Film Reviews by Steve

Delightful adaptation of Charles Dickens' debut novel; a picaresque adventure which rambles through all classes of Victorian society. There's a beautiful period recreation and a long cast list of British character actors playing cameos of classic Dickens caricatures. This might be the most English film ever made.

The Pickwick Society is a club of gentlemen oddballs who travel through town and country in search of unusual encounters. Japes and scrapes. James Hayter gets a rare chance to lead and he is uncannily perfect as Samuel Pickwick. His good companions travel from inn to coaching station, and fight a duel, or are sent to debtors prison...

... or many other idiosyncrasies of fate. But mostly they keep getting entangled in the sly intrigue of Mr. Jingle who isn't quite the hail fellow that the Pickwick Society is looking for. He is played with splendid panache by Nigel Patrick.

The multi-facets of mid nineteenth century life are glimpsed through a distorting squint of playful whimsy. Strangers meet and are soon clanking tankards together. It's not by any means the real world, but it charmingly captures the comic élan of Dickens' England.  Note- the film was made in b&w but a colourised version is widely circulated. 

After WWII, anthology films became big box office in the UK, like those from W. Somerset Maugham stories, Quartet, Trio and Encore. Soon such episodes would become the province of television. Meet Me Tonight is one of these packages of short films, adapted from three one act plays by Noël Coward. But in Technicolor, which tv couldn't reproduce.

And British tv in the early fifties would have struggled to match this ensemble of stars and old pros. The stories are linked by the conflict of married couples. Kay Walsh and Ted Ray are a couple of music hall troopers with a song and dance act who only cease fighting with each other when there is someone to gang up on. Leading to the demolition of the theatre.

The middle section is effective, but uncomfortable. Stanley Holloway has a midlife crisis and leaves his burdensome family. We can believe his life is hell, but his bullying revenge is awkward. Most of the budget was spent on the last and best story, with Valerie Hobson and Nigel Patrick happily cast as a couple of bankrupt sophisticates on the French Riviera.

They are sensational at delivering Coward's screwball banter. And there is some nice location footage of Monaco spliced into the bickering. The best two plays are very funny and great entertainment. Ray and Walsh get a couple of Noël's comic songs to perform. There's the writer's usual snobbery and preoccupation with class to contend with. But it's well worth it.

Powerful, emotional drama which miraculously- given its subject- manages to evade sentimentality because of its procedural style and understated performances. A child (Mandy Miller) is deaf and mute and born into a life of limited possibilities to an ineffectual, if rather well off father (Terence Morgan).

When she is eight, her mother (Phyllis Calvert) takes the girl to a special school run by an irascible, frighteningly motivated headmaster (Jack Hawkins). Mandy is so irresistible that the film builds a potent dread of anything which might stand in her way. Like the father, or the hostile administrator (Edward Chapman) who resents the teacher's methods.

The moment when Mandy learns to say 'b' is overwhelming. Hawkins plays a proper cinematic hero, who who fights using his intellect for complex, humanistic ideals. It's an inspiring portrayal. The film implicitly becomes a polemic which quietly promotes the public provision of special schools.

Alexander Mackendrick deserves credit for making it all matter so much, and presumably for piecing together a convincing performance from of the child lead. It's a neo-realist classic, shot in a working school for the deaf, in the bomb sites of Manchester. And was made with love, craft and conviction.

The ominous title reflects the weighty, unsubtle symbolism that grows wild through this tale of human pity. A meek, henpecked clerk lives a monotonous life in a drab backwater with his wife and child. He thinks of the trains that pass him by, and their romantic destinations. When a bundle dirty money comes his way by chance, he gets to take the express to Paris.

Claude Rains is the main asset, as the fastidious middle aged drudge for whom fortune deals an ill fated second chance. He becomes involved with a beautiful mercenary (Märta Torén) who only has eyes for his suitcase full of cash. Away from his usual bonds, the naive dupe unravels as his dream escapes him.

Really, it's film noir, but in inky Technicolor, and set in Europe. The radiant location footage of fifties Paris is a big bonus. The film doesn't quite sustain its suspense to the climax. And it lacks the touch of a skilful director. But there's a haunting atmosphere of gloomy fatalism which stays in the memory.

