Hobson's Choice

Charles Laughton delivers a bravura performance as a self-important Lancashire bootmaker who attempts to dictate his daughter's choice of husband, only to find that she marries his downtrodden and simple-minded employee and starts a rival business. Set in the 1890s, this working class comedy by Harold Brighouse was first staged in 1916 but is here given a fresh breath of cinematic life thanks to luminous cinematography by Jack Hildyard.