Film Reviews by Steve

Musical biopic- cleaned up from Lillian Roth's bestselling memoir- which is transformed from standard '50s nostalgia for the musical theatre of the depression, into a vehicle for Susan Hayward's huge, dynamic performance. It tells of Lillian's upbringing by her stage-door mother (Jo Van Fleet) and Broadway success before succumbing to alcoholism.

 There's a great big band sound from Alex North which adds a flavour of the vaudeville era, back when mother pushed her little girl to auditions, teaching her to fake her true feelings and desires. When stardom arrives, Roth fills her emotional emptiness with the booze that will drive her from pawnshop to fleapit to dives.

 Susan Hayward got to sing her own numbers, but the film doesn't really feel so much like a musical. It's all about Lillian's self destruction, whether courtesy of the bottle, or men, or business choices. Alcohol completes her, and then it destroys her.  

Daniel Mann creates a rich and credible ambience of backstage rootlessness and after show parties. He has a reputation as a good director of actors and credit to him for allowing Hayward to dominate to such fabulous effect. It's one of the great performances of the decade.

The 12 men of the jury are in recess during the murder trial of a Spanish American teenager charged with killing his father. Eleven think he is guilty. A unanimous vote would send him to the electric chair. Only Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) isn't convinced and stands in the way of his execution. He thinks they should at least talk about it a little.

 Gradually, we become aware that the decisions of the other eleven were based on their assumptions and preconceptions, or even just the dynamics within the jury room, and not on the facts of the case. Doubt passes around the table, from man to man, and the jurors must confront their prejudice, or their own desperate guilt.

 Fonda brings his candid integrity to the role of the quiet hero, who demonstrates the importance of serving your conscience, even if it should isolate you. The rest of the cast (mostly from tv) is expertly selected, and their ensemble work is wonderful. The script reveals their characters with precision and economy building to moments of intense dramatic conflict.

 12 Angry Men demonstrates the precariousness of justice and the personal nature of truth. It is about citizenship and the responsibility of the individual. It is also an incredibly inspiring and moving experience. An astonishing debut from Sidney Lumet who makes a great virtue of the location within a single room.

Howard Hawks' revision of Hecht and MacArthur's 1928 newspaper play The Front Page made star reporter Hildy Johnson a woman and the ex-wife of cynical editor Walter Burns, rather than just a colleague. What a fabulous inspiration, enhanced by a hilarious rewrite from Charles Lederer. The funniest lines are all his.

Cary Grant, as the scheming Burns, and Rosalind Russell as the ultimate fast talking dame, hot shot newshound Hildy, deliver all time great comedy performances. This is screwball heaven. She intends to leave the paper to marry slow-but-steady insurance man Ralph Bellamy. And yes, he's wonderful too.

 The first half hour is the most sublime comedy I've ever seen, as Grant starts to spin his web of deception around Bellamy, and of entrapment around Russell. The story gets steadily darker in tone and eventually critiques the death penalty, the depression, communism and political corruption!

The sparring between the stars is inspired and legendary. The rapid fire dialogue is boundless, dizzying and hilarious. It is weakened by taking Cary off screen for 30 minutes, which just robs it of perfection. The Front Page is a fine comedy (with more emphasis on the business of news reporting) but now this feels definitive. It's the ultimate Hawks screwball. 

This intelligent western is one of the best thrillers of the 1950s. It's mostly a two-hander, with the insidious killer (Glenn Ford) held at gunpoint in a rural town by a stubborn farmer (Van Heflin). While the captive waits for his ruthless gang to spring him before the train arrives to take him to the prison in Yuma, he whittles away at his emergency warder's insecurities...

One of the main attractions is the artistic film noir lighting, but Delmer Daves takes more from noir than its look. This is a psychological film about doubt and anxiety. It also has a remarkable atmosphere for a western, a poetic sense of loneliness most poignantly expressed when the wanted man dallies to seduce a forlorn bar worker, which allows him to be caught.

This melancholy is enhanced by the lovely acoustic guitar score. Of the support cast, Felicia Farr is heartbreaking as the unloved girl willingly seduced by the outlaw's welcome lies. Their sexual liaison is quite candid for '57. The visual imagery is haunting, particularly a very desolate, austere funeral. The script from Elmore Leonard's story is wise, and elegant.  