It's an adaptation of a story by Georges Simenon, but sans Maigret. Marius Goring is the Dutch policeman on the trail of the swag. Märta Torén makes a stunning, and very cold hearted femme fatale. But it's most distinguished by one of Claude Rains' very occasional leading roles, as a man who dares to recklessly dream, and pays the big price.

Micro-budgeted British B film which overcomes its limitations to deliver solid social commentary. It can't have had an auspicious pitch. This is about council drains... But it's also a David and Goliath story, as a middle aged housewife (Jill Esmond) goes up against the town hall and accuses them of graft, which leads to tragedy.

The film is compromised by its short running time and a lack of money. Plot lines are curtailed. The look is bare and the sound is rudimentary. The director chooses as few set ups as possible for his static camera. The actors are familiar without being even minor stars. There is a feeling of the budget running out as the big finale is replaced by a chat

But the premise of the underdog taking on entrenched vested interest is a resilient one. The script grinds a small political axe. The council is implied to be Tory, and there is warning of the dangers of fascism from the crusading local news reporter (Gerard Heinz), who was a refugee from the Nazis. But mostly we get an impression of how insulated are the guardians of power.

This is the sort of subject that in the sixties would be covered by the BBC on The Wednesday Play. But they would have used working class characters. Esmond, Jack Watling and Carol Marsh are all improbably posh as a family of council house tenants. It's an emotive film, a polemic. The corrupt officials are incredibly entitled. And the poor get stiffed again.

Probably it would be mean to suggest Alastair Sim was born to play Ebenezer Scrooge, but surely he gives the definitive version of Charles Dickens' immortal misanthrope. This is an adaptation of A Christmas Carol which owes far more to horror than whimsy and Sim's gaunt, gruesome moneylender is drawn in dark, heavy lines.

The support roles are well cast, with Mervyn Johns a fine Bob Cratchit, but Sim dominates the frame. The period recreation is strong and there is a potent atmosphere of Victorian misery. The main debit is the direction lacks flair and the narrative gets a bit stuck on occasion, but Dickens' moral intention survives intact.

While the depiction of the stoical, happy poor is not plausible, it is essential to the balance of the story, and this interpretation isn't wary of the politics. Scrooge is unambiguously a sociopathic capitalist who amasses wealth through nefarious means that the law fails to discourage. The depiction of what poverty means is particularly grim.

No more so than in Dickens' future Christmas when the poor share out and sell Scrooge's meagre possessions after his death. The staging is pantomimic, and occasionally sentimental, but also stark and abrasive. This isn't really primarily for children. And its message is still very pertinent; the greatest threat to any society is ignorance and want.

Genial caper which was one of the most successful of the post-war Ealing comedies at the box office. It's curious how the heist film became so abundant across Europe in the early fifties. Maybe the dreams of people still using their ration books made it a popular temptation to make off with the contents of a safe.

It's that image of the underdog who has his day which inspires Alec Guinness performance as a wage slave who is assumed to be a mild, unambitious man in a pin stripe and bowler hat.... who then robs a security van full of gold ingots in the pursuit of a more lavish, exotic lifestyle.

He makes a fine comic team with Stanley Holloway, who melts the gold into Eiffel Tower paperweights, in order to get the swag out of the country. With Alfie Bass and Sidney James they are a likeable bunch of rogues. Audrey Hepburn has a brief pre-fame cameo as a society it girl.

It's an entertaining diversion which pastiches American noir, with the shadows and procedural voice over. The Oscar for best screenplay feels a bit of a stretch; it isn't really that funny. Unusually for a mainstream comedy, there is no romance. But there is a strong flavour of austerity Britain, its citizens finding escape in improbable fantasies.

Charming Ealing comedy/science fiction which smuggles in a few darker political themes in among the usual whimsy. Alec Guinness plays an eccentric scientist who has to go to extreme lengths to develop an everlasting fabric that would be of great benefit to mankind. But will kill off the textile industry.  

The usually antagonistic class interests come together to stop him; the business owners who will lose their profits and the workers who will have no jobs. The film mostly has the energy of farce, and there are quite a few chases. But there is pessimism too. Partly because of the ostentatious gulf between the rich and poor.

