Film Reviews by Steve

Probably the best film adaptation of an Agatha Christie story. Her characteristic plot twists are implausible, but Billy Wilder's cute and acerbic comedy makes the film a delight. Tyrone Power gets top billing as the shifty, shiftless wide-boy who murders for money, but the film is dominated by Charles Laughton as his irascible barrister. 

There's a sort of screwball romance between Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, his carping, exasperated nurse. They certainly walk off arm in arm at the end. Marlene Dietrich gets the title role. She's 20 years too old, but she does allow a nice flashback to cabaret in the ruins of black market Berlin. It's her acting sleight of hand that gives the mystery its final reveal.

It's set in London, but was shot in the MGM studios. The sets feel realistic, particularly of the Old Bailey. There's a fabulous cast of British expats in support, with Una O'Connor scoring in her final screen appearance as the victim's cranky housekeeper. A sickly looking Tyrone Power is also in his last role. His flashy but squalid gigolo isn't his normal territory, but he excels.

This hasn't the psychological complexity of fifties film noir. It's a puzzle. Realism isn't a factor. Like most golden age murder mysteries, its credibility relies on the goodwill of the viewer. But, it delivers some delightful surprises. It's peak Wilder,  a Hollywood comedy-thriller of suspense and compelling entertainment.

This was made as a riposte to High Noon which Howard Hawks and John Wayne felt was anti-American, and they mocked the film for the notion that a sheriff would expect the support of his community; he should go out and shoot the bad guys alone. Though, in Rio Bravo, when the outlaws hit town, Duke has enough deputies and allies to fill a minibus.

It imitates the odd couple bromance of Gunfight at the OK Corral. Wayne is the steadfast, sharpshooting Sheriff. Dean Martin is the charismatic, drunken deputy. The films share many similar details, but Rio Bravo is more comic and cartoonish. Minor characters have names like Stumpy and Dude. Angie Dickinson wears feathers and so is called Feathers.

And by the finale, Walter Brennan is throwing sticks of dynamite around like it's Looney Tunes. After Hawks made The Big Sleep he decided that audiences don't care about  thestory, just the comedy and characters. Leigh Brackett wrote both films, and Rio Bravo is a series of archetypal western situations set into a loose narrative. The plot barely matters.

It's a long, episodic film and by the time Dino and Ricky Nelson present a couple of Mariachi ballads, it begins to feel more like a revue. We get a pair of comedy Mexicans and Dickinson reprises the Lauren Bacall persona of earlier Hawks films. But, the director and his star made this to support the human rights abuses of the McCarthy witch hunts. And that really sours the experience.

Crowd-pleasing, sentimental western which draws on the range wars between settlers and cowboys in 1890s Wyoming. This one takes the side of the farmers who are stampeded and burned out of their homes by the cattle barons whose demand that the plains remain open is backed up by intimidation, guns and a lot of muscle.

Van Heflin plays the most resolute of the farmers, a family man who can't operate a firearm but won't back down. He is supported by Shane (Alan Ladd), a mysterious, impassive drifter who might be a gunman seeking to bury his bloody past. When the cattle boss drafts in a cold eyed assassin- Jack Palance as a kind of proto-Terminator- maybe Shane will strap on his pistols one last time...

The main weakness is an astonishingly irritating performance by Brandon De Wilde as Heflin's impressionable 12 year old who hero-worships Shane. But, without him, this would be just another range war western. It's the way the stranger ingratiates his way into the the family, including the wife (a rather elderly Jean Arthur) that sets the film apart.

Maybe Ladd lacks stature, but his role remains one of the most potent in fifties cinema. It's Heflin who physically dominates the frame. But Shane is the quintessence of the western's most enduring archetype; the wandering gunfighter who can never escape his past, so must go on searching the valleys of the old west for an elusive peace. 

Intelligent western which relocates Joe Mankiewicz's 1949 noir House of Strangers to the old west, and improves it. Spencer Tracy plays an ageing pioneer who built up a cattle empire which will soon pass onto his four sons. The most loyal of these- Robert Wagner- is the child of his marriage to a Native American.

The other three belonged to his first (Irish) wife who died during the settlement. They are led by the more procedural Richard Widmark who wants to sell the land for oil. But they are motivated by prejudice too. The film alludes to the racism of the 'Indian' wars which is hardening into a legal apartheid.

