Film Reviews by Steve

This bombed on release but was venerated by the French critics who went on to direct the Nouvelle Vague; though their claims for it now feel like hyperbole. Still, this fascinating relationship drama was clearly influential over the next decade, and Roberto Rossellini’s exploration of the interior lives of the main characters is impressive.

It was initially recorded in English and later dubbed into Italian. The audio is satisfactory in neither, which takes some getting used to. It reflects on the disintegrating marriage between a pragmatic, wealthy businessman (George Sanders) and his more doubtful, sensitive wife (Ingrid Bergman) as they travel through the Italian southwest.

The actors were asked to improvise. This can be awkward, though arguably it contributes to the tension between them. The husband dismisses his wife as sentimental, but she has a more poetic feeling for life. He is a prosaic, hollow man. So Bergman is able to create a deeper characterisation, whereas Sanders gets stuck with a monster.

It’s not the first or last film to show people fundamentally change under the influence of Italy; its beauty, history and the warmth of the sun. The locations are glorious and the direction is eloquent. Though- for me- the ending is botched. It’s uncertain so many will now agree this is the turning point in modern cinema. But it’s a key Rossellini picture.

Euphoric, life affirming adventure-romance* set in medieval Paris with John Barrymore as (real life) French poet and bon vivant, François Villon, who slums with beggars while fraternising with the king (Conrad Veidt) and romancing his daughter (Marceline Day). 

Presumably the doggerel quoted in the film is a bad translation… Barrymore is pretty much the whole show and the Great Profile does the film sideways to exploit his trademark feature! And with such wit and exuberance! Veidt is fine as the cosseted, puerile monarch, though Day makes little of the perfunctory love interest.

The extensive sets of 15th century Paris (by William Cameron Menzies) bring atmosphere. There is an engaging sense of period, though hardly informed by realism.  The silent era- and the ‘30s- is a golden age of romance and adventure. And this is a riot.

This kind of cinema can't be made anymore. No one would contemplate an adventure so happily romantic. Or allow its star to overact so magnificently! Naturally, this isn’t an escape into medieval Paris, but into the arcane and exotic conventions of ’20-30s Hollywood. And it’s a place of pure delight. 

*The print is appalling.

The chief weakness of Fritz Lang’s German silents is the superfluous material included in his wife/collaborator Thea von Harbou’s scripts, and the director’s inability to edit them. Not so much that this landmark science fiction picture is too long, but the scenes are poorly assembled and tiresome.

Over the years Lang’s final silent release got cut down to about 90m. But now it is back to its original 160m and its flaws have been restored. The first hour about a criminal gang of shareholders trying to hijack a mission to the moon is extremely dull.

When Lang/von Thurbou introduce a stowaway boy into the crew, they invent the Disney summer blockbuster... This is not a serious picture designed by German rocket scientists; which would be fascinating. Still, it recovers in the second half during the space flight, and on the surface of the moon.

The models and effects are rudimentary, though weren’t much improved upon until the sci-fi boom of the ‘50s. This is best as an action adventure. Willy Fritsch and Gerda Maurus are attractive, charismatic stars and Fritz Rasp an effective baddy. The bakelite futurism is interesting. And heck, this was inventing the clichés. But it’s a bit of a chore.

This is chiefly remembered for being the last of German director Paul Leni’s four horror influenced thrillers made at Universal before his death in 1929. It is conspicuously modelled on his success with The Cat and the Canary a year earlier. So it’s a mystery-comedy presented in the style of expressionist horror.

A Broadway production closes down after the leading man is murdered. Years later when the play re-opens, some of the original cast and crew insist the theatre is haunted. Laura La Plante returns from Cat and the Canary and has her name on the posters, but it’s an ensemble cast in which Margaret Livingston stands out as a flirty jazz babe.

Though really, Leni is the star and this is a showreel for the flair and gimmickry he accumulated by the end of the silents. It’s interesting to reflect on what might have been, had he lived. The mystery is serviceable, but the director fills the frame with energy and action even though this is set within a single location.

Which is the studio set for The Phantom of the Opera (1925). There was a version released with music, sound effects and brief dialogue but that has been lost. What remains isn’t as good as Cat and the Canary, but still a lot of fun for fans of silent cinema. And surely influenced Scooby Doo! 

Long-winded, low budget home intrusion thriller which gave Frank Sinatra an offbeat starring role as a contract killer who holds a family hostage while he exploits the strategic position of their residence to shoot the US president. His employers are not named, but the implication is the Communists.

Meanwhile the script leads them all around the bullet points of libertine pressure groups, mainly the right/duty to bear arms and the primacy of small town conservative values. Sinatra gives a sincere performance as sociopathic murderer, though Sterling Hayden seems to be uncommitted.

But then he had recently been subpoenaed by HUAC for being a Red! The main weakness of the support cast is the child actor (Kim Charney) who sounds like he is inhaling helium. The director (Lewis Allen) actually creates a fair amount of suspense given everyone knows how this is going to end.

The extensive dialogue never becomes tiresome, however improbable the situations. Still, this is propaganda for the pro-gun lobby and Senator McCarthy’s suppression of liberal US rights. Inevitably the response (and the rating…) of the viewer will be influenced by their politics. 

