Welcome to a showstopping season of four musicals presented by Neil Brand. A rip-roaring masterpiece, 42nd Street dances its way to The Hippodrome this summer. The season is supported by funds from the BFI FAN Film Exhibition Fund.

Sound cinema itself had only been around a few years when Warner Brothers produced this masterpiece, but it’s a miracle – a confident, rip-roaring thriller of a movie musical, made pre-Code (which means it got away with a lot more naughtiness than movies could a year or two later), it doesn’t stint on the backstage traumas of putting on a show, or the treatment of chorus girls for whom a job onstage was the only way out of the Great Depression.

And then there are the numbers!

We’re in the Money (deeply cynical for the time), Shuffle off to Buffalo, You’re Getting to be a Habit with Me, 42nd Street – all brought to surreal, dreamlike life by Busby Berkely in his first dance-directorial role. Add to that a gorgeous new restoration and vastly improved soundtrack and you have a rare and unmissable big-screen Musical experience!

‘Absolutely spectacular’ EMPIRE

‘42nd Street is the quintessential ‘30s backstage song-and-dance movie and one of the most influential and much-copied musicals ever’ CHICAGO TRIBUNE