Film Reviews by Steve

This tough Warner Brothers road film takes the premise of the Bette Davis vehicle Bordertown and welds it onto the chassis of AI Bezzerides' pulp novel, The Long Haul. George Raft and a subdued Humphrey Bogart play wildcat truck drivers forever getting gypped by the  corrupt buyers.

Ann Sheridan contributes the sexy, snappy backchat that's compulsory for a waitress in a diner in a Hollywood film. The sassy hash-slinger wins Raft's attention away from Ida Lupino, the wife of the wealthy company boss who she's looking to turn into an insurance payout. The last third of the film is stolen wholesale by Lupino as the deadly femme fatale.

She is willing to destroy herself to take Raft down with her. Her disintegration in the witness box is a stunning tour de force. Alan Hale is excellent as the unlucky husband. It's similar to Jules Dassin's noir classic Thieves Highway (1949), also from a Bezzerides story. But it swerves around the politics.

This just a haulage melodrama, loaded with atmosphere and interesting social history. Raoul Walsh keeps the action always rolling forwards. The laconic dialogue is classic Warners. There's a weary, gloomy pessimism on board which gives this the haunting despair of film noir, though a few years short of the noir big bang.

One of the great Hollywood films. Credit is due to Dashiell Hammett's wonderful novel, faithfully adapted by debut director John Huston. The story and dialogue is all Hammett. He was a former Pinkerton Agent who knew what he was writing about. In Sam Spade, he gave us cinema's first authentic PI. And a breakthrough role for Humphrey Bogart.

The plot is actually quite theatrical, with the elaborate McGuffin of the Knight Templars' falcon, and the band of colourful crooks in pursuit. That the three male conspirers are obviously gay, is a remarkable detail, given the censorship of the period. It's a caper film, but with the darker shading of the emerging film noir style.

The stars are phenomenal, especially Bogart as the fast talking, morally ambiguous antihero. Mary Astor as the deliciously duplicitous femme fatale, is a noir legend. Elisha Cook and Peter Lorre are adorable as the gaudy henchmen. But trumped by Sidney Greenstreet as their huge, loquacious, dangerous boss.

It's an exciting thriller, with its cast of totally untrustworthy criminals, and a hero you are never sure of. The photography is artistic. The script is full of memorable, quotable dialogue, particularly in the long, thrilling final scene. This was a huge leap forward for the Hollywood crime film, and it seems to keep getting better.

The last of the '30s Warner Brothers gangster films looks back on the organised crime of the '20s with nostalgia. There's a declamatory newsreel style narration which takes us from the armistice to the repeal of prohibition. James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart play doughboys who turn to bootlegging to get rich during the depression. Priscilla Lane sings hits from the period.

Because this era is being filed away into history rather than the present threat it was in the early '30s, Raoul Walsh is allowed to be relatively frank about how the gangs made their money, and spent it. We see the speakeasies, the fashions, the machine guns and sedans. Real people from the period are featured, and infamous news stories are re-enacted.

Walsh keeps the story moving forwards and the stars are excellent. Cagney and Bogart repeat their good gangster/bad gangster dynamic from Angels With Dirty Faces. It feels like Bogie has now arrived as an actor and is just waiting for a better role than Warners' were willing to give him. But he still dies a quivering coward on the end of Jimmy's shooter.

The usual bases of Warners' social realist mob pictures are covered. There is a progressive ethic which condemns prohibition and supports Roosevelt's new deal. Aside from the tough guys, the nostalgia is quite sentimental. WWII ended the gangster film's first classic era, and it's great to see Cagney still at his peak, as the genre he dominates, fades to black.

Neorealist prison drama shot at Fulsom State Penitentiary, which used inmates as extras. One of the leads, Leo Gordon, had served five years in San Quentin for armed robbery! The title covers the plot pretty well but the action is a vehicle for social protest. While there is balance, this is a liberal film which argues for the kind of progressive changes usually resisted by the tax payer.

Producer Walter Wanger had just served time for shooting his wife's lover and wanted to make an exposé of his experiences. We witness the systemic thuggery which leads to the (costly) violence and vandalism which a more enlightened approach might avoid. The mentally ill, the sex offenders, the first timers and the lifers are all kettled under the cudgel of the demoralised staff.

