Watch Order
0 / 15 watchedFifteen key Gainsborough melodramas and horrors in release order.
About Gainsborough
Gainsborough Pictures ruled the British box office in the mid 1940s with costume melodramas aimed at wartime women. The Man in Grey in 1943 set the template of wicked aristocrats and wronged heroines, played by Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. Fanny by Gaslight, Love Story, Madonna of the Seven Moons and The Wicked Lady followed, mixing gypsies, highwaymen and music halls.
This guide adds the studio horror that fed the same audience, from the Karloff body swap film The Man Who Changed His Mind to the comedy horror The Ghost Train and the ghost story A Place of One's Own. Later melodramas like Caravan, The Magic Bow and Jassy close the run. Watch in release order, since the stars and plots rhyme from film to film without shared continuity.
Good to know
Gainsborough released well over one hundred features, so this is a starter pick of fifteen rather than a full studio filmography. The melodrama cycle itself ran from 1943 to 1947, while the studio dated back to 1924. Rank shut the studio in 1950 and no Gainsborough films appeared after 1951, so the run is complete. The Wicked Lady from 1945 was the biggest hit of the whole run.