Exotic, esoteric ghost story set in the feudal middle ages which gave western audiences a taste for the Japanese occult. It’s inspired by a series of 18th century tales (by Ueda Akinari) but was adapted by Kenji Mizoguchi to reflect on the recent WWII.

And in particular, the brutal treatment of Japanese women by their own soldiers. During a civil war, two wives are abandoned by their reckless, vainglorious husbands. The men learn valuable wisdom from the intrusion of the spirits of the dead into their destinies.

Meanwhile, their women suffer abominably. There is an impression that existence in medieval Japan is so wretched and capricious that people exist in some indefinite space between life and death, realism and fantasy. And the line between is fragile.

Mizoguchi permeates this indeterminate margin with shadowy, hazy enchantment. This is a beautiful, ethereal parable, enhanced by a percussive score of dissonant atmospherics. Now this is called folk horror; and it was hugely influential in creating an image in the west of what Japanese cinema is. 

Notorious precode melodrama which borrows the plot from MGM's Red Headed Woman (1932) and refashions it in the hardboiled Warner Brothers style. Crucial to this is Barbara Stanwyck's corrosive performance as the girl from the slums who endeavours to screw her way from the gutter to the boardroom, all the way up a New York skyscraper.

Stanwyck came from absolute poverty and its easy to imagine she drew on experience. Some of her delivery is extraordinary, particularly her paint stripping put-down of her father. The best part of the film is the sexually abused girl escaping her background and getting a foot on the ladder of a big bank. 'Do you have experience?' asks the first of her seductions. "Plenty'.

One of those rungs is a pre-stardom John Wayne. As she reaches the summit, the film becomes more predictable and less interesting. There's a fascinating scene early on when an old man in her father's front room speakeasy tries to interest her in Nietzsche. Surely the studio was warning of the danger of fascism taking root among the poor of the depression?

Red Headed Woman played as a comedy, with Jean Harlow's glamour. This is more realistic. The excellent Theresa Harris gets one of the few roles for African Americans in the '30s which allows her some dignity. Of course, when the Production Code came in the following year, the transgressive stuff was edited out. Including Nietzsche.

Thrilling, high-speed silent comedy set on the streets of New York, with Harold Lloyd playing his usual impetuous go-getter. Really this is three sketches linked by location as the star visits Coney Island with his girl, the Yankee stadium with Babe Ruth, and saves the last horse drawn tram in Manhattan from a big business takeover.

Woody Allen says one day people will only watch his own films as record of how New York used to look. And there is something of that here with Ted Wilde’s complex shoot capturing the city just before the stock market crash. And as well as the acrobatics, there is social realism.

However it still excels as an action comedy, with the chases and exciting stunts. The logistics of staging most of this in Manhattan must have been a huge challenge. The gags are imaginative and Lloyd gives a classic performance in his final silent film.

It was later released with a soundtrack and four short dialogue scenes, which still exists. But that was a gimmick; this was conceived as a silent with Harold about to go into sound at about his peak. It was the end of an era for Hollywood, just as it is for the horse drawn trams of New York.  

Moderate Buster Keaton entry which offers decent entertainment, but without any glimpse of the extraordinary. Genre staples are reworked and there are no spectacular stunts. He’s certainly not the first skinny comedian to find himself in the boxing ring with a burly, rowdy thug…

Or the last. Buster plays another rich, oblivious milquetoast. He ventures into the great outdoors to escape his customary luxury, but takes along his super-efficient valet (Snitz Edwards) and all the comforts of home. When he falls for a local girl (Sally O’Neil) the fop has to prove his manliness to her backwoods family.

So he pretends to be Battling Butler (Francis McDonald) a real pugilist in training for a big fight with the Alabama Murderer! And the dilettante learns valuable life lessons, as well as how to fight back. O’Neil brings little to the thankless role of Buster’s love interest, though Mary O’Brien sparks as the actual boxer’s wife.

 In the absence of the expected acrobatics, there’s a moment to appreciate that Buster had a kind of androgynous appeal, and how durable is his impassive-yet-liberated screen image. The modern world is an unfathomable mystery, but he confronts it with an irrational courage. And that’s always worth seeing.

Diverting, though ultimately unexceptional silent comedy which lacks the inspiration we usually expect from Buster Keaton. Most obviously, it is two years after Harold Lloyd in The Freshman and this is a bit of a rip off. Only it’s not as good, and did much worse at the box office.

Which was a problem as Keaton made a huge loss the previous year on The General. He has lost his credit as director. And he's still cast as a boy, even though now 31. There is an impression of his star beginning to fade, especially as College arrived at the same time as sound in The Jazz Singer.

Buster plays an unpopular bookworm who graduates from high school and follows his girl (Anne Cornwall) to college*. They break up because she desires a more athletic guy, so the swot seeks to prove himself on the track while bullied by the arrogant jock (Harold Goodwin) who wants to date his ex.

