Film Reviews by Steve

This is a tribute to that classic screwball set-up; the fast talking dame who creates chaos in order to get to know an attractive but naive stranger. So most obviously it borrows from Bringing Up Baby (1938). Only, in What's Up, Doc? Barbra Streisand has a supernatural capacity for causing accidents. Cars crash while she merely passes by.

In Bringing Up Baby, Cary Grant is a palaeoanthropologist with a dinosaur bone, and in this homage, Ryan O'Neal is a musicologist with suitcase of igneous rock... Various other desperate men pursue identical luggage... The film might not have amounted to more than well budgeted fan fiction, except it is full of clever and funny ideas and an obvious deep affection for the genre.

For instance, Streisand knows about a wide range of arcane subjects in great detail (including igneous rock) because we discover she has completed the first term at so many Universities before getting thrown out for causing pandemonium. The stars aren't the equal of the best screwball actors of the thirties, but they are still pretty good.

In the last third, the film steers closer to Looney Tunes than Bringing Up Baby with an extended car chase (including a huge pane of glass carried across a busy road). This isn't as enjoyable as the cute romcom of the earlier scenes. But there is a genuine frisson to be had from the nostalgia for the Hollywood golden age. And the love of the greatest comedies ever made.

My pick for the funniest film ever made, adapted from Woody Allen's Broadway hit. Woody goes through a crisis after his wife leaves him. He gets trapped in a fantasy world where he is given life/love lessons by an apparition of Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy), while he suffers a series of excruciating dates with kooks, neurotics and oddballs...

Until he falls in love with Diane Keaton, the wife of his best friend (Tony Roberts). The scenario is huge fun for film fans as Bogart gives macho advice in his screen image. And Woody plays his own stand up persona of the luckless neurotic. He and Keaton are fantastic together, as they always are.

Woody Allen's screenplay is among the greats. There's a stunning line every minute and the quotable dialogue is as beautifully written as it is hilarious. Like when Woody tries to pick up a suicidal woman in a gallery. Or when he strikes out with a nymphomaniac...

The physical humour is just as funny. This is different from Woody's other early films. It has a story arc rather than being a collection of sketches strung together. It's set in 'Frisco. The characters are more developed. There are so many great gags, but the film is quietly moving too, with engaging themes.

One of many seventies films about urban despair and the difficulties of city life. Jack Lemmon is a middle aged/class married man who has grown bitter with crime and metropolitan decay. And the neighbours. And his advancing years. When he loses his job and with it, his status, he becomes irrational and paranoid.

But even his psychiatrist is useless. It's a black comedy, really a cry of anguish that presumes others will identify with its suffering antihero. There are funny moments, and some real clunkers. The best is when he chases a supposed mugger (Sylvester Stallone!) across Central Park only to find his own wallet at home and in fact he has just robbed a pedestrian.

Anne Bancroft plays his wife who at first picks up the slack, but then is also destroyed by the rat race. We get great stars. But, for a comedy, there are few laughs, and for a drama the themes are random and unconcerned with solutions. Obviously, as an angry, untethered maniac, Lemmon's underdog is part of the problem. And he becomes too unsympathetic to identify with.

Neil Simon's script divisively sets the middle class against the poor without ever asking why it must be like this for anyone. In our era of social media it's interesting that this victim eventually turns to conspiracies as an explanation for his misfortunes. Which is part of his insanity. But everything improbably resolves by the fade out. New York is still hell, but this one man has survived.

Reminiscent of Jules Dassin's classic caper Rififi (1955). But this is a more lavish, colourful and spectacular production. Shot in Paris, Greece and Turkey, its ensemble cast and and exotic locations would be hugely influential on the heist film. A band of crooks come together to steal an emerald encrusted dagger from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

There are the usual stages of the three act heist film. The stars (Melina Mercouri and Maximilian Schell) assemble an eccentric team of character actors, and devise a plan. Next, they stage the caper in an extended set piece of sustained suspense. But the normal final twist is subverted. Rather than the theft being foiled by the gang's own weaknesses, the enterprise is a redemption.

They fail because of dumb bad luck. But the emotional nucleus of the film is Peter Ustinov as a shabby petty crook who finds self-esteem through overcoming his fears. Ustinov is excellent, and won an Oscar. But, beware casting Akim Tamiroff, because yet again he steals every scene, this time as the grubby, alcoholic cook who caters for the gang.

