In celebration of the Academy Awards in Los Angeles tonight, we’ve taken a look at some notable movies that feature diamonds.

Here, in chronological order, is our list of ten great diamond movies (or at least movies having some connection with diamonds…):

1. Night After Night (1932) – celebrated for the brief debut appearance of Mae West, generously adorned with diamonds, who elicits an admiring comment from a hatcheck girl, “Goodness, what lovely diamonds!“, to which West replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie“.

2. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) — in which Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell both dazzle like diamonds, and Marilyn sings about how “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend“. Monroe’s character meets Sir Francis “Piggy” Beekman who owns a diamond mine, and the plot then involves a diamond tiara, prompting Monroe to exclaim, “I just LOVE finding new places to wear diamonds!” To promote the film, Monroe wore a celebrated 24ct canary yellow pear-shaped diamond of Indian extraction called the ‘Moon of Baroda’.

3. To Catch a Thief (1955) — Hitchcock’s romantic thriller featuring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant as a notorious jewel thief who has retired to the French Riviera. But who is the cat burgler that’s pinching the fabulous jewels? Hitchcock keeps us guessing…

4. The Pink Panther (1963) — The Peter Sellers original, of course, rather than anything to do with Steve Martin.  The Pink Panther of the title refers to a diamond featuring a flaw which forms the image of a leaping panther, seen if held up to light in a certain way. David Niven oozes suave sophistication as the legendary jewel thief, Sir Charles Litton.

5. Diamonds are Forever (1971) — The matchless Sean Connery plays Bond, on the trail of the wicked Blofeld who is stockpiling smuggled diamonds for use in a deadly laser weapon which can obliterate targets on Earth from space. Bond gets help from the excellently named Tiffany Case and together they save the day, but the diamonds end up in orbit…

6. A Fish Called Wanda (1988) — John Cleese plays lawyer Archie Leach whilst Michael Palin plays Ken Pile who couples a memorable stutter with an affection for animals. Jamie Lee Curtis (Wanda) and Kevin Kline (Otto) are crooks planning a diamond heist in London, but it all falls apart when the heist team start to double-cross each other. Archie and Wanda end up fleeing to South America with the diamonds.

7. Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers (1993) — A diamond movie? Well yes actually, because the malevolent penguin Feathers McGraw steals and alters Gromit’s Techno-Trousers (given to Gromit by Wallace so that Gromit can take himself for a ‘walk’) and uses them to break into the town museum to steal a fabulous diamond.

8. Titanic (1997) — This record-breaking blockbuster from James Cameron (yeah, but what’s he done recently?) won 11 Academy Awards. It featured a fictional blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean – perhaps a scriptwriter’s blend of the famous blue Hope diamond (45.52 carats) and a sapphire necklace owned by genuine Titanic survivor, Kate Florence Phillips. The Kate Winslet character is saved and finds the diamond in the pocket of the coat given to her by Leo’s character, but as a 100-year-old woman we see her drop the gem into the ocean.

9. Snatch (2000) — Guy Ritchie rearranged Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and came up with Snatch, with the priceless shotguns replaced by an 86 carat diamond. But the film is more often remembered for the plot involving Brad Pitt’s gypsy Irish boxer and Pitt’s pikey accent that appears to have been cultivated on another planet.

10. Blood Diamond (2006) — Leo again following his diamond exploits in Titanic. Not the greatest movie ever made, but it shines a light on the events in Sierra Leone in 1996-1999 when that country’s diamond resources became embroiled in a horrible civil war. Blood Diamond was actually shot in Mozambique, and DiCaprio plays an ex-Rhodesian/Zimbabwean mercenary (and Leo does the accent quite well) who helps Soloman Vendy – a fisherman – recover a large pink diamond that Vendy had previously found when he was conscripted to work in the country’s diamond mines. The film ends rather better for Soloman and his family than it does for Leo’s character.

Finally, here’s a bit of a treat – Shirley Bassey singing Diamonds are Forever, appropriately enough in Antwerp, Belgium – home of the diamond business.