Film Reviews by Steve

Brief, fast paced B western which is full of offbeat narrative details: like the gunfighter's steel prosthetic right hand and the hero's duelling weapon of choice, the harpoon. It's a fascinating film, packed with audacious stylistic flourishes. The ultra-stark black and white photography, allied to a percussive mariachi score, gives the film a unique ambience.

Sterling Hayden plays a Swedish immigrant sailor who comes home to Texas to discover a rich landowner (Sebastian Cabot) has hired a gunman (Ned Young) to murder the farmers who have leased his territory, now he has discovered it is sitting on a sea of oil.  The killer has shot down the sailor's father. So it's a revenge western.

This was written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo under a front, and the film is ostentatiously about the failure of people to stand up to an oppressor. It is also a story about the corruption of capitalism. The terrified farmers wonder why one man should want everything. Hayden was another victim of McCarthy. He is terrific in this.

And it's an exciting work of genre fiction; the film moves like a bullet. There is phenomenal suspense for such archetypal situations. And the characters are vivid and moving. We really care about these persecuted farmers. This was Joseph H. Lewis' last film before he went onto tv, but he was still clearly at his peak. He's among the great low budget directors.

Low budget psychological western raised way above the ordinary by a wonderful double act between a nervy Anthony Perkins and a very cool Henry Fonda. There's a standard western plot. A bounty hunter and former lawman (Fonda) passes through town to claim on the body of killer.  He stays around to help the inexperienced sheriff (Perkins) learn the facts of life.

The stranger lost his wife and child long ago, and the youngster has no family either. They form a temporary father-son relationship as the veteran teaches his protégé how to face down a contemptuous gunman splendidly played by the ever loathsome bad guy specialist Neville Brand.

It's a liberal Hollywood film and Brand channels the racism of fifties America which the sheriff must overcome, as well as impose law and order. It's a great looking film in fabulous b&w, widescreen Vistavision. There's a plausible impression of period and a lovely romantic score from Elmer Bernstein.    

This is Anthony Mann at about his peak, making fine entertainment out of genre conventions. But it's the simpatico pairing of Fonda and Perkins and the relationship of their characters that makes the film so enjoyable. Though admittedly Perkins looks more like he belongs in High School Confidential than the old west. 

Ensemble western set after the Civil War. The naked spur refers to our motivations: bounty hunter James Stewart is driven by revenge; wandering prospector Millard Mitchell by gold; and disgraced cavalryman Ralph Meeker by sexual depravity. All are distorted by greed and compete to take in a fugitive killer (Robert Ryan), for a cut of the $5000 reward.  

And the murderer will seek to divide his captors and escape with his girl (Janet Leigh) as they travel through the Rockies back to Abilene. Most of the entertainment is watching the crazy, glittery eyed gunman use the men's weaknesses against themselves, like Iago in a cowboy hat.

Robert Ryan gives the dominant performance. He keeps his wild strategies secret, but he plainly enjoys the barbed malice he scatters in the path of his adversaries. No one could sneer quite as repellently as Ralph Meeker and he feels dangerous and completely mercenary as an ex-army rapist without any conscience at all. He's even more loathsome than the killer.

 James Stewart gives a complex portrayal as a peaceful man who has survived the Civil War with (what we'd call now) PTSD.  It's an actor's film, but visually striking with magnificent colour photography of the grandiose Rockies. It's all filmed on location and there's an exciting action finale shot in the rapids of the rugged, picturesque Colorado River.

A faithful adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque pacifist novel which was a landmark Hollywood war film and helped establish the conventions by which we imagine WWI on screen. Exhorted by a patriotic teacher, a group of naive German children enlist, and over years of combat they are transformed by their experiences, until mutilated, insane or dead.

There is no sense of strategy in the film. The boys and their fatalistic mentors contest the same plot of French farmland in an absurdist exercise in futility. The soldiers create a society out of their irrational circumstances, and a normality out of their fear. They come to view life away from the front as alien, even menacing.

Lewis Milestone fought with the US army in France and he does sensational work. He turns his cast into a believable band of misfits; brutalised, but processing their trauma through trench wit. The visual scope of the film is epic, the camera is mobile and the editing lively. He portrays his huge battle set pieces with coherence, which few directors ever do.  

This ranks high among anti-war films and visions of WWI. There is a lot of vérité; the film shows us the logistics of mechanical war. We see a man blown away by an explosive leaving just his hands on the barbed wire. There is no music to evoke glory or sentimentality, there is just the habit forming terror of trench warfare and the betrayal of a generation.

