Film Reviews by Steve

This seems entirely perfect. It is impossible to conceive of how it could be improved. Anyone who loves the book is spoiled. The casting is sublime. Tom Courtney is an uncanny fit for the title role. Is Julie Christie a touch too beautiful as Billy's girlfriend? Maybe. But she feels so right.

The dialogue expanded from Keith Waterhouse's novel is endlessly quotable. The impression of the changing northern town is vivid. The camera under the control of Deny Coop is lively and à la mode. John Schlesinger tells the story with eloquence and a lightness of touch.

Billy Fisher is an undertaker's clerk who prefers to live in a fantasy, rather than the uninspiring real world. Juggling a pair contrasting fiancées, too immature to make difficult emotional decisions, not ready for the yoke of employment, he retreats to Ambrosia, a mythical world of which he is President, and looks to install Julie Christie as his First Lady.

It is shot in the style of the British new wave, with a redeveloping Bradford forming its collapsing backdrop, and with many, many truly hilarious scenes. Some films are great because they contain a single aspect which is exceptional and transcends the rest. But this is flawless.

This is a devotional film, set in the western isles of Scotland. Wendy Hiller plays an ambitious middle class girl who travels north to marry a rich industrialist. Bad weather means she gets snagged up in a village harbour, tantalisingly a short boat trip from the small island of Kiloran and her wedding.

She comes under the influence of a hard up aristocrat (Roger Livesey) and the folklore and the enchantment of this unfamiliar world. With all her stubborn, materialistic single-mindedness, she tries to resist. She must get to Kiloran at any cost. Even if it destroys herself.

This is a lyrical love story of immense power. It is enriched by a mythic feel for the local traditions and people, and made beautiful by Edwin Hillier's gorgeous b&w photography. Livesey and Hiller are irresistible and matched by the striking, vivacious Pamela Brown. But it is the unique voice of Powell and Pressburger that makes this film so loved.

While there is realism, and the poverty of the islanders must have carried a punch to a country coming out of war, it is so profoundly historic, so intuitively optimistic, so different from the work of the others. It resonates deeply in our hearts, in our myths and in our culture.

Though Josef von Sternberg can be relied on for a gallery of striking images, he doesn't always tell the story so well. This does actually relate an interesting flashback to the Russian revolution. But what makes it compelling is the framing device which places an ex-Russian General in a Hollywood studio as an extra playing... a Russian General in a film directed by the former revolutionary he once jailed!

It's the archetypal Emil Jannings role of a once proud man who suffers the humiliation of reduced circumstances. He won an Oscar, and he brings the thrilling climax to combustion when he lives his part as an extra as if it was really happening inside his fragile psyche. There's an early credit for William Powell as the director/Bolshevik. His passivity contrasts with Jannings' histrionics!

 Von Sternberg adds another layer of interest by making the producer and director of the film in production as dictatorial and indulged as the Tsar and the Russian aristocracy, and likens the abused extras to the Russian peasants... There are fascinating insights into the making of a contemporary Hollywood film.

 We get the pathos we expect from Janning's, though it is hard to empathise with a General serving the Tsar. There are witty titles from Herman Mankiewicz (co-author of Citizen Kane), a part of silent cinema usually overlooked. There are many of the beautiful images typical of von Sternberg but allied to an interesting story. The legend is this was based on a real incident.

The final part of Franks Borzage's trilogy of silent romantic melodramas starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell is probably the best. The leads are adorable and there is an endearing touch of comedy. She plays an uneducated country girl who falls in love with a soldier just back from the Great War.

He instructs her in the rudiments of manners and hygiene and uncovers the lovely, maturing woman within... There's a charming scene when he washes her hair over and over until he discovers... she's a blonde. But this is a Borzage film, so fate isn't quite so benign.

Farrell had an accident in France and came back a paraplegic. He is placed in the agonising position of educating Gaynor for the benefit of the mendacious and irresponsible Sergeant who partly brought about the injury. OK, Farrell's recovery just in time to save his sweetheart from a disastrous marriage is most improbable...

But that's the transformative potential of true love in a Borzage film! They have a spiritual quality; a miraculous expression of ethereal romance. Sure, it's sentimental, but it communicates a strange, intangible sense of the supernatural, of the out-of body. Of the soul as it struggles to survive the physical world.

The derogatory subtitle (no longer used) affirms just how long ago this was, close to the dawn of the feature film. It is sentimental, and the characters are archetypes, but its power to disturb remains undimmed.  Lillian Gish plays an abused girl of 16 growing up in poverty in Limehouse, in the docks of London.

Her brutal father (Donald Crisp) is a prizefighter who visits his frustrations on his uneducated, frail child. She finds brief respite in the platonic adoration of a poetic Chinese missionary (Richard Barthelmess) who has grown disillusioned with his hope of bringing zen to the ruffians of the East End.

There is a naturalistic look. But when the waif and the Buddhist are together, the image has a woozy, narcotic feel. Gish is tenderly photographed in these few scenes. Her portrayal is extraordinary, even horrifying. She has been traumatised not only by violence, but a lack of affection. She is dirty and in rags, but Griffith captures something finer in her luminescent, suffering face.

The pacing is good and it still works as entertainment, though it creates a believable world of incredible deprivation and cruelty. There is realistic offensive language on the title cards. But this is a plea for tolerance and kindness (from the director of The Birth of a Nation). DW Griffith remains a controversial figure, but was a gifted and innovative director. 

The middle part of Frank Borzage's celebrated trilogy of silent romantic melodramas starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. The street angels are sex workers and the film relates the luckless attempts by one of them to escape the poverty and iniquity of her birth and find love with a naive, moralistic artist. It takes place in a Naples of the imagination, a distant place of passion and tragic fate.

