starring Judy Garland Gene Kelly
With its 19th-century Caribbean island setting, sumptuous costumes and Cole Porter songs, including
'Be a clown' and 'Love of my life', The Pirate has long been acclaimed as one of Minnelli's most original works and as a great Hollywood musical.
Screenplay by ALBERT HACKETT and FRANCES GOODRICH
Based on a play by s. N. BEHRMAN Songs by COLE PORTER
Produced by ARTHUR FREED
Directed by VINCENTE MINNELLI
(The Band Wagon, tomorrow 4.0pm) 0 FILMS: page 27

Live from Amsterdam
This year's traditional concert from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam consists of Symphony No 5 by Gustav Mahler with Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra conductor Bernard Haitink. For viewers who prefer something really different on Christmas Day what could be more suitable than a Mahler symphony? This one contains the beautiful slow movement made famous for a wider public as the theme music for the Visconti film "Death in Venice".
Introduced by Tony Scotland Produced by Dutch television (NOS)
A simultaneous broadcast with Radio 3. Viewers with stereo Radio 3 may wish to turn off TV sound and position their speakers on either side of the screen, but a few feet away.
Stereo headphones provide a suitable alternative.

The classic animated feature film
Just 45 inches from Broadway, in a weedy patch of earth surrounded by the cement-and-steel world created by the menace they fear most - the human race - lives a community of little people called insects. The construction of a huge skyscraper threatens the bug community and Hoppity the grasshopper goes out into the world to seek a Shangri-La. Produced by MAX FLEISCHER Directed by DAVE FLEISCHER
(Gulliver's Travels tomorrow at 12.45)
0 FILMS: page 27

This film is being shown again as a tribute to
Billy Dainty who died last month aged 59.
'Dear Mum, I'm crying as I write this letter, so please excuse the tearstains ...' wrote 12-year-old Billy after he got his first taste of show business. He grew up to become the back legs of a dancing donkey. In tonight's programme he meets up again with his front legs, and gives an unlikely rendition of Hamlet. Film editor RAY HOUGH
Producer JANE OUVER (R)

HM The Queen speaks to the Commonwealth. With open subtitles and sign-language interpretation for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.
(Shown on BBC1 at 3.0pm)

starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau.

When TV cameraman Harry Hinkle is injured while filming a football match his wily brother-in-law sees a golden opportunity to sue for a million dollars in damages.
Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon were teamed for the first time in Wilder's disenchanted look at shyster lawyers in particular - and dishonesty in general.
Released in Britain as "Meet Whiplash Willie" the film brought Matthau his first big-screen success and an Oscar for his performance as the greedy Willie.
(Black and white)

("Fedora" at 11.10pm)
(Films: page 27)

A celebration of America's greatest living composer, made as a tribute on his 85th birthday.
Aaron Copland talks about his life from his New York home, covering his boyhood in Brooklyn, the exciting years of Paris in the 20s, and his return home to become a leading American composer. Colleagues and friends add their own views, and there are rare film extracts including Agnes de Mille in the ballet Rodeo and Martha Graham dancing Appalachian Spring. There are musical contributions from
Leonard Bernstein and Michael Tilson Thomas at the piano; and the composer conducting the American Symphony
Orchestra in excerpts from his opera The Tender Land. Written by VIVIAN PERLIS Produced by RUTH LEON
Directed by ALLAN MILLER

starring
Evelyne Bouix
Marcel Cerdan Jr Jean-Claude Brialy Edith Piaf and world middleweight boxing champion
Marcel Cerdan were the idols of France in the 1940s, and their passionate, destructive obsession with each other was an open secret.
Claude Lelouch 's musical film version of two parallel love stories is highlighted by songs recorded by Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour , who re-creates his role in Piafs life. Boxer Marcel Cerdan Jr plays his own father.
Produced, written and directed by CLAUDE LELOUCH
(A French film with English subtitles. FirstshowingonBritishtelevision.)
0 FILMS: page 27

by M.R. James
Five chilling tales for dark winter nights, told by Robert Powell
Tonight: The Mezzotint
Designer Austin Ruddy
Producer Angela Beeching Director David Bell

Starring William Holden, Marthe Keller, Hildegard Knef, Jose Ferrer, Stephen Collins, Michael York, Henry Fonda

The fabulous, enigmatic film star Fedora has committed suicide. At her lavish lying-in-state in Paris, Hollywood producer Barry Detweiler recalls how, two weeks before, he had travelled to Corfu in a desperate bid to lure the beautiful actress out of retirement. Although Fedora wants to reach out for the limelight again, she is held back by the sinister entourage with whom she lives in a fortified villa.

(Some Like it Hot, tomorrow 10.5pm)
Film: page 27
(Ceefax subtitles)