Film Reviews by Steve

This stands apart from the rest of Douglas Sirk's melodramas for Universal in the fifties most obviously as it is in black and white, and because it focuses on a male protagonist. But it satirises the materialism of the American suburban middle class just as succinctly.

Fred MacMurray plays an affluent husband and father of a certain age who begins to feel stifled. He has become the financial support system to three awful kids and an indifferent wife (Joan Bennett). Temptation arrives with a visit from an old colleague (Barbara Stanwyck) who has been carrying a torch for him over many years.

This is Fred MacMurray's best performance. He's not cast against type as he was successfully by Billy Wilder, but he feels like the inevitable culmination of the sitcom dads he played over many years, but here, grotesquely trapped. He is identified, quite hideously, with the sci-fi robot his toy business is rolling out to the American market.

 This is a slender, compact film which focuses minutely on the condition of its distressed hero. Sirk tells us that the conventions of American society mass produce depressed, maladjusted people. Watching MacMurray being pinned by degrees to a profound emotional pain, purely through getting everything that he ever wanted, is actually quite distressing.

This legendary drama about the postwar controversy of teenage delinquency is inevitably dated but still works better than any other fifties film on that subject. And it's a memorial to the iconic star James Dean who was dead by the time of the release.

He plays a new kid in town with a history of petty juvenile crime, who attracts interest from a disturbed gang of young offenders. Natalie Wood is a valley girl who gets a thrill from hanging out with the slum kids. With a damaged, gay outsider (Sal Mineo) the trio make up an improvised family which none of them can find at home. Jimmy now feels a touch old, but Natalie (17) and Sal (16) look endearingly authentic.

It is probably naive on the theme of antisocial youth. But the voice of the first teenagers trying to find their own ethics to make sense of their nascent freedom is quite powerful. It's a fascinating period piece which Nicholas Ray shoots in the genre motifs of science fiction; the small town which must get through a long night of crisis in a threatening universe- as evoked by the climax in the planetarium.

The Cinemascope and the stunning colour are a sensual joy. The fantastic clothes create much of the iconic imagery.  But it's the performance of James Dean that dominates and we still believe in his troubled alienated antihero trying to understand the rules of his confusing and changing times. Which are tearing him apart.

Gorgeous adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning play benefits enormously from its beautiful stars Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. It was substantially changed from Broadway because of problems with censorship, and also to give the film a more upbeat resolution.

Big Daddy (Burl Ives) is dying and the awful family of his elder son goes head to head with Maggie (the Cat) to inherit the estate, just as her husband, the younger son (Newman), takes to the bottle. Taylor as Maggie in her beautiful Grecian dress looks like another possession, something brought back from a trip abroad. We encounter no love in this opulent mansion, only materialism and greed.

There's a vacuum in the heart of film left by the removal of any references to the alcoholic son's homosexuality, which nothing else fills. What remains is poetic melodrama with many great lines and reflections of the themes of mendacity and endurance. Music is used to great effect to evoke past lives. And sex is approached quite directly for the period.

Like most fifties screen drama, it looks stunning. And not just its stars. The use of colour is sensual and the sets are eloquent. Taylor and Newman are exceptional as those classic Williams archetypes, the frightened, wounded souls adrift in an ocean of corruption, surrounded by monsters.

This is set in the midwest but employs all of the disciples of '50s southern melodramas. There's the male drifter who is back in town; the beautiful but frozen female intellectual; the floozy; the weak and shifty brother who stays behind to pocket the filthy lucre; and the last relics of old money. And there is the awesome Cinemascope and the beautiful colour processes of the period.

Frank Sinatra plays an alcoholic soldier who returns to his old hometown after the war, with Shirley MacLaine's dim bulb nightclub 'hostess' in tow. He uncovers near limitless hypocrisy, but below the surface. Appearances are everything. He develops a close relationship with outwardly charismatic, but inwardly repulsive poker shark (Dean Martin) and aspires to an inhibited, censorious schoolteacher (Martha Hyer).

 Ultimately, Frank settles for the frightening and relentless unconditional love of the moll, which leads to tragedy. This is Sinatra's best performance, as a morally ambiguous anti-hero who is disgusted by the sanctimony the war took him from. But its MacLaine's film, and she breaks your heart as an abused, exploitable girl who seems to have no personality other than the prodigious intensity of her feelings.

