Film Reviews by Steve

By the end of the 1940s, the documentary style crime picture was dominated by poverty row, and low budget productions from bigger studios. This is a class above that and crucially hasn't dropped out of copyright. There's a significant star in Glenn Ford, and Burnett Guffey's photography is a standout.

And it boasts (arguably) the best director of B films in the studio era- Joe Lewis. Not only does this look great, but he also tells the story well and with realism. There is a very palpable sense of threat. It's adapted from a bestselling memoir by the US treasury agent who got notorious gangster Al Capone sent down for tax evasion.

Though the names are changed, and the period updated to (then) present day Chicago. In 1949, this may have been the most violent and homicidal criminal mob ever seen in pictures. Any witness who testifies is automatically murdered while the guilty live in fabulous wealth. We observe the strategies and dedication that put Scarface inside.

There's an ensemble cast of convincingly harassed T-Men led by Ford. And there is an impression of how the public is thoughtlessly complicit in the crime which then makes their lives hell. Which is still relevant. It's a decent gangster film from a decade when they went mostly out of fashion.

High concept action comedy which really is about watching a variety of (now) classic automobiles driving south through Mexico while the actors bounce smart-ass one liners off each other. Aside from being shot in B&W it could have been released last week. Except we have the pleasure of watching Jane Greer and Robert Mitchum deliver the wisecracks...

This wasn't greenlit to reunite the stars of classic noir Out of the Past (1947). Mitch was just out of jail for drug offences and a few Hollywood leading ladies backed out. Greer took the role and they make a wholly relishable double act as they chase a bundle of MacGuffin down the coastal highway. Pursued by William Bendix. In a '46 Buick.

It's just a car chase, with a nice twist at the climax. The action is well staged, though admittedly rudimentary compared with modern stunts. It's the laconic wit that drives the narrative, and the sassy rapport of the two stars. This was co-scripted by Daniel Mainwaring who wrote their previous vehicle. Nothing really matters, but they have chemistry to burn.

Some may find the picture of Mexico as a sleepy backwater a bit problematic, but the Chief of Police (Ramón Novarro) is a sharp operator, behind his ingratiating facade. Unfortunately, TCM went to the trouble of colourising the print, which is currently the only version available in the UK. Just so I have to turn down the colour to see it in its original specification...

Another low budget documentary noir released after WWII, this time about the US government's treasury department. So it begins with a five minute presentation on their many responsibilities followed by a fictional case which assures the public that crime doesn't pay. In this case, the counterfeit currency racket.

The storyline is interesting rather than original. Lloyd Bridges is inside for manufacturing plates used to make illegal banknotes. So who is responsible for printing the greenbacks coming back into circulation, which look like his work? When the convict is released to assist in the investigation, he absconds and plans to buy his way to Mexico with a phoney bankroll.

He and his compliant moll (Barbara Payton) are pursued by an undercover operative (John Hoyt). We see the usual stakeouts and wiretaps. There's nothing new here. In fact, this is very similar territory to the superior T-Men, directed by Anthony Mann a couple of years earlier, with the same documentary approach.

Which is also a B-picture, but with better production. The crucial difference is this one is out of copyright and only severely damaged duplicates are available. While T-Men has luminous noir photography by John Alton, this is a fuzzy blur. With poor sound. It still just about works as entertainment, but there is probably a better film under the blizzard.

Cumbersome dynasty saga which is a critics favourite but too weighted down by the laborious script. It's about the adaptation of a family of poor Sicilian immigrants to New York who achieve wealth but struggle to cast off the old ways. Like The Godfather. And it's a generational story about a patriarch who destroys his legacy by refusing to change.

To keep control, he sets his four sons against each other. Edward G. Robinson plays the father who grew up in poverty but made a fortune establishing a neighbourhood bank with idiosyncratic book keeping methods. After the 1933 banking act, the whole lot comes crashing down and his boys fight to take charge of the remains.

All the sons are like the father in different ways. His favourite is Richard Conte, a lawyer of dubious probity. There is much of the old country in all of them and insinuations of the mafia. The problem is the narrative focuses too little on the family's internecine power struggle and too much on Conte's on-off relationship with Susan Hayward.