Hollywood avoided WWI after the armistice, but the success of The Big Parade launched a wave of productions about the war over the next ten years. It was made only eight years after America joined the conflict, so there must have been real life experience on either side of the camera. Though there isn't an overwhelming impression of authenticity.  

King Vidor's epic invented a lot of the rules for platoon films, partly because it follows a predictable path: the initial patriotism on the home front; the drilling of a group of civilians into a fighting unit; the boredom of waiting and the virile furlough pursuits. Then the young soldiers confront the German army, and are stopped dead on the western front.

The film is dominated by a romance between its charismatic star John Gilbert as a rich doughboy, and the French Renée Adorée as an exuberant farmer's daughter. The cute comedy of their mutual incomprehension is utterly charming.

The Big Parade gave audiences a vision of war: the fighter planes, the army camps, the anti-aircraft artillery and chemical weapons. A veteran might have felt too many punches were pulled in the interests of tasteful entertainment. It's a long film, but doesn't drag. It was groundbreaking , but better, more incendiary war films were coming.

The plot of this adaptation of Raymond Chandler's classic crime novel was hugely simplified for the screen, though is still complicated by normal standards. But a surprising amount of Chandler survives, including a fair approximation of Chandler's tough, sardonic hero Philip Marlowe.

 Dick Powell handles the comedy particularly well and tones down the toothsome vitality of his crooning days. In his screen debut, giant ex-wrestler Mike Mazurki is Moose Malloy who strong-arms Marlowe into looking for his former sweetheart, a vanished showgirl called Velma. As cute as lace pants.

 It's disappointing that so little of Chandler's poetic vision of Los Angeles makes the cut (the studio didn't go near a subplot involving the trading of drugs to Hollywood stars). But many other strengths remain. Powell's voice-over exploits plenty of the writer's immortal narrative style and trademark wisecracks.  

A huge bonus is the noir photography, especially Marlowe's expressionistic descent into his drug hell. Thanks to censorship, the streets aren't all that mean, but the film does reflect the class structure of the great sprawling west coast metropolis and the crazies and charlatans that feed on it. A noir great.

 Astaire & Rogers represent so much of the classic glamour of 1930s cinema. Swing Time is their usual screwball frou-frou with Fred as a shiftless gambler looking to blag a fortune to marry a rich looker (Betty Furness) but falling in love with working girl Ginger.

A few of the support cast from Top Hat return, including the super-unctuous Eric Blore and comedian Helen Broderick, again playing Ginger's older pal. Swing Time's weakness is that it lacks the wit of Top Hat, and Fred's character really isn't all that easy to like. But...  

...it boasts some astonishing musical standards from Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern, and dance numbers that can be included among  Fred & Ginger's greatest hits. Fred sings the sensational romantic ballad, The Way You Look Tonight. His Bojangles tribute to Bill Robinson  is the showstopper. The legendary duo make magic together on Never Gonna Dance.

 And there's Pick Yourself Up, A Fine Romance and the title waltz! The art deco sets are wonderful too. Neither Astaire nor Rogers was a great actor or singer, in my view.. But ninety minutes spent in their company is a time machine back to a world of romance, grace and sophistication.  

*warning, film includes a blackface number. 

This is a heist film which closely follows the genre rules established by John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. The star of that film, Sterling Hayden also features in The Killing, though as the leader of the caper, rather than a heavy.  

The heist takes place on a racetrack, worked by inside men, particularly a crooked bookie played expertly by Elisha Cook jr. He's a sexual flop, pitilessly squeezed dry by his unfaithful, predatory wife. As they must, the caper falls apart disastrously on the big day.

There is a good hardboiled script, which uses the unusual device of telling the heist from the various points of view of all the gang members, with the sort of strident third person narrative familiar from documentary style noirs like The Naked City.  

This low budget film was Kubrick's first significant release. It didn't sell too many tickets, but it gave him the opportunity to make Paths of Glory the following year. It is a genre classic, and stylishly made. 

The last of the stunning sequence of silent dramas made by Fox films at the dawn of the talkies. City Girl was released in a movietone version with some dialogue but only the beautiful silent alternative remains.

 It is a domestic drama with a rural setting. Charles Farrell goes to Chicago to sell his father's wheat and impulsively marries the flirtatious but world weary waitress (Mary Duncan) he meets working in a big city diner. When he returns home with his bride he finds his father unimpressed with his business acumen and his choice of wife. In fact his father finds much to be angry about.

