Film Reviews by Steve

Maybe the most influential thriller ever made. The look of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s seminal masterpiece- particularly the distorted surfaces which obscure a mysterious threat- was ripped off for years, most extensively by Hammer studios. But more innovative was the big twist that subverts everything that went before.

Like in The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999). This has become the mother lode of the modern thriller. And obviously credit is due to the Boileau-Narcejac novel which invented the legendary climax, so expertly staged by Clouzot. Shot film noir style for maximum suspense.

In a decaying private school in provincial France, the wife (Véra Clouzot) and the lover (Simone Signoret) of the brutish principal (Paul Meurisse) seem to be plotting his murder. But the consequences continually confound the intention. The reveal only works once, but the whole experience is always compelling.

Typical of French films in this period, there’s a colourful support cast, led by Charles Vanel as the meddlesome detective. There is some subtext that the wife and lover are also having an affair. Its pleasures are slowly exposed, which will frustrate some. But it’s extraordinary; a cinematic landmark.

Wild western adventure set in the 19th century US gold rush but shot in the awe-inspiring Canadian Rockies. Maybe Otto Preminger wasn’t an obvious choice to direct all this boisterous, outdoorsy action and it hasn’t much of a reputation, but it’s an entertaining family film with a couple of points of interest.

It is among the early releases in Twentieth Century Fox’s widescreen CinemaScope process, plus Technicolor, which together make the big country scenery and intrepid stunts even more spectacular, as a homesteader and a showgirl chase a horse thief (her husband) downriver.

And there is the studio’s even bigger draw with Marilyn Monroe, who is magnetic while utterly incongruous in the austerity of the old west. Even during a gold rush. With Robert Mitchum as the hero, the hot combo boost the action with an overload of star charisma. Marilyn sings about half a dozen so-so ballads.

Rory Calhoun has little to do as the bad guy, though 13 year Tommy Rettig isn’t bad as Mitch’s adoring son- for a Hollywood kid. There are some life lessons learned, typical of a family adventure. Every few minutes there’s a cliffhanger. But what sticks is the magnificent Rocky mountains, and the eternal river.

Film noir makes a good calling card for a new director as they can be made on a low budget but also accommodate eye-catching artistic flourishes. And so it was for Stanley Kubrick on this short, self financed crime melodrama shot on the streets of New York.

And this is full of genre motifs like the visual expressionism, the flashbacks and the fall guy jeopardised by chance, and a beautiful woman. Jamie Smith plays an unsuccessful boxer who saves his neighbour (Irene Kane, a bit classy for a taxi dancer) from her older gangster lover (Frank Silvero).

 And there is a little gunplay at the climax, but this is mostly about the sad, metropolitan atmosphere and the ill fated citizens. The location shoot around the city may even be the main reason to see this now, as it evokes the period effectively, and the drama is more stylish than plausible.

And it feels even more artificial as the sound was dubbed on later. This isn’t classic noir. But it was directed, edited, photographed, produced and co-written by Kubrick and it got him backing the next year for The Killing. And it’s impressive for a cheap solo venture from a novice.

This lacklustre cold war propaganda is one of Sam Fuller’s few misfires, maybe because he came to the project late to help out studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck. The intention was to show how Twentieth Century Fox’s new widescreen CinemaScope process could be used to film interiors.

This is mostly set inside a submarine as a motley crew of international mercenaries is hired to take a Nobel prizewinner (and his sexy daughter) to an island controlled by China, rumoured to be the site of atomic experiments… And Fuller actually uses the interior space brilliantly.

Unfortunately Zanuck also imposed his latest other-woman on the director. And Bella Darvi lulls the film to sleep every time she speaks. Though she’s beautiful enough. I doubt Richard Widmark as the skipper looked back on this with pride either. The trivial intrigue does no one any favours.

