Film Reviews by Steve

After the success of Dracula in 1931, Universal studios rushed Frankenstein into cinemas later the same year. And it is an improvement in every respect. Most of all, the direction of James Whale co-ordinates the production with greater imagination. And there is obviously more money for costumes, effects and set design. And crucially, for Jack Pierce's monster makeup.

He transforms Boris Karloff as the reanimated cadaver into a screen legend. Though I'd prefer him mute rather than voice that weedy growl. The performances are fine, with Colin Clarke expressive as the monomaniacal Doctor Frankenstein. Dwight Frye stands out as the hunchback. There's some witless comic relief and a weak romantic subplot, but still clocks in at a taut 70m.

This is a blockbuster and Whale doesn't labour the subtext of Mary Shelley's classic novel. We get another story about mankind overreaching itself and being punished for it. But there is an engaging impression that the monster is looking for a father. And so being brought to life by lightning, Karloff quite poignantly reaches out to the stormy sky, like a forlorn child.

It is a more transgressive film than Dracula and still delivers a few shocks; like the monster's killing of the hunchback. It's a proto-mad scientist film which borrows heavily from German expressionism but has artistic merit of its own. It's edited particularly well. And Karloff as the agonised victim of Frankenstein's hubris, is an icon of the decade and the emerging horror genre.

This is the third of seven collaborations between Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich made between 1930-35. The last six were for Paramount and are exotic studio melodramas set in romantic places. Critics search for unifying themes, but what they uniquely share is the director's visual style, and the fascination of his camera for his star.

Dietrich plays a sex worker who turns spy for Austria in WWI. Her mission is to take down her Russian counterpart (Victor McLaglen) which she does, but of course they fall in love and she saves him and is shot for treason... But really this is a film about how von Sternberg lights his great leading lady. Plus a lot of fatalism and atmosphere with cigarettes and snowstorms.

And Marlene is dressed magnificently. In my view, this is the least of their films. Mostly because McLaglen is disastrously cast and a limited actor anyway. Dietrich gives a languid, opiated performance which is probably intended to be mysterious, but just slows everything down. The narrative of romantic espionage is commonplace. The dialogue is absurd.

But in a way, none of this matters. This is an artistic production of extraordinary glamour, and that's why these films survive. No one can make pictures like this now; they're rare blooms which are rooted in their period and its technology. And in the unique relationship between the director and his star and Paramount's willingness to indulge them.

After Marlene Dietrich's success as an exotic Austrian spy of the Great War in Dishonored, later in the same year MGM released a very similar melodrama loosely based on the last few weeks in the life of Mata Hari, who (allegedly) was a German agent in Paris. And it makes an ideal vehicle for Greta Garbo as the infamous Dutch celebrity/dancer who was executed in 1917.

Joseph von Sternberg's film is more beautiful while the less exalted George Fitzmaurice creates a more coherent and satisfying entertainment. It still looks great, with artistic photography and extraordinary costumes. But some work has gone into the script too and Garbo delivers a performance, as well as being a star.

In real life, Mata Hari was middle aged and looking it by the time of her death. But Garbo plays a lissom femme fatale for whom besotted men gladly die. There a memorable scene where she compels a dashing, handsome Russian fighter pilot (Ramon Novarro) blow out the eternal flame on his religious icon before she'll seduce him.

It's a sombre precode adventure with the usual impediments of early sound. It's dated but still absorbing. After '34 the censors cut out some salacious content which has been lost, but Garbo's dance at the start of the film is still quite erotic. Until the tiresome histrionics of Mata's death, this is an irresistible treat for fans of golden age romantic melodrama.

This is the masterpiece of Fritz Lang's German period because of its innovative use of the camera and emerging sound technology. In 1931, this must have looked like a giant leap forward. And it's a suspenseful thriller too with Peter Lorre as the psychopathic child murderer the whole of Berlin comes together to capture. Including the criminals and beggars.

A mythology has collected around M that it is an anti-fascist polemic and an allegory about the need for all citizens to root out and destroy the emerging Nazi threat. This feels tenuous... though Goebbels did ban the film as soon as they were in government. Perhaps the atmosphere of paranoia, mistrust and panic captures the spirit of the times.

While Lorre haunts the memory of the film, he doesn't have all that much screen time. But he is horrifying as he pleads for mercy from his hostile criminal captors on the grounds that he kills because he has no choice. Mainly it's a realistic police procedural as the Inspector (Otto Wernicke) uses forensics to track down the murderer.