 This is a work of realism without the metaphysical elements of the films Frank Borzage was making for Fox at this time. But its naturalistic narrative is gloriously illuminated by the golden splendour of its images (photographed by Ernest Palmer). Its artistic lighting is enchanting.

 City Girl absolutely works as a romantic drama. Its location shooting in Oregon (standing in for Minnesota) is richly atmospheric. Farrell and Duncan handle the comedy particularly well (though they lack the chemistry he shared with Janet Gaynor). But it's the visual appeal of the film which makes it such an exalting and haunting experience.

The ultimate film about the eighties political revolution and its economic Darwinism.

It's an acting masterclass with a magnificent ensemble cast, which Jack Lemmon just about shades as the corporate also-ran, way beyond his breaking point. Great actors must kill to get their hands on material as good as this.

A version of, and improvement on, David Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner, which is my generation's Death of a Salesman.

A transcendental film about two identical young women (Irene Jacob) who live materially unconnected but similar lives, one in Paris, the other in Warsaw, with contrasting but linked destinies.

This ethereal film is a mystical experience which speaks to us in a visual, impressionistic language.

It is an exquisite, metaphysical poem from the great Krzysztof Kieslowski. Irene Jacob is luminescent in the demanding dual roles.

As much a vision as a film. A quiet, meditative and incredibly beautiful experience.

After Sapphire, Dearden and scriptwriter Janet Green again married social commentary to a murder story, this time to explore the illegality of homosexuality which was allowing the widespread blackmail of homosexual men. Victim pulls a lot of punches. The lawyer played by Dirk Bogarde who expedites the investigation into the death of a rent boy doesn't actually have sex with men. He is married, and resists the impulse. But he does make clear the desire is there in a passionate speech apparently written by Bogarde himself. But the level of candour was still a big leap forward. Credit to all the cast and crew in making this film when the stigma might have caused considerable harm to their careers. It was banned in the US. The main attraction of Victim for me is the poignant performance by Dirk Bogarde, really the gateway to his many great roles of the sixties, particularly with Joseph Losey.

The Special Operations film, and the design, organisation and execution of a dangerous, covert enterprise in a foreign country under occupation was one of the most robust and rewarding subgenres of the 1950s war film. There was usually a great deal of genre conformity in these films, from the tough sergeant major, the explosives boffin, the repressed emotions of the final briefing through to their brave death or unlikely escape. Carve Her Name with Pride is distinctive because it about the training and operation of a woman, Violette Szabo who worked with the resistance in France and was executed at Ravensbrück concentration camp 1945. It is a dignified and charismatic portrayal by Virginia McKenna and a worthy tribute. The ending when she is executed with Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe is powerful and deeply moving.

This version of Elizabeth von Arnim's 1922 novel (filmed badly in 1935) was originally made for the BBC but later given a cinema release by Miramax. Four women mostly suffering from disappointing marriages, the grey fustiness of London and English middle class life, and a lingering despair brought on by World War I, travel to the picturesque fishing village of Portofino in north western Italy. There, established in a castle rented to tourists, in the light and warmth of their surroundings, the society of local inhabitants and free from the restrictions of their usual lives, they begin to thrive and grow again.  So pure escapism. A vicarious fantasy. Yet such a beautiful one, which works like an opiate flooding our veins and then our hearts with sweet release. The light, the Italian locations, the beautiful performances, they all allow us a little of the peace and optimism that the ladies find within themselves, released by the Italian riviera. And in my 1991, that was glorious, charming and irresistible.

A great stroke of luck for Monty Python was that they got the sets from Franco Zeffirelli's 1977 tv epic, Jesus of Nazareth which allowed this film to look a whole lot more authentic than Up Pompeii. Life of Brian is a series of sketches harnessed to the story of (an alternative) Christ. Its attraction is mainly twofold: it is an inspired and intelligent skewering of the characteristics of religious fundamentalism; and it is very funny. There is little characterisation save Graham Chapman's Brian, but there are some inspired performances, such as Michael Palin's Pontius Pilate, and John Cleese's Reg, leader of the Judean resistance. Brilliant comical scenes keep on coming, like the pessimistic, equivocal prophet, or the Roman soldier correcting the Latin of Brian's graffiti. I'm not usually an admirer of the work of Monty Python as a collective, but this is their absolute peak, and the hyperbolic reaction to the film's release (the BBC discussion between Palin, Cleese and Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark was lamentably witless on the part of the offended Catholics) indicated that a national, or global conversation was long overdue.