Film Reviews by Steve

In 1944 the Ministry of Information and Ealing Studios assigned Harry Watt to Australia make a film acknowledging their contribution to the war effort. Watt was a former documentary maker at the GPO and he found his story in the land and people. It was based on the huge cattle drive across Northern Territory in 1942, to ensure livestock didn't fall into the hands of the Japanese.

The irony being that the Australians were launching a scorched earth policy in one of the most barren habitats on earth. Rather than shoot and burn his herd, a resolute drover (Chips Rafferty) recruits a team to take it 1,600 miles across the interior. This is a epic story of the people against the wilderness.

It's an Australian western. Except, when the cattle are driven across the river, the crew have to clear it of crocodiles first. It is a realist film, and it's possible to pick up a surprising amount about the transport of cattle. There is mostly an amateur cast of locals, led by Rafferty (in his fifth feature) who makes a convincing outdoorsman and is a natural on horseback.

Some of the accents are suspiciously posh for a gang of Aussie rednecks. Otherwise this is low key, documentary film making, which is a stirring tribute to an immense real-life enterprise which took three years to complete. Though it's an Ealing film, it's a landmark in Australian cinema, and an authentic adventure story which still inspires.

The first British film about WWII prisoners of war is still the best. It introduces what would become the standard motifs of the POW film: the suspicion of a German mole; the escape detail; the concert party; and the irregular lifeline of letters from home, and Red Cross parcels. But The Captive Heart excels because, apart from the reportage, there is also a great premise.

This was loosely based on actual events. A Czech dissident (Michael Redgrave) escapes from Dachau and adopts the identity of a dead British officer. Then is taken prisoner. As part of his cover he begins to write to the wife of his new identity, unaware the two were estranged. And they fall in love with each other, with her ignorant of the deception.

The soldiers are taken prisoner after Dunkirk and incarcerated until the end of the war. The film reflects on the psychological and emotional consequences. Often this is sentimental as they idealise home. Jack Warner is the heart of the ensemble support cast, but it's Redgrave's repressed trauma that cuts deepest.

Some of the actors had actually been POWs, and part of the location shoot was at a real stalag. But while there is realism, the mood is lyrical. This is a hugely moving film. What emerges most starkly is the prisoners' fear of being forgotten. And an impression that in a time of such instability, miracles really do seem to happen.

My choice as the best British film adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens. The long novel is freely cut down to under two hours of screen time with some skill while retaining a strong flavour of the dialogue. Young Pip's (Tony Wager) confrontation with Magwitch (Finlay Currie) on an expressionist Kent marshes is one of the great opening scenes in cinema.

And this quality is sustained through Pip's encounters with Miss Havisham (Martita Hunt) and young Estella (Jean Simmons) in the old gothic house. But, after 35 minutes, John Mills takes over as the older Pip and some intensity is lost. Maybe because such excellence is hard to maintain, but also as Mills is miscast.

He's 20 years too old, and is far too rigid to capture any sense of being haunted by the ghosts of childhood. But Dickens always provides plenty of scope for the character roles. My pick is Finlay Currie, but the support cast is uniformly phenomenal. The film won well deserved Oscars for b&w cinematography and art direction.

The Victorian society presented is brutal. To survive and be happy is good fortune. The class system is a conveyance for cruelty and a justification for unwarranted pride. There is nothing at all to arrest the misery of the unfortunate. Surely this delivered a jolt to a country then inventing the welfare state? This is brilliant Dickens, but in 1946, it was also a lesson from history.

Funny murder mystery set in a hospital in south-east England at the end of WWII, which features the unusual gimmick of doodlebugs constantly harassing the characters. When a patient dies during anaesthetic and the nurse who announces she knows who was responsible is stabbed to death, suspicion falls on the close knit theatre staff.

Everyone has a motive, and as often in whodunnits, it's fairly random who actually did the crime. The surgeon (Leo Genn) has had affairs with all the nurses, and now has his roving eye on sultry Sally Gray, the fiancée of the short tempered anaesthetist (Trevor Howard). Yes, the doctors are all men and the nurses are women.

The early scenes of comic intrigue get a huge boost on 37 minutes when Alastair Sim appears as the waspish and unorthodox Inspector from Scotland Yard. Sim gets an 'and presenting' credit, even though he had been in British films for over ten years. Still, it is his ungainly eccentricity that most makes the film such a pleasure.