It's a story of the coming of law to the frontier. There's an audacious scene in a courtroom when Tracy goes on trial for dispensing instant justice. A grandstanding east coast lawyer puts on the squeeze, not so much for pulling down the copper mine which is poisoning his rivers, but for all the improvised law of the old, wild west.

This is one of the great westerns, a fascinating film with a brilliant script which presents realistic characters and complex ideas. Spencer Tracy is absolutely credible as the bullheaded, imperious patriarch who is an anachronism in his own lifetime. It's been called King Lear reimagined as a western! Which is tenuous, but gives an impression of its ambition.

The second of a pair of period films made by 20th Century Fox with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Arthur Conan Doyle's immortal Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. These and the further 12 updated stories at Universal have widely established the duo as the definitive Holmes and Watson on the big screen.

This stands out among the 14 because it is such a handsome production. The plot stands little scrutiny, but the film was made with a lot of love. There is is an atmospheric London of foggy, gothic graveyards, beautiful Hansom cabs and gas lamps. The excellent sets are painted in deep shadows. There's a touch of the exotic too, which is classic Doyle.

The story leans on the psychological war between Holmes and Moriarty (George Zucco) who intends to steal a priceless emerald from the Tower of London. But more thrillingly, the professor intends to destroy Holmes, who is the Napoleon of Crime's only realistic adversary. Obviously Scotland Yard is just a storage facility for idiots.

Bruce's bumbling doctor is a matter of taste, but he does bring some effective humour and he looks the part. But Rathbone is perfect casting. He's a ringer for Sidney Paget's original drawings in The Strand Magazine. The stars and the dense ambience of Victorian London make this a strong candidate for the best feature film about the great detective.

Fascinating curiosity which pre-dates many of the techniques and motifs which would soon be applied to film noir. A reporter (John McGuire) gives evidence at a trial which may send an innocent man (Elisha Cook Jr.) to the chair for murder. Under this pressure, the newsman's psyche begins to unravel just as he spies a mysterious stranger (Peter Lorre) who may be the real killer.

This was a minor, low budget release and it's isn't likely that it inspired the pioneers of noir. But some of its technical team became key players in the genre, like cinematographer Nicolas Musuraca (Build My Gallows High) and art director Van Nest Polglase (Gilda). They are the main contributors here, giving the film an ostentatiously expressionistic look.

There are quirky details that predict noir themes. McGuire is eventually accused of both murders and his girlfriend (Margaret Tallichet) must investigate to clear his name, which is a classic noir premise. There is voice over narration, a dream sequence, and a sense of oppressive uncertainty with an innocent man confronted by a malign, inexorable fate.

It was clearly influenced by Franz Kafka and feels like the work of the Hollywood socialists of the period. Authority figures are shadowy, menacing figures. The individual is helpless to resist. McGuire and Tallichet lack star wattage, but Lorre brings a surge of energy towards the climax and is appropriate casting for a production that owes a debt to German Expressionism.

Stylish whodunit from the year zero of film noir. It differs from most other noir classics in being a golden age murder mystery set among the cultural elite rather than tough, dirty pulp fiction. There is a deep and dreamy aura of romantic fantasy. The cinematography (Joseph LaShelle) won the Oscar and the web of expressionist shadows fills the screen with atmosphere.

When Laura's body is found in her swanky apartment she leaves behind a clique of rich, unlikeable and droll suspects. Mostly men who are in love with her. The detective (Dana Andrews) falls under her spell too, through her woozy, mysterious portrait. And then she walks back into her penthouse leaving the NYPD to wonder who the corpse really belongs to.

The famous romantic score perfectly elevates this mood of narcotic glamour. In the title role, Gene Tierney's unconventional beauty is a huge bonus. But too much doesn't work. Not so much the crazy, overelaborate murder plot, which is standard for the genre but because Otto Preminger just can't seem to stop the suspense from sliding out of the frame.

Clifton Webb, as the excellently named Waldo Lydecker utters weary epigrams which are too banal for the supposed doyen of fashionable New York, and is too creepy for it to be obvious why Laura spends time with him. The co-suspects (Vincent Price and Judith Anderson) are transparent. It was a massive hit. There's an interesting premise and it looks amazing. But Preminger fluffs it. 

This is Alfred Hitchcock's first entirely successful film. It combines the thriller with screwball comedy to create a new genre. Robert Donat is the model for many of the director's wrong men. Madeleine Carroll is the prototype Hitchcock-blonde. The chemistry of their flirtatious crosstalk is dynamite.

