Film Reviews by Steve

Tolerance of this surreal comedy of ideas is inevitably tightly bound to how sympathetic the viewer is to its politics. It's 1944 and the end of the war is in sight and thoughts are turning to what sort of regeneration will await the survivors.

Ealing Studios supported the radical ambitions of the left. Basil Dearden's adaptation of JB Priestley's play doesn't really examine what socialism would mean to Britain, other than it would be a revolution and would put power within the grasp of ordinary people. Vast inequalities based on birthright would be consigned to memory...  

The film examines how people may respond to this change. It assembles nine contrasting archetypes at the gates of a modern city and listens to how the new deal will impact them. There is a fusty aristocrat (AE Matthews), a complacent capitalist (Norman Shelley), a worn down waitress (Googie Withers), a disillusioned machine worker (John Clement)...

The situation is unrealistic, and the expressionistic photography is dreamlike, but the the dialogue is naturalistic and captures the typical hopes and fears of the public. Enthusiasm for the project is over indulged but it's a fascinating insight into the psychological state of the nation in the final act of WWII, at a crossroads in history.

Landmark horror anthology which assembles a cast of character actors in a country house, who tell tales of the supernatural. Or is there actually a rational explanation for all of them, as advanced by a visiting psychiatric doctor? The film is famous for its extremely satisfying wraparound concept which links all their experiences together.

Both the best known episodes are from stories by John Baines. The Haunted Mirror, in which a newlywed sees a Victorian murder room in the reflection of his antique mirror which compels him to kill his bride (Googie Withers). And The Ventriloquists Dummy, with Michael Redgrave as a cabaret act whose mind is taken over by his sneering wooden doll.

It's the second of these that most elevates the film, directed by Cavalcanti for maximum suspense. It's a real baroque blow out. Michael Redgrave gives one of the all time great horror performances as the schizophrenic ventriloquist. The last shot as he is finally subsumed into the dummy's personality is thrilling cinema.

It's quite uneven, with the golf story a weakness, but its best moments are unbeatable. British cinema has always been strong on horror, and this is a genre classic. Part of the pleasure now of Dead of Night is to witness the support actors of Ealing Studios at the end of WWII, demobbed from the screen war and together in a film of pure entertainment.

This feels like a response from Ealing Studios to the success of the Gainsborough melodramas, though it is set among the Victorian commercial class, rather than the aristocracy. Googie Withers is the brassy, mercenary wife of an alcoholic publican who she poisons to promote her greater sexual freedom, and to take over the business.

She gets strychnine by sexually manipulating an inexperienced teenager (Gordon Jackson), who is seeking to squirm from under the heel of his oppressive father (Mervyn Johns), who owns a pharmacy. The story is set in Brighton, but the accents of his large, but tight knit family come from all over the UK!

It is Robert Hamer's debut as director, and he conspicuously spotlights the ambient cruelty of the period; the rigid parenting, the absence of law, the primacy of class and ignorance. Which is the context for a spectacular performance from Googie Withers as a stupid but imperious egotist, the squalid consequence of a libertarian society.

In a chilling subplot, the pharmacist experiments by pitilessly starving guinea pigs which his sweet natured daughter buys cabbages to feed. Maybe informed by rumours from Germany at the end of the war? It's a leisurely but atmospheric murder story set in the shadows of gaslight, which gets lost in the deep psychological darkness of its villains.

Surely nothing said war is over to British cinema audiences as emphatically as a Noël Coward social comedy starring Rex Harrison...in Technicolor! And for the survivors, maybe a fantasy about the apparition of a dead loved one might strike close to many hearts. Though Blithe Spirit is played completely for laughs.

And it's a funny film. Harrison is a novelist who engages a dotty medium (Margaret Rutherford) to provide a little drawing room diversion, but afterwards finds himself living with the ghost of his first wife (Constance Cummings). To the fury of his second wife (Kay Hammond). That's just the first act. The rest is Rutherford trying to get the genie back in the bottle.

Rex can be insufferably smug, but he is sending himself up here. He claims to be a writer, but does nothing but sit down to a life of continuous dining. When a doctor suggests he is overworking, it's one of the best gags of the film. Cummings is ideal casting as the screwball spectre, but Rutherford steals the film, unforgettably.

As it's a faithful adaptation of a Coward stage play, there are many witty epigrams. But also, snobbery and a racist joke. When the wives fall out, it's mostly over the furnishings. The fluorescent green of the ghosts is an eyesore, but enabled the visual effects which won an Oscar. It's froth, but best quality froth, which probably felt like a blessing in 1945.