The bulk of the running time is wasted on the crew chasing the hot female scientist. Some of the climactic action is cut out of another thriller. The anti-Red spin is dated. Aside from the still impressive technology this is a snooze. Though it’s interesting to see the A-bomb go off in ultra-widescreen Technicolor. 

Critics often associate Billy Wilder with a cynical outlook on human behaviour, and this is one of the times when this bitterness reveals a lack of taste. The fault is in the premise; that the imperious manipulation of a super-rich family towards their chauffeur’s young daughter is suitable material for a rom-com.

The outcome tries to position all this as a fairytale romance, with the commoner marrying a wealthy man. But it doesn’t compute. It may be that the Production Code wouldn’t stand for American capitalists being openly evaluated as rapacious sociopaths, and to be fair to Wilder, at a subtextual level he offers some push back.

The only positive is Audrey Hepburn, at her most winsome and adorable. And beautiful. Humphrey Bogart and William Holden are both far too old as the privileged bachelors speculating on her affections. But she is irresistible, and even a period icon in her Givenchy fashions.

Apparently the production was rancorous, which perhaps is felt. There is plenty of studio polish, but the supposition of class entitlement is too hard to endure. The driver accepts the deception of his daughter without a murmur. It’s not even funny. This is my pick as the great director’s worst film. 

Frivolous comedy-adventure which seems to imagine that Humphrey Bogart joined the gang from The Maltese Falcon and spent the last dozen years on the road working elaborate scams. Robert Morley plays the fat man and we even get Peter Lorre, now also carrying a few kilos. Obviously they all operate under new names...

Brigid O'Shaughnessy must still be inside! Or dead. Now the lies are provided by a blonde Jennifer Jones as a ditzy kook. Bogart is married to Gina Lollobrigida and the glamour is more exposed than in the early days of film noir. It's a very bright, sunny film, mostly set in a touristic Italy, which maybe would have suited Technicolor.

There are no ominous shadows; this is film blanc. And it's just great fun. Everyone is trying to get to Africa to claim uranium rights... John Huston co-writes (with Truman Capote) and directs the Anglo-Italian production supported by an amazing British crew and a wonderful cast playing a gallery of untrustworthy crooks.

The screwball comedy fizzes for an hour though goes a little flat once they leave the picturesque Amalfi Coast. It's an engaging escapade with a dry, English sense of humour. It's utterly inconsequential and the conspiracy feels like it was made up on the set. It's minor Huston but actually triggers a new genre, the comedy caper.

Serviceable if implausible murder mystery whose big selling point on release was its early use of CinemaScope which, allied to the resplendent Deluxe Color process, gives this a dazzling ’50s look, especially the occasional location footage shot around Manhattan. Though unfortunately it was mostly filmed in the studio…

It was based on a bestseller (by Patrick Quentin) but feels like a stage play. Van Heflin plays a Broadway impresario married to a big star of the theatre (Gene Tierney). When she’s out of town he spends some time with a screwball female writer (Peggy Ann Garner) who turns up pregnant and dead in his bedroom. Whodunit?

Heflin carries the action as he tries to clear his name. Ginger Rogers is top billed but misfires as the power couple’s bitchy neighbour, also an actor. There’s a lot of back stabbing and venomous dialogue and a faint impression of New York theatreland. The twists are not astonishing, but at least effective.

The moral? Don’t ask strange young women to dinner when your wife is away! Tierney- who looks unwell- brings back memories of ’40s noirs, like Laura. The ’50s technology is appealing, but maybe it would have been better if they hadn’t bothered. Viewed from the present day, this would work really well in b&w. 

The RKO bosses intended Val Lewton- the head of their B horror unit- to produce a picture based on a magazine article about voodoo. But he took as his premise the idea of making 'Jane Eyre in the Tropics’. A film poetically sensitive to human suffering. As mournful as a spiritual hymn.

An inexperienced nurse (Frances Dee), leaves the snow of Ottowa to work on the Caribbean island of San Sebastian to care for the insentient wife of a sugar plantation owner (Tom Conway). Before his wife's sickness, she was planning to leave with his half brother (James Ellison).