The brilliant performances of Ford and Heflin dominate, framed against the parched wilderness of the land. The drought that is killing the farmer's herd. Daves directs with finesse. He seems to be gazing into the desolate heart of every scene. This is an exciting thriller, but it's the undertow of sadness that resonates.

Tough psychological western set around the time when the civilising of the west was threatening to end of the age of the outlaw. After many years of peaceful living, an ex-gunfighter (Gary Cooper) by chance runs into his ruthless former gang. He gets sucked into a bank job, while he tries to devise a plan to to extricate himself and co-travelling chanteuse (Julie London).

When the bandits stage the heist they discover the bank is now in a ghost town. They leave a few of their own bodies behind. It is an apt location for their futile shoot out. They are the phantoms of the old west, the anachronistic spirits of men who have outlived their ascendency with the arrival of law and order.

Cooper is 20 years too old, even for a reformed gunfighter. He looks unwell. Consequently Lee J.Cobb is buried under a heap of cosmetics in order to play his uncle. Julie London is for long stretches mostly employed as decoration. But they all still deliver memorable performances.

This is a bleak, brooding western. The family of outlaws are all vicious grotesques. There's some humour early on, but this becomes a bitter, violent experience, with an authentic look. Perhaps it was the film's brutality which meant it didn't find an audience at the time, but it has subsequently become a critics' favourite.

This is a cynical, tough war film which deals with the complex dynamic of soldiers fighting within a defective hierarchy. The Lieutenant (Jack Palance) is a classic square jawed GI, but his bravery is undermined during every crisis by his incompetent, cowardly Captain (Eddie Albert). 

The Captain is kept in position by the Lieutenant-Colonel (Lee Marvin) who seeks to gain politically from his stooge's family after the war. But how many casualties will he allow before he intervenes? This is a dystopian vision of the US infantry in the Battle of the Bulge which portrays the officers as a privileged elite, who benefit from the same preferment they expect back home.

Its weakness is that Palance is too much of a hero and Albert too much of a gutless zero, which makes the film schematic and less realistic. The sets are basic, though Robert Aldrich finds striking imagery among the ruins. There's plenty of talk, but with good action too. The usual running commentary of pessimistic infantry wit is punchy and funny. And there is nerve-shredding suspense...

Palance leads a dozen lightly armed soldiers into a heavily fortified village held by hundreds of Germans, with tanks. His superior doesn't even man the radio.  The Lieutenant's isolation and abandonment is excruciating. This was ahead of its time. Its motifs of disillusionment and mercenary individualism would become more typical in the war films of the '60s.

Motor racing melodrama about a driver who wins on the track but can't control his life when he's not behind the wheel. The racer falls in love with a regular girl but his obsessive compulsion to succeed shunts her off into the arms of a competing driver. Which sounds a lot like a pulpy airport novel.

The couple is played by the real life married team of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and they are so convincing that it feels a little voyeuristic watching them together. When Newman catches a ruggedly handsome circuit star (Robert Wagner) in bed with Woodward it feels suddenly, shockingly transgressive!

This works as a period piece, with the cocktail hour jazz of Dave Grusin's soundtrack, the ostentatious focus-pulls, the racetrack heat-haze rising up through the Panavision, and even the sad, isolated characters. The intense, introverted loner is such an archetype it feels like an omission that Newman doesn't return home to a fridge containing just a carton of rancid milk, and a hungry cat.

This is from the golden age of the motor racing film. The director doesn't capture the excitement on the track too well, but the drama away from the circuit is interesting. Newman is as charismatic as ever. He and Woodward give quite complex performances as older, experienced people who seem destined to be alone.

A cold war film about an error in the entrenched missile systems of USA and the Soviet Union which triggers a nuclear exchange. A computer malfunction fails to step down a resolved warning on America's satellite surveillance, releasing warheads which no human is able to recall. Still a relevant scenario.

Critics feel that this bombed at the box office because Dr. Strangelove was released earlier the same year and satirised a plot that Fail-Safe played for real. But it may also be because Sidney Lumet's film is quite cerebral and loaded with theory. Every aspect of the ethics and efficiency of the nuclear stand-off is discussed. Walter Matthau's character even delivers a lecture!

