Film Reviews by Steve

This adaptation of an epic medieval saga supposes an origin story for the German people. And it's easy to understand why it engaged the emergent Nazi party with its dynasties of Aryan warriors and implication of a superior race. It's the same story as Wagner's Ring, stretched over a challenging 280 minutes!

Though it breaks into two parts. The more interesting is Siegfried, where a low born swordsman with mythic powers (Paul Richter) survives multiple challenges to become a player in the treacherous intrigue of court, and then murdered... In the second part, his widow Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) exerts her monumental revenge, which lead to many extensive battle scenes.

The narrative can be difficult to follow. The unruly script is poorly edited, and scenes are allowed to spool on without purpose. The cutting is baggy and by the fifth hour, even the most scholarly may feel discouraged. However the action scenes are ambitious, and the artistic impression of Germany in the middle ages is awesome. Plus the costumes.

Though the magical effects are no more than standard for the period. It will be of interest to students of German Romanticism more than admirers of Fritz Lang. The actors look perfect, but the performances are limited. Schön has many long close ups, but registers a single emotion, of imperious obsession. This isn't about nuance, but epic scale, and national myth-making.

This is the film Alfred Hitchcock liked to think of as the first to carry his signature- though it took years for him to make good on its promise. It is his strongest candidate for the best British silent.  Admittedly, Anthony Asquith apart, that's not much of a contest.

A serial killer is murdering lone women in London. Handsome matinee idol Ivor Novello plays the jittery innocent man who the police and public assume is guilty. So, he is the prototype of the wrong man struggling to clear his name. And the motif of the blonde victim is unmissable.

Hitch returned from Germany influenced by expressionism. There are many memorable visual images; most famously, when the landlord's family discuss their new tenant, and the ceiling disappears to reveal the agitated lodger pacing the room above... 

It's full of classic Hitchcock riffs (including a cameo from the director). The story is told with clarity and suspense, with moments of humour, and there's a thrilling action climax. For the first time, his camera comes alive.

If Alfred Hitchcock took one thing from the success of his previous film, The Lodger, it wasn't that he was the emerging master of suspense… It was the handsome, delicate Ivor Novello who co-wrote this theatrical melodrama.

And he stars as a promising and privileged public schoolboy wrongly accused of theft, who tumbles slowly down to the worst flophouses in Marseilles. Hitch does a decent job. His dissolves, point of view shots, visual humour and character cues are all satisfying.

And there’s an effective dream sequence/hallucination in which the ill-fated youngster is tormented by his misfortunes. Unfortunately, Novello's script invites our sympathy for this wealthy boy reduced to the ignominy of poverty… But there is no compassion at all for those born into it!

This describes a reality where the vulnerable and the poor are ruthlessly exploited, but doesn't draw any conclusions. Its solution is the rich kid alone should be saved. The great director is wasted on this material even though only he is to blame for the clunky symbolism. 

Apparently Ernest Hemingway did not approve of this, the first screen adaptation of any of his novels. And that's understandable as this precode Paramount release is channeled more in the spirit of its director than classic literature. It's a Frank Borzage hyper-romance, a place of almost metaphysical melodrama- rather than a realistic vision of the Great War.

And on those terms, this is a triumph. Borzage has come into vogue, and his admirers will love this. There are great stars of the period with Gary Cooper as a volunteer US ambulance driver on the Italian front who falls profoundly in love with a beautiful, suffering English nurse- played by Helen Hayes. And their tragic devotion overcomes all obstacles, except death.

Even the remarkable difference in height! The stars inhabit the separated, anguished lovers with great sincerity. Cooper is still a raw actor at this time but well cast and handsome and Hayes is heartbreaking. Borzage's direction is innovative; there are no rules. What most enhances the soul of his ethereal, narcotic cosmos is the extraordinarily gorgeous photography.

Charles Lang won an Oscar for cinematography. It's an early talkie, but no matter; it got another for sound. This may be a little slow for many. But the main problem is it is in the public domain and most prints are poor duplicates. And usually of the 1938 Warner Brothers re-release which was heavily censored. Though the entire 88 minute Paramount version is actually out there on bluray.

This initial feature length adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 bestseller is a cinematic landmark for its incredible action sequences and for its recreation of the ancient world. The famous 1959 remake far exceeds this in scale of production... but for my money the legendary chariot race* is more astonishing in the silent original.

And there is a more exotic, decadent dimension, most obvious in the costumes... Plus the moments in primitive Technicolor.  The massive Francis X. Bushman is one of the great screen villains as the Roman who commits Ben-Hur to a living hell on a slave galley. Ramon Novarro is impassively hunky/sexy as the obsessive hero who swears revenge.