The humour is engaging rather than hilarious. There's superb location photography of Istanbul, with an evocative score of Balkan folk music. The best of the film is the actual robbery, with Gilles Ségal, the human fly, hanging upside down from the ceiling, slowly lowered onto the treasure. So many borrowed this scenario, and from the film in general.

Really odd sex comedy, which rips up fifties Hollywood censorship. Dean Martin plays 'Dino', basically his own image. The film starts with him telling booze jokes on a stage in Las Vegas. He intends to drive to LA to do his tv show, but gets sidetracked by a small town schmuck who wants to sell him songs.

It was generous of Martin to play such a cynical version of his playboy persona. The songwriter (Ray Walston) knows Dino is going to sleep with his wife (Felicia Farr) so he swaps her for hooker/waitress Kim Novak to help grease the sale of his Italian ballads. Peter Sellers was originally cast as the musician and it's hard not to wonder what might have been (he had a heart attack).

The problem is, given the possibilities of the post-censorship era, Billy Wilder doesn't do anything interesting with the freedom. The married couple can have casual sex, but it's hard to care. There are a few laughs, but there isn't the moral complexity which gave his comedies depth and feeling. And without this, his cynicism is often cruel.

Kim Novak miraculously gives her 2D tart-with-a-heart archetype a little pathos. It's a handsome looking B&W film with an interesting setting; the encroaching Pottersville of postwar America. Novak lives in a proto-trailer park. The cocktail bar on the edge of town offers customers the girls as well as hard liquor. The social history is absorbing, but too much else misfires.

Probably the best of Billy Wilder's later comedies, and the film which first brought together its star duo: Jack Lemmon as a sports cameraman who is knocked flat by the Cleveland Brown's runner at a football game; and Walter Matthau as the conniving 'Whiplash Willie', a lawyer who plots to turn the collision into cash.

Willie is the last of Wilder's great finaglers; no ruse too dodgy in his ruthless drive to strike pay-dirt. The director gives us a moral alternative in the football star 'Boom Boom' (Ron Rich) who takes care of Lemmon while he feigns injury. Like in Wilder's The Apartment, Lemmon has to stand up to his bully and be a mensch.

Matthau won an Oscar and he plays a fine crook without any scruples. He dominates the film. Boom Boom is an African American and Lemmon finally reveals he is a fake by punching the insurance investigator in the face after a very racist comment. This feels a little clumsy now, but maybe a sign that Wilder was taking a side in the civil rights movement.

The film is a satire on the lawsuit racket fed on by parasitic lawyers out to scam a quick buck from of the capitalist legal system. Lemmon is that classic archetype, the good guy who goes to the dark side. By allowing himself to be manipulated by a rogue like Willie he risks destroying the real hero of the film, Boom Boom. Welcome to the fight Mr. Wilder.

Stanley Donen makes a Hitchcock film and while it doesn't have Hitch's distinctive touch of the outré this is still an entertaining comedy caper. It's debatable whether Donan was referencing the Master, or ripping him off. Hitchcock had created his own genre rules which were widely copied in the sixties, and never better than Charade.

Audrey Hepburn is an innocent abroad in Paris who gets tangled up in the pursuit of some US Government MacGuffin, with the phenomenally untrustworthy Cary Grant and a ruthless gang of impressive Hollywood character actors, including Walter Matthau, Lee Marvin and George Kennedy. Who can she trust? There is suspense, though it's hard to take any of his too seriously.

The disparity in the ages of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn doesn't help the romance, but there is a faint thready pulse of chemistry. And it's great to see such legendary stars together, for the only time. The comedy is amusing and engaging rather than actually funny. There's an atmospheric spy film score from Henry Mancini, but Donan doesn't get the most out of his photogenic locations.

The film is enjoyable as an approximation of a Hitchcock comedy-thriller. This is where Cary Grant pays off. When Kennedy is stamping on Cary's fingers on top of the American Express building, the audience is transported to Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest. It's a stylish, fast moving escapade but Hitch had already moved on. In 1963 he made The Birds.

This is an adaptation of a French stage musical, but it junked all the songs. That leaves a magnificent comedy premise set in the Parisian lower quarter. Jack Lemmon is a naive gendarme who accidentally becomes the pimp of Irma la Douce (Shirley MaLaine). When he falls in love with her, he creates an alter-ego, an English lord to give her enough francs so she doesn't need any other johns.

But his plan runs aground because the ex-copper has to work all night to make enough money to give to Irma to keep her off the streets. Feeling shunned by her exhausted protector she plans to elope with the attentive aristocrat. Voila! Lemmon kills his creation and goes to prison. What a brilliant plot for a farce!