She's always worth watching, but her role is inflated. There is lavish set decor and artistic noir photography, but the story lacks impetus. When a powerful climax looms into view, it is fluffed. Maybe due to the production code. It was remade as Broken Lance in 1954, and the themes of heritage and revenge work much better as a western.

Implausible psychological thriller which is really a schematic attempt to explain the criminal mind. It's possible that the three storeys of psychiatrist Lee J. Cobb's backwoods holiday retreat represent three levels of human consciousness! Anyway, William Holden's gang of psycho-killers escape from jail and hold his weekend party hostage.

Rather than fight back in an orgy of revenge... Cobb puts Holden on the couch and cures him of his demons! If only law and order was really like this! It must be the most liberal film ever made. The shrink sets aside the danger to his wife, son and visiting academics while he exhumes the childhood trauma that put the gun in the killer's hand.

The use of Freud to drive the plot of a thriller was ubiquitous in Hollywood after WWII, but this was based on a prewar play (by James Warwick) which had been filmed before in '39. Director Rudolph Maté was a five times Oscar nominated cinematographer and he makes it all look polished, even if there isn't enough budget for noir ambience.

It's great to see Cobb in the lead and he carries the film; Holden's role is too contrived to be convincing. It's more about the ideas, which promote a progressive approach to crime. Though the family of the murdered prison warden might demur. It's a short, suspenseful B-picture made with considerable sincerity.

Classy murder mystery adapted by Aldous Huxley from his own short story, and staged in the film noir style by Zoltan Korda. This is a beautiful production which generates considerable suspense. There's an abundance of superfluous conversation and humdrum philosophy but it hardly burdens the narrative flow.

Charles Boyer plays an idle, misogynistic aristocrat who can't get along with his disabled, middle aged wife (Rachel Kempson) but finds a more convivial alternative in his unspoiled 18 year old girlfriend (Ann Blyth). Who becomes pregnant! The husband is found guilty of the murder of his spouse and sentenced to death.

Though perhaps the real killer is his former protégée (Jessica Tandy) who presumes she is next in line to marry... Or the sickly wife's lesbian nurse (Mildred Natwick). Korda creates a great deal of tension with his cast of suspects. And it looks outstanding with the standard thunderstorm of gothic melodrama an absolute knockout.

Maybe it's a little highbrow and it failed to find an audience. There's lots of subtext. Presumably all the circumstantial evidence makes a case against the death penalty. But this is a twisty, high quality noir with fine performances; particularly from Tandy as the woman scorned. It's worth a look just for the stunning cloudburst.

Routine crime thriller which gets marketed now as film noir but really is too sunny, and there are no shadowy interiors. Still, we get other genre motifs like the impression veterans of WWII were stiffed by those who stayed at home. Plus yards of hardboiled dialogue... And a blonde who's hot trouble (Shelley Winters).

John Payne is the front for Dan Duryea's unscrupulous gang of swaggering fraudsters. These conmen are proper lowlifes. Their latest scam is to convince a wealthy war widow (Joan Caulfield) to invest in a lavish project for a monument to her dead husband. But will actually be a big donation to organised crime.

The problem is we have to at least halfway sympathise with Payne's predicament when he falls for his mark. But he's an utterly amoral scumbag, even if not quite as repellant as his boss. And Payne hasn't the charm to make this work. It's actually much more entertaining to watch Duryea running through his familiar sleazeball schtick.

It's not obvious why every good looking dame finds Payne irresistible. But it's fun to watch these Universal starlets switch on the personality. Winters plays cinema's dumbest femme fatale to amusing effect. George Marshall usually directed B westerns and hasn't the style for film noir . This one is reserved for Dan Duryea cultists.

Unique political saga directed in the tradition of Italian Neorealism by its pioneer, Luchino Visconti. It's loosely based on a 19th century novel, but when the film makers arrived in Aci Trezza (Sicily) after WWII they found the way of life still intact. It's about the exploitation of impoverished fishermen by a cartel of wholesalers.

The dialogue is in a Sicilian dialect, not familiar even to Italians. The actors came from the region; the performances are stiff, but authentic. It is set on the rocky shore and in their crude stone houses. And the peaceful and wild sea. The crews have been stiffed by the middlemen for centuries but some of the men back from the war have new ideas.

