Film Reviews by Steve

The boxing film was always an apt metaphor for the Hollywood left in the era of film noir. They expose the corruption of the system as the boxers fight each other rather than those with power. Their willing participation in their own exploitation and destruction made the sport a potent symbol for the myth of the American dream..  

This is is the best of these. Robert Ryan plays a no-hope puncher nearing the end, vaguely aware he will never be a champion. His next bout has been fixed by his manager, who doesn't even tell him because he thinks his man has no chance anyway.  He is literally the fall guy. He fights, but he fight isn't fair. He has been sold.

 The film plays out in real time over a terse, tense 70 minutes. Ryan (a boxer in college) is magnificent as a decent man who has never been corrupted by the hell he lives in, and so must destroyed physically. The outcome is heartbreaking. Audrey Totter is also very moving as his suffering wife.

The fight game is powerfully evoked: the brutal contests; the punch drunk veterans ; the wealthy racketeers. Hard-up punters pay rich promoters to see other poor men beat the hell out of each other. The hostility of the crowd towards the losers is so powerful and shocking. Robert Wise places us in the seats, among these voyeurs, another one of the mob.  

This is an adaptation of a novel by one of hardboiled fiction's most pessimistic writers, David Goodis, a poet of impoverished lives ruined by dumb misfortune. It is glamourised a little for the screen, but is still subdued, like a sad, heartbreak ballad.  

Aldo Ray tells the story with a catch in his voice like a corny torch singer; a sentimental ill fated deadbeat. He is being tracked by a pair of relentless killers convinced he has pocketed the loot from their bank raid. Rudy Bond and Brian Keith are a fine double act as the menacing heavies.

There are relishable support performances from Anne Bancroft as the low rent model Aldo Ray picks up in a bar and James Gregory as a resourceful detective chasing up the stolen money.  Stirling Silliphant's screenplay conveys the weariness of Goodis' prose and the threadbare lives of his characters.  

It is mostly set in Los Angeles and the oil fields of California, but concludes in the winter snowdrifts of Wyoming. Like On Dangerous Ground the film contrasts the dirty city with white rural snowscapes. The death of a villain by snowplough must be unique in cinema! This stylish film is one of the classic LA noirs.

Fritz Lang's final Hollywood film is anti-death penalty. A novelist seeks to prove the fallibility of justice by planting clues to indicate that he is the killer of a burlesque dancer. He intends his publisher to then reveal the evidence was faked, proving circumstantial evidence is too precarious to justify capital punishment.  

No such luck. This being a Langian world, subject to the indifference of fate, the writer's accomplice is killed in a car accident the day the jury is to deliver its verdict! With the writer (Dana Andrews) on death row, his estranged fiancée (Joan Fontaine) works to clear his name.

There is a big final reveal, which though unlikely is still enjoyable... The weakness of the film is its stars. Andrews gradually ossified through the fifties and Fontaine is about 20 years too old. And the film looks awfully low budget. The bonus is its trashy burlesque setting and the sassy dialogue of its support cast of strippers.  

The police don't seem too bothered when they find out they were building a case against a writer researching a book. But though the story is improbable, it is still suspenseful and its many twists pay off.  And the film does actually make a reasonable case against capital punishment.

Robert Wise's polemic against capital punishment is based on the real life case of Barbara Graham who was executed in San Quentin in 1955 on unreliable evidence. It's a procedural film which explains how the prisoner is processed from her conviction, all the way to the death penalty. The system is characterised as barbaric and legally hazardous.    

The story casts doubt on her guilt and argues that she was ill-used by a defective judiciary and the parasitic media. It was based on Graham's letters, and articles by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who initially condemned her, but eventually tried to save her from the gas chamber.

Graham was a prostitute with a history of petty crime. She lies by reflex. She is also represented as an affectionate mother who a victim of domestic abuse. Susan Hayward- one of the very best dramatic actors of the fifties- is superb as the complex, condemned woman. 

Wise actually puts us inside the gas chamber with Graham, trapped within the voyeuristic gaze of the press and representatives of law and order. The film makes a powerful case (though has been criticised for altering facts) but it's Hayward's intense, kinetic performance that ultimately dominates.