Though the themes are complex, they are interesting and accessible. And once the missiles are in transit to Moscow this becomes nerve wracking as the President (Henry Fonda) ironically tries to help the Soviets shoot down American bombers. And then tragic as he negotiates a horrifying recompense for American nukes and the loss of five million lives.

There is no action but lots of tension. Fonda was born to play the US President, and pre-stardom Matthau is convincingly malevolent as a war games consultant who recommends exploiting the accident to start a conflict to end Soviet communism. It seeks to educate, but is also a suspenseful encounter with the ultimate catastrophe.

Anti-war film set in the '50-'53 conflict in Korea which presents an astonishingly unflattering view of the US military. Sadly the clarity of the message was compromised by a loss of nerve in post production and by its star/producer Gregory Peck's refusal to portray his character as the less than heroic figure that was written.

Peck plays an officer commanded to lead three platoons to reclaim a stronghold from the Chinese army. The terrain has no strategic value, and the war is coming to a close with the politicians negotiating a treaty, but both sides feel that the territory changing hands would influence the balance of the ceasefire.

We see the US Government and military brass trading American lives for diplomatic leverage. It presents these leaders as not only indifferent to casualties, but incompetent. The soldiers are poorly trained and unmotivated. No one can explain the mission. Strategy is outdated, communications don't work and logistics are appalling. Out of 132 men, around a dozen survive.

There is an impression of what might have been. Peck took the film off Lewis Milestone and re-edited it, and the protest was muted. But even so, this condemnation of the American army was at least a decade ahead of its time. It's portrayal of events that are so baffling they actually feel crazy, anticipates the more satirical war films of the '60s.

This saga of the ancient Roman world remains relevant, unlike many contemporary historical epics, because its themes are timeless and universal. Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) was a slave and gladiator who went to war with Rome to gain the freedom of his class. When he rouses his army before the battle he is obviously also speaking to the emerging US civil rights movement.

And Dalton Trumbo's brilliant script references the McCarthy witch-hunt of the '50s. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to co-operate with HUAC. The famous scene when the Roman general (Laurence Olivier) commands the survivors of the uprising to identify Spartacus and they all respond "I am Spartacus" must have gone straight to the heart of US audiences.

Douglas' performance is immense. He is matched by Olivier who evokes decadent cruelty without overacting or a flicker of camp. The whole cast is excellent. Peter Ustinov steals his scenes as an unctuous, mercenary slave merchant. Alex North's innovative score does a lot of the heavy lifting. The Roman world feels plausible, whether the intimate interiors or the huge hillside battle scene.

It's a grand spectacle which demonstrates that political miracles are possible. And it continues to inspire. This is the best film of its genre, not because of the epic scale but because of its powerful evocation of humanity and brotherhood. And Douglas' production broke the stranglehold of HUAC on American cinema, which may even be the film's greatest legacy.

Western melodrama leading up to the famous shootout in Tombstone in 1881 works best as an odd couple buddy movie between Burt Lancaster (Wyatt Earp) and Kirk Douglas (Doc Holliday). Earp saves Doc's life so Holliday trails the lawman across the famous towns of the old west to pay off his debt.

This is a study of the western gunfighters, so a few famous hot shots turn up who weren't really present. It concludes with Wyatt delivering a lengthy homily about the perils of the gunfighting life to one of the Clantons (Dennis Hopper). Who is shot anyway. The concluding face-off is excellent, but there's quite a lot of discursive chat in getting there.

It looks more like a western of the '60s. The palette of matt creams, browns and greens is muted compared with the more fluorescent Technicolor of the '50s. And Burt needs a shave at times and the impressive set of Tombstone feels relatively realistic. It's procedural even though the history is pure fantasy.

This is an urban western, but when the stars do leave town, the blue Vistavision sky is magnificent. Besides the action, there is romance and a few comical touches. Most of its big box office clout is down to the rangy leads. Burt and Kirk are a powerhouse combination as the legendary lawmen. 

Entertaining comedy thriller set in what seems to be '40s England, but is more identifiable as a Hollywood fantasy London of cobbled streets and gaslight. A wisecracking American taxi dancer (Lucille Ball) gets entangled in a Scotland Yard investigation into a serial killer who contacts his victims through personal columns, while taunting the Inspector (Charles Coburn) with provocative verses.