There are problems with the pacing. The initial 15 minutes which recreate the birth of Jesus is sluggish, unnecessary and sticky with the usual Hollywood awe for religious themes. The dialogue scenes are inevitably difficult in silent films and this could have been more sharply edited. And the sentimental melodrama is off the scale!

But this matters less than it sounds because it is mostly action. There is the famous visual effect of the miracle of Ben-Hur's mother and sister's recovery from leprosy, within a single edit... but this probably has little impact unless you're looking for it. This is not so much a classic silent picture, but remains an impressive and epic action spectacular.

*Warning. Many horses had to be shot because of the barbaric attitude to animal welfare.

This is available as an extra with the 1959 version.

THE MYSTIC

This is unmistakably the work of Tod Browning, with the carnival setting and the outré storyline about the post WWI vogue for occult communications with the dead. A trio of Hungarian sideshow charlatans are tempted to New York to run fake seances to scam the rich.

 And of course their racket succeeds, then falls apart. Without the director’s usual star- Lon Chaney- there are minor actors, but still a decent ensemble cast, with Aileen Pringle charismatic as the exotic medium. And she gets to wear some eye-catching art deco costumes.

The early scenes are spooky and unsettling, and it remains interesting as the tricks of the trade are exposed. But eventually the narrative stalls before recovering for a decent climax. In the middle period there is an impression of filler to get it up to feature length. But this always is a handsome production.

The home video release has an eerie score (by Dean Hurley) with ambient audio effects, similar to the Movietone soundtracks of later silents. And this enhances the picture… This should be of interest to fans of Browning’s weird, dreamlike idiosyncrasies. And surely was an influence on Nightmare Alley?

FREAKS

This is such a groundbreaking horror picture mainly because it emerged from an existing community; the human exhibits exploited by travelling carnivals. Many of the actors actually made a living out of displaying their deformity. And also because what is on the screen is so subversive. Sometimes, it's hard to believe your eyes.

There is a love triangle between two ‘midgets’ played by Harry and Daisy Earles (actually brother and sister) and a 'big person’, a normal bodied trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra). She wants his inheritance and so marries the much smaller man with the intention of ending his life.

This is an exploitation film. There’s a framing story which explains how Cleopatra  became a sideshow curiosity after the revenge of the 'freaks' which puts us in among the interested by-standers. We've bought a ticket, and we are voyeurs. And as the events are told by a carny barker, maybe the whole story is a fantasy and we are also mugs.

And perhaps the freaks aren't those with genetic mutations, but the normal woman and her accomplice, who seek to murder out of greed. The famous scene where the 'freaks' accept the bride, by chanting ‘one of us' is spellbinding. It’s an extraordinary experience, and not always easy to watch. There’s nothing else like this.

THE UNKNOWN

The wildest, craziest plot ever imagined. It is set in Madrid and claims to be a true story told by carnival workers! Lon Chaney plays a serial killer known to the police only by his unique double thumbs. So he binds up his arms and joins a travelling circus as a knife act, throwing daggers at a very young Joan Crawford with his feet. Who he loves...

Because of previous abuse, the girl can't stand to be touched. So she is neurotically repulsed by the attentions of the circus strongman (Norman Kerry). As the police close in, to hide his incriminating thumbs and to indulge her fetish, Chaney has both his arms removed by a surgeon he is blackmailing! 

Unfortunately, by the time he returns to the circus, the showgirl is over her phobia and married to the muscleman. The now insanely jealous knife thrower devises a hideous revenge! Phew! This is pretty uninhibited stuff. It was created by Tod Browning who left home as a child to join a circus. Chaney's upbringing was similarly unconventional.    

Many silent horrors have the illusory mania of a fever dream. And that is the attraction here. And it's a lot of fun watching Chaney (and his stand-in) act with his feet. There was an alchemy when Browning and Chaney worked together. It feels like absolutely anything is possible.

What looks like being Woody Allen's last American  film is a simple diversion about a pair of college kids separated in the eponymous circumstances who are snagged up in contrasting adventures. In a way, it takes us back to the director's early New York comedies...

Not just that Timothée Chalamet plays a lascivious/intellectual update of the old Woody persona, but more enjoyably, Elle Fanning clearly channels Diane Keaton in a delightful portrayal as a ditsy naif from small town, USA. She gives the screen a lot of light and energy.