But this note of melancholy is mostly due to the implication that Britain is hampered by vested interests which are unable to act for the greater good, or to enable progress. So scientists and visionaries appear as oddball agents of chaos. While this is a funny film, with imaginative plot complications, it's quite downbeat too.

The photography of industrial Lancashire gives the film atmosphere, with great sets and the famous sound effect of the bubbling polymers. Guinness is excellent as the naive genius in a corrupt world. The vision of him running through the dirty streets in his glowing white suit is one of the all time classic images of British cinema.

This has many motifs of American noir, like the luckless hero who gets mired in jeopardy by accident; the more he struggles, the deeper he's dragged down. And there's a classic noir look too. But in Britain, the mug ultimately gets away with it because he is the right sort of chap. In Hollywood, the production code would demand justice.

John Mills plays a respectable, wealthy, middle aged father who is needled into taking a swing at his sweet daughter's vile lover (Herbert Lom) and accidentally kills him. Dad dumps the body in a ditch out in the country, but when he returns to the scene, the corpse has gone and the cops aren't investigating.  

This futile meddling eventually arouses the interest of the law. The hapless killer exposes himself to a crossfire of clue and counter clue yet always evades capture by dumb luck. This relentless good fortune shifts the tone of the film to comedy. And the enquiry concludes that there was no foul play, because the victim was hit by a drunk driver!

This is not the only ethical code which now feels lost in time. The plot rests on the 'gypsy' witnesses being moronic, antisocial liars and thieves. And Mills' suicidal, unravelling executive feels too entitled now. But... there's a fine premise, the story moves along with extraordinary speed. And there are many exciting cliffhangers.

Exotic psychological drama set at the beginning of the twentieth century in the south seas. Ralph Richardson is a shipping merchant and explorer who takes the morally pliable grifter (Trevor Howard) he saves from drowning to a hidden, lucrative trading post on a remote shore. And in this alien environment, the stranger unravels...

It's all about laconic British actors in white suits failing to adapt to the demands of empire. Wendy Hiller's role is mainly to look as out of place as possible as a suburban housewife living in a bamboo hut with the island's wheeler dealer (Robert Morley) and their precocious moppet. Morley eventually gets cooked by the locals.

Howard falls in love with a local beauty (Kerima) but finds he is being played by the indigenous leaders who want to take control of the trade. Carol Reed uses his location shoot to anthropological ends. Which is fascinating if you've never seen these river dwelling communities before. But now we mostly have.

The photography is gorgeous. This is an exceptional production, shot on location in Sri Lanka, which explores human cruelty and corruption and the misguided heroism of empire. It's a compact version of Joseph Conrad's story, but epic in scale. Howard is perfect as the classic Conradian anti-hero, on his journey into the foul human heart.

The real oddity about this film is it purports to be about British engineers building a jet plane to break the sound barrier. It's shot in documentary style with reference to real incidents for greater authenticity. Yet Chuck Yeagar broke Mach 1 in California in 1947... So the premise is fundamentally flawed.

But it is still an intelligent action film with exciting aerial footage. The b&w photography is impressive, though it's a shame there's no widescreen. Terence Rattigan's script precisely examines the friction between the reckless pioneers who operate on the edge of scientific exploration, and those they sacrifice as an incalculable risk factor.

Ralph Richardson is convincing as the inflexible chief executive who is driven to advance human achievement at almost any cost. Ann Todd is his daughter who is sceptical of the real life benefits of this obsession and lives among the heartbreak of its victims. Nigel Patrick swaggers enjoyably as her husband, a test pilot who takes all the big chances.

There's a vast supporting cast of posh blokes, with Denholm Elliott making an early impact as Richardson's traumatised, tragic son. There's a thrilling score by Malcolm Arnold and Oscar winning sound. In 1983, the real story of the breaking of the sound barrier was told in The Right Stuff. But David Lean's fictional account is more entertaining.

Pacifist thriller set on the Irish border during WWII. The conflict between the Republic and the UK has often been an awkward subject for film makers. Partly because it's complicated, and the bias of the home and American markets are so polarised. Basil Dearden tries to look from both sides, but principally makes an appeal to put down the guns.