 The film is intelligently directed by Minnelli with long camera edits allowing the actors to develop each scene. The mood gets progressively darker until it's eventually quite like film noir, but in colour. The action climax, with the stunning, impressionist kaleidoscope of lights scored by Elmer Bernstein's piano led jazz big band, is a knockout. 

MGM drafted in the ranks of British expats, for this exuberant telling of the Charles Dickens classic. Ronald Colman even shaved off his trademark moustache to play the complicated tragic hero Sidney Carton. He is charismatic and sympathetic and the calm centre of much flamboyant character acting. Basil Rathbone also makes a mark as the tyrannical aristocrat, Evrémonde.

 It is full of historical detail that brings to life all the social strata of Paris and London in the brutal regimes of the eighteenth century. The grave-robbers, the bankers, the highwaymen... The sets are magnificent and the action scenes hugely ambitious, particularly the storming of the Bastille by a cast of many thousands.

 The main weakness is the oddly un-starry casting of B-film stalwart Elizabeth Allen as Lucie Manette. Perhaps the second half of the film isn't quite as stunning as the first as it cuts the rich historical detail in order to get the story done. But it is easily the best of the run of classic European historical adventure yarns produced by Hollywood in the '30s.

 And it is the ultimate adaptation of this thrilling story. It's curious that MGM presented this film of a starving proletariat sparking a revolution to an American public suffering the Great Depression. Maybe it's plausible to read it as support for Roosevelt's New Deal? But primarily, this is an exciting, inspiring and flavourful spectacle.

Frank Capra's cherished classic didn't make a profit, and was released to a critical shrug. Strange that a film about sacrifice should underwhelm a world coming out of war. Today, Harry Bailey, Bedford Falls and Pottersville are paradigms. Now, it's curious that eventually America embraced so tightly such a nakedly socialist film.

The plot is like Charles Dickens wrote the Twilight Zone. George Bailey (James Stewart) has reached the end of himself. Having sacrificed his life for others, he faces financial destruction and decides that suicide would be the best way out. After a bang on the head, and a couple of drinks, he is confronted by a guardian angel and the world as it would have been had he never lived...

 So far, so whimsical. The film though manages to absorb its undoubted sentimentality in the utter desolation of its premise; Bailey entirely squeezed of his dreams until he is standing on that bridge in the darkness of his home town, staring down with fear into the void of the river.

 Hard to imagine that anyone but Capra could have done this. And that cast... It is an extraordinarily emotional experience, and a sustainedly bleak encounter that ultimately offers up an overwhelming catharsis. But it is also the film where Capra finally got swallowed up in the shadows. His famous ending is an act of mercy. We are all living in Pottersville now. 

Sentimental and nostalgic account of the immigrant experience in early 20th century San Francisco from the perspective of an extended family of Norwegian settlers. It mostly focuses on their heroic matriarch, irresistibly played by Irene Dunne.

 It doesn't dwell on the negative experiences of many expatriates. There is no indication of prejudice or sectarianism and little of ghettoisation. The family is working class, and frugal. The main ritual of their week is their sharing out of the father's wage. Not much is left after the rent. But they are not poor.

There are no major dramatic events. It's so moving because of Mama's pragmatism and selflessness and determination to survive. Their struggle and unbreakable domestic bonds are compelling. They are obsessively thrifty. There's a hilarious scene where the uncle (Oscar Homolka) finishes a bottle of whisky on his death bed so it isn't wasted!

It is beautifully photographed and scored. George Stevens' artful direction counteracts the sentimentality. Sure, it's idealised, but memories often are. The narrative is framed as the daughter (Barbara Bel Geddes) remembering the early life that led to her career as a writer. It's quite like Little Women, but this is better than any screen version of that story.

Terence Stamp- cast just before his tenure as a sixties face- plays a psychopathic butterfly collector, who abducts and imprisons Samantha Eggar's beautiful arts student. It's a two-hander, mostly set in a single interior.

 Although this is is a tense and unorthodox work of suspense, it is as much about class, and the stultifying conservatism of post war Britain. And its mistrust of modernism/modernity. Eggar is the creative, liberated butterfly trapped in Stamp's killing jar. She represents the new rules of permissive London.

