Film Reviews by Steve

Musical version of Anita Loos' durable 1925 novel, via the Broadway stage. It's updated from the jazz age to the 1950s. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell are two showgals from Little Rock, Arkansas. Monroe is a gold-digger, Russell a sort of she-wolf. They sail to Paris with the red blooded boys from the US olympics team, and an elderly gent (Charles Coburn) who owns a goldmine.

Predictable chaos ensues. Neither Monroe nor Russell were dancers and they kind of wiggle and sway through the scenes in synchronicity, singing half a dozen pretty good musical numbers, including the legendary showstopper, Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.

There's a very funny script by Charles Lederer, heavy with innuendo, and Howard Hawks is a legendary comedy director.  But the film shines because of the two stars. They make dazzling, glittery magic, particularly Monroe, playing a sort of distorted femininity.  Its look probably influenced the future of drag more than mainstream chic. 

 It's completely weightless, and its values are materialistic, mercenary and soulless. But it is hilarious, irreverent and unique. It made Monroe a major star as the good time blonde. What she does here, I'm not sure it's acting at all, or even sexy. But as far as the Hollywood comedy is concerned, she heralds the hedonistic, consumerist '50s.

This is a vehicle for Charles Laughton's ripe comic talents.  He is Ruggles, a valet won in a game of poker by a tycoon from the US west, (Charles Ruggles, channeling Walter Brennan) from an English aristocrat (Roland Young).  It's a fish-out-of-water comedy, but there is also a little propaganda, as the inhibited servant finds freedom and equality in the new world.

There is plenty of Ernst Lubitsch in the premise (and Young and Ruggles are among his regulars) but Leo McCarey paints with a broader brush and a heavier touch. He even has Laughton quite solemnly reciting the Gettysburg Address!

 The earlier scenes are the funniest, as the wife of Laughton's new employer (Mary Boland) tries to get Ruggles to gentrify her reluctant spouse, mocking the (supposed) vulgar pretensions of Americans abroad. Eventually, Ruggles finds dignity in the American west and escapes the control of those in who would exploit his compliance.  

Laughton and Young give most unusual performances, almost catatonic, so inhibited are they in their feudal relationship. They are both damaged by their dependence on each other and their fatalistic belief that this is inevitable. Laughton's acting is a matter of personal taste, but this is his best comedy.

 This is one of the Laurel and Hardy scenarios in which they have jobs, their own homes, and wives, which always feels a stretch because they are incapable of carrying out even the simplest of instructions. We never find out what their work is, only they want to go to their fraternity's yearly convention to make business connections!

Which of course, their wives will not allow. The duo inhabit a domestic world of bullying and fear. Ollie's wife (Mae Busch) is often wielding a big knife and Stan's other half (Dorothy Christie) invariably holding a huge rifle for killing ducks. They go anyway and inevitably get found out. Ollie is punished ruthlessly, with crockery.  

As ever, it's the characters of Stan and Ollie and the comic performances of the great stars that are the best parts of the film; their clowning, their optimism, their aspirations and their inevitable failures justified by the pair through the distorting lens of self delusion.    

There's a good script and Charlie Chase is memorable as the drunk, middle aged practical joker they get lumbered with at the convention. Busch spars well with Ollie, and Christy is really quite scary. Laurel and Hardy often suffered with inauspicious directors and meagre budgets, but this is among their finest.

Low budget film noir with Helen Walker as an unfaithful wife who schemes have her rich husband (Brian Donlevy) murdered during a car trip. When her lover/accomplice fails to complete the kill and is consumed in the flames of a crash with a petrol truck, everyone assumes it is Donlevy's burned corpse at the scene of the accident.

While the concussed, amnesiac husband stumbles into a small town in Idaho to work as a mechanic for the tomboyish Ella Raines, Walker is busted by a smart Irish cop (Charles Coburn) and goes on trial for a murder that never happened.

Impact demonstrates how robust are the conventions of film noir. It's a reshuffling of noir archetypes and situations, made by a minor director and crew with a B standard cast. But it's still very entertaining, with plenty of atmosphere and strong performances.

Donlevy is fine as a schmuck that gets played for a sap, and Raines lifts the second half as the down to earth good girl who contrasts with Walker's glamorous femme fatale. Arthur Lubin was a lifelong director of support features, but he could turn out a pacy thriller and he handles the narrative well.  Film noir rarely lets you down.

