Film Reviews by Steve

This stands apart from most suspense thrillers because it draws quite realistically on scientific theory. The author of the 1948 source novel, was Nevil Shute, who had previously been an aeronautical engineer, and the hazard of metal fatigue to aircraft safety would result in a real life tragedy a few years later.

James Stewart plays a research scientist concerned about the sustainability of the aluminium frames of a new line of commercial aircraft. He predicts the tails will fall off after 1440 flight hours. And then it happens. While traveling to Canada to examine the crash debris, he discovers the plane he has boarded is approaching the crucial time span...

So for all the boffinry, this settles down into a disaster film. Stewart is a complex character; autistic, a widower, and a loner. But essentially a loose screw on a commercial flight which he claims is about to fall out of the sky. Meanwhile head office insist there's nothing to see, fearful of the bottom line.

Among the fellow flyers, Marlene Dietrich packs some incidental glamour, but Glynis Johns' flat performance is a negative. Stewart is solid as a shy, unheroic man made eccentric by his extreme intelligence, and suffering from his own stress fatigue. While there's a thoughtful production, its best factor is Shute's exciting plot premise.

Ultra-realistic, and harrowing adaptation of Nigel Balchin's novel which explores the mental trauma of those working in research and development during WWII. The boffins. David Farrar plays a bomb specialist who leads a group of scientists working in munitions. They are a small department which has to fight for resources and status.

This is an entirely masculine environment. And all the men live with extreme stress. Farrar lost a foot in an explosion, and incessantly fights off the whisky that brings him oblivion, while being called out to investigate the German trick bomb which has been killing his colleagues. His partner (Kathleen Byron) is his unofficial therapist.

The men suppress their emotions and have no way of communicating their fears. Farrer needs to determine the mental state of one of his team, but is only able to hold a short discussion on detonators. There is sense that there is no way of knowing how broken these people are because their customs are entirely based around not showing how they feel.

It is a dry, procedural film which manages to be intense and disturbing. Byron's emotional aura has an strange, mystical power. And it must be Farrar's best performance. The extreme expressionism of the photography might be overwrought if Powell and Pressburger had not created such an authentic hell, in a film of extreme psychological close ups.

Handsome but sedate production of Alexander Pushkin's story from 1834; a supernatural allegory of greed set in the St. Petersburg barracks during the Napoleonic Wars. Director Thorold Dickinson creates a powerful sense of macabre superstition, though doesn't relate the narrative as effectively, and the story drifts at times.

A lowly born engineer in the Russian army (Anton Walbrook) will go to any length to learn a formula for winning at cards from an elderly, grotesque former beauty (Edith Evans) who is said to have sold her soul for the secret. And he either goes insane with his obsession, or the old lady tricks him from beyond the grave. Your choice...

Either way, he loses his life savings to the degenerate officers he envies, and resents. The first hour of the film is very slow and interest rests on the supernatural atmosphere and period clutter. It's all carefree gypsies and decadent aristocrats. There's some fascinating detail related to an ancient book of souls that Walbrook discovers.

The acting is quite theatrical, but then the events take place in an illusory realm. Edith Evans plays a contender for the most disagreeable character in films, ever. The story comes eerily to life in the last third, as the engineer's superstitious dread envelops him, and the momentum builds to a thrilling climax, which is well worth the wait.

Edward Dmytryk was a pioneer of American film noir, and after becoming one of the first casualties of McCarthyism, he moved to England and directed Obsession, among the most authentic looking British noirs. And it's a terrifically suspenseful thriller.

Its preoccupation is the perfect murder. An egotistical psychiatrist (Robert Newton) is intent on killing his wife's lover (Phil Brown) and locks him in a hidden room. But the garrulous shrink plans to keep his rival chained up during the investigation into the disappearance, and murder him when the heat is off.

 Which will give the captor time to fill a bath with acid, while he toys expansively with his victim. Regrettably, Newton gives a typically bumptious and tiresome performance. Sally Gray though, is a most effective floozy; a victim of her husband's psychopathic jealousy but without being sympathetic either.  

