Department of Women's Education, led by Culpepper Brown (Thorle