Film Reviews by Steve

Offbeat, code-busting melodrama which can be read as a parable on US capitalism. Tyrone Power plays a charismatic narcissist who works up from a fairground conman to the lucrative spiritualism racket. He exploits everyone in his path until he is destroyed by a similarly fake psychotherapist (Helen Walker) who sends The Great Stanton into a spiral that ends at absolute zero…

Which is a geek in a sideshow. This is the performance of Power's career as the unscrupulous, ambitious clairvoyant who seems to see into people's souls, and can turn it into cash. He is matched by a sensational portrayal by Helen Walker as the wellbred shrink to the rich Chicago elite. When one of them must be sacrificed, Stanton's lack of class ensures it is him.

All the cast are exceptional, with Ian Keith as the alcoholic deadbeat whose demise Stanton's story arc will imitate. His pitiful death is appalling. Joan Blondell is Oscar-worthy. This should have been a big award winner. It is an ambitious production; Fox built a large fairground and filled it with real carnival acts. The noir photography is another big plus.

This is pessimistic and disturbing and complex. It is surprising this cut was passed by the censors, especially as it equates religion with spiritualism... and Power and Blondell's relationship is sexually frank for the time. Director Edmund Goulding usually made romances but this allegorical noir is one of the great films of the postwar period. 

Low budget thriller which spent most of its bottom line on the stars, including film noir legends Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. There's a familiar set up; a comfortable married couple (Scott, Arthur Kennedy) are out driving when a man in a passing car throws a blackmail payoff into their back seat. The sleazy extortionist, (Duryea, naturally) comes after them for his mislaid $60,000.

Duryea is a man you love to hate, but is outclassed. Scott plays one of the most relentlessly vicious femme fatales in noir. She will hold onto that windfall at any price. When her honest husband acts to hand it in to the cops, she shoots him and sinks his body in a lake. It's possible even to feel sympathy for the blackmailer when he is ruthlessly poisoned to settle who should keep the loot.

Scott plays a materialistic Californian housewife. Surely her absolute determination to satisfy her greed is meant to be satirical. She has never been poor, she wants money to give her status in the suburbs. So she’s not outgunned by the other wives. There is even a hint that she may have helped along the suicide of her first husband when he proved to be an insufficient provider.

The sets and back-projection are pitifully cheap but the strengths dwarf its limitations. Scott is gloriously degenerate in another of her noir bad girl roles. Sex is merely a negotiating stategy. There is something dreamy about her hushed, slurred delivery. She is aroused by wealth. Plausibility isn't always a priority, but this is a compelling morality tale, with a tasty script.

Comedy-thriller which smuggles in a few political themes under its sparkling surface. There is an ingenious premise: a big shot media mogul (Charles Laughton) murders his rainy day lover, and gets his fixer (George Macready) to plant evidence suggesting the killer was the newsroom's ace reporter (Ray Milland). The journalist investigates the crime and finds the trail leads to himself...

There are hints that the boss' unfettered corporate power implies the fascism that has just been fought in Europe. The ubiquitous big clock symbolises the range of his malign control. This is the era of HUAC. The Hollywood Ten were charged a year earlier. When Laughton threatens to have Milland blacklisted it must have shot a bolt down the spines of US audiences.

There's plenty of comic fizz. When Milland and the soon-to-be murder victim (Rita Johnson) go on a crawl of cocktail lounges they might as well be William Powell and Myrna Loy. Maybe better if they were as the smug Milland can be hard to like. This is also weakened by Charles Laughton's ludicrous yet soporific portrayal of the odious Mr. Big.

Still, Elsa Lanchester is adorable as the kooky artist who comes to the framed reporter's aid. The screwball makes it uncertain how serious all this is, but it just about works as suspense. The set design of the media empire, and the b&w photography make an attractive noir look. There are interesting historical themes but they don't burden the charming escapism.

Twisty thriller with an exceptional cast. Robert Young plays a dishonest playboy who is financially dependent on his wife (Rita Johnson) while dallying with Jane Greer and Susan Hayward. Greer's part is insubstantial but Johnson is excellent and Hayward gives the film a huge boost with her usual dynamism as an unrepentant gold-digger.

It's a murder mystery that rests on that familiar premise, the unidentifiable corpse. The story is narrated from the witness stand by Young who may well be an unreliable narrator. His uncorroborated testimony gives an already absorbing plot another twist.

It’s fun to see the suspect play the field before his complicated comeuppance. But the strongest emotion in play is just how trapped he is in his marriage and work. The gilded cage from which he never escapes. This allows Young to make his ill-fated character at least a little sympathetic.

The fatalism gives it a noir edge, though there are no mean streets or expressionism. The big plus is how Irving Pichel's direction speeds us through the chicanery of many intricate plot complications. And there's a fine, pessimistic script. Young felt his counter-casting as a villain made the public stay away; they all missed a stylish, exciting crime picture.