For the first of the famous Gainsborough melodramas, the studio fielded all of their star actors. Phyllis Calvert bagged the central character, but the box office name was Margaret Lockwood and after this she became known for her bad girl roles. It made James Mason a major star and was a big break for Stewart Granger.

The most startling aspect of the film is how luxuriously Regency England is staged, with lavish sets, coiffure and costumes. This was produced in the austerity of the war years, so credit to the crew for making this look so good. The other significant factor is how sexy it is, with the bodices for the females, and tight britches for the men.

 Mason plays a ruthless, decadent aristocrat who marries the demure Miss Calvert to provide him with a son without her getting in the way of his degenerate leisure pursuits. She invites a former schoolfriend (Lockwood) who has fallen on hard times, to live with her. The envious guest starts an affair with the husband and plots to do away with the wife...

It's the sort of gothic melodrama that features a gypsy curse, a duel, and a climactic electrical storm. It was a huge hit on the home front. It's got it all. Including a racist expletive, which may be realistic for London in the early 1800s, but unforgivable for a film in 1943. Still, the handsome production was a signifier that Britain was beginning to emerge from the shock of war.

Modest but exciting murder story set in a busy newspaper office. It feels like a low budget copy of a Hollywood screwball thriller, as phlegmatic crime reporter David Farrar tracks down the elusive witness to a killing, while sparring/flirting with newsroom Girl Friday, Anne Crawford.

And they are a lot of fun together, spitting out the fast rat-a-tat dialogue with cheerful zest. Farrar also quarrels agreeably with rival newshound William Hartnell, as they compete for a lead from the eccentric support cast.

A curiosity is that Headline was made in 1943, but Farrar and Hartnell are not in uniform. Nor is Crawford driving a general around in a staff car. There is no evidence of the war to be seen.

The main flaw is a truly appalling fistfight between Farrar and the desperate killer on a late night train. This isn't a profound film. Nothing is meaningfully at stake. But it is unfaltering, engaging entertainment and B director John Harlow tells the story with suspense and clarity, if not style.

The only British war film made in colour between '39 and '45 is a characteristic Powell and Pressburger reflection on English national identity. In this case, the stubborn, sentimental conservatism which was the friction in the British war machine. This is personified by the newspaper cartoon of Colonel Blimp, a rotund, blustering relic of the empire.

The central theme is that a sense of fair play was compromising the British military effort against the total war of the Nazis. This celebration of moral superiority might now surprise historians of empire and slavery, but may be excused in a time of national crisis. This is a propaganda film, which goes on to promote the Home Guard.

We follow Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey) from the headstrong adventurer of the Boer War, through the Great War to the stubborn diehard of WWII. He makes a lifelong companion of a German officer (Anton Walbrook) and is involved with three women (all played by Deborah Kerr). The war office wanted to ban the film for being insufficiently patriotic.

It is actually an unreservedly pro-British film. The objection could have been better framed as not being adequately anti-German. The screen is dominated by a boisterous performance by Livesey, aided by makeup, as he ages 40 years. It's a handsome, epic presentation by Powell and Pressburger. Many critics feel it is their best work. Certainly, it is typically unorthodox.

Inspiring and exciting recreation of a true story from the early days of WWII, and a morale booster for the merchant navy. The San Demetrio is a small British petrol tanker carrying valuable aviation fuel across the Atlantic, taking its chances with the hunting packs of German U-boats and battleships.

After their ship is torpedoed, the men escape into lifeboats. While some are picked up by the Atlantic convoy, one boat floats on for days through the rain and cold before sighting an approaching vessel. Which proves to be the San Demetrio! The men elect to re-board, put out the lingering fire and repurpose the burned out hulk to take them home.

So the film becomes a tribute to their ingenuity and resilience in undertaking this unlikely mission in such hostile conditions and to their unstinting durability as they pull together for the common cause. It's the ultimate affirmation of wartime Britain's mustn't grumble stoicism.

The ensemble of Ealing studio character actors bring realism, conspicuously led by Walter Fitzgerald, but driven by the big hearted Mervyn Johns who keeps the engines pumping. It isn't an artistic looking film, and the back projection is variable, but we palpably feel the demoralising, soaking, freezing waves of the Atlantic in winter, as we cheer the crew home.

The best film about the home front in WWII, and one of the greatest social realist films ever made in the UK. It is a tribute to the women who kept industry switched on, and the sacrifices that usually slip under the radar. Patricia Roc plays a shy shopgirl from a working class community, who leaves home to serve in a munitions factory.

