Brian Desmond Hurst

Movies

The Playboy of the Western World
Screenplay
A quiet little village, and especially a pretty young woman, falls under the spell of a charming, somewhat roguish stranger who suddenly appears one day.
The Playboy of the Western World
Director
A quiet little village, and especially a pretty young woman, falls under the spell of a charming, somewhat roguish stranger who suddenly appears one day.
His and Hers
Director
Author-explorer Reggie Blake takes an unorthodox approach to his craft, apparently finding inspiration in the adventures suggested by his agent Charles Lunton; it matters little that most of his experiences are wildly embellished or even entirely fictitious...
Behind the Mask
Director
A newly qualified surgeon takes the blame for his drug addict colleague after the death their patient through neglect.
Dangerous Exile
Director
Dangerous Exile is a 1957 British historical drama film directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and starring Louis Jourdan, Belinda Lee, Anne Heywood and Richard O'Sullivan. It concerns the fate of Louis XVII, who died in 1795 as a boy, yet was popularly believed to have escaped from his French revolutionary captors.
The Black Tent
Director
During the British retreat through Libya, a British officer takes shelter with a group of Arab Bedouin. He marries the chief's daughter. Sometime later, his younger brother, who had believed him to be dead, is informed that he may be alive in Libya - prompting him to set out and search for him.
Simba
Director
A European family in East Africa finds itself caught up in an uprising by local black Africans against their white colonial masters. Based on the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya in the early 1950s.
Malta Story
Director
In 1942 Britain was clinging to the island of Malta since it was critical to keeping Allied supply lines open. The Axis also wanted it for their own supply lines. Plenty of realistic reenactments and archival combat footage as the British are beseiged and try to fight off the Luftwaffe. Against this background, a RAF reconnaissance photographer's romance with a local girl is endangered as he tries to plot enemy movements.
Scrooge
Producer
Ebenezer Scrooge malcontentedly shuffles through life as a cruel, miserly businessman; until he is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve who show him how his unhappy childhood and adult behavior has left him a selfish, lonely old man.
Scrooge
Director
Ebenezer Scrooge malcontentedly shuffles through life as a cruel, miserly businessman; until he is visited by three spirits on Christmas Eve who show him how his unhappy childhood and adult behavior has left him a selfish, lonely old man.
Tom Brown's Schooldays
Producer
When Tom Brown arrives at Rugby boarding school, he’s mercilessly tormented by the school’s evil bully Flashman. With the help of his friend East, plucky Brown devises a plan to get back at Flashman; in the meantime, he’s asked to look out for a timid new student, whose life is accidentally put in peril during a school race.
Trottie True
Director
Tottie True is a gay-90s British music-hall performer who has her sights set on moving from rags to riches, who loses her heart to the pure-and-true blue balloonist, Sid Skinner, but continues her upward search on improving her social status. She finally settles for Lord Landon Digby who has lots of assets and a very-stiff upper lip. She gets a lot of the latter and very little of the former, and decides Sid might have been a better choice.
The Mark of Cain
Director
An attractive young French girl instigates rivalry between two brothers when she becomes the bride of the younger one.
Hungry Hill
Director
Life becomes a tragedy for the wife of an Irish heir to a 19th-century family feud and fortune.
Theirs Is the Glory
Director
Re-enactment of World War 2 Battle of Arnhem using the survivors from the battle.
The Hundred Pound Window
Director
An accountant who has to take a second job working at a racetrack, soon becomes mixed up with a shady crowd.
A Letter from Ulster
Director
A Letter From Ulster (1943). Northern Ireland's greatest film director Brian Desmond Hurst directed the film and his assistant director was fellow Ulsterman William (Bill) MacQuitty who went on to make the ultimate Titanic film A Night to Remember. The script was written by Terence Young who went on to direct the early Bond films. All the components were in place for a fine film and this short (32 minute) by the Crown Film Unit remains an important part of Ulster and America's cultural history. As the opening credit says "This film is dedicated to those members of the US Forces Who are our guests in these islands". The film shows American soldiers landing in Northern Ireland and settling into their new camps. The arrival of mail from 'back home' helps camp moral, however, two brothers receive none. Their commander realises that the two brothers have not sent any letters back to their parents and gives the order to write a letter home- A Letter From Ulster.
Alibi
Script
In 1930s France a bar hostess helps a man prove himself innocent of murder.
Alibi
Director
In 1930s France a bar hostess helps a man prove himself innocent of murder.
Dangerous Moonlight
Director
Stefan Radetzky, a Polish pilot and famous concert pianist, is hospitalised in England from injuries sustained while in combat, and having lost his memory. As Radetzky plays the piano in a trance-like state, the story moves back in time to war-torn Warsaw. During an air-raid, Radetzky meets American journalist Carole, and there is a mutual attraction. Following the fall of Poland, Radetzky and Irish pilot, Mike, escape to Rumania and then on to America. Radetzky continues his musical career in America and meets up again with Carole.
