Film Reviews by Steve

Perceptive psychological drama set in the barracks of a Highland regiment some time after World War II. It's a character study of the conflict between two uncompromising officers during peacetime, when there is no external enemy to fight. And so, they destroy each other instead.

Alec Guinness is an officer who commands through personality and favouritism with a kind of ebullient tyranny. He showed uncommon bravery in the desert war, but conceals a brittle self doubt due to his lack of education and rank. The passionate Scot is replaced by an eligible Oxford man played by John Mills, who is uncharismatic and leads by enforcing the rules.

And the film is their personal combat for authority, which ends in tragedy. Both must be ascendent at any cost. To compromise is defeat. Gordon Jackson is the go-between operating on the edge of the officers' fanatical egomania. And it is clear these men have been psychologically damaged by the recent war.

Tunes of Glory refers to the ceremonial bagpipes that provides the score, which won't be to all tastes. The production is mostly staged within the camp, like a play, with few distractions from the primacy of the key performances. Guinness wins the battle of the legends, though he has a flashier role. The ending is a letdown, but the two stars make this an actors masterclass.

Simplified and condensed version of DH Lawrence's epic autobiographical novel directed by legendary cameraman Jack Cardiff. Stripped of the author's prose, this is quite a conventional historical saga of a working class boy from a Nottinghamshire coalfield who cannot find artistic or sexual freedom within the confines of his class.

It's a domestic drama with American Dean Stockwell playing the angry young man as a kind of Edwardian James Dean. The acting is generally strong, with Trevor Howard as the father, a crude, drunken miner, and particularly Wendy Hiller as the suffering mother who finds comfort through her cultured, brooding child.

Its main virtue is the stark black and white photography of grimy Nottinghamshire mining towns, shot around the pit where Lawrence grew up. It was a big box office hit, maybe because there was a vogue for working class realism when released, and for stories about conflict between generations. And it's quite sexually frank for the period.

The script is uninspired, but most aspects of the production are fine. It's a well made and entertaining literary adaptation, but Cardiff doesn't create anything perceptive or enduring out of his material. It's surprising that it was nominated for seven Oscars, though not that it actually won for the cinematography.

Complex slasher prototype which was buried by the critics in 1960 who were horrified by the perverse violence and compassion for its psychopathic murderer. And it finished Michael Powell as a director in his homeland. Over time it became a cult item and now has acquired legend status, particularly among film makers. This is horror as art-film.

Karlheinz Böhm plays a photographer with daddy issues. His dead father was a psychiatrist who filmed his child for his studies into fear. And then gave the kid his own cine-camera. One day, Junior will attach to a blade so he can record the terror in the eyes of his female murder victims when he is sexually aroused. Then it gets even darker, but you get the picture...

So there's a pretty grotesque horror premise, but this is just the portal into an intricate web of subtext. It's possible to get lost in these thematic layers, but most obviously there's the connection between the voyeurism of the maniacal killer and the audience. And the manipulative dominion of the film director compared to a sick obsessive... and so on.

Maybe it wasn't what was expected in an era of social realism. Some may find it pretentious or gimmicky or offensive. But this is an immersive experience, and its lurid, trashy colour palette and discordant piano score are as much a feature of that as the unsettling themes. A personal film with an imaginative reach that never gets old or used up.

Ultra-stylish morality tale which pulls together motifs from prison and heist films into a vehicle for liberal themes typical of Joseph Losey. Particularly on greed and justice. Trauma eyed Stanley Baker is ideal casting as a violent con who leaves stir to set up a racetrack heist. Soon he's back inside, but with every villain in London after the loot.

The gangster lives without trust. He is a loner. There may be portents of the emerging swinging London in his flashy consumerism, but he is emotionally austere. Baker dominates the film. Among the exceptional support cast, Patrick Magee is a standout as a manipulative, autocratic screw. Who isn't quite right in the head.

The prisoners are mostly either mentally ill or of limited intellect. There is no rehabilitation, just perpetual horror. Losey doesn't editorialise, he merely creates a context for his sociopathic antihero. The film is stylistically unorthodox: psychedelic POV shots imply drug use; there's a great Johnny Dankworth's jazz score, and even some nudity.

