Film Reviews by Steve

By the time he made 7th Heaven, Frank Borzage had been directing films for ten years which are now mostly lost and forgotten. This was a big breakthrough for him. It is a hyper-romantic silent melodrama about the jinxed love affair between a street cleaner and an abandoned waif in the sewers and garrets of Paris.

 The film is dominated by the performances of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor- who is sensational. He just desires a better job and she dreams of a husband and a home. Their relationship gets snagged on his overbearing pride, and her lack of self worth. But when they do fall in love it is with an operatic intensity that is impossible to imagine in a film made now.

 There are a few problems. The religious theme is ridiculous, and the subplot on the western front doesn't work. Its greatness rests on the portrayal of unconditional love and the performances of its leads. It's an overwhelming experience. The vision of Gaynor appearing through the window in her wedding dress is a heartbreaker.  

The myriad social strata are richly portrayed from the sewers up to the dirty attic on the seventh floor where they find their brief happiness among the roofs and chimneys of Paris. The sets are great and Borzage's camera is mobile and expressive. It's not without flaws, but this is a classic silent romantic drama, sweetened by a lovely, sentimental Movietone score.

Pure Hollywood magic from Ernst Lubitsch, set in his beloved Paris in the '20s. And it's a late career success for Greta Garbo. Apparently, MGM had the tagline 'Garbo Laughs' before they had anything else.  But it is also a political satire which conveys quite a lot of sadness.  

It is an intuitive film, because it acknowledges that the screwball era was about over, with the world at war again. There are serious themes about Russia after the revolution. And it's a proto-cold war comedy. The script is by Billy Wilder and  Charles Brackett so there's plenty of characteristic cynicism.

Three bumbling Bolshevik ambassadors arrive in Paris to sell some jewels. The aristocrat in exile who once owned them, wants them back. The chilly, practical Ninotchka (Garbo) is sent to ensure they don't fall into the hands of the former oppressors of the workers. When she is courted by a rich capitalist (Melvyn Douglas), she thaws, seduced by luxury and romance.  

Douglas lacks the charm to make him sympathetic. Garbo is fabulous, but her character is too schematic. Utterly humourless and logical when under the Soviet influence, totally frivolous when seduced by the capitalists. It's the genius of the Lubitsch touch which ensures all this doesn't get lost in darkness. 

As crime films became more realistic in the '50s, Robert Aldrich made one of the most expressionistic noirs of the whole cycle. This is a visual knockout which also pushes at the boundaries of censorship, with explicit violence and an antihero-Mike Hammer- who isn't as much ambiguous as utterly unscrupulous.

It kicks off with a bang. The private detective (Ralph Meeker) runs into a woman who has escaped from being tortured, and is barefoot on the freeway in only a trenchcoat. He investigates her eventual death, not because he cares about the law, or her, but he thinks there will be more money to be had than his usual divorce racket.

Meeker's version of Mike Hammer is fascinating. It's a stunning performance. To a degree he recalls the ethical relativity of Sam Spade, but is much more mercenary. He is a philistine: narcissistic, sadistic and manipulative. But everyone in his world is motivated by greed. And no one can be trusted.

When the stupid protagonists stumble on the 'great whatsit', without knowing what it is, it kills them and everyone else. The motifs and themes of film noir are reimagined and updated to the cold war era, and there is a palpable sense of the dogs of censorship being called off. This is sleazy but stylish pulp fiction.

Woody Allen closed out the eighties with this well constructed comedy about a documentary film maker (Allen) always eclipsed by his more successful brother in law (Alan Alda). But he audaciously couples the laughs with a dark drama about an ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) who has his lover (Angelica Huston) killed, to save his marriage and reputation.

Woody brings the two stories together with a satisfying click. Some people are destroyed by guilt for a minor transgression, while others commit terrible crimes and-providing they are not caught- choose to be unaffected by the consequences. There is no moral law.

There's a clever script, with unexpected twists and shrewd observations. Huston is very moving as an emotionally unbalanced woman chronically starved of love. Landau is chilling as a rich man whose crime is masked by respectability, and dumb luck. And his lack of conscience...