At times it feels there is little happening on screen other than the wonderful magic created by the two stars. Farrell and Gaynor are the great romantic partners in early cinema. Their enduring chemistry and the fragility of their love in the face of an agonising destiny, is still compelling. These are hyper-romantic films about outsiders, down on their luck, but not easily giving up on their dreams.

They usually end on an uplift, but the tragedy is more persuasive. Love can never be enough to beat off the curse of pitiless fate in a brutal world of injustice and poverty. It is easy to see how these wonderful melodramas found their way into the hearts of audiences as the world went into the depression.

When Gaynor is torn away from Farrell and put in jail, they both whistle the same Italian ballad (on the Movietone soundtrack), like two birds who might die if separated. It's that intense. The setting is atmospheric, with vast constructions of foggy harbour-side slums. But realism isn't a priority. This is a spiritual film, where love is a brief glimpse of happiness seized from an endless panorama of sorrow.

This is sometimes described as a western which I think understates its strangeness. It is a primal psychological drama, which is unconventional and quite complex in the way it describes the impact of environment on the mind, culture and behaviour.

 Lillian Gish plays a delicate lady of manners who travels west to live with a near relative in a desert wilderness populated by rednecks. And is driven out of her mind by the ceaseless, unstoppable wind. Manoeuvred into a marriage of convenience, she murders a menacing suitor and hides his body in the desert, which she fears will be uncovered by the maddening, mystical wind at any time. Or may be buried, forever.

 This is Gish's most fascinating performance, which develops from a demure archetype into something quite disturbing. Victor Sjöström creates a metaphysical film full of startling images. There was an arduous location shoot in the Mojave desert which brings realism to a film which touches on allegory and expressionist horror.

 It is a story about man encroaching into the dominion of nature and the tragic consequences. Which is way ahead of its time. Unfortunately MGM forced a happier ending on the director and star. But it remains a film of brilliant dramatic storytelling. It is an intense emotional experience and one of the very greatest silent films.

Legendary silent drama which tells the story of the anonymous face in the crowd. James Murray plays the ordinary man who lives a life of small triumphs but larger disappointments. Fate is either indifferent or cruel, leading to a genuine tragedy which destroys him.

We are introduced by one of the most famous edits in cinema, as the camera tracks up the numberless windows of a huge skyscraper and locks in on one opening in particular. It dissolves into an office interior with a vast number of geometrically positioned desks and locates by degrees the subject of the story. And the film concludes with an equally celebrated shot... 

 His life is ostentatiously ordinary. He goes to Coney Island, meets a girl and gets married and honeymoons in Niagara Falls... gradually he is robbed of his assumption of personal exceptionalism and absorbs conformity. The production was shot on the streets of New York, among real crowds. It surely anticipates neo-realism. There is quite a lot of The Bicycle Thieves in this.

It's easy to identify with Murray, who went into the production as an extra. King Vidor's visual storytelling is impressive, and while he doesn't eschew pathos, it feels realistic. Any Hollywood film maker who attempts to reflect the everyday experiences of ordinary people in the big city, does so in the shadow of this cinematic landmark.

Douglas Sirk's final American film is his best. It's a remake of the old Fannie Hurst best seller, revised for the era of black civil rights. Lana Turner becomes a big Broadway star while behind the scenes, Juanita Moore brings up both their daughters. The only way they can be together for mutual benefit, is for Juanita to act as the black maid, even though she isn't paid.

While bringing up the actor's child (Sandra Dee), she suffers the agonies of her own (Susan Kohler) who finds she can 'pass for white'. But this is a mirage. The reality is that her race will always limit her freedom. It is brilliantly acted, particularly by Moore as the black mother for whom American apartheid has been a lifelong trauma. This sounds like a soap. And it is, to a point.

 But the story suddenly mutates. Lana comments that she never knew Juanita had friends, and the 'maid' replies: 'You never asked'. And then the film becomes an overwhelming demonstration of the invisibility of black American lives in '50s America. This is a symphony of emotion conducted by Sirk to a conclusion which is so moving it is painful.

It has the opulence and glamour typical of Sirk's Universal melodramas. Lana wears a lot of fabulous gowns and diamonds in picture perfect domesticity. But never before has he exposed a sickness in American life with such passion. It is both subtle, yet operatic. It's a heartbreaker, but without the fundamental realism, it would be too much. It never falters. It is an extraordinary experience.

Elia Kazan's handsome epic only tells the last part of John Steinbeck's long novel of '52 and simplifies what remains. It is a loose updating of the story of Cain and Abel relocated in California, which plugs into the performance of its debuting star James Dean whose mannered, method inspired performance still crackles.

The theme which captured the spirit of the times is the generational schism between the introverted, maladjusted son (Dean) and his domineering, righteous father (Raymond Massey). Though with the early part of the novel omitted, this is hugely condensed. The search by the young man for personal identity and freedom was a sensation with '50s teenagers.

Dean's star performance feels like a great leap forward for Hollywood. What most attracts now is Kazan's spacious, artistic rendition of the Salinas Valley in Cinemascope. It is a beautiful production. The colour and camera effects still look amazing. The period of rural California on the edge of World War I is superbly realised.

Sadly the film ends badly with the boy seeking and finding understanding from the stubborn, dying patriarch, which negates the rest of the story. The plot is overstuffed,  but it remains an unflagging, ambitious blockbuster about all the big biblical sins. And the legend of James Dean still lives in his only starring film released before his death.

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.