And Cleo Laine's deep, melancholy Prison Ballad recurs like a chorus. These fashionable details date the film now, but also give it an elegant period mystique. Not everything works. The calypso singer who comments on the action is clunky. But, it puts a black face in the cells. The years have eroded the realism but this still excels as a cold, fatalistic noir.

Bruising cop drama influenced by the procedural docu-noirs that came out of Hollywood after WWII. And while Val Guest's revision retains stylistic riffs which have become genre clichés, once the exciting story kicks in these hardly matter. This is a gripping thriller, led by a typically laconic and impassive performance from Stanley Baker.

He plays a hard as nails detective- yes, married to his job and neglectful of his long suffering wife. While investigating the murder of a young woman in a holdup, the cop finds he is on the trail of an escaped convict (John Crawford) he sent down and who swore revenge. Now all the contacts of the killer are in danger.

There's a nice plot detail which adds a little social commentary. The stolen banknotes have been treated with a chemical which shows up on the hands of everyone who handles them; who become literally marked. The cops trace the stain of dirty money as it spreads through the criminal community. Because crime touches everyone.

This is a realist film, expressively shot on the streets of Manchester and the surrounding moors. But the title is a little misleading; the mean streets of the black and white city just provide atmosphere. This is primarily a violent, fast moving policier and an ideal vehicle for Stanley Baker as the classic crime-busting loner.

This late period British noir was bombed by the critics, but now looks like a genre classic. It was a big change of pace for its two stars. Richard Todd is a brittle middle class, middle aged wage-slave, drowning in debt and about to lose his job. Peter Sellers is a flashy, sociopathic racketeer who runs a criminal gang which steals cars to be customised in his Paddington lock-up.

When the desperate salesman gets his new motor nicked, he goes vigilante. He's tired of getting pushed around. But in fighting back, he destroys himself and his marriage. Though cast against type, this is the best performance of Todd's career, and while not realistic, Sellers is astonishing too. He literally rips up the scenery. Under pressure, both men fall apart.

This is the human jungle where the weak are exploited and the most ruthless get the rewards. The set up has been used many times, but rarely as well. Maybe best of all is the nasty, poetic script (Alun Falconer). There's an extraordinary scene when Todd's loving wife (Elizabeth Sellars) explains that he is a loser and she has settled for disappointment.

John Guillermin directs with a little unexpected style. John Barry composed the jazz soundtrack and scored the title song for Adam Faith, who plays a delinquent carjacker. Carol White is affecting as a pitiful, vulnerable teenager preyed on by the sadistic gangster. All staged in a tough, cruel London. This is one of the best British crime films of the sixties.

Groundbreaking British New Wave film adapted by John Osborne from the play he wrote for Laurence Olivier. Critics claim that Larry was far better playing Archie Rice on stage than screen, which is staggering. His performance here is among the masterpieces of English cinema. He killed the role for anyone else.

Archie is a soft shoe shuffle comic in the last days of music hall: bankrupt, lecherous and a little grotesque; barely scraping a living from an old seaside town while his options for the future are closed down. He has no reason to go on, but is unable to stop because it's all he knows. Olivier gives us a journey into his humiliation.

Though Archie is a scoundrel, the star makes it possible to empathise with his degradation. Eventually it becomes clear that this story of a derelict song and dance man still doing the old routines to an indifferent world is an allegory for Britain's diminished status made apparent during the Suez crisis, which is when it is set.

The support cast operates in the shadow of Olivier, but it is interesting to see the film debuts of Alan Bates and Albert Finney. The realistic location shoot in Morecambe during holiday season now makes the film look like a period piece, but the theme of a declining country divided by class, race and the generations is still familiar.

Sentimental WWII melodrama set in a convent in Tuscany in 1943 which operates as a safe house for the transit of Jewish children out of fascist Italy. After the assassination of Mussolini, the Nazis take over security of the nearby prisoner of war camp and threaten to brutally crush the humanitarian work of the nuns.

Its big strength is the location shoot in the sunny Italian campagna, especially the fourteenth century monastery, which gives the film atmosphere and authenticity. Some of the dialogue is excellent, particularly the psychological manoeuvres between the mother superior (Lilli Palmer) and the German officer (Albert Lieven).