The most interesting parts of the film are the philosophical diversions voiced on tape by a (real life) professor of psychology at NYU, Martin Bergmann- the subject of Woody's documentary- who shines a flicker of light into the darkness. This is a pessimistic experience, but moderated by intelligence and humour. 

This early Howard Hawks comedy is a landmark of the emerging screwball style of the early '30s, with the fast talking dames, the duped, disorientated male, the crazy, improbable consequences, and the slapstick visual gags- all set in contemporary urban America.  

John Barrymore plays a Broadway producer who discovers a smalltown wannabe (Carole Lombard) and turns her into a stage sensation. Enraged by her svengali's constant egotistical dominion, she flees to Hollywood and becomes a triumph, while he slumps into debt. He must win her back while they return to New York by train.  

Barrymore is just hilarious, overacting brilliantly, with his melodramatic catchphrases, like 'I lower the iron door' for when he sacks someone, which is often. Lombard gets buffeted a little in the whirlwind of his performance, but she puts up a fight in a role that would make her a big star (the final irony). The support cast doesn't stand a chance.  

It is very, very funny.  It isn't all that emotionally nourishing. But as pure comedy, it is a triumph. Preston Sturges did some work on this and his hand is very evident. It's so much fun watching Carole transform from a timid novice to an egomaniac, who almost capable of going into combat with the great impresario.

After 1990 Woody Allen started make genre films. Shadows and Fog is expressionist horror. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is film noir. This a musical comedy about the romantic diversions of an extended family of rich New Yorkers. These are usually pastiches, but made with love.

Everyone Says.... may be a homage to the great Hollywood musicals, but the actors are not natural singers and the choreography is perfunctory. This a standard Woody Allen film, but with the periodic insertion of song and dance. Aside from a ballroom  number by the Seine with a wired-up Goldie Hawn, the musical episodes are uninspired.

The comedy is lacklustre and it's difficult to care much about the love affairs of these lightweights. So other irritants are exposed. Like (a 61 year old) Woody Allen and- much younger- Julia Roberts swept away in contrived sexual passion. Why is Edward Norton actually doing a Woody Allen impression?  

The characters are so privileged they are difficult to relate to. There is a gentle, undemanding romance in among the classic songs. The photography (Carlo di Palma) is lovely. The locations are stunning. Drew Barrymore has never looked more beautiful. But... this is my candidate for Woody's worst film. 

 This is my favourite of Woody Allen's London trilogy. It is a supernatural comedy thriller with Scarlett Johansson as a journalist who is made to disappear by a hapless magician (Woody) at a magic show.  During the trick, she encounters the ghost of a dead newshound who tips her off about an aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) who may be the Tarot Card Killer, the serial murderer of sex workers in London.

Aroused, she sets off in pursuit of/falls in love with the titled psychopath, with a reluctant Woody in tow, posing as her father. Scoop wasn't given a cinema release and later debuted on tv. The critics announced that Allen was finished, though it's the film after one of his biggest hits, Match Point.

The script is so-so, but it scores with Scarlett and Woody's screwball chemistry which is infectious. She is sensational as an intrepid girl reporter. Their intuitive comic rapport recalls his partnership with Diane Keaton, many years ago.

The director said he was going for a feel like the Thin Man films of the '30s, with Nick and Nora. Well, he doesn't really get that because this is across the generations, and Woody plays a coward. It's more like a good Bob Hope film. There is a lot of genuine suspense for a comedy thriller. There's beautiful photography of London. This is a lot of fun.

Since Sight and Sound voted it the critics' number 1, Vertigo often gets labelled the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock film. Maybe it deserves that status in recognition of a coming together of key collaborators: costumes by Edith Head; orchestral score by Bernard Herrmann; Robert Burks' innovative camera effects; script by George Tomasino; and Saul Bass' title design and effects.  

They say Vertigo is personal to the director, as it imitates a film making process; of turning an actor into a character. James Stewart plays an obsessive detective who transforms Kim Novak into the image of a woman out of his troubled past. While it does mimic that exercise, it doesn't draw any profound conclusions. This is primarily a thriller with a twisty, disorientating plot.