The narrative is only loosely based on John Buchan's rather anaemic novel, and most of what was great about the film was added by the director and Charles Bennett's witty adaptation and script. Donat is presumed guilty by the press, public and police of a murder he didn't commit and is compelled to escape north to Scotland by train

He must clear his name with the impediment of being handcuffed to a beautiful, but unsympathetic woman. The episodic structure is bursting with classic scenes, and characters you really care about, far more than is typical with this genre, like Peggy Ashcroft as a crofter's wife, stuck in an isolated cottage with an abusive husband.

It's the kindness of strangers to the innocent man which makes the film gently moving. The support cast is excellent, but the stars are a sensation. The only weakness is a contrived MacGuffin, but it hardly matters. The Master's touch is sublime. This is my favourite Hitchcock film.

Woody Allen begins like a stand up, addressing the camera, reflecting on the end of an affair. But everything has changed. His bald patch is concealed under a comb-over. The wild hair from his early funny films has gone. He has been styled into a suit, though the trademark spectacles remain.

 Diane Keaton- in the title role- is made over into a preppy look that was copied across the world. A Woody Allen release is now is aimed at a mainstream audience, and wins the Oscar for Best Film. There are moments of drama which are no longer punctured by a joke about bodily functions. And the quality of the writing is at another level.

This is innovative and personal, but has moments of delicious romance. It is funnier than his early funny films, but Woody's persona now has a darker side. Keaton's comic performance is irrepressible, and stands comparison with anyone from any period. She's screwball, but absorbs genuine emotions too.

Nothing doesn't work. Every joke hits the mark with exquisite timing. Like the scene when Woody sneezes into a lot of dollars worth of cocaine. It has an all time great screenplay, which has been widely copied, but never improved on. This is one of the great films of American cinema. 

My favourite Woody Allen film. It's a mystery why this warm and very funny morality tale isn't more widely loved. A group of comedians in a delicatessen spend an evening reminiscing and telling stories about Danny Rose,  a theatrical manager. The central anecdote takes place around New York in about 1970.

Danny handles unpropitious acts- like his blind xylophone player or a skating penguin- who he promotes with extraordinary commitment and optimism. He signs an overweight Italian night club crooner who might be about to breakout. The story relates Danny's adventure escorting the singer's other woman, a noisy blonde, to a key show.

 Mia Farrow is fun as this intractably pragmatic former mafia moll. And Woody is immensely sympathetic as the devoted champion of lost causes. But the most stunning performance is by Nick Apollo Forte as the alcoholic ex-teen star looking for a second chance. He even wrote, and performs, a couple of perfect supper room ballads.

Gordon Willis' black and white New York is a dream. The screenplay is inspired. The brilliant last scene at the Thanksgiving dinner is a heartbreaker. It ends outside the very deli where this story will one day be told. One of the best films I've ever seen. And I swear, my hand to god, you will love stuttering ventriloquist Barney Dunn

This is film noir's year zero. If noir was created at the junction of US pulp fiction and German film aesthetics, it couldn't be more auspicious. It was adapted by Raymond Chandler, the crime novel's ultimate poet. Director Billy Wilder emerged from UFA in Berlin, and Miklós Rózsa, the composer of the dreamy orchestral score, went to Hollywood on the same wave.

It invents most of the genre motifs, and the closer a film adheres to its archetypes, the more noir it feels: the witty, pessimistic dialogue and narration; the angel-of-death femme fatale; the weak natured hero caught in the grip of an implacable destiny; the shadows and the neon soaked streets.

It is also a vehicle for Barbara Stanwyck's chilling performance as a psychopathic murderer who lies dormant in the Los Angeles suburbs until reanimated by Fred MacMurray, an insurance salesman looking to dupe the system from within. It is about corruption and greed hidden in the hearts of ordinary seeming people, shielded from the public gaze in the dusty interiors of American homes .

There is a sickness in their malign desires, which is horrifying. Much of this is taken from James M. Cain's source novel. The incredibly dark photography is classic noir. While the film is flawless in every respect, it's Chandler's voice that makes it sublime, whether the fabulous wisecracks, or explaining the nihilistic dreams of its doomed heroes. 

This is a propaganda film, a sort of 'why we fight' reflection on English culture made as the threat of invasion diminished after the Battle of Britain. But it isn't like other WWII morale boosters. There is no flag-waving in this subtle, literary tale. It creates an impression of identity- a profound and unconscious tradition- forged in the legends of history.

