Vivien Leigh in the context of "Hans Wild"

British cinema has significantly influenced the global film industry since the 19th century. The oldest known surviving film in the world, Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), was shot in England by French inventor Louis Le Prince. Early colour films were also pioneered in the UK. Film production reached an all-time high in 1936, but the "golden age" of British cinema is usually thought to have occurred in the 1940s, which saw the release of the most critically acclaimed works by filmmakers such as David Lean, Michael Powell, and Carol Reed.

Many British actors have accrued critical success and worldwide recognition, including Alec Guinness, Patrick Stewart, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Sean Connery, Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Craig, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Glynis Johns, Vivien Leigh, Ian Mckellen, Peter O'Toole, Gary Oldman, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Emma Thompson, Rachel Weisz, Kate Winslet and Keira Knightley. Some of the films with the largest ever box office profits have been made in the United Kingdom, including Harry Potter and James Bond, the fourth and fifth highest-grossing film franchises of all time.

The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs or BAFTA Awards, is an annual film award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international film contributions. The ceremony was first held at the flagship Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square in London, then the Royal Opera House from 2007 to 2016. The event was held at the Royal Albert Hall from 2017 to 2022, before moving to the Royal Festival Hall for 2023. The statue awarded to recipients depicts a theatrical mask. The BAFTA Awards are recognised internationally as the highest honour in British cinema, equivalent to the BAFTA TV Awards for television, Laurence Olivier Awards for theatre, and the BRIT Awards for music. The BAFTA Film Awards are considered equivalent to the Academy Awards.

The first BAFTA Awards ceremony was held in 1949, and the ceremony was first broadcast on the BBC in 1956 with Vivien Leigh as the host. The ceremony was initially held in April or May; since 2001, it typically takes place in February.

Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of fiction, music, film, theatre, and television that is heavily influenced by Gothic elements and set in the American South. Southern Gothic fiction highlights violence and cruelty as features of southern culture, often through characters whose place in the social order exposes them to such treatment. Common motifs include racism, gender and sexual difference, poverty and disability. Where Gothic literature depicted the intrusion of the barbaric past into the Enlightenment, Southern Gothic depicts the persistence of social trauma in the reconstructed south. The genre arose in reaction to romantic portrayals influenced by Lost Cause myths and the ideology of American exceptionalism.

In film criticism, classical Hollywood cinema is both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking that first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the later years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of United States cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood from about 1927, with the advent of sound film, until about 1967 and the arrival of New Hollywood productions such as Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate. During the intervening forty years, it was the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.

Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity. The period is also referred to as the studio era, which may also include films of the late silent era.

Blanche DuBois (married name Grey) is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Streetcar Named Desire. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Williams' play; A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando.

A Streetcar Named Desire is a 1951 American Southern Gothic drama film adapted from Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Directed by Elia Kazan, it stars Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. The film tells the story of a Mississippi Southern belle, Blanche DuBois (Leigh), who, after encountering a series of personal losses, seeks refuge with her sister (Hunter) and brother-in-law (Brando) in a dilapidated New Orleans apartment building. The original Broadway production and cast was converted to film, albeit with several changes and sanitizations related to censorship.

Tennessee Williams collaborated with Oscar Saul and Elia Kazan on the screenplay. Kazan, who directed the Broadway stage production, also directed the black-and-white film. Brando, Hunter, and Malden all reprised their original Broadway roles. Although Jessica Tandy originated the role of Blanche DuBois on Broadway, Vivien Leigh, who had appeared in the London theatre production, was cast in the film adaptation for her star power. The film brought Brando, previously virtually unknown, to prominence as a major Hollywood film star, and earned him the first of four consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Actor; Leigh won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Blanche. It received Oscar nominations in ten other categories (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and won Best Supporting Actor (Malden), Best Supporting Actress (Hunter), and Best Art Direction (Richard Day, George James Hopkins), making it the first film to win in three of the acting categories. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and Leigh won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 12th Venice International Film Festival.