The best ever backstage musical offers a vicarious glimpse into life on Broadway in the '30s while also reflecting on contemporary social handicaps. It's one of the the great films about the depression because it approaches it obliquely and through the genre conventions of the musical, avoiding the sanctimony that is sometimes the Hollywood way with the big issues.  

There's a realistic chorus line story with characters which would become archetypes: the lecherous financier (Guy Kibbee); the hardboiled, stage director (Warner Baxter) under pressure and giving the company hell; the sassy, wisecracking, starving dancers led by Ginger Rogers and Una Merkel. Bebe Daniels is the hot tempered diva; Dick Powell the pretty, romantic juvenile.

And of course, as the ingenue who gets her chance when the star goes down lame, Ruby Keeler. In the immortal words of Warner Baxter: 'Sawyer, you're going out a youngster but you've got to come back a star!'. The punchy, sassy dialogue is a blast. OK, Keeler dances like a horse, she's overweight and her acting is little more than enthusiastic, but this doesn't really impair the exprerience.

It's Warner Bothers so there are unpretentious proletariat scenarios. But the last three numbers, are staged by legendary dance director Busby Berkley with prodigious panache.  Shuffle Off to Buffalo, Young and Healthy, and the showstopping 42nd Street. The title song is immortal, and Berkley's living tableau of the Great White Way channels a metropolitan mythology which remains rich and joyous.

Musical biopic- cleaned up from Lillian Roth's bestselling memoir- which is transformed from standard '50s nostalgia for the musical theatre of the depression, into a vehicle for Susan Hayward's huge, dynamic performance. It tells of Lillian's upbringing by her stage-door mother (Jo Van Fleet) and Broadway success before succumbing to alcoholism.

 There's a great big band sound from Alex North which adds a flavour of the vaudeville era, back when mother pushed her little girl to auditions, teaching her to fake her true feelings and desires. When stardom arrives, Roth fills her emotional emptiness with the booze that will drive her from pawnshop to fleapit to dives.

 Susan Hayward got to sing her own numbers, but the film doesn't really feel so much like a musical. It's all about Lillian's self destruction, whether courtesy of the bottle, or men, or business choices. Alcohol completes her, and then it destroys her.  

Daniel Mann creates a rich and credible ambience of backstage rootlessness and after show parties. He has a reputation as a good director of actors and credit to him for allowing Hayward to dominate to such fabulous effect. It's one of the great performances of the decade.

The 12 men of the jury are in recess during the murder trial of a Spanish American teenager charged with killing his father. Eleven think he is guilty. A unanimous vote would send him to the electric chair. Only Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) isn't convinced and stands in the way of his execution. He thinks they should at least talk about it a little.

 Gradually, we become aware that the decisions of the other eleven were based on their assumptions and preconceptions, or even just the dynamics within the jury room, and not on the facts of the case. Doubt passes around the table, from man to man, and the jurors must confront their prejudice, or their own desperate guilt.

 Fonda brings his candid integrity to the role of the quiet hero, who demonstrates the importance of serving your conscience, even if it should isolate you. The rest of the cast (mostly from tv) is expertly selected, and their ensemble work is wonderful. The script reveals their characters with precision and economy building to moments of intense dramatic conflict.

 12 Angry Men demonstrates the precariousness of justice and the personal nature of truth. It is about citizenship and the responsibility of the individual. It is also an incredibly inspiring and moving experience. An astonishing debut from Sidney Lumet who makes a great virtue of the location within a single room.

Howard Hawks' revision of Hecht and MacArthur's 1928 newspaper play The Front Page made star reporter Hildy Johnson a woman and the ex-wife of cynical editor Walter Burns, rather than just a colleague. What a fabulous inspiration, enhanced by a hilarious rewrite from Charles Lederer. The funniest lines are all his.

Cary Grant, as the scheming Burns, and Rosalind Russell as the ultimate fast talking dame, hot shot newshound Hildy, deliver all time great comedy performances. This is screwball heaven. She intends to leave the paper to marry slow-but-steady insurance man Ralph Bellamy. And yes, he's wonderful too.