It starts as a falcon soars skywards at the time of Geoffrey Chaucer's pilgrims, which is edited into a Spitfire as we pass through 600 years in a single, amazing jump cut. Three modern travellers find themselves in Kent in search of blessings, and come within the influence of a local historian/magistrate (Eric Portman), who may himself travel in need of penance.

The acting of the trio is variable. Real life American soldier John Sweet, is plainly an amateur. Dennis Price is well cast. But Sheila Sim in her debut is extremely good as an ordinary girl surviving unusual times. The McGuffin of the glueman who pours the sticky stuff onto the hair of women out late at night is eccentric, but works in such a strange, illusory environment.

It is a wonderful work of magic realism made with rare intelligence which creates a profound impression of the Kent countryside, and reflects a local facility for wry understatement. But it is impossible to say what this spiritual, intuitive film means exactly, it has to be experienced. Powell and Pressburger communicate the unsayable.

This is often adopted as the last of the classic period of film noir because it makes such an auspicious landmark.  Orson Welles spins pulp fiction into gold yet again. He wrote the cynical, quotable script and dominates the picture as the huge, corrupt, infallible police chief, Hank Quinlan.

Charlton Heston plays a Mexican narcotics agent passing through a US/Mexico border town with his new wife (Janet Leigh) who witnesses the murder of a US construction boss and his showgirl date. Quinlan investigates through his usual unorthodox methods while the outsider researches the detective, amassing evidence of 30 years of unsafe convictions.

Welles relates the complicated narrative fairly well, but this is just a framework for his visual flair and effusive wit. The 3m20s uncut opening shot of a bomb being planted in a car at customs and then driven through the border town is legendary. The climax is similarly audacious.

There is an expressionist look with some some splendidly grotesque close-ups. Henry Mancini's wild, cool, percussive jazz score enhances the visual art. Maybe Heston isn't the best fit as a Mexican. But Welles is sensational as a freakish sort of monster. The screenplay is full of noir poetry, topped by Marlene Dietrich's nihilistic, immortal final couplet...

Voted by the BFI as the best ever UK film. Carol Reed directed it on amphetamines, shooting round the clock on the streets (and sewers) of Vienna. It's a nervy, pessimistic, infinitely melancholic film. There is humour, but even the rat-a-tat of irony and mustn't-grumble make do that is a given in all British films of the post-war era, is muted here.

The ambience of the divided, devastated post war Vienna is profound thanks to brilliant locations and Robert Krasker's off kilter expressionist photography. The casting of local actors in support roles also contributes. It takes about an hour for Orson Welles to appear as Harry Lime, and he gives the story a huge boost.

Joseph Cotten is a decent lead, but perhaps better with a British actor. Trevor Howard was born to snap out these terse exchanges. Best of all is Graham Greene's thrilling, elegiac script of the unscrupulous trafficker in the ruined city as it slips from the World War into the Cold War. Realistic, yet deeply poetical. The greatest original screenplay in cinema. 

This is a constant spool of brilliant scenes, from Carol Reed's opening clipped narrative overture, to the stunning coda at the cemetery. The hero not only doesn't get the girl (Alidi Valli), but she lives out her life in the memory of a psychopath... It is a  flawless work of suspense and fascinating moral complexity.

From the initial wave of film noir, this is an American cinema classic. Robert Mitchum runs a garage in rural California when his past catches up with him by chance. He used to be a laconic private detective who was hired by a tough racketeer (Kirk Douglas) to bring back the dangerous moll (Jane Greer) who turned a gun on the him and escaped down to Mexico with $40000.

The gumshoe catches up with her in a bar in Acapulco. But rather than turn her in, gets romantically entangled. Which ends in murder. Years later the gangster plans a complicated revenge... Mitchum and Greer are sensational together. They are noir legends. She, as Kathie Moffat, is the ultimate femme fatale.

It's a complex yet engaging narrative. But it's the visual imagery and the gorgeous noir photography (Nicholas Musuraca) that stays in the memory and creates a profound aura of fatalism. The lovers kiss among the fishing nets on a beach, both operating an alias. Mitchum sitting in a cantina under a big neon sign, thinking he is the trap, when really, it's her. 

The dark cynicism of the film allows in no light. Nothing can end well. The script is dark noir poetry. The usual genre pessimism is expressed so exquisitely, especially by Mitchum and Greer in the casino as he watches her lose at roulette:

 "That's not the way to win.  

Is there a way to win?

There's a way to lose more slowly..."