Lang based the events on interviews with the police and research into serial killers. He took his extras from the Berlin underworld. And there is sympathy for the left behind and the dispossessed of the depression. This is a long way from the German expressionism of the early '20s. It's an ominous, pessimistic crime thriller which was an influence on film noir.

Classy screwball musical from Gaumont which is bathed in the lustre of Jessie Matthews' stellar performance. She (yet again) plays a singer/dancer struggling to break into showbiz. Co-star Robert Young is a gossip columnist who fills column inches with stories about a made up madcap socialite called Mrs Smythe-Smythe.

Jessie simply steps into the role and becomes famous for being famous. The star gets to perform many excellent song and dance numbers in a variety of styles and is dressed magnificently. The costume and set design were by veterans of German cinema. All the crew would later get Oscar recognition. This brims with quality from top to bottom.

The actors squeeze all the laughs out of the witty screwball script. Jessie is superb at the comedy and is fortunate to be matched by a genuine Hollywood leading man. There is an obvious influence of American musicals. This was released over there, but these scanty costumes must have challenged the stricter censorship.

Matthews' elocution lessons left her with an old fashioned faux-posh speaking voice and her high vocal range was already dated in the age of jazz. But she has charisma to burn. She's no classic beauty but has one of cinema's most adorable overbites! It's not saying much to claim this is the best British musical of the thirties. But it compares with the best of Hollywood too.

Hardboiled newsroom comedy drama adapted from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's Broadway smash of 1928. The play is sometimes cited as an influence on the emerging screwball style; the verbal gags build up an unstoppable momentum, though the romance is peripheral. It is probably set in Chicago, but the material is so censorious it's never made clear.

It all takes place in the press office at the city jail as a political prisoner is due to be hanged for murder. The Morning Post's hotshot reporter (Pat O'Brien) intends to leave for New York to marry, so his manipulative editor (Adolphe Menjou) spins a web around his writer to keep him on the story. This is a frame for diverse observations on political corruption, race, Communism and the death penalty.

Some of the contemporary references are now obscure but the political climate hasn't changed much. Menjou was Oscar nominated, which is a stretch as he is mostly offscreen. The support cast plays the cynical and borderline crooked news hacks with gusto, and O'Brien stands out in a rare star role. Mae Clarke makes an impact as a sex worker agitating for the condemned man.

Lewis Milestone explores his single interior space with a fluency still rare in '31. He sets the dialogue to a breakneck speed, much as Howard Hawks did in his 1940 remake, His Girl Friday. This version isn't as brilliant, or as funny, but it is much more faithful to the source and still a pretty good precode talkie which captures the spirit of the roaring '20s.

*this is available as an extra on His Girl Friday.

Laurel and Hardy's debut feature is a mixed bag. Years of making shorts ensures their double act is fully evolved by '31. But the early sound production values are rudimentary and there's a meagre budget. It's a pastiche of the vogue for prison films, like The Big House, released a year earlier. The boys are sent down for bootlegging, where Stan's vibrating tooth gets them into the customary scrapes.

There's the usual problem for comic artists in adapting from short films; how to get the routines to stretch to feature length. This takes the standard option of padding out the comedy with musical numbers. The gags stop for about 15 minutes while Ollie sings (well), Stan dances (badly) and various guest vocalists get a turn in the spotlight.

All this was edited down to 55m to tighten the material for release. But ever since, film restorers have been putting the cuts back in! So now it's 68m and the pace is a little slow. The other negative is the stars appear in blackface. Viewers will adopt a diverse range of views on this, but it's at least disappointing to watch the eternal pals doing this stuff.

But for those willing to set this aside, Stan and Ollie are in fine form. When the material is weak, they still make it funny. It's great just to see them bickering. Then there's all the subtext for the critics. But my favourite bit is Ollie's line to Stan, which is a profound summation of his self-delusion: 'You're actually using your brain. That's what comes from associating with me!'

Offbeat variation on the Beauty and the Beast, relocated to British Columbia, Canada in the 1890s. Oliver Reed is a brutish trapper who drops by a trading post to buy an innocent, mute orphan (Rita Tushingham) against her will and take her back to the wilderness. And of course they fight and change each other and eventually fall in love.

Their rapprochement is secured by an extraordinarily visceral episode when they fight off a pack of wolves together. Reed plays a primitive man of appetites with a relishable excess of panache. And a French accent! Rita portrays the fears and frustrations of the damaged foundling as a wide eyed, melodramatic waif. It isn't realistic or subtle.

