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Screen history is pocked with African-American musicals showcasing stars who were rarely allowed to exhibit their talents in mainstream pictures. Indeed, on the rare occasions when the likes of Lena Horne, Bill Bojangles' Robinson or the Nicholas Brothers were accorded guest slots in prestigious studio pictures, their numbers were invariably cut from prints destined for the Deep South for fear of offending supremacist audiences.

Even though they were made with the best of intentions, films like King Vidor's Hallelujah (1929), William Keighley and Marc Connelly's The Green Pastures (1936), Andrew L.Stone's Stormy Weather and Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky (both 1943) tended to patronise black cast members and viewers alike with their misplaced attempts to foster tolerance through stereotype and platitude. And, in all honesty, Hollywood still hasn't really found a way of presenting African-American characters in so-called folksy situations without resorting to Uncle Tomisms.

Fortunately, however, John Sayles manages to stay the right side of the line in Honeydripper and, consequently, he has produced a thoroughly entertaining, if rather naïve drama that occasionally erupts into vibrant life.

Set in Harmony, Alabama in the 1950s, the story centres on Danny Glover, the indebted owner of a rundown roadhouse who agrees to let stranger Gary Clark Jr. perform with his homemade electric guitar in a bid to poach custom from a newly opened juke joint. But Sayles packs the action with subplots that subtly subvert the Jim Crow atmosphere generated by such characters as Glover's religious wife, Lisa Gay Hamilton (who is tempted by the charismatic new preacher), his winsome daughter, Yaya DaCosta (who turns out not to be as innocent as she appears), and redneck sheriff Stacy Keach, who corruptly supplies a local cotton tycoon with pseudo-slave labour from his cells.

With Dick Pope's photography and Toby Corbett's designs imparting a palpable sense of time and place, this may prove too slow-moving for some. But that molasses quality only makes the melodrama more intriguing and the rocking finale all the more exhilarating. Sayles may not be saying anything new here about the trials endured by black Americans. But, sometimes, it does no harm to restate the obvious to ensure that past mistakes are never repeated.

Claude Miller does much the same thing in Un Secret, a solid and often moving adaptation of a fact-based novel by Philippe Grimbert. Slowly revealing pertinent details as it traces the events that shaped a Jewish family over half a century, this tightly controlled picture owes as much to Véronique Lange's editing as Miller's intricate script. Opening in a monochrome Paris in 1985, the story switches away from Mathieu Amalric's search for his missing father to the 1950s, as sickly Valentin Vigourt invents an imaginary brother to help him cope with the pressure of living up to the expectations of athletic parents Patrick Bruel and Cécile de France. However, the boy learns from masseuse Julie Depardieu that their seemingly idyllic marriage belies wartime heartache and the action flits again to the 1930s, as Bruel becomes obsessed with his statuesque sister-in-law on the day he marries homebody Ludivine Sagnier.

Superbly played by a fine ensemble, this works as both a tense historical thriller and an illicit romantic melodrama, with the unassuming period details reinforcing the sense of shifting morality wrought by a despair induced by the Nazi Occupation of France and the indelible legacy of the Holocaust.

Jiri Menzel provides another masterclass in period film-making in I Served the King of England, which the Czech veteran adapted from a novel by his long-time collaborator, Bohumil Hrabal. The action opens in the 1950s, as Oldrich Kaiser is released from a Prague prison and relocated to an abandoned German village on the Czech border. As Kaiser begins to reminisce about the past while refurbishing the local pub, Menzel cuts to the 1930s, as our anti-hero (now played by Ivan Barnev) rises through the ranks of the hotel trade by flattering bosses and customers alike and by orally servicing an endless parade of society beauties. His fortunes change when he marries committed Nazi Julia Jenstsch and is able to purchase his own long-cherished premises with the proceeds of the stamp collections she has stolen from murdered Jews on the Russian front. But Barnev is soon arrested for his wealth and only then does he come to understand the important things in life.

Although packed with acerbic insights and moments of dark satire, this is essentially a paean to pleasure, with the sensual delights being enhanced by Jaromir Sofr's glowing photography, Milan Bycek's opulent interiors and Ales Brezina's jaunty piano score.

2:58pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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