With Dr. X (1932), one of a pair of horror films made by Warner Brothers in the early '30s, shot with mostly the same cast and crew and both in 2-strip technicolor. The greens and browns of this process give The Mystery of the Wax Museum an unusual and exotic look, allied to the striking deco sets (even in the morgue!). Fay Wray gets top billing, but is in a supporting role.

The film is carried by Glenda Farrell as the sort of fast talking girl reporter that got her typecast.  Lionel Atwill plays a waxwork sculptor in London whose creations are destroyed when his partner burns down the gallery in an insurance scam. These statues were the artist's closest confidents, and his face and hands are scorched in the blaze.

He reopens in New York years later and overcomes his disability by ordering corpses that look like his lost works and coating them in wax. Fay Wray looks the image of his long ago favourite, Marie Antoinette. The horror is mostly confined to the last ten minutes, particularly when Wray pulls off the maniac's wax mask to reveal the hideous distorted face beneath.

This is a wonderfully entertaining film. While we're waiting for the exotic horror of the climax, the tough, fast talking dialogue is a delight. Farrell is a blast and establishes a rapport with everyone she shares the screen with. The wax museum premise became a horror staple, but this is the best version and a marvellous swan song for the 2-strip colour process.

WC Fields used his feature films to recycle favourite sketches from his stage act, so they are inevitably episodic. This feels like his first masterpiece because his tragicomic persona crystallises perfectly. He is a timeless, suffering everyman whose plans are always thwarted. He only wants to go to California to run an orange grove...  

Fields' is a middle aged man whose wife has become alien to him. He is aware that he has been left behind by a changing world. His coping strategies have made him weary and unfulfilled. There is a residual charm which is evident to the kindhearted, but looks grotesque to most. Traumatised by domesticity, he is much kinder than his times.

 Like all film comedians, Fields creates a strong visual image: his cigar, white flannel suit and boater, the ruined nose. The opening episode is the funniest with his grocery store destroyed by the blind/deaf Mr. Muggles, who after wrecking the glassware, hilariously crosses the road outside untouched by the speeding traffic.

Such are the frustrating laws of the Fieldsian universe. He can see every disaster as it approaches, but is powerless to resist. All he can do is palliate with whisky and cigars. It is a standard strategy in comedy to place your protagonist in the last place he wants to be, which is exactly where his immortal alter ego lives his life. 

When comic acts from vaudeville got to make Hollywood films they were usually stiffed with B directors and budgets. The Marx Brothers fared better than most and here rated multiple Oscar winner Leo McCarey. Harpo, Groucho and Chico (and Zeppo in his last film) worked their act for years, and finessed their strong visual image and contrasting comic styles.

There's Groucho's fast talking wordplay, Chico's garbled malapropisms, and Harpo's destructive, primal mime. Groucho takes over the corrupt oligarchy of Freedonia which is slipping into war with neighbours Sylvania for whom Harpo and Chico are operating as spies. With populist governments emerging in 1930s Europe, this was satire.

But it's mainly an opportunity for the trio to unleash their trademark anarchy. There's a great visual joke with Groucho playing both sides of a mirror. Margaret Dupont again scores as their uncomprehending stooge.  Marx Brothers films are best when Groucho is reeling off sardonic, convoluted, rapid-fire gags and not so much for the musical interludes of the other two.

Which makes this their best film, dense with immaculate Grouchoisms.  It's the pick of their early Paramount films and it bombed at the box office, badly. The remaining three brothers left for MGM thinking that they were finished. But Duck Soup has become an influential comedy (there's plenty of Monty Python here) and is now rated their masterpiece. 

With 42nd Street a hit, Warner Brothers made Gold Diggers in its image. Busby Berkley arranges the dance numbers and the brilliant songs are again by Dubin and Warren. There are familiar faces on screen with Dick Powell as a blue-blood composer romancing Broadway showgirl Ruby Keeler, to the outrage of his stuffy Boston family.        

If the comedy, script and situations aren't quite to the standard of 42nd Street, Berkley's musical numbers are still sensational and the best part of the film. It opens with Ginger Rogers singing We're in the Money as the rented scenery and costumes are reclaimed. Broadway is feeling the impact of the depression.  

