Film Reviews by Steve

It's not obvious which is more gorgeous, the sumptuous Technicolor location photography or Gene Tierney in her only Oscar nominated performance. No need for a line of dialogue explaining that she is hot trouble. Her beauty has bite too, feeding the narcissism which makes her a danger to anyone who threatens to come between her and her husband (Cornel Wilde).

Tierney creates a chilling portrait of a psychopath. The scene when she watches Wilde's disabled brother drown as she looks on from behind her shades is haunting, and it's astonishing that the Production Code allowed it to stand. Similarly when she kills herself while to frame her step sister (Jeanne Crain) who she suspects loves her man!

It has the dark pessimism of film noir, but in colour; the interiors are full of shadows and Tierney is a very malevolent femme fatale. However, much of the atmosphere of the film comes from its sunny rural exteriors, which isn't really noir. This is psychological melodrama.

A major weakness is Vincent Price's clodhopping performance as the idiotic lawyer who seeks to prove the crazy bombshell was killed by her sister. Wilde and Crain are fine, but the film is dominated by Tierney's stunning performance. This was Fox's biggest box office hit of the whole decade. While it's a little slow in places, it's a compelling, unsettling film.

Gothic romancer with supernatural themes which was a big factor in Gene Tierney's post WWII rise to stardom. She plays a farm girl from New England before the Civil War, who is invited to take a job as a governess in the stately home of an aristocratic relation. Vincent Price is the megalomaniac landowner who kills his wife in order to marry his beautiful country cousin.

Dragonwyck is the sort of old manor which has a haunted harpsichord. Where the servants mutter about strange goings-on. There's a lot of Poe in the story and that's a home draw for Price. His delusional philosophy conveys unmissable echoes of fascism. His performance is excessive, but it's not easy to imagine anyone else getting away with it.

There were many films in the forties about an inexperienced girl moving into a grand residence occupied by intimidating gentry and hostile staff. But this one isn't as fainthearted as most. Tierney plays her as a naïf, but she has ambition and stubborn values derived from her faith. Walter Huston is excellent as her unbending but protective father.

This was Joe Mankiewicz's directorial debut and he wrote the adapted screenplay. It creates is an impression of a believable, detailed historic society. It's a key American gothic film, and while the narrative is a little slim, there's a rich, eerie ambience thanks to Alfred Newman's score, the wonderful interiors, and the arcane language.

The first of Susan Hayward's trademark powerhouse performances which would make her the premier American female dramatic actor of the fifties. Smash Up gave her a debut Oscar nomination. She plays a nightclub singer who parks her career to bring up baby and support her crooner husband (Lee Bowman). Social anxiety leads to her becoming a drunk.

The Production Code didn't like this story at all, and many compromises were made. While the film is surprisingly realistic in its depiction of alcoholism, Hayward's descent into booze hell is much less ugly than in I'll Cry Tomorrow in 1955. Everything works out by the fadeout. But it's a typically emotional and volatile portrayal from the star.

There's a hot blooded face off between Hayward and Marsha Hunt as Bowman's lonely personal assistant who is in love with the boss. It's a great touch when Angie's swanky apartment fills up with gifts that her rival bought on his behalf. The feud finally erupts into a punch up in the girls-room, with the pie-eyed wife going in fists first.

Eddie Albert plays his standard best friend role with his usual warmth, and Marsha Hunt is excellent. Bowman is an insipid male lead. It's a pulpy melodrama with quite an expressionistic look as the singer loses her struggle with the bottle. The main pull is Hayward's star-making performance and she's on the screen all the way. She even has a soliloquy!

This is one of the great American dramas of the forties. It bears the signature of its German director Max Ophüls, who mostly made films in France. And it feels like the poetic realism that was popular there either side of WWII. It is set in turn of the century Vienna. Of course it's filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it does leave a persuasive impression of place.

Joan Fontaine plays an unremarkable, lower middle class child who falls in love with the handsome, talented concert pianist who lives in an adjacent building. Unknown to him. The man (Louis Jourdan) isn't a rogue but he is frivolous. She lives her life as a kind of homage to the musician but only meets him once, aged about 20. He leaves the girl with a child, and soon forgets about her.