Except the system is stacked against them, and their community refuses to work as a collective. One family attempts to break free from serfdom and their demise is excruciating. This is a persuasive, blistering polemic. Admittedly, it's likely that a documentary drama which scrutinises socialist solutions to poverty won't entertain everyone...

However, although the style is rudimentary, this is a visually haunting epic: of the boats on the sea at night, fishing by lamplight; the silhouettes of women searching the horizon for returning crews... It's a way of life that has been swept away, but the working practices are familiar in our gig economy. Visconti's masterpiece still applies.

This is the masterpiece of Italian neorealism and the pinnacle of social realism on screen. It portrays the shame and humiliation of a man who can't provide for his family. By the fadeout, the huge emotional tide of Vittoria Da Sica's tragedy is hard to bear. If this doesn't break your heart, check your pulse. Then call for help.

The masterstroke is the casting of non professional actors. Lamberto Maggiorani is the careworn father worn down by poverty in destitute post WWII Rome. When his bicycle is stolen he can no longer work, so he pursues its disappearance in accumulating desperation with his son- Enzo Staiola in one of the great child performances.

The depiction of Italy after the devastation of war is profound and detailed. But its dramatic heft is in the utterly convincing relationship between the man and boy as they search through the many strata of Roman society. There is no hope, but they continue on their quest because their need is overwhelming. We feel the burden of their survival.

And see how precarious life is without social cohesion. There is a political subtext, but no polemics. The man is poor and uneducated and doesn't understand how the system works. This is one of the most influential films ever made and inspired many future film makers. It's a monument to humanism which remains absolutely relevant today.

Actually no, it doesn't live up to the pulp sadism of its title (from Gerald Butler's 1940 bestseller). Though Burt Lancaster does get whipped by prison guards. He plays a suffering brute back from WWII with PTSD who accidentally kills a pub landlord, witnessed by a black marketer (Robert Newton) not above a little blackmail. It's a pessimistic London noir.

The East End was recreated on an extensive sound stage at Universal, so some money was spent on this, but it's from an era when studios were shooting more on locations, so it probably felt dated even on release. Its evocation of a dazed country struggling to emerge from the shock of war may have felt more contemporary. In the UK at least.

This is a land of bobbies on the beat, unlocked doors and ration books. Of austerity and crime, loneliness and loss. And threatening strangers who loom in the shadows of the human jungle. There is an overwhelming sense of despair. But as a thriller, it lacks the necessary suspense to obscure the familiarity of the narrative.

Burt is always good as the fatalistic loser of his early noirs. Joan Fontaine is superb as a traumatised war widow suffocating in her isolation; who fastens onto a wounded creature out of desperation and pity. Newton delivers his usual ham. There are points of interest but a quality film fails to emerge; it needed a more gifted director than Norman Foster.

After WWII the bad guys in Hollywood spy films changed overnight from the Nazis to the Communists. And with HUAC now putting liberals on the witness stand and worse, the FBI encouraged the dream factory to produce propaganda justifying the rightness of their cause. This is about dirty Reds stealing US nuclear secrets.  

And they are as unscrupulous as they could be, even rubbing out their own operatives when expendable. The west is completely virtuous. There is neither the moral equivalence of John Le Carre's Circus nor the action set pieces of James Bond. This is a procedural docu-noir in the contemporary style, shot on location in San Francisco.

Representing the FBI there's Dennis O'Keefe as a red blooded all American agent. Does he hate Commies! For Scotland Yard, Louis Hayward is more of a thoughtful analyst. And they make a good double act. This is a low budget crime feature and for all the motifs of social realism, it's just hokum, shot quickly and without finesse.

But it is a good thriller, however manipulative. Gordon Douglas tells the story well with a light touch and there are some effective dramatic crescendos. Like when a Russian immigrant takes a bullet for her new country. Regardless of how the viewer feels about the political polemics, it's a punchy B-picture with likeable leads.

Adapted from a now obscure thriller (by Murray Forbes) this has the narcotic feel of David Goodis' cult novels with its cast of nobodies undone by dumb bad luck and their own stupidity. The film was soon out of copyright and is now impossible to see apart from on fuzzy duplicates with appalling sound and no subtitles.