The nuns are archetypes, with Sylvia Syms a sensual novice and Yvonne Mitchell a scary fundamentalist. The German officers are ultra-sadistic, but this feels more melodramatic than realistic, driving the suspenseful plot to a frantic climax. Will the Nazis discover the hidden kids during their (noisy) religious ceremony?

Setting aside historical fidelity, ultimately the film is spoiled by an excess of the cutes. The performances of the children are badly misjudged, which is the director's fault. And this is exaggerated by the lush, romantic soundtrack. And transforming this holocaust story into a manipulative tearjerker feels like a failure of judgement.

Lightweight but fun comedy based on the satirical non-fiction of Stephen Potter, which entered the words 'gamesmanship' and 'one-upmanship' into the dictionary. Ian Carmichael is a passive washout who wants to romance the astonishingly cute/sweet Janette Scott but is always trumped by a pushy blowhard played by Terry-Thomas.

So the clueless schmuck goes to a school in lifemanship run by Alastair Sim and learns how to turn the tables and win the girl. It's a simple story which swerves the many possible complications of imagining a society of competing sociopaths and just goes for chuckles. And thanks to an ideal cast it delivers a blissful diversion.

This is an England of the wealthy. Even the supposed loser, runs an accountancy firm. Though he is bullied by the staff until he learns how to push back. The events take place in exclusive restaurants and country clubs, a long way from the class divisions which might have given the story some bite.

It was the last film directed by Robert Hamer, though it doesn't have the complexity of his best work. Or the sadness. Ill health meant it was finished by other hands, but there is no evidence of a troubled production. It's a typical British comedy of the 50s-60s, and if the familiar period sexism can be overlooked, this is among the best of its type.

Exuberant satire aimed at the stereotypes of labour relations which became entrenched after WWII. It's the workers versus the bosses and both sides are presumed to be dishonest and mercenary. Peter Sellers' performance as the trade union leader Fred Kite became a standard image of the shop steward; bumptious, intractable and defensive.

This is a sequel to the Boulting Brothers', Private's Progress, with most of the same cast; a formidable assembly of British comic talent from a golden age of character actors, including Terry-Thomas as middle management and Margaret Rutherford as a dotty aristocrat. Irene Handl stands out as Fred Kite's more conciliatory wife.

Ian Carmichael stars as a well meaning relative of the factory boss who takes a job on the shop floor, naively stirring up hostility to the benefit of the executives. While the film characterises everyone as self-interested, it is guilty of false equivalence; a factory worker seeking to hold on to his rights isn't really the same as a corrupt boss making a crooked fortune.

Perhaps the film actually did harm in embedding extreme caricatures. Unforgivably the workers are portrayed as stupid. Depressingly, there is a prohibition on black union members. But this England of factory chimneys is a long ago country now. This is a period piece with an interesting gallery of rogues, but only a few laughs.

Courtroom melodrama guilty of many shameless plot stunts but which also generates a few delicious dramatic flourishes. It is based on an old faithful of the theatre but updated to WWII. Though the woozy insanity of the narrative would better suit the Great War. Anthony Asquith and a quality cast bring a deep shine to the improbable intrigue.

Dirk Bogarde plays a pair of identical POWs captured at Dunkirk. One is permanently brain damaged in a breakout, while the other gets back to England to be the titled inheritor of a stately pile. But was the wealthy baronet nobbled by his snivelling lookalike, who was a skilled actor? Certainly, the third member of the escape party (Paul Massie) thinks so.

And, after a dramatic court case to establish identity, so does the aristocrat's wife. She is portrayed by Olivia de Havilland, who gets top billing, but this is really a star vehicle for Dirk Bogarde, who is adorably sincere in his absurd predicament. Robert Morley and Wilfred Hyde White are also a fun double act as the combative barristers.

There are no genuine feelings on display, this is pure melodrama. There is some reflection on the reliability of memory. Inevitably, justice is done and social equilibrium is restored, but there is pleasure to be had watching the haughty toff squirm for a while. And Asquith adds striking expressionistic strokes to another of his classic legal dramas.

Eccentric British comedy which channels the kind of absurd humour typical of The Goons and Monty Python. The impoverished Duchy of Grand Fenwick invades the United States, intending to immediately surrender and apply for war aid. But their troops, armed with bows and arrows, blunder into winning the battle by capturing an atom bomb.

