Film Reviews by Steve

This is set in a small town in early twentieth century Alabama where little has changed since the civil war. It is a poor community, of low wage workers and racial apartheid, which is resistant to change. The southern aristocracy has atrophied and the new money of American capitalists is about to feed on the corpse of the confederacy.  

The adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play is set almost entirely in a single house. As a woman, Bette Davis' matriarch has to fight for wealth through her husband (Herbert Marshall). He has grown tired of exploiting the weak and is terminally sick. But the wife and her brothers need his money to secure a deal which will make them very rich.

 This is a fascinating film of the decline of a corrupt tradition about to be consumed by the wealth of the few. They are all avaricious monsters who howl and tear at each other as much as those they exploit. Davis is impassive behind her mask of white paint, which conceals her tawdry appetites and sordid ambitions. 

It is specifically about the deep south, which would dominate Hollywood drama in the middle of the century. Hellman's writing is more precise than the poetics of her contemporaries. This is a frank exposure of the physical and emotional violence hidden in domesticity and a society where southern gentility is merely a strategy.

Film historians routinely tell us that during the Great Depression, audiences turned to screwball comedy and musicals for diversion. Sure they did, but they also made hits out of The Grapes of Wrath and this, Pearl Buck's huge epic of Chinese feudal poverty.

It's the story of a woman sold into slavery as a child during a famine and her struggle to endure a proud husband, a hostile environment and an oppressive aristocracy. Luise Rainer gives one of the most moving of all cinema performances as a pragmatic, brutalised, determined survivor. Paul Muni is convincing as her vain, impulsive husband.  

This is a huge spectacle, with vast scenes of revolution. The people are chattels, owned by the rich, and destitute women suffer most of all because they are possessed by their husbands. Wealth is hoarded by the few and the poor are blown about by the winds of history just as the deadly locusts are by capricious thermals.  

It is long and slow, but hypnotic. The realism is horrifying at times, like the period when the family survives by eating earth and the husband sifts the soil for roots. There is also a suggestion that the wife kills one of her babies. There is a little hope at the climax. It's the incredible hardship and hunger that linger in the mind.

This is the best of the many end of the world films made during the cold war. Its premise is that the accumulation of nuclear weapons will inevitably lead to their deployment which will potentially end human life. And we get the pleasure of listening to Fred Astaire explain the concept of mutually assured destruction!  

Gregory Peck plays a buttoned down submarine Commander unable to articulate the pain of losing his family. He eventually falls in love with a party girl (Ava Gardner) who is drinking to forget. They meet in Melbourne in the last inhabitable city on earth, waiting for the winds to bring the fatal radiation.

The film delivers its anti-nuclear message clear and stark. We are less moved by the two stars finding solace in the path of inevitable death, than the premonition of the destruction of ourselves. Stanley Kramer is critical of the forces that divide us, including class and religion, as well as the nationalism that provokes the war.  

The production utilises its Australian locations evocatively, the black and white photography is beautiful and there is a quite superb script in which people communicate through implication and evasion. It is a study of how people behave when there is no hope left. 

 The action explodes into life as a speeding train delivers a one-armed war veteran (Spencer Tracy) to a remote desert town to take a medal to the father of a Japanese soldier killed in WWII.  Tracy discovers this farmer was murdered by one of the locals and the crime covered up.

The suspense never really eases off. But what makes the introduction (scored with great vigour by André Previn) so stunning is the artistic spectacle of the Cinemascope-plus the gorgeous colour- which captures the epic grandeur of the Mojave Desert and its great white sky.

The film is set in '46 and seeks rapprochement for the victimisation of Japanese citizens in the US after Pearl Harbour. It warns of the consequences of hate. A man is violently killed for his race. And the disabled veteran is next. No stranger was ever made less welcome. 

Spencer Tracy leads effectively, but the film is carried by its all time great support cast of western rednecks: Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Walter Brennan. The sense of threat is very potent. We empathise  so completely with Tracy's outsider/victim that it makes the anti-racism of the story's message extremely powerful.   

Short and very sweet musical fairytale set in France after WWII, but really an idealised provincial fantasy town of button shops and circuses. Leslie Caron stars as a homeless orphan who joins a carnival and falls in love with a philandering magician while distantly admired by Mel Ferrer's inhibited, saturnine  puppeteer.  

As common with folktales, the story conceals a trauma. We never discover what past sorrow causes Lili to retreat in her mind to a make believe world of puppets, but its burden is palpable. Ferrer was disabled in an accident, but there is also an impression he remains distressed by the war. And the film acutely captures the pain of unrequited love.

 OK, Leslie Caron played many gamine ingenues in her career and Lili is that persona pushed to its extreme. But she is very moving as we watch her mature from shunned waif to a beautiful girl with a trusting but discerning heart. It is a story of wish-fulfilment, of a child learning how to love and becoming a woman.  

The puppets and the carnival world are wonderfully realised. The photography is lovely, with the primary colours of the sunny days absorbed into the inky blues of night. It is a whimsical, enchanting and optimistic film where virtue triumphs over cynicism.

In 1949, James Cagney returned to Warner Brothers for an update of his early '30s prohibition films. He plays Cody Jarrett, a crazy, mother-fixated killer, like he is one of the most-wanted of the depression. There is a tension between this outlaw throwback, and the modern scientific police methods used to track him down.