Hitchcock uses motifs of spirals and falling which make us vicariously experience the cop's psychological trauma. Stewart was far too old, though he is effective.  Kim Novak is excellent in both her roles. The San Francisco locations and local myth making add plenty of atmosphere.

Hitch and his team created their own genre, which many others copied. Film noir is reckoned to end in '58. The Master's films in this period would be a standard model for the thriller for a decade. It's not my favourite Hitchcock, but it is a summation of his art at the time of his Hollywood peak. 

Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor meet cute and fall in love against a background of an ecological apocalypse. The people of Bodega Bay, lost in trivial diversions, are blind to an inconvenient truth. From being initially oblivious to the gathering danger they are finally overwhelmed by the sudden, inexplicable onset of war by all birds on mankind.  

So maybe there's some strike through to present day anxieties... The Birds is full of famous horror moments.  Like the flock of crows which gathers at Tippi's back as she smokes a cigarette outside a school while the kids sing a nursery rhyme. Which has some of the gothic frisson of Poe.

Alfred Hitchcock's only science fiction film was a huge box office hit and the spectacle of the attack of the birds is a triumph of set design and camera illusion. The soundtrack of bird sound processed through a synthesiser was innovative and creepy. Inevitably, the actors take a back seat to the effects but it's that kind of film.

The story lacks an ending and it would be nice if Hitch had done a little more with the theme of man at war with nature, but it is a one of the best of the end of the world films of the cold war era. Each scene is imaginatively designed and assembled to set an eerie note of fear against an ominous symphony of catastrophe.

James Cain's depression era novel is turned into film noir with the addition of a murder. This prompts a flashback about a waitress who builds up a restaurant chain, but loses everything else. Mildred Pierce was the role of Joan Crawford's life. She surely identified with a woman born into poverty who works to gain wealth but alienates her child through dogmatic parenting.

It's a powerful film with strong studio virtues. Much of the dramatic thrust is provided by Max Steiner's orchestral score. The gorgeous high contrast black and white photography gleams like a highway in the rain.  The sassy, hardboiled dialogue is classic Warner Brothers.

There isn't as much of an urban setting as other '40s noirs. It is mostly situated in the LA suburbs, but still makes expressive use of its locations; the beach towns and highways of Southern California. And the lavish Malibu beach house where the murder takes place.  

The big strength is its depiction of psychological frailty: it's an opera of passive-aggression; an epic of bartered love; of sex and greed rendered so frighteningly sordid that they both mean the same thing. The casting is spectacular. Crawford deservedly won the Oscar. Ann Blyth- only 17- is horrifying as Mildred's spoiled, sociopathic daughter.

About the turn of the fifties, Hollywood began to accommodate Italian Neorealism, particularly in its crime films. The most influential release in that style was Jules Dassin's The Naked City. My personal favourite is Call Northside 777 which has a moving and suspenseful story with a knockout ending.  

It is based on real events sourced from newspaper articles. James Stewart plays a Chicago reporter who is alerted by a mother's offer of a reward saved up through 11 years working as a cleaner to investigate a miscarriage of justice which resulted in her innocent son being sent to prison for 99 years.  

Stewart is credible as a cynical newsman who becomes obsessed with the faulty verdict from so long ago that many of the protagonists are dead. Henry Hathaway made a few of these documentary noirs, with the big city locations, and powerful, declamatory voice overs.

Compared with the Italians this is processed, mainstream stuff and the politics is muted. But it was still groundbreaking in US cinema and unashamed to show realistic poverty, particularly among immigrants. Hathaway was a conservative, but these stories about the victims of institutional corruption were usually made by the Hollywood left.

Woody Allen's rewrite of La Dolce Vita landed with a loud critical thud,  and Kenneth Branagh's Woody impression met a stunned response. It would have worked better if Ken had the charm to account for the stars receiving him so readily into their entourage, and Melanie Griffiths relaxing him so libidinously. But, it's time for a rethink. Celebrity was ahead of its time.

