It’s a crumb of playful gothic weirdness, with extracts from the radio series “The Shadow” read by Welles over the soundtrack. It isn’t the film Welles intended – RKO hacked the 141-minute original version down to just 88 minutes, imposing a happy ending that might have blunted Welles’s purpose, but could not smother the film’s glory. The studio took the pieces of Welles’s jigsaw and reassembled them in a different order, though the performances are so ferociously human that they have survived the interference of the editor’s scissors; in particular, Tim Holt as brattish George and Agnes Moorehead as his conniving Aunt Fanny, both driven by a ruthless self-interest which finally engulfs them. Anyone who questions the absence of the Star Wars trilogy from this list should consult their GP immediately. The trend for classic revivals continues in January, with the re-release of Douglas Sirk’s stormy melodrama Written on the Wind, the 209 minute director’s cut of Das Boot and Eisenstein’s explosive Battleship Potemkin. But rounding off 1997 is a new print of Orson Welles’s 1942 near masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons, about the pride and cruelty of a wealthy American family. This year has seen some of the finest films ever made returning to the cinema screen – The Battle of Algiers, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, along with glittering treasures like The Honeymoon Killers and Mamma Roma.

For the film critic for whom Charlie Sheen and Chris O’Donnell appear to be taking over the world, the appearance of a Spiral Staircase or a Plein Soleil on the release schedules provides a refreshing oasis. When men are involved, they are either troublesome, like the cad who deserts his pregnant girlfriend, or timid, like the wimp who is intimidated by Ginger. It’s interesting that a group who are largely marketed on their looks should make a film in which their sexuality is defined by how they present themselves, rather than by how men react to them.The characterisation is certainly crude, but there is some redeeming comic friction in the casting. Kevin Allen, who made Twin Town, turns up as a boorish Italian director; Richard E Grant, as the group’s manager, has a scene in which a screenwriter pitches him an idea for a film – a reversal of Grant’s own role in The Player; while Stephen Fry, last seen in the dock as Oscar Wilde, gets the film’s funniest scene as a judge passing sentence on the Spice Girls for having released a song “that is by no means as kicking as your last single”.The film is generally a very scrappy piece of work, with the washed-out colours of a TV special. The timing is often dismal, but you have to marvel at the film’s cold efficiency; there may be no sign of cinematic verve, but every frame pulses with sound business sense. To paraphrase the character played by Jools Holland, Spiceworld The Movie is perfect without actually being any good..

Even if you had made a studious effort to avoid every new film released in 1997, you still wouldn’t be able to deny that it’s been a rich year for cinema – old cinema that is, dusted off and smartened up. The new prints of old films which have surfaced this year have provided the chance to savour classic pictures without having to wade through a snowstorm of scratches, or those jumps that can make a Renoir look like a hip-hop video; they also provide a choice in the matter of when and where you see a film – no longer is a perfect date movie like His Girl Friday consigned to Saturday afternoon on BBC2. So it’s reassuring to find them putting their movie where their mouth is. Romance is consistently squeezed out in favour of exclusively female friendship.

Baby rejects a potential suitor on the grounds that her bed is already full up with cuddly toys, while Sporty just talks soccer when confronted with a half-naked Italian model. The joke doesn’t chime because Costello isn’t in the pop dumper. Surely one of the Goss Brothers would have been a better choice, and they would certainly have appreciated the work.The Spice Girls themselves share a flashback which suggests that they were school friends, a fabricated biographical detail, but one which makes blatant the group’s decision to rewrite their own history.Girl Power as promoted by the Spice Girls has always seemed too conveniently malleable – the group themselves award honorary Spice Girl status to any woman they come across. More confusing is Elvis Costello’s appearance as a barman, which is timed to coincide with a character’s comment about the fickle nature of fame.

Spiceworld The Movie is set in a tourist brochure London where the Spice Girls are preparing for their first live show, though the film’s realism is two-tiered and entirely conditional. Elton John and Bob Geldof play themselves, while Meat Loaf is cast as the group’s driver, a reference to his role in the 1980 film Roadie. Yet each time we see them they are actively cultivating their respective images – Baby sucking lollipops, Sporty pumping iron. Far from being too dim to know someone is manipulating them, they exaggerate their own personas for comic effect.