Yet beneath the years of deterioration, there's a really evocative film noir steeped in pessimism and inhabited by some incredibly fatalistic deadbeats. Paul Henreid makes the mistake of holding up a casino run by gangsters and plans to save himself by murdering a lookalike and stepping into his shoes.

But it's film noir so the dead man turns out to be in as much trouble as his killer. And the doomed crook puts his doppelganger's scar on the wrong cheek anyway, after the photo developer reverses the negative! Henried is miscast as a tough heavy, but Joan Bennett is amazing as his astonishingly defeatist rainy day gal.

Henreid produced and ended up directing without credit. Noir legend John Alton is the cinematographer, though his artistry is now buried under the haze. There's an ultra low budget and the twists are improbable, but the impression of malign fate has a way of lingering. Escape is futile... Someone should restore this, pronto!

Critically adored film noir shot on location around New York. It's only one of many noirs to either equate crime with capitalism, or portray business as a semi-corrupt racket, but this is the most overt. Writer-director Abraham Polonsky was soon suspended by HUAC and didn't get another screen credit for 20 years.

Everyone is corruptible. There are no good guys. John Garfield is an unscrupulous Wall Street lawyer for organised crime. He attempts to save his small time older brother (Thomas Gomez) who runs a nickel and dime numbers game when the mob tries to establish a monopoly. But the big brother doesn't want to be saved.

He sees the lawyer as morally unredeemable. This is an actors film. Garfield makes his predatory degenerate just about bearable. But Gomez is superb as the morally equivocal little guy, his self-betrayal worn on his sickly, suffering face. Beatrice Pearson is badly cast as his biddable secretary. It's like she's a rich girl doing crime on work experience.

Polonsky directs with style and there is stunning location photography and expressionist interiors. The poetic, unrealistic dialogue is probably a matter of taste. The plot doesn't cohere, but that doesn't always matter. But these people are so deluded they are hard to relate to; so there is zero suspense. It's more interesting than thrilling.

Thrilling police procedural about a real life murderer/armed robber who operated in Los Angeles in the mid '40s. And it's surprisingly faithful to the actual events. Richard Basehart gives a convincing performance as the cop killer who returned from WWII a resentful loner and becomes a resourceful and determined criminal.

It's typical of the docudramas popular in this period, with the stentorious narration and extensive location shoot. Cinematography was by noir legend John Alton- the prince of darkness- and there are some artistic interiors, but documentary realism for the street scenes. The portrayal of LA is one of its big strengths.

There's an exciting climax in the city's storm drains, a year ahead of The Third Man. It is presented as a disclosure of authentic police methods. Jack Webb has a decent support role as a forensics lab nerd and he used this approach as a template for his hugely successful radio/tv crime series, Dragnet.

This isn't merely still watchable for its period realism and nostalgia for boxy technology. It's a really suspenseful thriller from start to finish as the cops close in on the dangerous quarry. Credited director Alfred Werker was a journeyman, but Anthony Mann took over mid shoot and this looks like his work. It's among the best postwar docu-noirs.

Not the best of Robert Siodmak's run of classic '40s noirs, but still a quality update of the old gangster set up about the cop and the crook who grew up on the same mean streets, destined to obsessively confront their alternative potential. This is the best role of Victor Mature's career as the dedicated Italian detective.

Though he's still matched by Richard Conte as the sociopathic cop killer. And womaniser. The mafia boss escapes from prison hospital to find his idealised other, his virtuous madonna- startlingly played by 14 year old Debra Paget. And then he searches the city at night for suckers to set them free.

The most potent of these encounters is with Hope Emerson, as a butch abortionist with a stake in a jewel robbery. The location photography of New York is striking, with the noir atmospherics reserved for the interiors. It was made by Fox, so Alfred Newman's music from Street Scene is again recycled, which is fine, but familiar.

It's a brutal portrayal of big city crime. Mature has to be willing to destroy himself to take down the narcissistic murderer. Aside from the resilient cop, everyone is malign, or indifferent. Censorship demands a moral perspective, but there is a tolerant, reformist agenda. This is a gangster noir classic and hugely influential.