Naunton Wayne gives the film a big lift in the second half as a proto-Colombo who turns up unexpectedly, asking awkward questions. It's such well directed and exciting thriller that it's possible to overlook Newton's histrionics. And his really strange accent. This is one of Dmytryk's best films.

Eccentric social comedy adapted from the HG Wells novel, which is pretty much a one man show for its star and producer John Mills. He plays a genial, self-effacing Edwardian slacker, who lacks ambition. His life is occasionally blown off course by a major event, but eventually drifts back into inertia.

Mills isn't usually comfortable playing outside the middle class, but he's fine here, and stirs up a few laughs with Alfred Polly's verbose pattern of speech: 'Suicide arsonical. Good idea. Right-oh!' Polly's world is dominated by assertive women, but in an episodic film, the female performances are cameos.

Megs Jenkins stands out as the comfortable innkeeper he settles for. Otherwise, Finlay Currie makes an impact as an idler much like Mr. Polly, but violent rather than passive. In their period clothes, the duo's slapstick scenes together recall the comedians of silent films.

Alfred is an unhappy man who seeks refuge from a world of conformity which he lacks the intelligence or gumption to transcend. It's an offbeat film, maybe even unique, full of elaborate, unorthodox language. More whimsical than hilarious. A treat for any who may identify with Mills' portrayal of an ineffectual introvert.

Groundbreaking black comedy which might as well be a definition of the word 'droll'. The film is usually remembered first for the eight performances by Alec Guinness as the various idiotic, aristocratic members of the D'Ascoyne family who a poor relation (Dennis Price) must kill in order to inherit their land and wealth.

Price's trademark plummy froideur makes him perfect casting. This is an incredibly literary film, with writing that is often poetic. Most of the script is Price's acerbic first person narration which is a masterpiece of irony and innuendo and creates a comical tension between what is said, and what is shown. Great final twist too.

Robert Hamer satirises both the aristocracy, and everyone else who defers to them. But there is something deeper. The film pulls together strands of understatement, absurdity and irony which we have come to regard as the English sense of humour. Often this is more whimsical than hilarious, but close attention is rewarded with some big laughs.

It constructs a Victorian facade of genteel privilege, which obscures an underlying misery. This is the best of the Ealing comedies, and one of the great British films. This is mostly because of the tone of the writing and the dry, deadpan performances. Guinness' garrulous but dimwitted vicar is my personal favourite.

From the silent era to the swinging sixties, Butcher's Film Service turned out the lowest budget releases in British cinema, with murky sound and vision, limited sets and short shooting schedules. Almost none of them have any ambition. The Monkey's Paw is a cheap fright film which partly works because of these limitations.

Low budget horror directors say it's the dark that frightens audiences most. Norman Lee fills his frame with shadows, but also the poor quality photography opens up patches of black all over the screen. And, crucially, he doesn't show his monster, but leaves it to our imagination, as it bangs on a jammed door in a thunderstorm.

It is the best version of the famous old parable. A mummified monkey's paw is cursed by an Indian mystic to deliver three wishes. But fate must always deal an ironic joker... Megs Jenkins is a bereaved mother who wants to bring her son back after he dies in a motor accident. But he is returned in his burned, decomposed state.

The cast is a mix of seasoned support actors and enthusiastic amateurs. It lasts only an hour, and there are no lulls, but plenty of gruesome melodrama. The horrifying climax as the corpse escapes its grave and comes home, packs a punch of powerful dread. It's a genuinely creepy experience. And surely Butcher's best film.

Documentary style dramatisation of Robert Scott's quest to be first to the South Pole in 1912, which ultimately proved to be unsuccessful and tragic, with the final group of four men dying 11 miles from return camp. The realist approach accentuates the small details of the expedition, and draws on Scott's diary for the narration.

The use of Technicolor though makes the film look more artistic, and the location footage seem artificial. And the inscrutable facades of the actors and their brittle, cheerful received pronunciation makes the characters difficult to get to know. It's a lot of posh blokes going to the pole, and can at times feel like a Monty Python sketch.