There was a glut of films in the decade after WWII in response to news reports about prison riots. There is a lot of editorialising, but this is easily the most realistic. Its cast looks authentic even if at times the cons are too articulate. Neville Brand and Gordon are convincing as the leaders of the unrest, with contrasting methods.

Gordon is a psycho who just wants to waste the screws from the start. Brand,  who is usually cast as a thug, actually has a strategy! This was Don Siegel's breakthrough as a director. It is a work of procedural social realism, modelled on a real prison riot, and it still feels relevant.

Lengthy courtroom drama based on a real life criminal trial which scrutinises the condition of the US legal system. It was adapted from a novel by a defence attorney based on one of his cases. And if that sounds like homework, it really isn't. This is an absorbing film made with a light touch by Otto Preminger with a fine jazz score by Duke Ellington.

It is shot around coastal Michigan where the actual events took place. An unambitious small town lawyer (James Stewart), defends an army lieutenant (Ben Gazzara) who shot the man who raped his flirtatious wife (Lee Remick). The soldier is charged with murder and claims temporary insanity.

The story is fascinatingly ambiguous and it is impossible to be sure, even by the end, what really happened. Which is true for the jury who must reach a verdict. The audience wants the lawyer to win the case as we see through his eyes, and we like his sassy secretary (Eve Arden) and the alcoholic gumshoe seeking redemption (Arthur O'Connell). So we are partial.

The point is that everyone involved is influenced by expectation, personal interest and past experience. Justice is at the whim of the dark arts of the lawyers. It's 160m of exposition voiced by static actors mostly framed within a single interior, the courthouse. The superb cast really brings this to life. This is Preminger's masterpiece.

Violent action thriller set on the bayou of southeast Georgia. It's a confrontation between a progressive lawyer (Gregory Peck) and the vicious thug (Robert Mitchum) who was sent down by his evidence. The hoodlum strolls into town straight from prison to destroy the family of his nemesis. 

The noirs of the 40s/50s were liberal films, but this is an update of a conservative frontier western. The law won't help. Legislation protects the criminal. The women can't protect themselves. A killer can't be reasoned with. He isn't a psycho because of the failure of urban planning projects. He's just a human devil and a man must defend his family with the means available.

Which is ultimately a handgun. This is remembered for Mitchum's performance as the repulsive, inexorable head case. He spends the last part of the film bare chested. We believe completely in his brawny depravity. The men hired to beat him up scatter in horror. His menace is muscular, but also also malevolently psychological.

J.Lee Thompson was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, but this leans more on Mitchum's malign charisma than techniques of suspense. Though he does have a score by Bernard Herrmann! By '62, the dogs of censorship were being called off. The threat of rape and paedophilia are explicit. Today, thrillers about a father protecting the domestic bubble from omnipotent malice are everywhere.

Ultra-realistic and harrowing adaptation of Nigel Balchin's novel which explores the mental traumas of research and development staff during WWII. The boffins. David Farrar plays a bomb specialist who leads a group of scientists working in munitions. They are a small department which has to fight for resources and status.

It's an entirely masculine environment. And all the men live with extreme stress. Farrar lost a foot in an explosion, and is in a constant struggle with the whisky that brings him oblivion, while being called out to investigate the German trick bomb which has been killing his colleagues.

The men suppress their emotions and have no way of communicating their fears. Farrer needs to determine the mental state of one of his team, but is only able to hold a short discussion on detonators. There is sense that there is no way of knowing how broken they are because their customs are entirely built on not showing how they feel.

This must be Farrar's best performance. Kathleen Byron is his girlfriend, and unofficial therapist. Her emotional aura has an uncanny mystical strength. While the story is procedural and realistic, the visual style is expressionistic. This might have seemed overwrought, if Powell and Pressburger hadn't created such a convincing hell.

Made by Warner Brothers, the home of the prison film, this is the best women-in-prison picture ever made! The story is familiar: a naive and exploitable first offender (Eleanor Parker) arrives at the Big House as a 19 years old. She is consumed by fear, but among the crazy lifers, the mentally sick and the dumb victims, she transforms into a tough convict. A survivor.

It has a liberal perspective which asserts that punishment further harms these luckless dupes and a progressive approach would be more effective. But there is no money for therapists and teachers. It creates a powerful impression of the institution: the brutal hierarchy, the crooked officers, the insensitive parole board.