Cult film noir set in New Mexico after WWII. Robert Montgomery returns from the Pacific with his pal who gets rubbed out by a mafia boss (Fred Clark) for trying to put on the bite for a crooked Government contract. The ex-GI tracks the gangster south to San Pablo during the fiesta, while being tailed himself by an FBI agent (Art Smith).

There isn’t a strong expressionist look; this isn't a town of shadows. It is film noir because of its political cynicism. The promised postwar settlement fell through. Semi-legitimate gangs and crooked politicians got rich while a generation of young men fought in Europe and the East.

The traumatised hero lost his girl and his friend and his faith in his country. He can’t trust the law which let the killer go free. Criminality is normalised. But in San Pablo he meets honest citizens among the Mexican poor; the trusting, guileless Wanda Hendrix and an optimistic fairground worker (Oscar nominated Thomas Gomez). This challenges his racism and pessimism.

The enigmatic title hints at the socialist message stowed inside a low budget thriller. Perhaps it was this which attracted A list writers Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, and Montgomery, to such a minor production. It was released in the year the Hollywood blacklist was introduced to prevent films like this being made. It works best as a woozy, dreamlike political allegory. 

Cheerful locked room murder mystery from the Philo Vance series. William Powell returns as the gentleman sleuth which is a perfect fit for his sophistication and comic élan. There's a standard genre premise; a wealthy but hated man is found dead in his bolted bedroom with a gun in his hand. Everyone has a motive. The idiotic police are happy for the amateur to take charge.

There are the weaknesses usual with golden age mysteries: the solution is preposterous; anyone could have done it; and the cast of suspects are archetypes. There is no impression of the misery caused by the act of murder. But given these limitations… it is one of the better entries in a detective series.

Michael Curtiz keeps the the action moving. Despite the meagre budget, Warner Brothers draw on a fine support cast of familiar contract players, like Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette and sexy Helen Vinson. So at least we know who these people are. The precode humour fizzes, and crucially, the director tells the complicated story with lucidity, which rarely happens in serials.

There are sterile sets and a static camera and the typical impediments of early talkies. But it’s also a lot of fun and so slick it speeds by. We get the cosmopolitan setting and the stereotypes and clichés we go to the classic detective story for. Powell gives it sparkle. This was his last go at Vance, but he would play similar roles throughout the ‘30s, with charm and a lightness of touch.

This is famous for Humphrey Bogart’s star making performance as killer Duke Mantee, modelled on depression era gangster, John Dillinger. But the best part is the opening 30 minutes of romantic dalliance between Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. She is a dreamer trapped in the Arizona desert. He is a rootless poet running low on hope. Their ethereal chemistry is very poignant.

They meet in The Petrified Forest, a desert of fossils, a wilderness where obsolescent creatures come to die; like Mantee, the last of the western outlaws, or the poet who is a disillusioned, exhausted idealist. A few other archetypes gather in the lonely diner where Bette marks time as a waitress: there’s a patriot, an athlete, a wealthy couple…

After the exceptional opening, the dialogue becomes aimless and overwrought. But the film maintains its grip. This is too early for film noir, but it has that feel. Partly because of the slowly darkening restaurant as the night falls, but mainly because of its sadness, its atmosphere of pessimism and malign destiny.

Bogart has a presence, and he dominates later scenes, but he is awkward and not yet a star. The staging of Robert Sherwood’s poetic realist play is rich and full of mythology and wistful symbolism. But it's the melancholy rapport between Howard and Davis that cuts deepest, both searching for meaning in the haunted desert as world sinks into the depression and fascism. 

on SCANDAL SHEET.

Short but thrilling film noir set in a news office. It was adapted from a Sam Fuller novel and it punches like his films, with an extrovert swagger and dialogue that sounds like headlines. The star editor (Broderick Crawford) kills the wife he left twenty years earlier when she threatens to expose his past to the rival tabloids, which are as rapaciously unprincipled as his own.

The newsman is conflicted. He wants to hide his criminal background, but can't deny the populist urge to sell papers. So he puts his top reporter (John Derek) on the story of the dead woman and blows it up big. A lavish bonus is promised to the editor. Sales go through the ceiling but the trail leads right to his desk.

This is fabulous entertainment, driven by a lively, hardboiled script and unpretentious direction. It pulses with energy, especially in the fast talking newsroom scenes. The cast lacks a little sparkle in places, with Donna Reed insufficiently sassy, but Derek is effectively sordid and Henry Barnes memorable as a former Pulitzer prize winner who has drunk his way down to skid row.

There are sleazy New York locations, among the drunks and bums, hock-shops, scuzzy hotels and, well, tabloid newspapers. Derek finds redemption when he rejects the corrupt tabloid methods. Crawford's constant justification for dealing in murder and vice is 'it will sell papers'. In the end, he flogs his own dirty washing and makes his biggest sale. He can't deny his nature.

on SHOCKPROOF.  

