Film choice

Great Expectations (1946, b/w) BBC TWO, 12.35PM ★★★★★

David Lean’s peerless version of Dickens’s novel is packed with memorable moments, from its opening scenes on the marshes, where Pip first meets the escaped convict Magwitch, to the enduring images of Miss Havisham’s house… not forgetting Pip’s boxing match with Herbert Pocket. John Mills is twice the age of the book’s Pip, but there’s a subtle ingenuousness in his performance.

Rebecca (1940, b/w) TALKING PICTURES TV, 9.00PM ★★★★★

One of Hitchcock’s most disconcerting and finest films was adapted from a Daphne du Maurier story, though he departed from the text in many ways. A bride (Joan Fontaine) is haunted by the memory of her husband’s (Laurence Olivier) dead first wife. The excellent cast (Judith Anderson as formidable housekeeper Mrs Danvers is a particular highlight) adds class to this eerily suspenseful treat.

Inglourious Basterds (2009) CHANNEL 5, 10.00PM ★★★★

It wasn’t quite the masterpiece we were told to expect, but Quentin Tarantino’s pastiche of war films and spaghetti westerns is still rollicking good fun and has all the ingredients of a classic Tarantino film. A celebration of vengeance, it’s an audacious take on the Second World War. Christoph Waltz deservedly won an Oscar for his incendiary turn as the “Jew Hunter”. Brad Pitt also stars.