 The first half hour is the most sublime comedy I've ever seen, as Grant starts to spin his web of deception around Bellamy, and of entrapment around Russell. The story gets steadily darker in tone and eventually critiques the death penalty, the depression, communism and political corruption!

The sparring between the stars is inspired and legendary. The rapid fire dialogue is boundless, dizzying and hilarious. It is weakened by taking Cary off screen for 30 minutes, which just robs it of perfection. The Front Page is a fine comedy (with more emphasis on the business of news reporting) but now this feels definitive. It's the ultimate Hawks screwball. 

This intelligent western is one of the best thrillers of the 1950s. It's mostly a two-hander, with the insidious killer (Glenn Ford) held at gunpoint in a rural town by a stubborn farmer (Van Heflin). While the captive waits for his ruthless gang to spring him before the train arrives to take him to the prison in Yuma, he whittles away at his emergency warder's insecurities...

One of the main attractions is the artistic film noir lighting, but Delmer Daves takes more from noir than its look. This is a psychological film about doubt and anxiety. It also has a remarkable atmosphere for a western, a poetic sense of loneliness most poignantly expressed when the wanted man dallies to seduce a forlorn bar worker, which allows him to be caught.

This melancholy is enhanced by the lovely acoustic guitar score. Of the support cast, Felicia Farr is heartbreaking as the unloved girl willingly seduced by the outlaw's welcome lies. Their sexual liaison is quite candid for '57. The visual imagery is haunting, particularly a very desolate, austere funeral. The script from Elmore Leonard's story is wise, and elegant.  

The brilliant performances of Ford and Heflin dominate, framed against the parched wilderness of the land. The drought that is killing the farmer's herd. Daves directs with finesse. He seems to be gazing into the desolate heart of every scene. This is an exciting thriller, but it's the undertow of sadness that resonates.

Tough psychological western set around the time when the civilising of the west was threatening to end of the age of the outlaw. After many years of peaceful living, an ex-gunfighter (Gary Cooper) by chance runs into his ruthless former gang. He gets sucked into a bank job, while he tries to devise a plan to to extricate himself and co-travelling chanteuse (Julie London).

When the bandits stage the heist they discover the bank is now in a ghost town. They leave a few of their own bodies behind. It is an apt location for their futile shoot out. They are the phantoms of the old west, the anachronistic spirits of men who have outlived their ascendency with the arrival of law and order.

Cooper is 20 years too old, even for a reformed gunfighter. He looks unwell. Consequently Lee J.Cobb is buried under a heap of cosmetics in order to play his uncle. Julie London is for long stretches mostly employed as decoration. But they all still deliver memorable performances.

This is a bleak, brooding western. The family of outlaws are all vicious grotesques. There's some humour early on, but this becomes a bitter, violent experience, with an authentic look. Perhaps it was the film's brutality which meant it didn't find an audience at the time, but it has subsequently become a critics' favourite.

This is a cynical, tough war film which deals with the complex dynamic of soldiers fighting within a defective hierarchy. The Lieutenant (Jack Palance) is a classic square jawed GI, but his bravery is undermined during every crisis by his incompetent, cowardly Captain (Eddie Albert). 

The Captain is kept in position by the Lieutenant-Colonel (Lee Marvin) who seeks to gain politically from his stooge's family after the war. But how many casualties will he allow before he intervenes? This is a dystopian vision of the US infantry in the Battle of the Bulge which portrays the officers as a privileged elite, who benefit from the same preferment they expect back home.

Its weakness is that Palance is too much of a hero and Albert too much of a gutless zero, which makes the film schematic and less realistic. The sets are basic, though Robert Aldrich finds striking imagery among the ruins. There's plenty of talk, but with good action too. The usual running commentary of pessimistic infantry wit is punchy and funny. And there is nerve-shredding suspense...

Palance leads a dozen lightly armed soldiers into a heavily fortified village held by hundreds of Germans, with tanks. His superior doesn't even man the radio.  The Lieutenant's isolation and abandonment is excruciating. This was ahead of its time. Its motifs of disillusionment and mercenary individualism would become more typical in the war films of the '60s.

Motor racing melodrama about a driver who wins on the track but can't control his life when he's not behind the wheel. The racer falls in love with a regular girl but his obsessive compulsion to succeed shunts her off into the arms of a competing driver. Which sounds a lot like a pulpy airport novel.