There is lots of atmosphere in the pristine clinical areas, and the dubious figures in gowns and masks. Writer-director Sidney Gilliat keeps the finger of suspicion moving smoothly around the extremely well spoken medical staff. Though the mystery of the means of murder won't puzzle many for long, the abundant suspense makes this escapist fun.

As much a national treasure as a feature film. There is a glorious moment even before the start when the Powell and Pressburger Archers logo blooms from austere grey into rich Technicolor. War is over. The country survived. Then the film opens with the pilot of a flaming Lancaster (David Niven) on radio to a ground operative (Kim Hunter), one of the great scenes in British cinema.

The following shot of Niven walking from the wet seashore in his RAF uniform (having jumped from the bomber without a parachute) is properly iconic. The rest of the story takes place in the pilot's head as he fights to stay alive, and resist the b&w afterlife of his imagination. Which is a typically eccentric Powell and Pressburger conceit.

The airman should have died, and is expected in the bureaucratic offices of the departed. This crisis is presented as a court case, and this is the climax of the film. But the scene is a huge muddle which makes no convincing argument either for the future of the country or the survival of a brave man. Much of the film is prodigiously nihilistic, which is fascinating, but hardly the zeitgeist.

Still, what stays vividly in the memory is the heartbreaking scene back in the Lancaster with the doomed squadron leader speaking his last words to a stranger. The rapport between Niven and Hunter is overwhelming and at times the film is too moving to bear. It's a stunning visual production and an audacious concept, which loses its way in its climactic set piece.

This might have been just another wartime B film by a minor director about the resistance in Europe. But there is a touch of class, which may be evidence of its producers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They brought in a superior crew, including cinematographer Erwin Hiller who shot on location, with East Anglia standing in for Netherlands.

There is a sensitivity to history, mythology and national identity which is typical of Powell and Pressburger. Ralph Richardson plays a Dutch shipbuilder who draws inspiration from his country's resistance to the Spanish piratical 'silver fleet' in 1628. He fronts up as a Nazi collaborator while secretly sabotaging the submarines built in his shipyard.

So he is despised by his countrymen, and doubted by his wife (Googie Withers). Richardson gives his standard performance of the war years, energetic, puckish and a bit mysterious. Esmond Knight contributes a caricature of a gestapo officer, cartoonishly grotesque, uncultured and sadistic. Even his own colleagues laugh at him.

While the Nazis are unrealistically ineffectual, there is some fascinating dialogue which touches on fascist assumptions of national superiority. An uncredited Pressburger co-wrote the script which offers a lyrical reflection on patriotic sacrifice. It's propaganda, and sometimes sentimental, but there is a thread of quality woven all the way through.

Typical Gainsborough melodrama set in 1880s London with Phyllis Calvert as a good girl born outside marriage who is thrown to the mercy of Victorian hypocrisy before being rescued by a progressive MP (Stewart Granger). Fanny is raised above a brothel and eventually cohabits with her broadminded suitor... so the film was heavily cut for US release.

But with Hollywood soon to enter the McCarthy era, maybe it was the politics that offended. The film's subtext is the toxicity of the class system and the callousness of a society where the poor and weak are abandoned without hope. When Granger is on his hind legs declaiming that everyone deserves a fair chance, he may as well be campaigning for Attlee.

This is febrile stuff. Everything is exaggerated. When the heroine succumbs to illicit love, it's all the way to a hotel in bohemian Paris. When she suffers, she is a washerwoman mucking in with the uncouth mob. Phyllis lacks charisma and beauty as the demure Fanny, and is dominated by the surly James Mason, again playing the brutal, immoderate aristocrat.

Indeed, Jean Kent is more vivacious in a role presumably not substantial enough for Margaret Lockwood. Naturally, the plot resolves with a duel at misty dawn. It delivers plenty of what the audience paid for, principally Mason snorting like a lusty horse. Not the best Gainsborough melodrama, but it is delightfully artful trash.

Tolerance of this surreal comedy of ideas is inevitably tightly bound to how sympathetic the viewer is to its politics. It's 1944 and the end of the war is in sight and thoughts are turning to what sort of regeneration will await the survivors.