The location photography of the city is attractive, and the sets and decors are wonderful, a comical pastiche of Parisian low-life. The weakness is Wilder and IAL Diamond's variable script which lacks wit, even if its morality conveys typical Wilder cynicism. It's the situations that are often funny.

MacLaine and Lemmon are predictably excellent and keep just enough reality on screen for us to care. It's yet another occasion in the sixties she played a sex worker. There's a note of sadness in her which gives the farce a little necessary weight. Curious that the two main characters spend so much time playing cards together, just as Shirley and Jack did in The Apartment.

A comedy sensation thanks to Peter Sellers' landmark performance as Inspector Clouseau. Otherwise, this is a send up of the chic crime capers Hollywood made in Europe in the sixties. This is set in Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Switzerland and it has the visual opulence of those films, with its ultra-widescreen Technicolor.

The so-so pastiche is completely unbalanced by Sellers' scenery wrecking intervention as the clueless detective investigating the rumoured theft of a priceless diamond. His performance remains very funny. Admittedly, it's not as hilarious as when I was twelve, but there is detail and intelligence to his physical comedy which is quite impressive.

The other actors have to hold on and hope. And they do a reasonable job in archetypal roles. Claudia Cardinale is plainly stunning as the Princess who owns the famous titular jewel. David Niven resented that Sellers took over production but comes out well as the gentleman thief. There's a bossa-nova number by Fran Jeffries for variety.

The film is also enhanced by Henry Mancini's celebrated lounge-jazz soundtrack, and the cartoon Pink Panther which features over the credits. Some of Blake Edwards' surrealism is inspired, like when two men at a fancy dress party dressed as gorillas break into the same safe. There are longueurs, but its best parts are legend.

Neutered sex comedy which was a code-buster at the time because the split screen editing made it look like stars Doris Day and Rock Hudson, though in their own apartments, were sharing a bed, and even a bath! The script had knocked around Hollywood for decades and it's a standard screwball plot of a man and woman who hate each other, and then fall in love.

The film works best as a photograph of America- and New York- in the 1950s. Postwar austerity is forgotten. She has an independent single life as an interior decorator. He is a playboy with a bachelor pad where he operates a number of casual affairs. Best pal Tony Randall has a swanky office in a downtown skyscraper. And the stars have a phone in every room...

Rock and Doris were approaching forty when this was made. It was a film for a grown up audience looking for risqué sophistication; more fun than funny. The stars are attractive and the widescreen Technicolor makes the film feel luxurious, particularly for a comedy. There are negatives. It's especially sad to hear Hudson voicing dialogue mocking homosexuals.

The story is familiar. Day made it a year earlier as Teacher's Pet. It's a period piece which illustrates the myths of Eisenhower's America:  the relative sexual freedom; the prosperity of the urban middle class; and the modern American city as place of recreation rather than industry. It's the ultimate Doris Day film, with all the kitsch that implies.

Stale political farce set in the divided city of Berlin just before the wall went up. Maybe the jokes were fresh when the film was produced but the premise of a beautiful American capitalist (Pamela Tiffin) falling in love with a Communist (Horst Buchholz) certainly wasn't. And there are scenes which lack taste that might be overlooked in a better film, but here land with a thud.

Apart from a dull script stuffed with predictable jokes and dated taunts at the expense of the Germans, the major problem is with the cast. Tiffin and Buchholz are lookers, but neither is even comfortable on camera. And sadly Cagney is unable to bring any charm or nuance to his role as a big business wheeler-dealer. He does reprise some famous dialogue from the thirties though.

The best performances are by the Germans. There's Hanns Lother as Cagney's obliging, obsequious go-fer and Liselotte Pulver as the executive's ditsy rainy day squeeze. Hubert von Meyerinck playing a former aristocrat reduced in circumstances since the war gets the most laughs in a five minute cameo, as he riffs on Emil Jannings' in The Last Laugh (1924).

Wilder gets the whole bundle up on its feet for the frantic finale, but the film is a disappointment. At least Wilder soft pedals the propaganda. He sends up corporate capitalism at least as much as Communism. The black and white photography is attractive and Andre Previn's energetic score is effective. But for a director of Wilder's reputation, it's ordinary. Maybe one for cold war nostalgics.

A case of style over content, but what style. The mood of the film is established by Henry Mancini's era defining lounge-jazz score. The luminous colour photography of Manhattan makes for a gallery of classic New York images. These are the setting for Audrey Hepburn's irresistible portrayal of Holly Golightly, a gamine in a little black dress.