This is a dreamworld of superstition, where science and the occult are entwined. Jacques Tourneur creates so many eerie, unforgettable images: the night walk through the plantation; the torch flames on the sea as the islanders look for the wife’s body; the vision of the gaunt zombie-guardian of the cross-path.

It is relentlessly melancholy; a sad/beautiful vision of lonely people about to swallowed in the darkness. The depiction of the heirs of the shame and despair of slavery is unique in ‘40s Hollywood. This is the best of Lewton's low budget horrors and one of the all time great genre films.

After Mickey Rooney found stardom as an MGM child actor in the 1930s, he struggled for a second act. He was still cast as small town American teenager Andy Hardy into middle age. His most interesting venture is a pair of ‘50s noirs in which he played honest mechanics duped by glamorous femme fatales.

The other is Quicksand (1950), but this is better, a slender heist film in which the diminutive grease monkey is tempted to be the wheels on a bank job by a gangster’s sexy, sweet talking moll (Dianne Foster). She’s way out of his league, which is often emphasised by how much taller she is.

The preparation for the robbery is paramount, with the driver motivated more by loneliness than greed. The actual getaway is brief though effective. But nice guy Eddie has a huge scar from an old head injury which alerts us to the possibility that he might prove a little less predictable than he seems.

It’s a routine crime melodrama, but the best performance of Rooney’s career. It’s startling how the ex-juvenile star is demeaned in the dialogue, for being short and a sexual loser. Foster is fine too and looks so potent in her swimsuit that it’s understandable she got even Andy Hardy to go bad.

This ostentatiously imitates Double Indemnity at every twist, though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s wise to steal from the best. It even stars Fred MacMurray, though ten years have passed and he’s now too old for the role as the wage slave tempted by sex and greed.

And naturally Kim Novak, in her debut credit, is no match for Barbara Stanwyck as the femme fatale. Or as cold hearted. Still, she’s a sexy, blonde knockout as the moll of a murderer who has knocked over a bank. MacMurray is the cop on a stakeout at her swanky apartment.

So we get a touch of Hitchcock, with the cool blonde and the voyeurism. And there's some decent hardboiled dialogue. Which is plenty for a viable, if derivative thriller. But the leads are merely adequate and Richard Quine is a lesser director who doesn’t create much suspense.

Eventually, like Philip Carey as Fred’s surveillance buddy, it’s easy to get distracted by Dorothy Malone as the vivacious nurse who lives next door. She has charisma to burn. In ’54 this must have looked awfully old fashioned. But now, the reliable noir motifs will engage genre fans.

Most noir fans will know this for the hot combo of all time genre greats, Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame. And they are the best part of film; he is a tough cop sacked for leaning on a murder suspect with political connections, and she is a pitiful cantina chanteuse in love with the wrong guy.

Gene Barry is also interesting as the man who obsesses them both. Hayden because he is convinced he’s a sociopathic cop killer. And Gloria because she wants to marry the scumbag even though he treats her so bad. He’s an exceptionally potent villain; slippery, entitled, whiny….

In fact he seems like a model for Scorpio in Dirty Harry (1971). He gives the film most of its pull because we really want to see him taken down. The ex-detective goes vigilante and tracks the accused to a Mexican border town where he gets the shop soiled torch singer to switch sides.

This clearly draws on GG’s bad girl role in The Big Heat, a year earlier, but here she’s a shabby pushover who never got any breaks. The story is fine and the scuzzy, lowlife location gives the film atmosphere. It’s just a B-picture by a director who mostly did tv. But the three stars make it feel like something more. 

The creature is usually regarded as the last of the great Universal monsters. The gill man became an icon for horror fans but never quite passed into the mainstream like Dracula or the Frankenstein creation. Still, this was a significant studio production with the underwater photography and its initial release in 3D.