The film isn't concerned with narrative realism; Lisa stands outside his house for years waiting for a chance to meet. When they do, they share a perfect day together, which for her is a kind of communion, but meaningless to him. It's a psychologically fascinating story framed in the masochism of the girl's obsession. She's the narrator, and it's not certain how much truth she tells.

The film confirms Fontaine's status among the great Hollywood film actors. Jourdan is exceptional too. Their initial meeting is a moment of cinema magic. It's such a beautiful looking film. Ophüls tells his story with a personal style and finesse; it feels more like a classic of world cinema than a Hollywood drama.

Bette Davis was always good when she was being bad, but here is poorly cast. She lack the looks her character is assumed to possess. She's ten years too old and wears so much makeup she's hard recognise. Davis plays a sociopathic monster who ruins her forgiving sister (Olivia de Havilland) by stealing her husband. After Davis compels him to suicide she comes back for Olivia's new fiancé...

The source novel won the Pulitzer Prize so perhaps it was more highbrow than this entertaining soap. This adaptation feels like the Hollywood southern melodramas of the fifties. There's a jazz soundtrack. The dichotomy between the good/bad sister is classic fifties. There is a corrupt, dying patriarch (Charles Coburn) who has a transgressive longing for his childlike niece. It's full of sexual innuendo.  

This was John Huston's second film and it's not typical of his work. Though maybe his liberal politics allowed for the more enlightened attitude to race, for the time. After the drunken bad girl kills a mother and child in a hit and run, she casually accuses an African American (Ernest Anderson) of taking the car. The film is explicit that her testament will be verified because she is white.

Amazingly the film wasn't allowed an overseas certificate because it represented USA as being racially biased! Possibly there is a much more intelligent film dormant within this production. What we get is a Bette Davis vehicle, and while she's grotesquely fascinating, this is not always for the intended reasons. It's an interesting, implausible curiosity.

This film is so tightly knotted to its theme of vanity that it eventually becomes a moral fable. Bette Davis plays a high society coquette who marries a modest but rich businessman (Claude Rains) to keep her crooked brother out of jail. Her marriage is no impediment to having a good time in the company of fast men. So Mr. Skeffington toils without love, filling her life with riches.

The unfaithful wife loses her looks after a bout of diphtheria, and learns valuable life lessons. By 1944, in a lifetime of heavy smoking, Bette looked middle aged and she is hardly convincing as a famous beauty. In fact there is a premonition of Baby Jane Hudson in her heavy makeup, even before the illness. But credit to Davis for allowing her later grotesque appearance.

She dominates the film, and haunts your nightmares. Rains gives a more subtle and touching performance as her rejected husband, a Jewish man who takes his daughter to Germany as the Nazis come to power. The film starts just before WWI and concludes with the world about to be again consumed by war. Bette gets to wear a compilation of classic frocks from the first half of the century.

There's quite a lot of humour (from Julius & Philip Epstein). The witty script keeps the drama fairly superficial. Almost nothing is done with the theme of anti-semitism. This is an epochal film in the history of classic cinema, because it was the final release of Bette's hated contract with Warner Brothers. And while not her best, it's a significant entry in that body of work.

Culture clash comedy which is a nice memento of the star appeal of Ivor Novello in early British cinema. He plays an exiled Russian prince of no fixed address who moves into the home of a conventional English middle class family and changes their lives. It was adapted from Novello's own stage play.

The strength of the film is the humour which deals in the usual motifs of the sitcom, like social climbing and class etiquette. And the ensemble work of the cast sparkles. Remarkable to see a barely recognisable, and very young Ida Lupino as a shopgirl shacked up with her boss...

Novello stands out as the languid, decadent aristocrat who introduces the family to unfamiliar freedoms, mostly sexual, as he transforms their suburban home with his balalaika, exotic cigarettes and Russian gimcracks. And vodka. He is charming, handsome and elegant under the makeup. And just a little camp.

His comic timing is exceptional. It's easy to see why he was such a big star. Some of the acting in smaller roles is theatrical, but still, very funny and the cast squeeze all the laughs out of a pretty good script. The main negative is that when they pull the message together at the fade out, it seems to be- know your place! But it's fun getting there.

Intelligent and very funny social comedy which was a massive box office hit. It looks a knockout with the pop art visuals, stunning use of widescreen, quirky editing, striking Technicolor... And directed by Mike Nichols with an innovative and surreal imagination.