But it is passionate. These are Darwinian humans, fighting to survive in an incredibly hostile, remote environment. The perception of constant jeopardy is extremely well staged and photographed, at times slipping into a sensation of a primal altered reality. And their dependence on each other finds a way to an instinctive intimacy.

So she can't speak, and he doesn't want to hear anyway. It's a simple survival story which becomes breathtaking. The Canadian scenery is exhilarating. The impression of isolation and savage nature is prodigious. But way beyond the drama of the landscape, it's a compelling, unorthodox romance set in the context of extreme human experiences.

Follow up to the Marx Brothers debut feature The Cocoanuts, released the following year. Both are written by George Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and adapted from the brothers' '20s Broadway hits. It's an improvement; there is more of Groucho, Chico and Harpo and less of the supporting musical acts. And the quality of the routines is so much stronger.

Partly the upgrade is due to improvements in early sound and camera technology. But mainly it's because for the first hour, this is as good as the Marx Brothers ever got. The unabated bombardment of classic puns, wordplay and general lunacy is inspired and very funny. For which Kaufman and Ryskind deserve more credit than they are ever likely to get.

The stars tear through pages of this stuff at reckless speed. Then they run out of gags with half an hour left. So everything stops for long musical recitals by Chico and Harpo, which I suppose are very much to taste. The show tune sung by Lillian Roth isn't as much of a killjoy, but the momentum never returns and the weaker sketches are kept for last.

The boys drop in on a Long Island mansion and get involved in some farce plotted around the stealing of a valuable painting. Groucho plays a famous big game hunter, and Chico and Harpo a couple of freeloaders. Zeppo is also present. The support cast just has to take it and like it, but Margaret Dumont is, as always, a brilliant stooge. It's the brothers at their crazy best. For an hour. 

Classic example of the films which inspired the cult of Hollywood talking pictures before the Production Code was enforced in 1934- which were then banned or re-edited because of illicit content. They give a fascinating insight into what metropolitans thought before they were told how to think by the Hays office. Plus it's great to see the period fashions and hear the slang.

Norma Shearer stars as a modern career woman whose husband (Chester Morris) has a casual affair. So the wife retaliates in kind. When she finds she is judged by different standards, they are divorced and she plays the field. And he discovers he can't get on without her. These themes are not just obliquely alluded to, this is ostentatiously a proto-feminist polemic.

There's the jazz age setting popular in Hollywood films going back to the mid-20s. Only in the talkies, there's ragtime on the soundtrack. Norma won the Oscar for best female actor. She's unsubtle, but plays a believably strong woman. And has some astonishing lines. The screenplay is a blast, brimming with witty, acidic and salacious observations on sexual hypocrisy.

The attitude which now confounds is not the divorce, but the drunk driver who disfigures a women, but takes zero responsibility. Norma dominates, as she should, and Robert Montgomery gives good support as the rich lunkhead she evens the score with. This is badly paced, poorly directed and edited, and old fashioned. But that's part of the deal. It's also a wild experience. 

Gloomy melodrama adapted from Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning play which (of course) was a sensation because it was silent star Greta Garbo's debut talking picture. Her first line made headlines: 'Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby!' And she's still the main attraction, weary and full of cynicism as a sex worker who goes home to her Swedish immigrant father (George Merion).

The main selling point of the play is the realistic presentation of the working poor, trying to scrape a living off the New York river during the depression- while they palliate their misery with booze. There's nothing to arrest the decline of a woman alone. Garbo starts off well as a defeated no-luck dame who has run out of options. She conveys all the troubles of the world.

But eventually she is defeated by the script as the dialogue get ever more overwrought. The insights into the lives of destitute immigrants are no more wise than a dime novel. There is little narrative; Garbo meets an Irish sailor (Charles Bickford) but is tortured by the shame of her past. All the actors struggle. Marie Dressler comes off best as the old, threadbare wharf rat who represents Greta's future.

There's a trip to Coney Island, but mostly this is a filmed stage play. The lighting of the dockland set brings some atmosphere. But Clarence Brown doesn't have the imagination to challenge the technical limitations of the early sound period. We are shown lives destroyed by poverty and ignorance, but it's not obvious that anyone working on this production cares too much. Maybe not a good fit for MGM.

From the dawn of German expressionism, this is one of the most influential films ever made; most ostentatiously, the extraordinary set decoration which not only inspired other German silents but Hollywood too. The classic Universal horrors of the early thirties are unmissably produced under its spell. Critics now call this the first ever horror feature.

A travelling circus comes to town, which features a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) primed by a mysterious mentalist (Werner Krauss) to commit murder. But the sideshow svengali is also the governor of a mental hospital. There is a framing devise, with the events told by one of the inmates. This unreliable/mad narrator makes the story fascinatingly ambiguous.