There's the same story as King Kong (1933), though it keeps the part where the captive beast is shipped to America for the sequel. A scientific expedition to the Amazon uncovers a mysterious fossil, and then its descendant, a living creature which is half human, and half fish. Of course, it’s a man in a rubber suit, but still effective.

We get the kind of boffins who are best when seen in their swimwear. Richard Carlson and Richard Denning have a fistfight over the ethics of their mission. Julie Adams cavorts extensively in a water ballet while the gill man (understandably) watches approvingly. There’s the standard beauty and the beast theme.

It tries to exist in the creation myth of the bible and also the science of natural selection, which doesn't really compute, but at least work has gone into making the hokum halfway conceivable. There’s even some minor ecological subtext. All the classic motifs of the creature feature are delivered intact; but the clichés are still fun.

Critically adored psychological action thriller about four desperate men in central America who drive nitro-glycerine over 300 miles of rocky mountain terrain in death traps for a US oil company. Sure the truckers are motivated by greed, but even more by reckless despair. This is a place people arrive when they have run out of choices.

The first hour is slow and creates a palpable impression of the hopelessness that brought them to this hot, squalid dead end, gorgeously photographed in noirish b&w. But once the fuse is lit and the drivers are in motion with their unstable, incendiary cargo, the tension is extraordinary.

There is an anti-capitalist subtext which meant it was edited for US release. The company’s explicit faith in social Darwinism is a clear link to fascism. The depiction of the corporate exploitation of indigenous people and the natural environment is ahead of its time.

But it is usually described as an existential thriller. The four (Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli) exist within an instant of their death. They each process fear in individual ways. There are epic and allegorical dimensions. Yet it’s mainly an incredibly suspenseful, nerve shredding experience.

Hollywood salute to the 9th Australian Division which resisted Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps at Tobruk for 231 days. Maybe it offends the Aussies by giving them a British leader (Richard Burton). And the Brits by overlooking their contribution entirely. It doesn't take much from the actual events, but it's a sincere tribute.

And Robert Wise creates a fairly realistic picture of the war in North Africa in 1941, which effectively blends in newsreel footage. There is an impression of the immense bravery and sacrifices of the veterans. Though it examines the burden of leadership in more detail than the miseries of the men burrowed into the sand.

James Mason reprises his role as Rommel from The Desert Fox (1951). Burton is fine as an inexperienced officer, who is demanding yet sensitive. But it's far more interesting to see the Australian support cast, including Chips Rafferty and Charles Tingwell as the boisterous but determined and loyal recruits.

We hear Waltzing Mathilda so many times the bagpipes of the relieving army are doubly welcome. Aside from the usual studio liberties, the main drawback is Robert Newton's horrible performance/role as a cowardly, drunken buffoon. Inevitably he redeems himself. It's not one of Wise's best genre pictures but it stands up against the British war films of the '50s.

Prototype juvenile delinquent/teenage rebellion picture which was imitated in low budget motorcycle gang melodramas for the next 20 years. Two rival mobs smash up a small sleepy town in rural California in an orgy of vandalism which the police can't control. It was produced by Stanley Kramer so a serious scrutiny of pack mentality might be expected.

But that's not what it is. Or at least what it looks like now. It's just a cult exploitation film which is mainly of interest for how astonishingly influential it became. This inspired a wave of mainstream counterculture; for example, the rivals of Marlon Brando's gang are called the Beetles (sic). And the clothes, and the cool motorcycles.

But the narrative is dated, and while Brando is iconic on the back of his Triumph Thunderbird, his method acting now looks of its time. The teenage anarchy is supposed to be obnoxious, but so is his surly pursuit of the local good girl (Mary Murphy) which feels creepy. Lee Marvin is more engaging as his knockabout, drunken adversary.

And both are far too old. The film might have been immediately obsolete because these kids are into jive and rock & roll came to town two years later. But it energised that generation, and its cultural impact was massive. It was banned in UK for 15 years. Now it looks like a historical artefact, but at the time it was a grassroots revolution.