She was nominated for an Oscar, but really Eggar and Stamp are captivating as a pair in their long, intense scenes together. The adaptation from John Fowles' novel, works as a very creepy thriller and a perceptive and evocative snapshot of its time.

William Wyler is often unjustly overlooked. It's remarkable that a director from the golden age was still making such relevant, invigorating and challenging films which capture moments in a changing world. It was mostly shot in Hollywood, but this is a key document of sixties London.

Exuberant and intelligent drama set in the midwest in the '20s about an itinerant troupe of revivalists working the rural towns of the bible belt, passing the hat around the poor farming families of the depression. After being joined by travelling salesman Elmer Gantry, they try to take on the challenge of adapting to the new markets in the cities.

 This is the role Burt Lancaster was born to play, as the charismatic preacher: big hearted, generous, forgiving and full of sin. And he delivers a huge, boisterous performance. It is an actors' film, with Jean Simmons also memorable as the star of the show, Sister Sharon, and Shirley Jones dazzling as the sex worker from Gantry's past.

Sinclair Lewis' 1927 novel draws on Sister Aimee Semple McPherson's real life showbiz evangelism. It is a curiously American phenomenon which fuses capitalism and protestantism. The film critiques a broad range of themes around the subject of evangelistic faith, much of it editorialised through Arthur Kennedy's atheistic news journalist. It is cynical of revivalism's provenance and ethics.

The story has a valid point to make about the preachers' exploitation of their followers, but this is by no means a dissertation. The threadbare locations, the impoverished times, the showmanship and the personalities are vividly brought to life. It is a colourful, sumptuous production which is carried by the magnetism of Lancaster's Oscar winning performance.

Meticulous and intelligent adaptation of Abby Mann's 1959 television play, mostly set within the single space of the courtroom. Four judges from Nazi Germany are on trial for crimes against humanity, but as the case progresses, it becomes less obvious who is actually responsible for these atrocities.

 In fact, as the Soviets enter Prague, is evident that neither side is interested in pursuing these convictions as the west needs Germany as a bulwark against Communist expansion and the Germans seek to bury their past. There is even the rather alarming insinuation that Republican politicians just want the men released and consider the trials to be the obsession of Liberal extremists.

There is a lot of talk over three hours, but it works as entertainment because the ideas are fascinating and the performances intuitive. There is a pair of raw, poignant cameos from Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland as victims of Nazi depravity. Maximilian Schell won an Oscar as the lawyer defending the judges.

The central role of the American judge was played with real dignity and authority by Spencer Tracy. He has many long passages to articulate including a lengthy summation in which he manages to remain objective to many interested parties and deliver a stirring and wise verdict. And this is that the end never justifies the means, however expedient. 

Progressive biopic of murderer Robert Stroud who was sent down in 1909 and remained in solitary until 1959, and in prison until his death in 1963. While inside he began to keep and study birds and developed remedies for previously untreatable diseases. Given a simple microscope he studied haematology and histology and wrote academic books. To keep his menagerie, he learned about the law.

When Stroud (Burt Lancaster) is first jailed he is wearing stripes and chains. He feeds his birds with insects freely infesting the jail. Under the control of a reforming public servant (Karl Malden) the cells become cleaner and safer and less physically brutal. But the film is clear that prisons are instruments of revenge, and fail because they do not mend the psychological faults of the convicts.

It is vague on Stroud's mentality. He seems a sociopath, resentful of anyone but his mother. He kills a warden. But his sullen malevolence is ameliorated by nurturing birds. At first this is to break the monotony of solitary, but then he lives vicariously through them. There's a nice, ironic shot of the prisoner viewed though the bars of a birdcage. Eventually his obsession releases his talent, or even genius.

Lancaster does well to maintain interest in this troubled introvert who isn't easy to like. The director overcomes the limitation of shooting within a tiny space by dealing mostly in closeups and expressionistic angles. We don't get a realistic idea of what compelled Stroud to kill and then change so remarkably. The film mostly has a reformist agenda and it makes its case with intelligence.

The wildest, craziest plot ever imagined. It is set in Madrid and claims to be a true story told by carnival people! Lon Chaney plays a serial killer known to the police only for the strange double thumbs on his left hand. So he straps his arms behind his back and joins a travelling circus as a knife act, throwing daggers at a very young Joan Crawford with his feet. Who he loves...