And it takes us back to contemporary New York after the director's European period, to the sidewalks of the early classics. Fifty years on. If it all fades out with two lovers meeting in Central Park in the rain, it would feel appropriate. 

There's little plot, just a loose chain of events evoking the charm and romance of life (for the lucky) in the great metropolis and the sweet benevolence of chance. It doesn't feel like the work of an artist running down on inspiration and motivation. It is still fascinated by the hazards of the human heart.

One of many Alfred Hitchcock films made in a Hollywood studio but set in England with a predominantly British cast. It is a thriller from a novel by Francis Iles about a frumpy spinster (Joan Fontaine) who marries a dangerous sociopath (Cary Grant) and grows to fear for her life.

And that premise conceals a number of difficulties. In 1941, Fontaine was a very beautiful young woman and there is little about her character that is unappealing. And Grant was the great screwball star of the period, but a limited dramatic actor and his portrayal is idiotic.

But the main problem is derived from Hollywood star etiquette. The plot continually stretches plausibility until it eventually rips apart during a climax purely devised because RKO wouldn't let Cary Grant play a murderer. Still, despite these fundamental weaknesses, it's an entertaining film

This is mainly thanks to the Master's imaginative visual approach. It is shot in the emerging film noir style with its ominous house of shadows. Fontaine won the Oscar she deserved for Rebecca a year earlier, playing another vulnerable new wife. It's a flawed woman in peril thriller with a few nice moments of black comedy. 

Stunning crime melodrama, which in some ways hardly feels like an Alfred Hitchcock film at all; it's similar to the wave of b&w docu-noirs which swept US cinema in the '50s, in the wake of Italian neorealism. The premise of the innocent man accused of crime is pure Hitch, but this is much more naturalistic.

During the opening credits, a woman suddenly looks into the camera, to stress that this is intended to look like a documentary and a long, long way from the Hitchworld of spectacular set pieces and sexual innuendo with an icy blonde on a speeding train. He then throws in some jump cuts....

Henry Fonda plays a night club musician wrongly accused of robbery by a negligent and mediocre judicial system. And his life and marriage fall apart. Fonda and Vera Miles give deeper performances than we expect from Hitch. And Robert Burks photographs New York on location- in that candid Weegee style- at least as well as anyone else in the period.

Hitchcock introduces the film, to emphasise this is a true story. There are familiar themes of guilt, mental instability and the imperfection of justice, and it's as suspenseful as his thrillers. But this is different. Instead of a MacGuffin, we get social realism. This is Hitchcock goes New Wave. And he succeeds completely.

Like much of '30s screwball, this reflects on the economic realities of the depression. A Wall Street banker (Edward Arnold) is so enraged by his family's profligacy that he throws his wife's new mink coat over the balcony of his Manhattan penthouse. It lands on a working girl (Jean Arthur) on her way to the office, knocking her out of the orbit of her ordinary struggles.

She is sacked for the moral improprieties she is presumed guilty of to get the coat. But because she is thought to be the mistress of the third richest man in America, luxury traders lavish her with valuables when they draw the same conclusion. By chance (!) Arthur ends up giving a room in her penthouse suite to the slumming son (Ray Milland) of the banker..

Arthur is really very good as a bewildered working stiff carried far away by the tide of fate. Her hunger in the early scenes is palpable. She never feels fake and eclipses the faintly drawn support characters. Preston Sturges' script allows her to experience both sides of the depression.

There's a remarkable scene in an automated restaurant. The unemployed protagonist can't afford even these prices. A man washes in a glass of water. And we wonder how such extremes of wealth can co-exist. The banker treats everyone in his kingdom with contempt. The politics is woven into a charming and entertaining farce. But in Hollywood terms, this is quite subversive.

Billy Wilder revives the screwball comedy, about 20 years after its golden age. As was typical of his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, the director returns to Europe for his story, a '30s French farce called Fanfare d'Amour, and transplants it to the US, to the Chicago of the jazz age and prohibition.

Two musician pals (Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon) witness a gangland hit and go on the run in drag as part of a female swing group, fronted by Marilyn Monroe.  Screwball was usually about boy meets girl. Here, the two men drive the narrative. What we now call a bromance...

Their relationship is complicated by the predicament that they are disguised as two female jazz musicians and travelling with a party-hard girl band. Like most screwball comedy, it is a masquerade; characters pretend to be something they are not. The exception is Monroe, who doesn't know that Curtis is a man, so exposes her heart.