There's Shadow Dance and the amazing Pettin' In the Park. This time it's Powell who has to go on at the last minute after the juvenile wrecks his back, and he ends the routine trying to get Keeler out of her steel corset with a tin opener. There's some fizzy, salacious dialogue from Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahan. This is still a year before the production code.

Remember My Forgotten Man is the showstopper with a phenomenal vocal from Etta Moten,  mimed by Blondell. Berkley cuts from the stage to scenes of men queuing at a soup kitchens. Warner Brothers supported the New Deal and Roosevelt. Berkley's numbers are usually exquisite confections, but here he shows us how to dance the blues.

This civil war comedy-drama is now considered Buster Keaton's classic though it wasn't well received at the time.  He plays a rebel engine driver who isn't allowed to enlist and so is shunned by his fiancée. When his train, with his girl on board, is stolen by Northern spies, Buster must retrieve the locomotive, rescue the girl and secure a strategic advantage for the South.  

 It's an ambitious film, with armies of extras staging huge battles, with spectacular stunts, shot in remote locations in a period setting. Keaton was thinking bigger than his comic contemporaries. Sadly, its failure meant his independence was compromised and he would soon sign a disastrous deal with MGM which sent his career into a spiral.  

But he was still at his peak. His gymnastics around the engine are graceful and breathtaking, with many truly hair-raising stunts. He still performs his familiar persona, the Great Stoneface, but also inhabits a believable character. Marion Mack gives an appealingly ditsy performance as his capricious sweetheart.  

While the film is spectacular, it isn't among Buster's funniest films. It doesn't help that so many people are dying on screen. It's an action film. The period detail is persuasive and the star gives a brilliant demonstration of his prodigious talent as a physical actor and comic artist.

When the Marx Brothers signed with Irving Thalberg, he asked them if they would take a pay cut as Zeppo had quit. Groucho replied that without him they were worth twice as much. It's a shame that no one brought similar insight to the musical numbers that stretch their MGM debut over 90 minutes and introduce longueurs to their manic, fast talking comedy.  

The act was revised, toning down the anarchy, and making the trio more likeable by having them roast the bad guys, rather than just anyone. The difference is obvious, but there are still some long sequences of fabulous wordplay, including the legendary Sanity Claus sketch.

 There is also the famous crowded stateroom scene. Margaret Dumont adds a little continuity by leaving Paramount with the remaining trio to play their stooge.  The vocals of Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones are, I guess, a matter of personal taste.

It's tempting to lean on the FF during the musical numbers. Harpo and Chico's recitals are actually more of a challenge than the opera. Hard to be too critical as this was the biggest box office hit of their careers, but my preference is for the earlier, crazier Paramount comedies.

Classic meditation on greed which is sometimes credited as a western, but isn't really a genre film. It is set in Mexico in 1925, opening in an unprosperous town where desperate, destitute American drifters congregate and chisel out a few lousy pesos from other crooks. After lucking into a little money, three bums decide to fund an arduous trip to search for gold in the mountains.

When they find it, they become possessed by the mesmeric lure of wealth. The gold distorts them. This is no surprise to the old prospector who has seen it all before (Walter Huston). A younger man (Tim Holt) becomes suspicious and fiercely protective of his good fortune, to the point of murder. But Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is consumed entirely by the power of greed.

And he becomes violently paranoid. This is a persuasive and intense parable which the locations help make realistic. But it is mainly an actors film. Holt is very good in a more neutral role. Bogart is astonishing as the shifty lowlife who is destroyed by his own moral weakness. Best of all is Walter Huston who is absolutely convincing as a grizzled veteran of both mining, and human frailty.

These have become legendary film characters. It's a hugely unconventional and influential work from John Huston. Unfortunately it didn't find an audience at the time, maybe because people were unsure of what it was. Few films end as bitterly and brutally as this. There are no good guys. It feels as epic and eternal as a a tale from the Old Testament.

Howard Hawks' legendary western is bursting with points of interest, but there are many flaws too. It is an archetypal cowboy story as a group of men move cattle from Texas to Abilene after the Civil War. John Wayne has built his huge cattle empire up from the dirt, and must transport the stock through 'Indian' country with Montgomery Clift, the foundling he brought up as a son.

Wayne assumes the role of law and order among his men, enforced by his gun. It was a breakthrough for Duke; a complex role which he fortunately elects to underplay rather than go the whole Captain Bligh. Clift emerges as a star in his debut role, as the boy who takes over the cattle drive. In the early scenes, Hawks seems to have Clift and John Ireland sparking like Bogart and Bacall.