Even their wives are impassively stoic. There is no rewrite of mythology. The men are heroic and uncomplaining. Team spirit is invincible. Every heart is devoted to god and empire. This is a film of surfaces and reportage. John Mills is perfectly cast as Scott, but a cypher. Most of the emotion is imparted by Vaughan Williams' heart pumping score.

Still, it's an exciting portrayal of a brave and ambitious misadventure. As the men grow tired, mistakes are punished and luck runs out. Scott and his companions were beaten to the pole by Norwegian expertise, but their journey- and this film- is a monument to human endurance, and obsessive, imperious ambition.

As the influence of American film noir spread after WWII, John Mills emerged as the best of the British actors to play the archetype of the jinxed male dupe at the mercy of malign destiny. He is the centre of Roy Ward Baker's debut, drifting through a striking but sombre shadow world of danger and rain and loss.

The pitch for The October Man is an old noir stand-by; a man of unreliable rationality is accused of a crime he didn't commit and must clear his name. Mills plays a troubled stranger who leaves hospital after a crack on the head. When a floozy from his austere guesthouse is found dead, no one believes his story.    

If this British noir lacks Hollywood glamour, then that accords with the downbeat mood of the film. This isn't so much existential despair, as the depressing greyness of the postwar years. Stupid rules are ascendant. Everybody is cold and badly fed. And truth yields to gossip and narrow minds.

While Eric Ambler's whodunit structure works well, what endures is the emotional and material poverty of a threadbare country. Where a woman being into the room of a gentleman is a scandal. Where the old have no fuel. And the police are dour and stupid. It's a powerful evocation of a national malaise.

This critically adored catholic noir is a masterpiece of expressionist photography. James Mason plays an IRA boss who leads a robbery to fund their political machinery. He is wounded while shooting a guard and gets separated from his men. Then is left to wander through the dark, rainy streets of Belfast at night.

This is a realistic, bomb wrecked city of sympathisers and informers. But it is also a metaphysical place. As the killer becomes delirious from his bullet, his surroundings turn increasingly surreal. When the snow starts to fall, the streets become a mysterious agent of god's grace. The partisan is existentially alone, but his soul is saved.

James Mason dominates the film and delivers a magnetic, subdued performance, though his screen time is quite limited. Increasingly, the scene is seen through his eyes. The picture gets ever more distorted and dark as he begins to hallucinate while he passes thorough a series of encounters with an A-Z of Irish stage actors.

The film is damaged by a typically gung-ho performance by Robert Newton as an enraptured artist who wants to paint death. The script is didactic, though not interested in politics. The suspense gets stretched by the wordy religious themes. But the film is legendary for its stunning visual artistry, and Mason's powerful despair.

Tough, dirty gangster noir, which also explores the experiences of the heroes returning home from war and prison camps. Trevor Howard plays an ex-RAF pilot and POW who can't adjust to the banality of peacetime or a country where it seems everyone is on the make. He falls in with a gang running a black market operation.

One of the stalwarts of Brit-noir is the wide boy who dealt in contraband during the war while others were fighting, and later spins his small time enterprise into something more profitable. In this case, cocaine. Griffith Jones is the ruthless mob leader who is doing a whole lot better than the demobbed forces looking for jobs.

When the two men fall out over the ethics of running illegal drugs, Jones frames Howard for killing a copper. Then the fall guy escapes from Dartmoor with retribution in mind. It's a fairly simple revenge story, but violent, with sweet repartee and a lot of style. Sally Gray brings her usual sullen glamour as the moll who changes sides.

The unsubtle symbolism evokes the Hollywood gangster films of the early '30s. It has the look of American noir, but is more violent, and even dares an unjust resolution. And these mean streets are very British.  Plenty of credit goes to the star. Howard is so good it feels like he could have made a career out of playing tough losers.

No other film better captures the grit in the soul of Britain after WWII. Robert Hamer's realist masterpiece doesn't just document the squalid poverty of working class London, but saturates it in a gloomy, damp despair. Even now, the title (from Arthur Le Bern's novel) captures something of England's inherited pessimism.