This is primarily a gangster film. When Jarrett wants to break out of jail, he doesn't have a hidden map of the building and a plan; he busts out with a gun and improvises. But it has the look of film noir. When Cody comes after his disloyal heavy (Steve Cochran) and unfaithful, degenerate moll (Virginia Mayo), it is as dark as The Big Sleep.

The characters are more nuanced than the pre-code gangster films, and the cops are smarter. It is a genre landmark which marries the punchy gangbusters of the early mob films with the gloomy introspection of post war film noir.  And it is as tense and exciting as a thriller.

There's a phenomenal star performance from Cagney, but the support is also superb. Especially Edmond O'Brien as a G Man who goes undercover with the most volatile crook in films, to plan a heist in an oil depot. The incendiary ending when Cagney literally burns up the set is film legend. 

A clique of New York intellectuals is unable to apply the ethics and philosophy they constantly reference to their own lives, in even the most basic way. Their narcissistic, moral shiftiness is sugared by some witty dialogue, Gordon Willis' gorgeous black and white Panavison, and the Gerschwin score. But there is a lot of satire here.

Their hypocrisy contrasts with a teenager (Mariel Hemingway) who is Woody Allen's younger girlfriend. She is the only one able to apply a system of values to her actual choices. Woody plays quite an amoral anti-hero. But she gives the story some optimism, including the sweet wisdom of her fabulous closing line.

The real hero of the film though is Manhattan Island, magnificently captured for all time. Including that famous, beautiful shot of Woody and Diane Keaton against the 59th Street Bridge at dawn. Sometimes the background overwhelms the dramas of these urban creatives in tide of romanticism and nostalgia.

The performances are all brilliant and the script is outstanding: 'My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst'. Diane is always special in Woody's films. Possibly the artistic serenity of the surface style has obscured its distressed depths. But that makes it a fascinating film to rediscover.

Preston Sturges' best film is a very funny vehicle for comedy legend Claudette Colbert, but stolen adorably by crooner Rudy Vallee in a (mostly) non-musical role. As is usual with Sturges, this adapts familiar screwball scenarios: Claudette runs away from home and matrimony and flees across country without money or luggage, hoping to pick up a rich benefactor.

She is adopted by an eccentric oil millionaire (Vallee) while Colbert's husband (Joel McCrea) races her down to Palm Beach to save their marriage. The story kicks off at maximum speed and never lets up, the baffling opening scene satisfyingly resolved in a crazy finale.

 There is less physical humour than usual for Sturges, though a motif of Colbert continually breaking Vallee's glasses with her feet is actually pretty funny. There is a typical support cast of oddballs, such as the very deaf Wienie King and the rifle shooting members of the Ail and Quail Club*.

 But it is the opposites-attract chemistry of Colbert and Vallee that makes the film so special, with the rich man's naive, homespun philosophy up against the runaway's streetwise wit. Arguably this is last great screwball classic, which brings to a close the golden age of comedy. 

*there are some racist caricatures.

Some bright young things are on a scavenger hunt among the homeless of New York. A ditzy socialite (Carole Lombard) explains this 'is like a treasure hunt, except... in a scavenger hunt you find something that nobody wants'. She attaches herself to 'forgotten man' Godfrey (William Powell) in the most cynical meet-cute in pictures.

He becomes the butler to her anarchic family. The father (Eugene Palette) earns big in the stock exchange, but his dependents spend it bigger; his idiot wife (Alice Faye) and her freeloading protege (Mischa Auer, who is hilarious). The girl has a dangerous sister (Gail Patrick), who has the potential for the kind of political extremism sweeping Europe.

The butler survives the family, and inevitably saves them, teaching them humility and (by implication) the value of Roosevelt's new deal. Powell is sensational; charming, with an underlying dignity which is never tarnished no matter how reduced his circumstances: 'The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job'.

It is a romantic comedy, and Powell and crazy Carole are adorable as a very odd couple. It is funny, and it is heartbreaking and it is also about the political dangers of the depression. It is a classic example of how skilled '30s screwball got at reflecting America back to itself.  

One of many fifties southern dramas influenced by Tennessee Williams,  which employ similar archetypes: the photogenic drifter; an ailing, corpulent patriarch obsessed with legacy; a cerebral, inhibited (but beautiful) ice-maiden; and a hot, earthy coquette. Plus the sickly remnants of southern aristocracy.

 All these are present in The Long, Hot Summer, which is freely adapted from short stories by southern laureate William Faulkner. These opulent, atmospheric films are soundtracked by orchestral scores and the chirping of crickets. Usually there is the cry of a lonesome steam train, though here it is a paddle-steamer.

 Paul Newman is charismatic as the ambitious, mysterious stranger, ingratiating himself into the secrets and lies of a rich family of cotton planters while romancing a repressed schoolteacher (Joanne Woodward). Lee Remick plays a sexy and manipulative siren married to the shiftless son of Orson Welles' overbearing patriarch.  

This is a dreadful performance from the hugely overweight Welles. He is unintelligible. But I really like this genre, full of poetic, philosophical digressions and obsessed with sex. The film has a wonderfully rich, dreamy ambience but it's a mostly a star vehicle for the young, handsome Paul Newman.

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.