It's a loose adaptation of Truman Capote's novella. George Peppard is a writer-gigolo who moves into Holly's brownstone apartment. She is a paid escort. The film backtracks on Capote's implication this involves prostitution, but there remains an obvious correlation between the two characters. Because they are mercenary, but also, lost souls adrift in a city where people come to reinvent themselves.

If it is a role of cinema to enchant then Breakfast of Tiffany's is a classic. The scene when Audrey sits at the window singing Moon River is is one of the most lovely in films. But it's also phoney! There's no reason why Holly should be singing at all! There's no other reference to her being musical. For all its magic, the film makes little sense.

The climax is disappointing. And everyone surely wishes Mickey's Rooney's role as a Japanese neighbour could be snipped out and burned. Peppard is big and handsome, but stuck on one bum note- his sanctimony. It feel cruel to be so harsh because the film is delightful and Hepburn is truly iconic. And it has the greatest party scene in celluloid history. It's a sugary treat.

Musical remake of The Philadelphia Story mostly follows the same plot, as a pair of tabloid reporters cover the lavish nuptials of the American aristocracy. This time, naturally, there are songs (no dancing). And what songs. Cole Porter's soundtrack is phenomenal, especially Well, Did You Evah and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And True Love. And Now You Has Jazz...

Both words and music are exceptional.  Also among the positives, Grace Kelly's stunning beauty at least helps us understand why so many eligible men want to take on Tracy Lord in spite of her mean, shrewish nature. On the debit, Bing Crosby is so square and stiff it's not obvious why she would marry him, twice.

And his singing voice hasn't stood the test of time. Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm are convivial as the reporters, and Frank sings well, including his solo, You're Sensational. But any scene featuring Louis Armstrong is stolen with panache. The Vistavision and Technicolor make this a striking production even if Charles Walter's direction is prosaic.

Compared with The Philadelphia Story, this is superficial entertainment. There's no darker side. Nothing about class conflict and at times it feels like we're expected to fill in gaps from having seen the original. But Kelly's supreme elegance and particularly Porter's forever classics make me prefer High Society. And there are great songs I haven't even mentioned.

A musical starring Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire in a touristic Paris among elite fashionistas... Hepburn wears Ginenchy, Astaire dances with his cane... There are songs by the Gershwins... How can it fail? Well, maybe once upon a time it was a fairytale about a plain, bookish girl who finds love, fame and beauty in one of the great cities of the world...

But, now it feels more about an intelligent girl who is made trivial by being plucked from a Greenwich Village bookshop and strong-armed into becoming a model. Still, Audrey and Paris are beautiful, and Stanley Donan's colourful visuals in Vistavision are vividly chic, so why not just give in to the glamour?

Astaire was 58 when he made this and it's not his best work as a dancer. And he's too old as a lover, for her. But he has some fine songs (including S'Wonderful). It's the vivacious and lovely Audrey who gets the film on its feet. Her dance numbers are actually more fun. There are some amusing sketches, particularly when Fred and Kay Thompson gatecrash a beatnik party.

It's hard to credit Hepburn as the plain Jane of the title, but this is the movies. And she graces the fluff with a sincere performance. The script tries to convince us that the intellectual world is as phoney as high fashion, but that doesn't compute. This is superficial frou-frou that the great stars almost turn into Hollywood magic.

Intelligent comedy drama which follows a standard romcom story arc featuring a pair of adversaries who fight each other before falling in love. Clark Gable is a gnarled, old school newspaper editor who goes incognito to a school of journalism in order to prove that classroom learning is pointless.  

Naturally he discovers the opposite and begins to doubt himself. Doris Day is the teacher who he romances through false pretences. Gable was 57 when he made this and even under heavy makeup he looks ten years older. Day was a fresh faced 36. Their relationship doesn't really make sense, but he is at least believable as an old school newspaperman.

No matter. Everyone remembers this for Gig Young's Oscar winning support performance as Clark's rival for Doris; an educated man who infuriatingly can do anything. When they are in an African jazz club he plays bongos and speaks perfect dialect while the older man just gets bitterly drunk. And he even turns out to be a pretty nice guy.

The film explores interesting themes relating to education, social deprivation and journalism. Though its two hour running time is a stretch. The script is literate and some of the dialogue is exceptional. But it is starved of jokes. There is a diverting cameo by Mamie Van Doren as an archetypal dumb blonde. But it's Gig Young who lifts this above average as a comic film. A+ for him.