Most of the action is Buster performing athletic events badly, which looks improvised and lacklustre. Put a group of sport shy kids on a playing field, and they will come up with this stuff. It recovers for a decent climax and there are a couple of big laughs. But this is a misfire. 

*There is a scene in blackface.

Stanley Kubrick's heist-noir imitates the genre conventions established in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle in 1950. The star of that film, Sterling Hayden also features, though as the leader of the caper, rather than a heavy.  

It’s a racetrack robbery worked by inside men, particularly a crooked bookie, expertly played by Elisha Cook jr. He's a sexual flop, pitilessly squeezed by his unfaithful, predatory wife (Marie Windsor). As it must, the caper falls apart disastrously on the big day.

There is a good hardboiled script, which employs the unusual device of telling the story from the multiple points of view of all the gang members, supplemented with the sort of strident third person voiceover familiar from documentary noirs like The Naked City.  

This low budget thriller was Kubrick's first significant release. It didn't sell too many tickets, but is made with considerable style and gave him the opportunity to direct Paths of Glory the following year. Now it is a genre classic. 

The last of a stunning sequence of silent classics made by the Fox studio at the dawn of the talkies. This rural melodrama was released in a Movietone version with some dialogue, though only the beautiful silent alternative remains.

Visiting Chicago to sell the family wheat harvest, a country boy (Charles Farrell) impulsively marries a flirtatious but world weary city girl (Mary Duncan). When he returns home with his bride he finds his father unimpressed with both his business acumen and choice of wife. In fact, the patriarch finds many reasons to be angry.

This is social realism, without the metaphysical themes of the Frank Borzage pictures also being released by Fox. But its naturalism is gloriously illuminated by the golden splendour of its imagery (photographed by Ernest Palmer). The artistic lighting is an enchantment.

This absolutely works as a romantic drama. The location shoot is richly atmospheric. Farrell and Duncan handle the comedy particularly well, though they lack the chemistry he shared with Janet Gaynor in the Borzage films. It's the visual appeal which makes this an exalting and haunting experience. 

Astaire & Rogers represent so much of the classic glamour of 1930s cinema. This is their usual screwball frou-frou with a shiftless gambler (Fred) who seeks to blag a fortune by marrying a rich looker (Betty Furness), while falling in love with a working girl (Ginger).

Some of the support cast from Top Hat return, including the super-unctuous Eric Blore and comedian Helen Broderick, again playing Ginger's older pal. Swing Time's weakness is that it lacks the wit of Top Hat, and Fred's character really isn't all that easy to like. But...  

...it boasts some astonishing musical standards from Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. And dance numbers which can be included among the stars' greatest hits. Fred sings the sensational romantic ballad, The Way You Look Tonight. His Bojangles tribute to Bill Robinson is the showstopper*. The legendary duo make magic together on Never Gonna Dance.  

And there's Pick Yourself Up, A Fine Romance and the title waltz! The art deco sets are wonderful too. Neither Astaire nor Rogers was a great actor or singer (in my view...) But 90 minutes in their company is a time machine back to a world of romance and sophistication.  

*warning, this is a blackface number. 

Brief, bullet paced B western full of offbeat narrative details: like the gunfighter's steel prosthetic right hand and the hero's duelling weapon of choice, the harpoon. And it's a vehicle for the director's audacious flourishes. The ultra-stark black and white photography allied to a percussive mariachi score, gives it a unique ambience.

Sterling Hayden plays a Swedish immigrant sailor who returns home to discover a rich landowner (Sebastian Cabot) has hired a gunman (Ned Young) to murder the farmers who have leased his territory, now he has discovered it is sitting on a sea of oil. The killer shot down the sailor's father. So it's a revenge western.

It was scripted by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo under a front, and this is ostentatiously about the failure of people to stand up to an oppressor. It is also a warning of the dangers of US capitalism. The terrified farmers wonder why one man should want everything. Hayden was another victim of McCarthy. He is terrific in this.

And it's an exciting work of genre fiction. There is phenomenal suspense for such archetypal situations. And the characters are vivid and moving. We really care about these persecuted farmers. This was Joe Lewis' last release before he went on to tv, but he was clearly still at his peak; and one of the great low budget directors.

Low budget psychological western raised way above average by the double act between nervy Anthony Perkins and cool Henry Fonda. There's a standard western plot; a bounty hunter/ex-lawman (Fonda) passes through town to claim on the body of killer. He stays around to help the inexperienced sheriff (Perkins) learn the facts of life in the old west.

The stranger lost his wife and child long ago, and the youngster has no family either. They form a temporary father-son relationship as the veteran teaches his protégé how to face down a contemptuous gunman splendidly played by ever loathsome bad guy specialist Neville Brand.

It's a liberal Hollywood picture and Brand channels the racism of ‘50s America which the sheriff must overcome to impose law and order. And it's a great looking western in fabulous widescreen b&w Vistavision. There's a plausible impression of period and a lovely romantic score from Elmer Bernstein.    

This is Anthony Mann at his peak, making fine entertainment out of genre conventions. But it's the simpatico pairing of Fonda and Perkins that makes the film so enjoyable. Though admittedly Perkins looks more like he belongs in High School Confidential than the old west.