Because of previous abuse, the girl can't stand to be touched. So she is neurotically repulsed by the attentions of the circus strongman (Norman Kerry). As the police close in, to hide his incriminating thumbs and to indulge her fetishistic attraction to him, Chaney has both his arms removed by a surgeon he is blackmailing! 

Unfortunately, when he returns to the circus, the showgirl has got over her fear of being touched and married the muscleman. The now insanely jealous knife thrower devises a hideous revenge! Phew. This is pretty uninhibited stuff. The story was created by Tod Browning who left home as a child to join a circus. Chaney's upbringing was equally unconventional.    

Many silent horrors have the illusory mania of a febrile dream. And that is the great attraction here. And it's a lot of fun watching Chaney acting (brilliantly) with his feet. Browning and Chaney did astonishing work elsewhere, but there was an alchemy when they worked together. It feels like absolutely anything is possible.

After Paul Leni arrived at Universal studios, the expressionism of German horror began to be standard in Hollywood too. His third US film is an adaptation of a novel by Victor Hugo about a boy who is disfigured by the king and grows up with a hideous grin which masks his ceaseless misery.

Conrad Veidt  is heartbreaking as the suffering grotesque who joins the circus. It's the pathos of a man so mutilated he can never reveal how he feels. Mary Philbin supports as a blind woman, fated never to see her own beauty. And because she can touch the lips of the clown, she is fooled that he's always happy.

Leni is brilliant at the visuals, but less gifted at narrative and while it looks like art, the pace is slow. The expressionist sets of 17th century England are excellent. There isn't the social critique of the novel, but it does expose the brutal oppression of the poor by the aristocracy. The wealthy are as physically hideous as the members of the freak show that exploits the young outcast.

There is something primal about the monstrous characters we encounter in silent horrors. They ask ask us to relive one of the terrible fears of childhood, that we ourselves are uniquely unlovable, and the love we need to survive cannot be returned. These figures are eternal, universal nightmares.

Loose remake of the German silent horror The Hands of Orlac (1924) directed by Karl Freund, the star photographer of German expressionism. So it looks wonderful. Famed cinematographer Gregg Toland paints with light most eloquently and there are evocative sets of the back alleys of the Parisian Grand Guignol. 

The plot is among the most brilliantly lurid in all horror. When the hands of a concert pianist (Colin Clive) are crushed, his beautiful wife (Frances Drake), visits the sinister/brilliant surgeon (Peter Lorre) who stalks her, and begs him to save her husband's precious fingers. So the doctor transplants the hands of a recently guillotined, knife-throwing murderer!

His patient is still unable to play the piano but can't stop chucking blades... And then things get really crazy! This is a quality mad doctor film and an early example of the dark hospital theme, which finds within its gleaming white sterility, suffering, transgressive behaviour and unbridled egotism. Lorre is memorably repellant.

Censorship was about to send horror into remission. Many classics were shelved for decades This is the last of it's early '30s golden age. The vision of the bald, baby faced, big eyed Lorre in his fetishistic leather neck support and robot hands is one of the great grotesque horror images. 

Screwball fantasy about a boxer (Robert Montgomery) who crashes his small aircraft and is assumed dead by the inexperienced clerk (Edward Everett Horton) at the pearly gates. Big mistake. The fighter has to be found a new body by heaven's head of department (Claude Rains) as his own was cremated.  

He is billeted in the fresh corpse of a murdered banker. The boxer is just an honest guy who wants the world to be a better place. But he discovers everything is corrupt, whether the stock market or the fight game. His consolation is Evelyn Keyes, who he runs into no matter whose body he is in. It was meant to be.

 Robert Montgomery is a little too much of a dumb klutz. Everything is explained to him three times in case the audience isn't paying attention. And Claude Rains twinkles far too unctuously. But this is a pretty funny story with a fertile premise that would be remade many times. Keyes brings plenty of Hollywood glamour.

It tells us that what happens is meant to be, and we would understand this if we saw the whole picture. Hardly the most progressive of philosophies. But it's easy to see that this is intended to be gentle solace to those suffering loss. It was released with the world at war, and America's entry was confirmed a few months later, after Pearl Harbour. Before the end of the year, Montgomery was in the US navy.