Ealing Studios supported the radical ambitions of the left. Basil Dearden's adaptation of JB Priestley's play doesn't really examine what socialism would mean to Britain, other than it would be a revolution and would put power within the grasp of ordinary people. Vast inequalities based on birthright would be consigned to memory...  

The film examines how people may respond to this change. It assembles nine contrasting archetypes at the gates of a modern city and listens to how the new deal will impact them. There is a fusty aristocrat (AE Matthews), a complacent capitalist (Norman Shelley), a worn down waitress (Googie Withers), a disillusioned machine worker (John Clement)...

The situation is unrealistic, and the expressionistic photography is dreamlike, but the the dialogue is naturalistic and captures the typical hopes and fears of the public. Enthusiasm for the project is over indulged but it's a fascinating insight into the psychological state of the nation in the final act of WWII, at a crossroads in history.

Landmark horror anthology which assembles a cast of character actors in a country house, who tell tales of the supernatural. Or is there actually a rational explanation for all of them, as advanced by a visiting psychiatric doctor? The film is famous for its extremely satisfying wraparound concept which links all their experiences together.

Both the best known episodes are from stories by John Baines. The Haunted Mirror, in which a newlywed sees a Victorian murder room in the reflection of his antique mirror which compels him to kill his bride (Googie Withers). And The Ventriloquists Dummy, with Michael Redgrave as a cabaret act whose mind is taken over by his sneering wooden doll.

It's the second of these that most elevates the film, directed by Cavalcanti for maximum suspense. It's a real baroque blow out. Michael Redgrave gives one of the all time great horror performances as the schizophrenic ventriloquist. The last shot as he is finally subsumed into the dummy's personality is thrilling cinema.

It's quite uneven, with the golf story a weakness, but its best moments are unbeatable. British cinema has always been strong on horror, and this is a genre classic. Part of the pleasure now of Dead of Night is to witness the support actors of Ealing Studios at the end of WWII, demobbed from the screen war and together in a film of pure entertainment.

This feels like a response from Ealing Studios to the success of the Gainsborough melodramas, though it is set among the Victorian commercial class, rather than the aristocracy. Googie Withers is the brassy, mercenary wife of an alcoholic publican who she poisons to promote her greater sexual freedom, and to take over the business.

She gets strychnine by sexually manipulating an inexperienced teenager (Gordon Jackson), who is seeking to squirm from under the heel of his oppressive father (Mervyn Johns), who owns a pharmacy. The story is set in Brighton, but the accents of his large, but tight knit family come from all over the UK!

It is Robert Hamer's debut as director, and he conspicuously spotlights the ambient cruelty of the period; the rigid parenting, the absence of law, the primacy of class and ignorance. Which is the context for a spectacular performance from Googie Withers as a stupid but imperious egotist, the squalid consequence of a libertarian society.

In a chilling subplot, the pharmacist experiments by pitilessly starving guinea pigs which his sweet natured daughter buys cabbages to feed. Maybe informed by rumours from Germany at the end of the war? It's a leisurely but atmospheric murder story set in the shadows of gaslight, which gets lost in the deep psychological darkness of its villains.

Surely nothing said war is over to British cinema audiences as emphatically as a Noël Coward social comedy starring Rex Harrison...in Technicolor! And for the survivors, maybe a fantasy about the apparition of a dead loved one might strike close to many hearts. Though Blithe Spirit is played completely for laughs.

And it's a funny film. Harrison is a novelist who engages a dotty medium (Margaret Rutherford) to provide a little drawing room diversion, but afterwards finds himself living with the ghost of his first wife (Constance Cummings). To the fury of his second wife (Kay Hammond). That's just the first act. The rest is Rutherford trying to get the genie back in the bottle.

Rex can be insufferably smug, but he is sending himself up here. He claims to be a writer, but does nothing but sit down to a life of continuous dining. When a doctor suggests he is overworking, it's one of the best gags of the film. Cummings is ideal casting as the screwball spectre, but Rutherford steals the film, unforgettably.

As it's a faithful adaptation of a Coward stage play, there are many witty epigrams. But also, snobbery and a racist joke. When the wives fall out, it's mostly over the furnishings. The fluorescent green of the ghosts is an eyesore, but enabled the visual effects which won an Oscar. It's froth, but best quality froth, which probably felt like a blessing in 1945.