Dustin Hoffman (in a star making role) is home from college and seduced by a friend of the family (Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson), which proves an impediment when he wants to marry her daughter (Katherine Ross). It is labelled a counterculture film, but that's not really what is on screen.

The graduate may be experiencing generational friction with his parents and their bourgeois pals. But he is not rebelling against their wealth or hypocrisy. He is a product of them. He has no causes. He is just drifting. He has as little to communicate as his materialistic relatives.

It's a generational film, but Hoffman is not playing a hero/anti-hero. He's just another thwarted American life, alienated, inarticulate and lost within his own familiar subculture. A landmark second film by Nichols, with standout use of brilliant Simon and Garfunkel songs.

Punishingly energetic High School musical from the Broadway stage which made a star of Ann-Margret. She's a girl from Sweet Apple, Ohio who wins a competition to kiss a popular rock and roll bad boy (Jesse Pearson) before he goes in the army. And, that's pretty much it. Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh were nominal stars, but it's a showcase for Ann-Margret.

Not only for her astonishingly dynamic dancing and faux-naif vocals but her alluring freshness. And abundant sex appeal. The film is kinetically directed in primary colours and widescreen by musical veteran George Sydney. Including split screen effects. The huge peak is the extended Lot of Livin' to Do, which belongs among the great ensemble dance routines in cinema.

The song everyone remembers is Dick and Janet's duet on Put On a Happy Face. He complained there was too much Ann-Margaret, but actually the screen misses her when she is absent. Of the rest of the cast, Maureen Stapleton is funny as Van Dyke's incredibly passive-aggressive mother. It's a surprisingly sophisticated topical comedy.

And it's a satire of small town America and rock and roll hysteria. Pearson is unambiguously Elvis Presley. Some of the routines are filler, especially a dance number for Janet Leigh which feels like it was included to pump up her screen time. It's the bright, shiny surface of this joyful film that attracts. And Ann-Margret's magnetic, vibrant performance.

This is a very funny social comedy which makes satirical observations about English class system. It is compassionate about the suffering of the poor and critical of the pitiless entitlement of the rich. It's difficult to watch without comparing it to the musical remake, My Fair Lady. But Pygmalion is too good to be lost in its shadow..

Phonetics expert Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) makes a wager that he can pass off grubby flower seller/beggar Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) as a lady at a grand ball... But this isn't really a romance, and the pair do not become a convincing couple. Eliza has no status and her modified accent prevents her from rejoining the working poor, so she no longer has any home.

Howard is excellent as the arrogant, careless Professor. But it's Hiller's film and she is both extremely moving, and really very funny. The bath scene, when the housekeeper scrubs the filth off the indignant pupil is hysterical. Eliza has her own moral code, and an awareness of her social position, which is a notch above a prostitute.

And that difference is crucial to her self respect. Hence her catchphrase: 'I'm a good girl I am!' It's a kind of fairytale, but while Pygmalion is clearly not social realism, there is far more care for the realities of poverty than in My Fair Lady. It's a handsome production with an Oscar winning script and wonderful cast performances. And Wendy Hiller is a sensational Eliza.

This popular Ealing comedy is an early draft of national myth making about London's response to the blitz. During the hardship that follows the war, the explosion of a dormant bomb reveals buried medieval treasure... and a deed which indicates that Pimlico isn't part of Britain at all, but a fiefdom of the Duke of Burgundy...

And therefore isn't subject to the austerity laws of postwar Britain. So the locals rip up their ration books and identity cards. The action is staged around the bomb site and the film builds a perverse nostalgia for the war years, when people pulled together. 

Given opportunity, leaders emerge. Stanley Holloway wants to use the windfall to develop social projects. Raymond Huntley turns his bank branch into the treasury. Margaret Rutherford shines as the excitable Professor who explains the historical back story. Ultimately the locals accept that deregulation leads to anarchy, and rejoin the UK.

There are the standard motifs of Ealing comedy, like the dreaded men from the Ministry, and the resourcefulness of the community, but the politics is muted. Though a shortish film, the interesting set up is overextended, and the satire is very gentle. However the ensemble cast makes it fun.  Don't miss those Brexit parallels!

This is an independent production intended to imitate the popular Gainsborough melodramas of the forties. So there is a tyrannical aristocracy, a band of troublesome gypsies, intense, transgressive passions and illicit meetings in the stables as the protagonists struggle for the wealth and privilege that comes with land and status.