Eleanor Parker is phenomenal as the inexperienced girl who goes into prison pregnant and is forced to give up her baby by law. She breaks down and rebuilds herself in a new shell, like the more resilient cons. Hope Emerson is formidable as the butch screw who runs the wing. Jan Sterling excels as an uneducated sex worker.

The slang is dated, but this is a credible drama which was intelligently researched (by screenwriter Virginia Kellogg). Yes, there's a shower scene, but this is no exploitation flick! Though surely it invented some of the genre cliches. It's so powerful because of the pitiful and futile realities of the penal system, and Parker's heartbreaking performance.

This was Elizabeth Taylor's first dramatic role as a grown-up actor. She was 17 and while she doesn't have the gravity to match Montgomery Clift, their star power is a big part of the film's legend. Partly because they look so magnificent. Taylor's pristine beauty made her perfect casting as the rich dreamgirl that Monty's penniless outsider aspires to marry.

Clift is a poor relation who gets a job on the shop floor of his wealthy uncle's factory. The money that he aspires to is beyond his reach, so he dates a girl from the production line (Shelley Winters) and gets her pregnant... just as it appears a rich bombshell (Taylor) is in love with him. So, he can stand by his rainy day girl...

...Or he could get rid of her in a boating accident and marry the wealthy, lovely debutante... There's a lot of film noir in the story, but George Stevens' film seems to consciously steer away from the laws of noir. This is a prestigious studio production with A list stars and is framed as straight drama. Unfortunately this approach is sometimes ponderous.

It was made at an unfortunate time: censorship prohibited much of the impiety in Theodore Dreiser's great American novel, and McCarthyism kicked its critique of capitalism into touch. It won six Oscars, but no longer feels like a landmark. What remains is a signature performance from Clift and a star making role for Taylor, and they do make screen magic together.

 This is one of those few films which is more loved than merely liked or appreciated. Much of that affection is courtesy of Audrey Hepburn's charming, luminous performance in her Hollywood debut. She stars as a fashionable princess constantly pursued by the media and driven crazy by the confines of public life.

 For 24 hours she goes missing in Rome and has an adventure with a reporter (Gregory Peck), and they flirt. He intends selling his story. Eddie Albert is the paparazzo who secretly takes the pictures. Of course, by the end, the newshound is in love with her as much as the audience, and he spikes the scoop.

Blacklisted Dalton Trumbo co-wrote the chic script without credit (with John Dighton). While it deals in innuendo, this is playful and witty. It's the same story as It Happened One Night, but the location work in a touristic Rome adds so much magic to the gorgeous romance. It's a masquerade, with neither of the participants owning their true identity until the finish.

It grows sentimental in the last third, but by then we are utterly under its spell. This frosting of emotion actually makes the film better. It is a stylish fairytale which sells us a ravishing impression of Roman life; with its fashion, and the ancient streets full of vespas. Of la dolce vita staged against the backdrop of the city's staggering history.

Billy Wilder revives the screwball comedy, about 20 years after its golden age. As was typical of his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, the director returns to Europe for his story, a '30s French farce called Fanfare d'Amour, and transplants it to the US, to the Chicago of the jazz age and prohibition.

Two musician pals (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) witness a gangland hit and go on the run in drag as part of a female swing group, fronted by Marilyn Monroe.  Screwball was usually about boy meets girl. Here, the two men drive the narrative. What we now call a bromance...

But their relationship complicated by the predicament that they are in the guise two female jazz musicians and travelling with a party hard girl band. Like most screwball comedy, it is a masquerade; characters pretending to be something they are not. The exception is Monroe, who doesn't know that Curtis is a man, so candidly exposes her heart.

Marilyn was famously impossible on set, but she delivers a performance (and a couple of good vocals), not just dumb blonde schtick. Lemmon and Curtis are inspired. On the threshold of the '60s, Lemmon succeeds Cary Grant as the great comedy star of his era. This is a fabulous spectacle of comic imagination. 

Billy Wilder's bleakest comedy is a very modern tale of urban loneliness and corporate bullying, which features a desolate suicide attempt. There is wit, but this is usually pessimistic. There are plot devises with the gloomy fatalism of a Russian novel... The mood is of overwhelming sadness, with a sexual frankness unusual for its time.