John Mills is an IRA soldier who grows weary of violence during a period in England. But he has to watch out for his brother (Dirk Bogarde) who is still fighting for the cause. Their mission is to spring two political prisoners being moved to a jail in Belfast. The accents of the stars are unreliable, but Bogarde is fine and there's decent support from the Irish actors.

And there's a lot of talk, particularly from a blimpish Englishman on holiday, who represents the British tabloid point of view. Dearden made many subtle films about social justice, but these arguments are quite simplistic. Screenwriter Robert MacDougall ultimately advances a pro-union perspective. But this isn't a polemic.

Apart from a couple of botched manoeuvres, the events take place in a rural hideout, like a play. The production was shot in the studio, with a noirish look. There's a satirical script and witty dialogue, which help underplay the political stakes. The portrayal of the conflict is dated, but it still works as an engrossing suspense film.

Social-realist crime story made in the style of the Hollywood police procedurals which began to appear after WWII. This was shot on location on the mean streets of Paddington. There's a familiar narrative about an old copper coming up to retirement (Jack Warner) breaking in a new constable (Jimmy Hanley).

Warner's PC George Dixon is a landmark in British cinema, and he survived the film to feature in a long running BBC series. He's a light touch local bobby who knows his beat and keeps the peace with paternal common sense. The film assumes that community policing works, and makes a case for more resources. Now, this long ago London is barely recognisable.

Famously, Dixon is murdered by a juvenile armed robber, with 40 of the 80 minutes to run, and the narrative evolves into a pursuit of the killer leading to a fine climax at White City. Dirk Bogarde isn't all that credible as this psychopathic kid from the streets, but he is charismatic, and this was a breakthrough role for him.

Though writer TEB Clarke was with the Met in WWII and the action is shot documentary style in the streets, time has robbed The Blue Lamp of its realist credentials. Still, it's an entertaining and immersive experience of a vanished country, and representative of a kind of policing to which many British people still feel emotionally attached.

Jolly farce set in an English public school. Its chief merit is the pairing of Alastair Sim and Margaret Rutherford as the cranky Heads of two schools, for boys and for girls, who find themselves having to share the same premises after the Ministry for Education gets its files in the wrong box. This is sitcom... 

Most of the humour is drawn from on the chaos of trying to keep the snafu hidden while the school is inspected by fussy parents and assessors. A classroom of boys must be instantly transformed into a gym session for girls... There aren't many great gags, most of the fun comes from watching the perfectly cast stars.

Sim and Rutherford built reputations as expert scene stealers, but this time they are aced by Joyce Grenfell in a small early role as a sexually repressed games mistress. Shame she didn't get more lines as she is a real standout. Obviously, there is crossover between this and the more anarchic St. Trinian's films.

Some gentle satire is lobbed at the hapless bureaucracy of the men from the ministry, a common target for comedy writers after WWII. Maybe it's awkward that these inhibited spinsters and fusty bachelors are such fair game. And it's a bit sad that the sexes pitched in together is assumed to be an absurdity! But! This was England...

Exciting submarine drama based on a true story. HMS Trojan is damaged by a mine which has been floating in British coastal waters since WWII. Many die in the explosion, but a few survivors are able to escape with the limited safety equipment. Which leaves four men waiting for the laborious rescue manoeuvres...

That's John Mills as the calm but flawed captain. Nigel Patrick plays his informal, rakish sidekick. James Hayter is an idiotic grunt. And Richard Attenborough is the hyper-panicky claustrophobic. The outcome is surprisingly bleak, but interestingly each character is given a reason for why they might not want to be saved.

Even among the last four living men on board, the dynamics are rigidly enforced by class. There is a great deal of awkward talk as the men drift very slowly into oblivion. After the rules are relaxed sufficiently for the lower ranks to be invited into the stateroom, Mills can barely tolerate Hayter's rambling stupidity.

The film explores the craft of decision making. The style is documentary realism, with no score. There's a small amount of underwater photography, but the action is mostly shot in a single interior of the submarine, betraying its stage origins. While understated with an abundance of talk, the gathering suspense is overwhelming.