But there is plenty of evidence of a troubled production. Ireland just disappears after a promising start. The later episodes are badly scripted and the plot resolves poorly (with a typical Hollywood ending). Joanne Dru's character and dialogue are disasters and she's not good enough to salvage such a terrible role.

There is an impression of the vast interior and its many dangers. The photography and score are excellent. While Wayne is obviously at home in the skin of his western archetype, it's Clift that makes the greater impact. It's a generational film (James Dean stole Monty's performance). Clift is an exciting, unconventional presence and must be the quickest on draw in all Hollywood.

Henry Fonda's portrayal of a narcissistic and mediocre cavalry officer is the film's main asset. If a new leader announces himself with 'I am not a martinet but...' you know where this is heading. Fort Apache is a remote camp intended to simply keep Native Americans on the reservation but the new boss' vanity escalates this task into the bloody massacre of his own men.

The other impressive factor is its interpretation of the 'Indian' wars, which isn't flattering towards the settlers. The Apaches are portrayed as sophisticated guerrilla warriors, wronged by political expediency. John Ford deserves credit for revising the representation of Native Americans usual in Hollywood westerns, and indeed in his own films.

Sadly, the themes and Fonda's great performance are set adrift in a vast epic of sentimental whimsy: the constant, idiotic quest for whisky supplies; the comedy punch-ups; the singing group harmonising Irish ballads; the comical drilling of inept new recruits. The actual story constantly wanders off into long diversions of knockabout tomfoolery.

Ford's company of character actors is well capable of carrying off this horseplay. The photography and the familiar locations are fine. John Wayne has a badly written support role as the experienced veteran. There is the standard western theme of what too much power does to the few that exercise it. But the comic relief ultimately overwhelms the film.

This is the only major Hollywood film about the war in Burma made during WWII. It follows a platoon of paratroopers dropped into the jungle to blow up a Japanese radar, which they achieve with little difficulty. But, when they fail to be met by air support, they must walk to their base through hundreds of miles of hazardous and unfamiliar terrain. The jungle becomes the enemy.

The opening scenes are realistic and focus on the logistics of running the audacious operation. The leader of the group is played by Errol Flynn, who is trenchant, and quite moving. The latter part of the story deals with their formidable escape. As their ordeal becomes increasingly forlorn and arduous, their endurance becomes epic.

It is brilliantly photographed and scored. Raoul Walsh directs with his usual laconic toughness. Attitudes to Japan have hardened since Pearl Harbour. When the US soldiers encounter the butchery of the Japanese torture of POWs we are confronted by the real horror of war. And become even more inspired by the American cause.  

This became infamous for its impact in the UK, where it was accused of overlooking the British effort, and was withdrawn. I don't think this is fair. Hollywood was telling one story of its own soldiers. Other stories would be told. It is a film about the heroism of a group of ordinary men and their survival against the odds. It's a relentless, inspirational war film

Romantic adventure featuring one of cinema's oddest couples, coming together to torpedo a German warship on Lake Victoria in WWI. It's a two-hander with Oscar winning Humphrey Bogart as a drunken, Canadian river-rat and Katherine Hepburn as a genteel, Methodist spinster travelling downstream on a ramshackle steamboat, the African Queen.

 Which makes for the grandest of entertainment as they fight each other before turning on the enemy. And during their implausible campaign they rather sweetly fall in love. Bogart is a variation on his reluctant heroes who come late to the cause. Hepburn plays the vinegary old maid to far greater effect than she ever did her screwball ingenues of the thirties. 

We see almost nothing of the experience of the Africans. There is the country and the wildlife, but little of the indigenous people caught up in a European war. It's a romance and a vehicle for its great American stars. Jack Cardiff's Technicolor location photography of the Congo is magnificent. The whole film represents an audacious triumph of logistics.

Credit is due to John Huston for driving the production way beyond the normal comfort zone of a film made in the 1950s. And there is something enchanting about watching the old couple drifting via their heart of darkness to a foolhardy assignation. And it's inspirational and moving. The film observes that the pity of life isn't that they suffer, but that the one they love should suffer too.