One of a cycle of film noirs directed by Douglas Sirk after WWII. They are not what he is remembered for but are all worth seeing. This is written by Sam Fuller whose presence is unmissable in the punchy dialogue, the scuzzy, pliable characters and sleazy plot complications. He is also responsible for the implausible central premise...

Patricia Knight plays a tough peroxide blonde out on parole after doing a stretch for murder. Cornel Wilde is the official in charge of her release, who... falls in love with her, though she is still seeing the oleaginous gangster (John Baragrey) she took the rap for. She even gets to live in the sap's house with his blind Italian mother (Esther Minciotti) and kid brother.

Then the public officer and the prisoner go on the run in a subplot reminiscent of the Hollywood road melodramas of the depression. The studio called in a re-write, so Fuller at least isn't to blame for the Hollywood ending. Yet, the improbabilities hardly matter. This is a stylish and entertaining crime thriller with a good cast playing engaging archetypes.

John Baragrey does best as the narcissistic racketeer; not an ordinary Joe gone wrong but a flashy, amoral sociopath. There's some talk of criminal psychology, which was a big issue back then. And Sirk gives the bogus intrigue a sheen of real quality. Wilde and Knight were married in real life and while they don't have the chemistry of Bogart-Bacall, they make attractive leads.

Revisionist western which reflects '60s US civil rights more than the historic persecution of Native Americans. Paul Newman plays a white settler adopted by Apaches as a young man. Finding himself a second class citizen on a hazardous stagecoach journey, he reluctantly uses his combat skills to save the lives of his fellow passengers when held up by bandits.

So it's a liberal reshuffle of the old western classic, Stagecoach. Though John Ford is unlikely to have featured characters like the avaricious Fredric March who starves Native Americans on a reservation and pockets the profit. Newman plays that archetype of US cinema, the isolationist eventually persuaded to act for the greater good.

It is a morality tale with few diversions. Newman is an effortlessly cool hero. Among the support cast, Diane Cilento is moving as a sassy, wise but lonely woman facing up to middle age. As ever, Richard Boone makes a convincingly brutal outlaw.

There is an epic score and impressive cinematography. The theme is the psychological violence of prejudice, and the personal injury of living in its grip. It's a philosophically interesting film, with suspense and strong characters; and a key star vehicle for peak period Paul Newman. 

Still the biggest box office hit ever, adjusted for inflation, David Selznick's blockbuster is the ultimate Hollywood production of the studio era. It's a faithful adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's bestseller about the US Civil War and the epic romance between tempestuous southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and rakish soldier of fortune Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

It's a spectacular landmark, though flawed. Scarlett survives the burning of Atlanta, but the film doesn't, and the second half is episodic and repetitive. There's a birth or serious accident or death along every five minutes like a speeded up soap opera. Characters change and then forget they've changed. The portrayal of the slaves is heartbreaking and unforgivably cruel.

Max Steiner's score carries the later scenes. Otherwise it's the performances that keep the film alive. Scarlett is an absurd archetype, but Vivien Leigh just about makes her credible over four hours through sheer star willpower. Gable has little to do other than twinkle roguishly but Hattie McDaniel and Olivia de Havilland at least make you care.

The troubled pre-production shows. There were many writers and three directors. Politically, it is hard to stomach. Towards the end it is strongly implied that Rhett and a few male cohorts join the Ku Klux Klan! Now the material is controversial it is promoted as an opportunity to reflect on the values of a vanished civilisation. But that's too much to ask.

Based on a scandalous true story about the murder of a woman by her aristocratic husband, which got entangled in the 1848 revolution in France. Bette Davis plays the notorious Henriette D-, the governess to their children, rumoured to be having an affair with the Duc (Charles Boyer). Warner Brothers intended this to be a rare sympathetic role for their star.

It doesn't entirely work that way. The neurotic wife (Barbara O’Neil) goes crazy with jealousy over the impeccable Henriette, but the tutor does actually entirely take over the household and win the love of the husband, even if they don't share a kiss. Bette captures the eye and Boyer is compelling. And there is chemistry. O’Neil was Oscar nominated but overacts horribly.

There's a large budget. This is a visual banquet; a sumptuous recreation of the interiors and costumes of Restoration Paris. Colour would have been nice. Like many productions intent on touring you around the scenery, it is a little slow, stiff and formal.

Much of its long running time is spent watching the acting talents of many Hollywood kids. This appeal is very much to taste; for me this ranks with religious awe as the stickiest feature of classic cinema. Especially when one of the moppets gets sick. It's not the best of Bette's melodramas for Warners, but there's a fine score from Max Steiner and those first rate production values.