Sometimes this only feels like comedy at all because of the extraordinary performances of Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, whose charm manages to sugar the bitter themes, and obscure their own characters' deep flaws. Though it looks gorgeous, with the gleaming widescreen b&w photography, and stunning set designs.

Lemmon plays the go-ahead corporate wannabe seeking to jump the executive ladder by permitting his bosses to use his apartment to have sex with their female employees without their wives knowing. He also aspires after the lift operator (MacLaine) who is sexually exploited by the CEO (a rather sinister Fred MacMurray).

 Even the relief from this tragic triangle is heartbreaking; an encounter which the inebriated company yes-man has on Christmas Eve with a lonely, ditzy barfly cruising for a one night stand, sensationally played by Hope Holiday. Ultimately, Lemmon learns how to be a mensch. But without the constant, barely audible note of comedy, this would be too painful to bear.

Howard Hawks' clever revision of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs features Gary Cooper as Professor Potts, the stuffy leader of seven elderly academics compiling an encyclopaedia, stuck on the letter S. He invites hepcat vocalist Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) into their bachelor study/living quarters to help with the entry on slang.

 Which suits Ms. O'Shea as she is trying to disappear so she doesn't have to testify against her gangster sugar daddy (Dana Andrews). And so the moll teaches them hep-talk and in turn they expose her to a few of the kinder human values. The film dwells on themes around the letter S, like sex, Saturn and Shakespeare

 The big problem is the lack of combustible chemistry between the stars. Cooper is inert and Stanwyck lacks spark. She doesn't have the sass or the glamour to give this life. But she does get to mime a fine swing number, played Gene Krupa and his orchestra. And the support cast is an A-Z of classic Hollywood character actors like Oscar Homolka, SZ Sakall and Henry Travers.

The Billy Wilder/Charles Brackett script gives us one great line. As she struggles with her zip, Sugarpuss wisecracks: 'You know, I had this happen one night in the middle of my act. I couldn't get a thing off. Was I embarrassed!' But this isn't their best work, and is a touch slow by Hawks' usual standards. It's worth seeing for the clever concept, the support cast, and what might have been.

My view is that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn are not great comic actors, though they did have a run of hits together in the '40s and '50s. She is too strident, and he is a touch menacing for lighter roles. But this is their best comedy and those traits actually help their performances this time.

It's not the funniest sitcom, and much of the humour is at the expense of its lower class support characters from the point of view of the Manhattan elite. But it is an interesting contemporary battle-of-the-sexes review of women's rights which mostly stands up today. There's more drama than screwball.

 A mother of three (Judy Holliday) has shot and injured her unfaithful husband.  Tracy is the public prosecutor in charge of the case, but his lawyer-wife (Hepburn) defends the accused, enraged by the gender hypocrisy of attitudes to adultery. And she won't back down, no matter how furious her husband gets.

There's a fun setting among the postwar Manhattan cocktail and dinner party set. They even have a foppish neighbour who drops in to play their piano and sing a Cole Porter number! But, George Cukor hasn't the Lubitsch touch, and the comedy fails to get off the page. Still, the sexual politics remain of interest.

With the fighting now over, Ernst Lubitsch revisits prewar England for this class satire, made in Hollywood. Charles Boyer is a Czech dissident wanted by the Nazis, who finds himself at a country house where everyone, above and below stairs knows their place. He is an unconventional, insouciant free spirit, which makes him incongruous in this sleepy backwater.

So he forms a bond with a vivacious lady's maid/plumbers daughter (Jennifer Jones) who also struggles to accept the straitjacket of tradition. England before WWII is satirised and made to look absurd, whereas the interlopers are lively and iconoclastic.  The servant often wields a hammer.

 This was made in 1946, when the old world order was being questioned, by men coming back from combat and the women who sustained the home front. The film implies that society and the feudal restrictions of class have to change. It damages and trivialises everyone, either side of the divide.

Boyer and Jones are marvellous, and there's the usual excellent support of Hollywood Brits in character roles, notably, Una O'Conner as a grotesque old busybody who communicates entirely by coughing. There's some really funny dialogue too. It's the last film Lubitsch completed. He signs off with a clever, funny classic.