It has stimulated many diverse interpretations. And theories of how it reflects Germany between the wars. Most obviously, it is a subversive, anti-authoritarian fantasy. It expresses a social climate of paranoia and conspiracy. But primarily it is an an imaginative and exciting thriller. The acting is unsubtle... But then, this is a modernist dreamscape.

So who knows how people should act! Krauss doesn't make much of the title role. But Veidt as the hypnotised killer, pale and dressed in black, has become a goth icon. This is the thriller as arthouse, which has stimulated many musicians to write soundtracks to accompany the crazy events. Robert Wiene creates a gateway into a world of a distressed imagination which still beguiles.

This is Ernst Lubitsch's debut sound film and the first of four musical comedies co-starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald before the implementation of the Production Code in 1934. It's a farce which is tumescent with innuendo, and Maurice was a sort of genius in the craft of salacious insinuation. And his song Paris, Stay the Same is the standout number.

Jeanette's operetta style vocals have dated, and maybe by the end of the extended running time, it's possible to feel she sings too much... And her Philadelphia accent is a bit of a stretch for middle European royalty. She marries a commoner (Chevalier) who is stifled by his role as the Queen's consort and has to assert his masculinity before the fade out.

And aside from some falling over by Lupino Lane, who is pretty good at it, that's the whole plot. After about half an hour the narrative stalls and thereafter only fitfully advances. The comic songs are mostly engaging and there are plenty of laughs. It's sexy and sophisticated. But even the legendary charisma of Chevalier can't keep the fizz from going flat.

There's a support role for 19 year old Lillian Roth, whose boozy life story was turned into I'll Cry Tomorrow in '55, a warts-and-all biopic with Susan Hayward. Though Roth isn't all that good! The Lubitsch touch gave class to Hollywood in the early sound period, and he overcomes all the technical limitations. But the director and his stars all did so much better with One Hour With You in '32.

Sleazy, precode backstage melodrama which overcomes some initial creakiness mainly courtesy of Rouben Mamoulian's artistic direction. Not everyone cast in this can act, and they get to inhabit some transparent archetypes. But the compelling visual storytelling and realistic set design retain interest long enough for the characters eventually to start to matter.

This was Mamoulian's debut feature and he had the usual difficulties of early talkies to contend with. But he got his camera to move quite freely, though not always smoothly. He pioneered new sound techniques, but that isn't really what makes this interesting. The New York locations add value, but mainly it's how the director skilfully explores each frame for nuance and narrative detail.

Helen Morgan stars as a deadbeat burlesque stripper who wants to keep her daughter out of the racket but is continually blocked by the lowlife chiseller (Fuller Mellish) she's shacked up with. Who turns his sexual attention to the girl (Joan Peers). It's a trashy tearjerker but it builds up a powerful impression of life being nasty, brutal and short, with no way out for the poor of the depression.

Morgan was good casting. She had success on Broadway in the '20s with Showboat, but by the time of Applause she was an alcoholic and well on the way to an early death. She is 29, but looks much older. Her life was cleaned up in 1957 for a nostalgic biopic, The Helen Morgan Story. She's got a sob in her voice that initially irritates, but eventually touches the heart.

There's something about silent cinema which promotes performances which have become mythic. And Louise Brooks as the tragic courtesan Lulu, falling slowly through hedonistic Weimar Berlin, is one of these. Brooks was monolingual and from Wichita, Kansas, so... a long way from home. But she flawlessly captures the spirit of capricious, sensual spontaneity.

Lulu is a waif who only has her sexuality to exploit to survive. She leads a coterie of crooked oddballs who also get by in the only ways they know. She has become rated as a feminist symbol. My feeling is the film- adapted from a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind- is more broadly critical of inequality, and the hypocrisy of German bourgeois society.

Now, at least to non-German audiences, it's GW Pabst's film which most represents the divine decadence of '20s Germany. Even though Wedekind's play dates from 1904. There is a prominent lesbian character. Lulu is compulsively promiscuous. Society is divided between the ostentatious excesses of the wealthy and the crimes of the poor. Even Louise's hairstyle is an icon of the period.

Lulu is both a femme fatale and a victim, and Brooks plays that ambiguity like a virtuoso. In London she meets Jack the Ripper and the whole bundle suddenly feels like fan fiction! Though this episode allows Pabst to adopt some welcome expressionism. He even seems to sanctify her! But Brooks legendary performance always transcends these moments of phoney melodramatics.