For each of more than 14,000 consecutively numbered chronological title entries, information listed includes major credits (director, producer, writer, original author), production company, distributor, actors and actresses, role names, running time, censors’ certificate, genre and a brief plot.

There existed no central register or other complete archive of films made in the UK, and Gifford sought to address this with the Catalogue.

In order to compile the first edition of the work, Gifford spent twenty years meticulously searching through back copies of trade newspapers and tracking down directors who had retired years before.

The Catalogue was selected by the British Library's Curator of Moving Image as his choice in a Sight & Sound magazine shortlist of the best ever film books: "The nearest we have to a British national filmography was created not by any institute or university but by one man.

"[2] Along with the work of other early film archivists and chroniclers, Gifford's work in relation to the Film Catalogue was praised by Leslie Halliwell in the 1976 introduction to the first edition of Halliwell's Film Guide: "I salute especially the work of Leonard Maltin, James Robert Parish, Denis Gifford, Douglas Eames and the unsung anonymous heroes who compiled the reviews of the BFI's Monthly Film Bulletin during the fifties and sixties.