Marilyn was famously impossible on set, but delivers a performance (and a couple of good vocals), not just dumb blonde schtick. Lemmon and Curtis are inspired. On the threshold of the '60s, Lemmon succeeds Cary Grant as the great comedy star of his era. This is a fabulous spectacle of comic imagination. 

The second of six films directed by Marcel Carné between 1938-46, which are the foundation of French poetic realism. Though without his usual screenwriter  Jacques Prévert, there is more realism, and less poetry. It's an ensemble melodrama set among the residents of the title address.

What makes this most like other Carné films is the romantic pessimism of the central story about a juvenile couple who can't make a living in the depression, so check in to execute a double suicide. Annabella and Jean-Pierre Aumont are extremely beautiful and affecting in the roles.

There's a wonderful support cast of French character actors, but the emphasis of their stories is unbalanced by the charisma of Arletty and Louis Jouvet as a sex worker and her pimp. Watching them bicker while shacked up in bed spotlights how much more adult late '30s French cinema was than Hollywood.

There is an awful lot of infidelity going on! The huge set of the Canal St. Martin and Maurice Jaubert's romantic score bring atmosphere. It's arguably the least of Carné's releases around the war years, but the image of the young lovers wrestling malign fate in the dark of their temporary room is among his most potent.

After the success of Dracula, Universal studios rushed Frankenstein into cinemas later the same year. And it is an improvement in every respect. The direction of James Whale co-ordinates the production with greater imagination. And there is obviously more money for costumes, effects and set design. And crucially, for Jack Pierce's monster makeup.

He transforms Boris Karloff as the reanimated cadaver into a screen legend. Though I'd prefer him mute rather than that weedy growl. The performances are fine, with Colin Clive expressive as the monomaniacal Doctor Frankenstein. Dwight Frye stands out as the hunchback. There's some witless comic relief and a weak romantic subplot, but still clocks in at a taut 70m.

This is a blockbuster and Whale doesn't labour the subtext of Mary Shelley's classic novel. We get another story about mankind overreaching itself and being punished. But there is an engaging impression that the monster is looking for a father. And so being brought to life by lightning, Karloff quite poignantly reaches to the stormy sky, like a forlorn child.

It's more transgressive than Dracula and still delivers a few shocks; like the monster's killing of the hunchback. It's a proto-mad scientist film which borrows heavily from German expressionism but has artistic merit of its own. The editing is excellent. And Karloff as the agonised victim of Frankenstein's hubris, is an icon of the decade and the emerging horror genre.

The Baron (Herbert Marshall) and the Countess (Miriam Hopkins), share a romantic supper in his swanky hotel in Venice. But soon they tumble each other as fellow con artists. After they have returned their stolen trinkets, they move to Paris together and steal a diamond covered handbag from a rich perfumer (Kay Francis).

Marshall finagles a job as the tycoon's secretary and develops romantic feelings for her while embezzling a fortune from the company. But Hopkins wants him for herself. It's a love triangle, except two of the lovers are kleptomaniacs trying to gyp the third, and each other.

Marshall is very much at home in Ernst Lubitsch's Paris.  But it's Hopkins film, in a performance that goes a long way to establishing a female archetype of the screwball comedy, with her blend of the ditzy, impulsive and volatile.  

The dialogue is witty and the farce is adorable. But it's also a comedy of manners which refers to Trotsky and the wages of the poor. Surprising and imaginative at every twist this is the last word on the sophisticated comedy which was Lubitsch's gift, set in the romantic destinations of Europe, places of irony, charade and repartee. And scandal. 

This violent gangster-noir is dominated by Broderick Crawford as a tough cop who goes undercover among New York longshoremen to investigate criminal activity- including murder- by the union. This is three years before On the Waterfront. So HUAC would appreciate its politics, even if it does feature a corrupt policeman.

The plot is driven by the search to expose the gang boss. Which will come as a surprise, and the jeopardy of the special agent makes this a potent thriller. The clunky wisecracks which Crawford has to constantly spit out are a weakness, but his aggressive, kinetic performance supplies the film's energy.

He created variations on this character for the rest of the decade. There are familiar faces in minor roles. Charles Bronson is an uncredited dockworker and Ernest Borgnine a supercilious heavy. Best of all, Neville Brand re-runs his schtick as the sneering, sadistic goon. Somehow he gets better dialogue than anyone else.

There is expressionism and the action is melodramatic, but it's the look of grainy realism which impresses. This is a dirty waterfront of desperate men. The female roles are peripheral. Once the postwar vogue for classic noir began to fade, the gangster picture returned. Though this isn't well known, it's among the more successful.