 The story is a collection of interwoven vignettes from a street in the East End. The dominant strand relates to Googie Withers, stuck in a marriage of convenience with the stolid Edward Chapman She is surprised by an old flame (John McCallum) on the run from Dartmoor. All the old passions are stirred up, but for no gain.

Everyone is trapped. The convict escapes, but only briefly. This is the London of the black market. The local economy is crooked. Jack Warner plays the neighbourhood cop not only in pursuit of the hunted fugitive, but a trio of petty stooges who have stolen roller skates no one wants. They are more tragic than comic.

A day in the life of a community is assembled on the wet grey of the screen, from threadbare hardship to tawdry glamour. Escape means infidelity, religion, or a stiffener. Opportunity is crime or a quick sale of fleeting youth. Googie Withers is heartbreaking. Haunted by disappointment, her only solace is numb acceptance.

Arthouse fantasy about a couple of mysterious characters who seem to have become unstuck from time. Or is there's a rational explanation? It's the kind of ghostly tale of the uncanny which became popular after WWII, and owes an obvious debt to French surrealist director, Jean Cocteau.

Which is curious as this is the debut of Terence Young, who went on to make Bond films. Eric Portman is cast against type as an androgynous aesthete who meets a black haired beauty in prewar London (Edana Romney), who is the image of his renaissance painting.

While the supernatural events have a kind of opiated logic, this is foremost about about the dark atmosphere, with elaborate sets in deep shadows, dreamy symbolism, and motifs of fetishism and sexual ambiguity. George Auric's modernist score makes a big contribution to the ambience of hazy romance.

The sound is bathed in reverb for hypnotic effect, which makes the dialogue difficult to follow, despite Portman having the clearest diction in films. Romney is the lead and she looks fine as a hallucinatory apparition of a medieval aristocrat, though not a great actor. It's a curiosity which is sometimes absurd, but ultimately, haunting.

Supremely well cast version of Terence Rattigan's 1946 play, based on a famous incident; the presumed theft of a postal order by a boy in a naval academy, who was expelled. It's usually assumed the play is a celebration of British justice, though the themes are more complex, or muddled, than that, and the case is arguably a decadent folly.

This adaptation retained many of the stage actors. The most significant change is the introduction of Robert Donat as the barrister defending the child's right to a trial. And Donat dominates in this showy support role. Cecil Hardwicke is quietly impressive as the boy's father.  

 The play is terribly dated. The servant is an idiotic comic stereotype. The motivations of the comfortable middle class are taken as those of the country. There is absolutely zero class friction. Or gender. And indeed, if Rattigan intends to extol British human rights, often the events prove the opposite.

The period is just before WWI, but there is no impression of mankind on a precipice. But there is still much to enjoy, with unusually precise dialogue and fine staging by Anthony Asquith. Plus a signature Donat performance. Rattigan's England is superbly realised, and there is some pleasure to be taken in that. But it feels a very distant shore now.

Intelligent and very suspenseful adaptation by Graham Greene of his own short story, the first of three high quality collaborations with director Carol Reed. It's the story of a romantic, adulterous affair between the married housekeeper of the French embassy in London (Ralph Richardson) and one of the secretaries (Michèle Morgan).

Only events are seen and heard from the perspective of the ambassador's lonely child (Bobby Henrey) who idolises this gentle, wise employee, and hates his shrewish wife. But the adult world is a puzzle and the boy can't read the code. Through his eyes, we observe how people learn to deceive to shelter from emotional pain.

So when this naive witness tries to protect his father substitute from the charge of murdering his unloved wife, the child just incriminates him further, even though it was an accident. The final half hour, as the fate of the innocent man balances on the good intensions of the boy, is extraordinarily suspenseful. And brilliantly scripted.  

And the artistic photography is persuasive, and striking. This is one of the great British films, eloquently directed, with understated but moving... no, agonising performances from Richardson and Morgan. The crew all said Bobby Henrey was hopeless... but Reed actually pieces together an effective performance.