For the first of the famous Gainsborough melodramas, the studio fielded all of their star actors. Phyllis Calvert bagged the central character, but the box office name was Margaret Lockwood and after this she became known for her bad girl roles. It made James Mason a major star and was a big break for Stewart Granger.

The most startling aspect of the film is how luxuriously Regency England is staged, with lavish sets, coiffure and costumes. This was produced in the austerity of the war years, so credit to the crew for making this look so good. The other significant factor is how sexy it is, with the bodices for the females, and tight britches for the men.

 Mason plays a ruthless, decadent aristocrat who marries the demure Miss Calvert to provide him with a son without her getting in the way of his degenerate leisure pursuits. She invites a former schoolfriend (Lockwood) who has fallen on hard times, to live with her. The envious guest starts an affair with the husband and plots to do away with the wife...

It's the sort of gothic melodrama that features a gypsy curse, a duel, and a climactic electrical storm. It was a huge hit on the home front. It's got it all. Including a racist expletive, which may be realistic for London in the early 1800s, but unforgivable for a film in 1943. Still, the handsome production was a signifier that Britain was beginning to emerge from the shock of war.

Modest but exciting murder story set in a busy newspaper office. It feels like a low budget copy of a Hollywood screwball thriller, as phlegmatic crime reporter David Farrar tracks down the elusive witness to a killing, while sparring/flirting with newsroom Girl Friday, Anne Crawford.

And they are a lot of fun together, spitting out the fast rat-a-tat dialogue with cheerful zest. Farrar also quarrels agreeably with rival newshound William Hartnell, as they compete for a lead from the eccentric support cast.

A curiosity is that Headline was made in 1943, but Farrar and Hartnell are not in uniform. Nor is Crawford driving a general around in a staff car. There is no evidence of the war to be seen.

The main flaw is a truly appalling fistfight between Farrar and the desperate killer on a late night train. This isn't a profound film. Nothing is meaningfully at stake. But it is unfaltering, engaging entertainment and B director John Harlow tells the story with suspense and clarity, if not style.

The only British war film made in colour between '39 and '45 is a characteristic Powell and Pressburger reflection on English national identity. In this case, the stubborn, sentimental conservatism which was the friction in the British war machine. This is personified by the newspaper cartoon of Colonel Blimp, a rotund, blustering relic of the empire.

The central theme is that a sense of fair play was compromising the British military effort against the total war of the Nazis. This celebration of moral superiority might now surprise historians of empire and slavery, but may be excused in a time of national crisis. This is a propaganda film, which goes on to promote the Home Guard.

We follow Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) from the headstrong adventurer of the Boer War, through the Great War to the stubborn diehard of WWII. He makes a lifelong companion of a German officer (Anton Walbrook) and is involved with three women (all played by Deborah Kerr). The war office wanted to ban the film for being insufficiently patriotic.

It is actually an unreservedly pro-British film. The objection could have been better framed as not being adequately anti-German. The screen is dominated by a boisterous performance by Livesey, aided by makeup, as he ages 40 years. It's a handsome, epic presentation by Powell and Pressburger. Many critics feel it is their best work. Certainly, it is typically unorthodox.

Inspiring and exciting recreation of a true story from the early days of WWII, and a morale booster for the merchant navy. The San Demetrio is a small British petrol tanker carrying valuable aviation fuel across the Atlantic, taking its chances with the hunting packs of German U-boats and battleships.

After their ship is torpedoed, the men escape into lifeboats. While some are picked up by the Atlantic convoy, one boat floats on for days through the rain and cold before sighting an approaching vessel. Which proves to be the San Demetrio! The men elect to re-board, put out the lingering fire and repurpose the burned out hulk to take them home.

So the film becomes a tribute to their ingenuity and resilience in undertaking this unlikely mission in such hostile conditions and to their unstinting durability as they pull together for the common cause. It's the ultimate affirmation of wartime Britain's mustn't grumble stoicism.

The ensemble of Ealing studio character actors bring realism, conspicuously led by Walter Fitzgerald, but driven by the big hearted Mervyn Johns who keeps the engines pumping. It isn't an artistic looking film, and the back projection is variable, but we palpably feel the demoralising, soaking, freezing waves of the Atlantic in winter, as we cheer the crew home.