So Lucy is recruited by the cops to meet up with oddball lonely hearts. Ball may lack the glamour her character is assumed to possess, but she's fine at this broad comedy. As she closes in on her dangerous quarry, the film actually becomes effectively suspenseful. Douglas Sirk makes an exciting whodunit with an attractive expressionist look, even if the plot gets a little crazy.

There's a wonderful cast of British expats in support, with George Zucco fun in a rare comedy role. Poor old Boris Karloff plays a whispering nutcase who meets Lucille in order to feature her in the fantasy fashion show he intends to stage in his deranged imagination. George Sanders contributes his usual droll, cynical libertine to good effect.

When Sanders gets banged up in error, it's possible to wonder if Lured is making a modest point about the unreliability of circumstantial evidence. But it never gets that serious. This isn't one of Sirk's classic melodramas, but it is the sort of hugely enjoyable froth that the major studios of the golden age produced so reliably.

This is a minor studio production which has become a B film legend. Nina Foch takes a job as a secretary to a family of nutcases who abduct her and lock her up on a remote estate in Cornwall (shot in California). They need her to stand in for the woman who was murdered by her psychopathic husband (George Macready).

They parade their prisoner as the dead wife for the benefit of local witnesses, claiming her protests are part of her psychosis. OK, it's a crazy story, though no more than many other golden age mysteries. It succeeds because director Joe Lewis stages it so well. No screen time is wasted, and there's a brilliant noir house-of-shadows.

Foch is plausible in the difficult title role, but the crazy kidnappers make a bigger impression. May Whitty is the eccentric but ruthlessly pragmatic mother of the simple-minded Macready. He is splendidly menacing as the killer who relishes their plans for the stand-in, while also enjoying having her as his wife, for a while.

It is set in England where, in the minds of Hollywood producers, these things happen. Like Gaslight. Critics like to flag up the doomed males of film noir as a key postwar motif, exploited by predatory females. But there are many women like Julia too; lonely, vulnerable and manipulated. This is among the most typical and successful of these woman-in-peril films.

Spy melodrama from a story by Eric Ambler, with plot points which anticipate Graham Greene's The Third Man. Peter Lorre is a Dutch writer visiting Istanbul who hears of a ruthless, inscrutable agent for hire called Dimitrios, who has washed up in the Bosphorus with a fatal stab wound, and decides to research his past for a possible novel. 

This proves hazardous because the trail leads to Dimitrios himself (Zachary Scott), who isn't as dead as he is supposed to be. There's an episodic plot made up of flashbacks to international scandals from which the agent provocateur vanishes without capture.  Ultimately, Lorre allies with Sidney Greenstreet, one of Dimitrios' former gang of murderers, assassins and spies. 

Lorre and Greenstreet made eight films together in the five years after The Maltese Falcon. And they are always good value. Zachary Scott makes his debut in the title role and he is ideal as the outwardly charming, inwardly unscrupulous conspirator, gaming the volatile capitals of the Balkans between the wars.

Hollywood routinely used this kind of foreign intrigue for their many serials. This is a class above that. There's a more coherent story. Production values are decent for a moderately budgeted ensemble thriller with no big stars. And the art direction and photography are full of shadowy atmosphere.

This tough Warner Brothers road film takes the premise of the Bette Davis vehicle Bordertown and welds it onto the chassis of AI Bezzerides' pulp novel, The Long Haul. George Raft and a subdued Humphrey Bogart play wildcat truck drivers forever getting gypped by the  corrupt buyers.

Ann Sheridan contributes the sexy, snappy backchat that's compulsory for a waitress in a diner in a Hollywood film. The sassy hash-slinger wins Raft's attention away from Ida Lupino, the wife of the wealthy company boss who she's looking to turn into an insurance payout. The last third of the film is stolen wholesale by Lupino as the deadly femme fatale.

She is willing to destroy herself to take Raft down with her. Her disintegration in the witness box is a stunning tour de force. Alan Hale is excellent as the unlucky husband. It's similar to Jules Dassin's noir classic Thieves Highway (1949), also from a Bezzerides story. But it swerves around the politics.

This just a haulage melodrama, loaded with atmosphere and interesting social history. Raoul Walsh keeps the action always rolling forwards. The laconic dialogue is classic Warners. There's a weary, gloomy pessimism on board which gives this the haunting despair of film noir, though a few years short of the noir big bang.