There is a detailed and colourful recreation of a historic English country estate, but the revenge narrative is so sordid it could be film noir. The events are loosely based on a real case from Victorian times. Valerie Hobson plays the poor cousin of rich relations, who takes a position as their family governess.

While she is quietly ambitious and marries the creepy heir (Michael Gough), she longs for the manager of the estate (Stewart Granger) who is tormented by the awful burden of being an illegitimate offspring. He looks after the horses while making plans to seize his thwarted inheritance. Leading to a sweet plot twist at the climax.

The colour photography is dramatic, especially of Hobson and Granger who sparkle darkly together. Valerie gets to wear some luxurious gowns once she is established in the master's bedroom. Everything is overstated and degenerate, and invariably set on horseback. Gainsborough couldn't have done it better.

This was only briefly shown in cinemas as a charge of plagiarism was filed and it wasn't seen for fifty years, until it fell out of copyright. Whatever the validity of the legal challenge, this is a typical Val Lewton horror, rich with atmosphere: of shadows and fog, and sea shanties; of arcane traditions of the sea and dense emotional anxiety.

RKO asked Lewton- the producer- to get some use out of the studio's water tank and a ship already built for another production. The Ghost Ship examines the deepest fear of its main character; Russell Wade plays an inexperienced Third Officer on his maiden voyage on a cargo ship, concerned that he lacks practical knowledge.

The captain (Richard Dix) is a martinet obsessed with authority, but also he lacks moral will. He always fails to act, resulting in death or danger, but has built a weird, crazy philosophy justifying his negligence. The novice begins to suspect the captain's sanity, but is isolated because everyone else on the ship is blind to these misfortunes, and he doubts his own judgement.

The tale is narrated by sailor who is mute; his poetic commentary is extremely pessimistic. There are extraordinary action sequences; when the anchor is returned to its locker, a labourer (debuting Laurence Tierney) gets shut inside by the skipper and slowly crushed to death. There is that touch of the peculiar that is characteristic of the Lewton horrors. It's a shame this brief, hallucinatory film isn't better known.

Frantic but dated sex comedy is a good candidate for the ultimate sixties swinging London film. It's a vehicle for Oscar nominated Lynn Redgrave as the goodhearted but frumpy Georgy, alienated by the contemporary scene, and in particular, Charlotte Rampling's chic, slumming superbabe. Dressed by Mary Quant.

The humour has a few sharp edges, particularly regarding the glamour girl's rejection of her new baby. And perhaps Georgy's inner beauty is too defined by her potential for domesticity, to please modern audiences. But the film has incredible energy and is brilliantly photographed and edited.

The characters are eccentric rather than mere period archetypes. What they most have is spontaneity, particularly Alan Bates' kinetic performance as the lover of both women. James Mason is a northern millionaire who wants to set up Georgy as his mistress. He is a sort of stand-in father figure, but the film glosses over this ambiguity.

It's a quirky romcom which offers a nice snapshot of the London Ray Davies sang about. Though Georgy's fear of missing out is timeless. She only wants love, but it turns out to be too much to ask for. The mood is captured perfectly in the title single by The Seekers; lively, winsome and a bit homespun. Both were huge hits.

In 1955, the release of the French thriller Les Diaboliques reset the genre for the next ten years, with its mood of psychological uncertainty, and the ostentatiously twisty plot capped by a big final reveal which hopefully upends the audience's expectations. No studio ploughed this furrow deeper than Hammer.

And no film ripped off the motifs of Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic as audaciously as Taste of Fear. There's even a body hidden in a swimming pool... But no matter, the illusion works again and this is the best of the Hammer psychological suspense films. The performances are persuasive and director Seth Holt evokes a pleasing noir sensibility.

Susan Strasbourg calls on the luxurious coastal mansion of her estranged, wealthy father only to be informed by his new wife (Ann Todd) that he has been suddenly called away. The teenager is vulnerable because she is confined to a wheelchair, and soon she begins to be confronted by her father's corpse. Is she crazy, or is the stepmother...

Well, the audience is requested by the management of the cinema not to divulge the ending of this exciting suspense thriller. It's a woman in peril film which benefits from a quietly menacing portrayal by Ann Todd. Aspects of the plot are contrived, and don't work at all on a second viewing. But, it remains a fun, entertaining shocker.