Two Thousand Women

Typically lively wartime offering from Launder and Gilliat, made under the Gainsborough banner and set in a women's prison in Nazi-occupied France. The prisoners attempts to conceal three daring RAF chaps from the authorities. On the one hand, it stands as a progenitor of Launder and Gilliat's later, equally zestful St Trinian's movies, coming complete with lashings of knockabout humour and a chaotic fight which would have done the Fifth Form proud. On the other, however, in its own Tenko-like way, it's also surprisingly touching.