An insight into the lives of rich sophisticates in ’30s California; mainly a celebrated and entitled -but alcoholic- lawyer (Lionel Barrymore) and his reckless, free spirited daughter (Norma Shearer). It is interesting that with fascism gaining influence in the US and Europe, MGM gave us heroes who see themselves as above the law and normal morality.

Lionel gets a prohibition gangster (Clark Gable) off a murder rap while Norma falls in love with him, and his expensive lifestyle. And if that already looks an impressive cast, there's Leslie Howard second billed as a well-heeled polo celebrity. They stand around expensive apartments in swanky clothes (by Adrian) drinking cocktails as their laissez faire decadence reaps a whirlwind.

Barrymore won the best actor Oscar and Shearer was nominated, which is a bit of a stretch. These are mannered performances. Much of the problem is the direction of Clarence Brown who abandons his stars to lengthy long or medium shots, like figures on a stage. Brown also got nominated and he became a star director of soaps at MGM.

The main interest in this today is to see Shearer, a huge star of early talkies, plus the frivolous precode hedonism. It opens with a discussion of Norma's scanty lingerie! The writing is unpolished, the sound is poor and it has a flat, uninteresting look. But it's fascinating to hear what Hollywood was talking about before the censors took charge.  

Marlene Dietrich wrote the plot outline in an attempt to broaden her exotic appeal. She's still a cabaret singer. And she meets her husband (Herbert Marshall) while she's swimming naked in a lake in Germany... but then the narrative diverts towards a more conventional Hollywood soap with the star suffering poverty and disgrace while struggling to provide for their son alone.

The best (and most famous) scene is a nightclub routine with Marlene in a gorilla costume. She removes the disguise to sing the excellent 'Hot Voodoo'. But the glamour and the naturalism clash. Dietrich complained the box office was undermined by censorship and it's possible to imagine her descent into the gutter may have been planned as more realistically brutal.

Josef von Sternberg wasn't a director for social realism though. When his star is compelled to live in a flophouse, he creates the most beautifully lit flophouse in cinema. The milieu is exotically sleazy. Marlene does a lot more acting than usual, rather than a model for von Sternberg's adoring lens.

Pre-stardom Cary Grant plays an unlikely gangster! Sidney Toler is fine in a cameo as a sordid detective. It's a curiosity. No one else walks on the wild side with Marlene's insouciance, but it just doesn't compute when she’s forced to wash dishes. That's what Lillian Gish does in a Griffith film, not Dietrich in a von Sternberg. It's an interesting diversion but only intermittently successful.

Bette Davis didn't get an Oscar nomination for her sensation in Of Human Bondage and it seems standard to assume that a year later, the Academy gave her the award for Dangerous to make up for the oversight. But this scenario ignores that Claudette Colbert deserved her win for It Happened One Night, and that Bette is pretty good in this.

There are signs it was jigged to give the audience a few echoes of her star-making role. But her character is completely different; an intelligent and celebrated stage actor who has fallen on hard times and alcoholism but finds a way back through the support of Franchot Tone's principled, wealthy architect/playboy.

It's melodrama and there are many sacrifices made before the cast manoeuvres towards a conclusion acceptable to the Production Code. This hasn't the prestige of a Somerset Maugham adaptation. The plot is clumsy, though there’s a witty script. The direction is dreadful, but this is Warner Brothers and there's enough talent on board to compensate.

Bette is fabulous and makes the standard situations a lot of fun. Including when she manipulates the engaged Franchot to kiss her in a thunderstorm. She is the sort of predatory girl you don't leave alone with your man! Her solution to an inconvenient marriage is to accelerate herself and her husband into a tree and see who survives! It's that crazy. And it's that irresistible.

Handsome adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel about Germany after WWI, and the pacifism which gives way to poverty and the emergence of the Nazis. Three young men return from the western front to rebuild the nation but find themselves swept up in the rising tide of a new tyranny. Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young share a palpable rapport as the friends.

Taylor falls for a penniless aristocrat played by Margaret Sullavan. She has a strong screen presence; slim, poised, husky and cool. And looks elegant in a beret. Frank Borzage turns their relationship into the ethereal hyper-romance which was his speciality. The normally lightweight Franchot Tone brings gravitas in support, with perhaps his best performance.

This has the only screenwriting credit of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sullavan complained she couldn't speak his dialogue so it was rewritten by the producer, Joe Mankiewicz. These difficulties are not apparent; the script has poetry and depth. There is some editorialising. The censors wanted the bad guys to be communists, not fascists! But Borzage held firm!

Still the politics is vague for 1938. It's a pacifist story set in a studio's idea of middle Europe. Today it works best as a lyrical romance; a Borzage picture, full of atmosphere and suffering. Sullavan's death in a sanitarium is protracted but gives the film a mythic weight. It's a weepie, but a relatively sophisticated one.