A Call for Arms!
Story
"What a life for a couple of nudes!" Two dancers find a new way of doing their bit for the boys in this frothy wartime propaganda short. Lord Kitchener's famous finger persuades Joan and Ireen, dancers in a 'Non Stop Nudes' revue (not that we see anything that warrants that title), to make a radical career change. Swapping their skimpy costumes for dowdy munitions factory overalls, they join a growing domestic army of women keeping the machines rolling. Belfast-born Brian Desmond Hurst was essentially a feature film director, whose best-remembered work is the Dickens adaptation Scrooge, but whose credits also included the war films Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and The Malta Story (1953). The Call for Arms was one of three propaganda shorts he made between 1940 and 1941, the most memorable being Miss Grant Goes to the Door, in which a pair of village spinsters outwit a Nazi paratrooper.
A Call for Arms!
Director
"What a life for a couple of nudes!" Two dancers find a new way of doing their bit for the boys in this frothy wartime propaganda short. Lord Kitchener's famous finger persuades Joan and Ireen, dancers in a 'Non Stop Nudes' revue (not that we see anything that warrants that title), to make a radical career change. Swapping their skimpy costumes for dowdy munitions factory overalls, they join a growing domestic army of women keeping the machines rolling. Belfast-born Brian Desmond Hurst was essentially a feature film director, whose best-remembered work is the Dickens adaptation Scrooge, but whose credits also included the war films Dangerous Moonlight (1941) and The Malta Story (1953). The Call for Arms was one of three propaganda shorts he made between 1940 and 1941, the most memorable being Miss Grant Goes to the Door, in which a pair of village spinsters outwit a Nazi paratrooper.
Miss Grant Goes to the Door
Producer
Two sisters encounter a German spy. A public service film showing how to thwart the enemy.
Miss Grant Goes to the Door
Director
Two sisters encounter a German spy. A public service film showing how to thwart the enemy.
The Lion Has Wings
Director
This early, influential propaganda film blends documentary and studio footage to show the valiant efforts of the Royal Air Force to defend the British people against the Nazis.
On the Night of the Fire
Writer
A barber gives in to temptation and steals some money, leading to blackmail and murder.
On the Night of the Fire
Director
A barber gives in to temptation and steals some money, leading to blackmail and murder.
Prison Without Bars
Director
Suzanne, Renee, Nina and Marta all hate being in prison, being slapped and treated badly, and so all the girls are trying to escape. Madame Appel just causes chaos all the time, with her harsh manners. When Yvonne with her free-thinking ways is put in charge of the school for misbehaving girls, and asks them to tell her their complaints, they don't believe her at first. Yvonne is in love and about to marry the establishment's doctor, and it does not help that one teenage girl falls for him - and is corresponded. It's a hard life for the girls, and for the new female warden.
Glamorous Night
Director
Based on Ivor Novello's hit stage play: an opera singer and her gypsy friends try to rescue their king from the clutches of a would-be dictator.
Sensation
Director
Pat Heaton may be the best crime reporter in town but his fiancée Claire, despairing of the more tawdry aspects of his profession, makes him promise to give the job up. When a pretty waitress is found murdered, however, Pat falls in line with the rest of the 'Murder Gang' the pack of reporters who gather to glean stories by fair means or foul!
The Tenth Man
Director
George Winter, a self-made businessman and MP, lets nothing get in the way of his climb to the top. Certain in his belief in the corruptible and foolish nature of others, whenever Winter meets a competitor who can't be bought, he destroys the man through methods both legal and underhanded. Then, he meets his 'tenth man': a victim who refuses to be silenced by threat or bribery, with the power to bring Winter's house of cards crashing down around him.
Ourselves Alone
Director
One of the most significant films ever made about the Troubles in Ireland, a powerful story of love and conflicting loyalties set against the battle for Ireland's independence.
Riders to the Sea
Writer
In this story of Western Ireland, the most famous work of Irelands greatest dramatist JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE is brought to the screen by Ulsters greatest film director BRIAN DESMOND HURST.
Riders to the Sea
Director
In this story of Western Ireland, the most famous work of Irelands greatest dramatist JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE is brought to the screen by Ulsters greatest film director BRIAN DESMOND HURST.
The Tell-Tale Heart
Writer
A young man is driven mad by his obsession with the repulsive diseased eye of the old man who cares for him.
The Tell-Tale Heart
Director
A young man is driven mad by his obsession with the repulsive diseased eye of the old man who cares for him.
Hangman's House
Horse Race Spectator
Forced by her mean-spirited father, Lord Chief Justice James O'Brien, to marry a man she doesn't love, Connaught O'Brien gives up hope of ever with her true love, Dermot McDermot. After her father dies and a hunted rebel leader returns to town, however, Connaught finds a renewed hope that the tides of oppression will shift and she might again find happiness. This silent romantic drama, set in Ireland, is the first film in which a then-unknown John Wayne is clearly visible.