The couple is played by the real life married team of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and they are so convincing that it feels a little voyeuristic watching them together. When Newman catches a ruggedly handsome circuit star (Robert Wagner) in bed with Woodward it feels suddenly, shockingly transgressive!

This works as a period piece, with the cocktail hour jazz of Dave Grusin's soundtrack, the ostentatious focus-pulls, the racetrack heat-haze rising up through the Panavision, and even the sad, isolated characters. The intense, introverted loner is such an archetype it feels like an omission that Newman doesn't return home to a fridge containing just a carton of rancid milk, and a hungry cat.

This is from the golden age of the motor racing film. The director doesn't capture the excitement on the track too well, but the drama away from the circuit is interesting. Newman is as charismatic as ever. He and Woodward give quite complex performances as older, experienced people who seem destined to be alone.

A cold war film about an error in the entrenched missile systems of USA and the Soviet Union which triggers a nuclear exchange. A computer malfunction fails to step down a resolved warning on America's satellite surveillance, releasing warheads which no human is able to recall. Still a relevant scenario.

Critics feel that this bombed at the box office because Dr. Strangelove was released earlier the same year and satirised a plot that Fail-Safe played for real. But it may also be because Sidney Lumet's film is quite cerebral and loaded with theory. Every aspect of the ethics and efficiency of the nuclear stand-off is discussed. Walter Matthau's character even delivers a lecture!

Though the themes are complex, they are interesting and accessible. And once the missiles are in transit to Moscow this becomes nerve wracking as the President (Henry Fonda) ironically tries to help the Soviets shoot down American bombers. And then tragic as he negotiates a horrifying recompense for American nukes and the loss of five million lives.

There is no action but lots of tension. Fonda was born to play the US President, and pre-stardom Matthau is convincingly malevolent as a war games consultant who recommends exploiting the accident to start a conflict to end Soviet communism. It seeks to educate, but is also a suspenseful encounter with the ultimate catastrophe.

Anti-war film set in the '50-'53 conflict in Korea which presents an astonishingly unflattering view of the US military. Sadly the clarity of the message was compromised by a loss of nerve in post production and by its star/producer Gregory Peck's refusal to portray his character as the less than heroic figure that was written.

Peck plays an officer commanded to lead three platoons to reclaim a stronghold from the Chinese army. The terrain has no strategic value, and the war is coming to a close with the politicians negotiating a treaty, but both sides feel that the territory changing hands would influence the balance of the ceasefire.

We see the US Government and military brass trading American lives for diplomatic leverage. It presents these leaders as not only indifferent to casualties, but incompetent. The soldiers are poorly trained and unmotivated. No one can explain the mission. Strategy is outdated, communications don't work and logistics are appalling. Out of 132 men, around a dozen survive.

There is an impression of what might have been. Peck took the film off Lewis Milestone and re-edited it, and the protest was muted. But even so, this condemnation of the American army was at least a decade ahead of its time. It's portrayal of events that are so baffling they actually feel crazy, anticipates the more satirical war films of the '60s.

This saga of the ancient Roman world remains relevant, unlike many contemporary historical epics, because its themes are timeless and universal. Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) was a slave and gladiator who went to war with Rome to gain the freedom of his class. When he rouses his army before the battle he is obviously also speaking to the emerging US civil rights movement.

And Dalton Trumbo's brilliant script references the McCarthy witch-hunt of the '50s. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to co-operate with HUAC. The famous scene when the Roman general (Laurence Olivier) commands the survivors of the uprising to identify Spartacus and they all respond "I am Spartacus" must have gone straight to the heart of US audiences.

Douglas' performance is immense. He is matched by Olivier who evokes decadent cruelty without overacting or a flicker of camp. The whole cast is excellent. Peter Ustinov steals his scenes as an unctuous, mercenary slave merchant. Alex North's innovative score does a lot of the heavy lifting. The Roman world feels plausible, whether the intimate interiors or the huge hillside battle scene.

It's a grand spectacle which demonstrates that political miracles are possible. And it continues to inspire. This is the best film of its genre, not because of the epic scale but because of its powerful evocation of humanity and brotherhood. And Douglas' production broke the stranglehold of HUAC on American cinema, which may even be the film's greatest legacy.