Film Reviews by Steve

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..."

Robert Mitchum plays a psychopathic serial killer who presents as a preacher: 'How many is it now Lord? Six? Twelve?'. It turns out to be 25. The character is based on a real murderer of widows in the US south of the depression. He marries Shelley Winters whose husband was hanged for a murder committed during a bank robbery. He intends to extract from her two young children the location of the loot 

And he doesn't just kill his new wife and leave her body among the weeds in a river. He spiritually tortures her. The children escape downstream chased by the nightmare figure of their stepfather. Everything is cruel and threatening. The country is scorched by the flames of poverty. Religion has gripped the minds of poor and uneducated and distorted them. 

Charles Laughton's only release as director is notoriously difficult to categorise: part horror, part fantasy, even perhaps a film for children. It's often called film noir, though the historic, rural setting isn't all that noir, and neither is its prominent religious theme. Part of the difficulty of classification is that it is unique. Even its imitators haven't repeated its genius.  Now it is usually called American Gothic, a kind of horror.

The adaptation of Davis Grubb's novel haunts the memory; it's a dreamy gallery of enchanted images. Mitchum is truly phenomenal and Billy Chapin gives one of best ever performances by a child. But its Laughton's film, the work of an auteur.  It is such a regret that it is the only chance he got to direct. This is a classic of American cinema.

Surely this is the best spy film ever made. Director Martin Ritt was an outsider, ostracised in Hollywood by McCarthyism. He was the perfect choice to direct this complex story of lies, subterfuge and betrayal. It's the chilly prototype for the spy-procedural genre, which annexed new wave realism to the glacial surfaces of John le Carre's classic novel.

And it introduces the motifs of the cold war thriller: the sedate bureaucracy of MI6; the locations like checkpoint charlie, and the Berlin wall; the laconic, elliptical dialogue; the grey, ultra realistic design. The superb support cast gives flesh to the layers of administration.

Richard Burton is profoundly credible as a spy who has been out in operation for too long, and is starting to think about the ethics. Control has an idea for how he can save their man in East Berlin. But it's not the clever, cynical double cross that he actually shares with his agent; he has a deeper, more devious scheme.

The astonishing narrative was allegedly taken from life. Most precious of all is the audaciousness of Le Carre's sleight of hand, which disorientates our moral perspective, and finds the burned out operative at the wall, with one last chance to subvert the dehumanising machinations of the Whitehall Circus.

Erich von Stroheim initially cut this to a running time of 8 hours and was devastated after MGM bought the production studio and slashed it to 140 minutes. But even the short version is an enormously ambitious work of great social breadth, with a well told, complex narrative. It has the expansive, labyrinthine design of a Victorian novel. It doesn't leave the impression of being a fragment. This is epic.

It's a moral tale on the nature of greed. John McTeague (Gibson Gowland) marries the fiancée (Zasu Pitts) of his best friend (Jean Hersholt). When the wife wins big on a lottery, her jilted ex is tormented by the ill fate of missing out on such huge wealth and consumed by a desire for revenge... while she grows miserly and suspicious. The couple slip deeper into madness and imagined poverty.

These aren't archetypes, they are flawed and vulnerable people. It is visually magnificent and the director unlocks the frame with his depth of field. There is a primal energy. It was photographed on location and there is a palpable impression of early century San Francisco and its immigrant population. The arduous shoot in Death Valley gives the film a stunning- and famous- climax.

 Apart from some clunky visual metaphors, the only real negative is the curiosity of what might have been. Von Stroheim never got over the the fate of his creation. Which is a shame because what we have is one of the great films of the decade. As often seems to happen in cinema, it is a vision of compulsion made by man who was himself an obsessive.

FW Murnau's dazzling expressionism and stunning camera effects make this a film unlike any other. The lavish deco sets of the big city recall the ambition of Metropolis. It is the ultimate example of the visual reach of silent cinema, which achieved its apogee just as it was made redundant by Al Jolson singing Mammy in the Jazz Singer.

 It is a simple tale of a rural couple whose marriage is threatened by poverty and a predatory woman from the city. She convinces the husband to kill his wife and be free. He proves unable to do so, but the wife gets the idea... He must seek her forgiveness... but fate has a final twist to impart.

George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor are devastating as the couple, and then poignantly comical as they rediscover their love on a trip to the bright lights. There's a sweet scene when they walk out of a church having watched a wedding, and the passing public assume it is they who just got married.

 The story is realistic, but the frame is full of enchantment. It's a heartbreaker, but artistic too, and that's the magic of Murnau's achievement and his testament. And the wonder of all cinema. A hundred years on, he still spellbinds his audience, and provokes our tears.

After Hannah and Her Sisters Mia Farrow commented: 'He (Woody Allen) had taken the ordinary stuff of our lives and lifted it into art. We were honoured and outraged'. Deconstructing Harry examines the use of the personal in the life of the writer, both in terms of its impact on friends and family, and on the writer himself.

It is similar to Stardust Memories in that Woody takes a journey to receive an award, and the events of his life are illustrated by excerpts from his fiction. This time he is a novelist rather than a film director. As with the earlier film, Woody flits from the fiction of the film to the fiction of the character with skill and imagination.

 It was welcomed by critics as a return to form, which I can't endorse as he made other fine films at this time. It is a dense, complicated trip through the moral dereliction and personal inadequacy of a protagonist unable to see beyond his own superficial desires and whose philosophy is designed to excuse this failure.

 He reflects: 'I'm a guy who can't function well in life but can in art'. If this is intended to be a personal disclosure, then it's a pretty desolate, wretched confession and not always easy to watch. There are some great comic ideas. There's a lot of energy and some fine writing, but my most prominent reaction is to feel a little repulsed.