Branagh plays a travel writer who leaves his wife (Judy Davis) and plans to become a screenwriter. He funds himself by freelancing for celebrity mags, which brings him into contact with A-listers, like fashion model Charlize Theron and hell raising actor Leonardo DiCaprio and their periphery of sycophants, publicists, and gofers.

Davis quits being a teacher of medieval fiction to present daytime tv, interviewing B list makeweights like gossip columnists and politicians.  While not a profound piece of work, Celebrity does generate enough zeitgeist to work as a final cry for help from a society obsessed with the trivial.

These characters are no more degenerate than the intellectuals of Woody's early period, but they don't aspire to anything more cultural than a rung on the celebrity ladder.  They assume fame frees them from personal responsibility.  The script is sharp and the many celebrity cameos give the film an attractive gloss- and the ending is a knockout.

Flimsy but fun comedy of manners with Woody Allen- for a change- casting himself as a working class cultural halfwit. He and Tracey Ullman make a great team as a lowbrow, hardup couple who accidentally get rich and try to assimilate into Manhattan high society.

The premise isn't all that new. A mob of hapless bankrobbers led by a clueless deadbeat (Woody) lease retail space to dig into a bank up the street. To create a front, his wife (Tracey) opens a bakery in the store and, of course, her biscuits are a sensation.

 They make so much money they abandon the raid and become a filthy rich, eccentrically managed corporation. The second half focuses on Ullman's compulsion to social climb, bringing her into contact with Hugh Grant, as an oleaginous art dealer. He is educated, but no less a crook than Woody.

 It's a lightweight confection, which makes its comedy from the culture clash of new money against the wealth of the elite. It feels awkward that the laughs are at the expense of the poor and their lack of taste. But the film gets a huge lift from Elaine May as Tracey's even dumber relative, whose dialogue is so idiotic that it appears to have a strange incidental wisdom.  

This gangster film takes a while to gather momentum, but still has a few points of interest and is a cut above the bulk of British B noirs of the early sixties. The screen now feels dominated by Sean Connery, a year ahead of Dr. No. He's still a developing actor, but much better than in his fifties appearances, and he has some unmissable natural charisma.  

There is a soundtrack by the Shadows, and the title music reached number three in the UK charts. Norrie Paramor also contributes a few pre-Beatles pop songs sung by cast members, which haven't lasted very well. London born Yvonne Romain performs one of these and contributes plenty of ersatz continental glamour as a Russian nightclub vocalist...

The gangland narrative would have made an impact in the era of the Krays. Herbert Lom plays the Mr. Big, trying to organise the criminal underworld. This is all lifted from the Hollywood syndicate noirs of the 1950s. The mobsters mostly operate in the protection racket, but their strong arm methods are less brutal than reality.

There is a message! The police- led by John Gregson as the determined but burdened detective- is fighting crime with its hands tied. Law is for the benefit of the mob. This Daily Express style editorialising was still being recited in cop dramas a decade later in Dirty Harry. There are a few better low budget UK crime films in the early '60s, but this is coherent and has a little style.

Lerner and Loewe's stage sensation became the last great Hollywood musical. It's a Technicolor and Cinemascope epic which takes George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and crams it full of amazing songs. It's a hugely ambitious production full of startling fashions and set decoration, and treasured performances from its stars. When it's good, it's fabulous.

But it's far from a perfect film. It seems disinterested in of the philosophical themes of the play. It hardly acknowledges the profound misery of the poor or the entitlement of the wealthy. No one learns anything. Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) ends up the same misanthrope and misogynist he was at the start, except he is in love (sort of). It doesn't climax, it just stops.

However, the songs are immortal. My personal favourite is the Cockney-blues of Wouldn't It Be Loverly. The lyrics are witty and intelligent. By the usual standards, the dancing is no more than perfunctory. But... My Fair Lady ultimately triumphs because of the brilliant performance of Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl who becomes a phoney princess.

She gives the film its heart. Eliza is tied into a web of exploitation and cruelty, and Audrey makes that pathos come alive. Even when miming the songs. Harrison does well to make his curmudgeonly aristocrat just about tolerable. George Cukor keeps the musical romance light and entertaining over its long, long running time (plus interval).