Peter Sellers plays multiple members of the court, including the Grand Duchess, performed in the manner of Margaret Rutherford. He dominates the film and the rest of the cast play straight to his suppressed craziness. Jean Seberg contributes some elfin love interest. David Kossoff is effective as the nuclear scientist, like a daft Albert Einstein.

There is a little satire built around such dunderheads having control of the means of global destruction. And maybe there's a hint that Fenwick is Britain in its diminished status after the recent Suez crisis. But mostly this is just cartoonish high jinks full of extraordinary plot complications which are often inspired.

But is it funny? Well of course that depends, but those who enjoy the classic surreal British humour will laugh at this. Or Irish, as the writer of the source novel (Leonard Wibberley) was from Dublin. It has lost most of its topicality, but the clever script and Sellers' multifaceted comic talent keeps the comedy fresh.

Like J.Lee Thompson's Ice Cold in Alex a year earlier, this brings together a loose alliance of uprooted mavericks who travel in ramshackle transport across a war ravaged country with a traitor on board. This time it's British India in 1905, and an army officer (Kenneth More) must get an infant Hindu prince to a safety by train, as north-west India spills into civil war.

And he's accompanied by a party of diverse civilians, with Lauren Bacall as a proto-feminist in her best post-Bogart role. Herbert Lom is typecast as the saturnine villain. IS Johar plays the obsequious Indian train driver as a dated stereotype, but he is charismatic, self deprecating, and ultimately a hero. And then there's a huge cast of extras.

This is an epic adventure which fills the magnificent CinemaScope with spectacular action. There is some thematic talk of colonialism and religious conflict which strays into clumsy editorialising. But this is broken up by incredibly suspenseful cliff hangers, particularly the nerve shredding crossing of a blown up railway bridge...

Spain effectively stands in for occupied India. While some of the attitudes are of their time, there is quite a critical attitude to the British Empire, compared with the Hollywood Raj films of the thirties. Kenneth More makes a dashing Ripping Yarns style hero. While maybe too verbose for some, it's a thrilling and good looking British blockbuster.

Strange, eerie adaptation of a Daphne Du Maurier story which smooths out the novel's lumpy plot complications and instead offers a simple, haunting impression of a lonely, morally exhausted man trying to find a reason to go on. Though never admired by critics, it has the deep poetic melancholy which is typical of Robert Hamer's best films.

The doppelganger device is pure literary artifice. Alec Guinness plays a language professor from an English University on a driving holiday in France who meets his double, a decadent aristocrat. So Guinness has a dual role. Naturally, the bankrupt toff changes places with the academic to provide an alibi for the murder of his rich wife.

Only the fall guy has found solace in his new home and doesn't want to give it back. On a realistic level, this is all ridiculous. But as the story of a fanciful, enervated sentimentalist who imagines an unlikely, but romantic end to himself, this becomes a poignant fantasy. Thanks in large part to Guinness wistful performance.

The locations around the town and country estate of Le Mans add much to the atmosphere, and there are sensitive, subdued performances from the cast. Bette Davis is a counterpoint in her wholehearted cameo as a frumpy, drug damaged matriarch. The big plot twist comes as no surprise, but this can still be enjoyed as a sad, ethereal daydream.

The final release from Ealing studios is an Australian film noir about a prison break. Brawny Aldo Ray is sprung from stir and hiding out with his pals in a former penal colony on an island in Sydney Harbour, now a tourist attraction. They take a family of caretakers hostage while the fugitive demands a retrial from the State Governor.

And most cinematically, the gang's former naval gunner (Victor Maddern) has trained the battlement's functioning cannon on a ship in the bay loaded with explosives, ready to fire if their demands are not met. It's a wild plot, but the main attraction is the unusual historic location of Pinchgut, and the wider use of Sydney.

It's fascinating to see the city before its modern transformation into a great metropolis. Just a big sunny provincial sprawl. There's a memorably eerie scene in the empty streets, evacuated beyond the range of the threatened explosion. Local actors got some minor parts, but Ray is the star and he dominates as the charismatic, headstrong convict.

Ironically he breaks out of one prison, only to be penned into another. The great Ealing studio brought down the curtain with a production which reflected their penchant for social realism. And their ambition, with Harry Watt making his third film in the lucky country. It's not among their first rank of classics, but still a tough compelling noir.