She meets people of different classes and intellects, and performs a small task in a larger chain of national importance. She marries an RAF pilot (Gordon Jackson) who dies over Germany. And it becomes apparent that, rather than solely fighting the Nazis, these people are now building a new Britain, which must be a fairer than before the war.

Much of the political idealism is voiced by Eric Portman as the bluff factory foreman. One of film's delights is his growing relationship with a cosseted mannequin (Anne Crawford) ill equipped for manual work. Unexpectedly, the mismatched actors share a potent chemistry which lights up the later scenes. But it's Roc's film and she breaks your heart.

This is an extraordinarily moving tribute to the female factory workers who provided the men at the front with the means to fight. It was commissioned as morale boosting propaganda, but it is more realistic and honest than this suggests. Credit to Launder and Gilliat for understanding the territory. And they give us Charters and Caldicott in uniform too!

British B directors also did their duty on the propaganda front in WWII, armed with newsreel footage and small budgets. Their films were made quickly on limited studio sets, but often there was talent available, working for the cause. Harold French’s film is the best of these, with a good script co-written by Terence Rattigan.

With the war going poorly these films often dwelt on the European resistance. This is set in Norway with Hugh Williams as a dilettante reporter who gets it together to attack German U-boats harboured in the fjords, The familiar story gets stuck in morale boosting rhetoric early on but is dealt a shot of adrenaline at half way as Hugh parachutes back to lead the underground.

Williams is an insipid lead, but there’s a pre-stardom Deborah Kerr, and Ralph Richardson in a conspicuous cameo. British films could always count on a good cast of support actors, and Finlay Currie stands out as tough but paternal sea captain. Francis Sullivan plays yet another sadistic Nazi. The war is in its fourth year, and the screen Germans are now much more ruthless.

Due to budget constraints, most of the action takes place off screen. Curiously, the film ends with a British invasion of Norway that never happened. But maybe this fiction gave the home front more hope than reality could. Today, the strength of the wartime B films is that they betray a feeling of national anxiety. Everything is still to be fought for.

Short and very sentimental musical melodrama which reprised a few popular standards for the home front. A busking violinist (John Warwick) is way down on his luck, but he is given a break by a showbiz promoter (Wilfred Lawson), which leads him to his long lost ex-wife and mother of his son (Ann Todd), who has blown in from America, where she is a successful singer...

So it's schmaltz. It was made by Butcher's Film Service who produced the lowest budget B films, with no obvious expertise, often memorable for murky lighting. Danny Boy wasn't successful with audiences. Halliwell's film guide says it is 'not for the critical'. It was directed by Oswald Mitchell, best known for making Old Mother Riley films! 

But inevitably... and yet. This film has an irresistible poignancy because of the time it was made, with the war going badly and Britain inevitably casting its gaze hopefully to the US and wondering if it would join the fight. The plot draws on this national need. The British are struggling, but with resilience. The rich relation comes back and recognises a common attachment.

In this context, the songs (Danny Boy, Auld Lang Syne) deliver a sweet emotional punch. The casting works today because Ann Todd became a star, and John Warwick isn't much remembered now. But it is he who gives the film heart, with his palpable decency and humility. In spite of its weaknesses (and many appalling jokes) this is surprisingly watchable, and a memo from history.

This landmark political polemic is also one of the great British films about class conflict. The introductory narration describes miners as 'the backbone of nations'. Yet they live in poverty. AJ Cronin's adaptation of his own novel advanced ideas about the future of the UK that would gather momentum over the war years.

Michael Redgrave plays an intelligent child from a northern mining town who can never escape the pull of his roots. This is due to the obstacles the poor must overcome to achieve their potential, and because he believes he must stay to fight for the future of his community. The collieries are owned by wealthy bosses who will sacrifice lives for profits.

Of course, there is a climactic pit disaster with bodies pulled out of the floodwater. Carol Reed stages this brilliantly on the huge studio set. But more impressive is the representation of the people in an era when the working class were rarely more than comic relief in British films. Their poverty is depicted starkly, without condescension.

The film is dominated by Redgrave. He delivers a couple of rousing editorialising speeches that put over Cronin's vision with punchy eloquence. But the whole cast creates a plausible impression of a resilient, suffering people. Reed's first great film captured an emerging national mood and was a huge success with the public.

Critics usually prefer this earlier adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's stage play to the MGM remake... and they are right! George Cukor's version has Hollywood stars and a larger budget, but the original is still a handsome production, with a deep period atmosphere. And its actors are well chosen. Anton Walbrook pulls off the trick of being repellent, without being unwatchable.

Walbrook schemes to drive his delicate, unstable wife (Diana Wynyard) into a mental hospital by creating an alternate and frightening reality which always undermines her expectations. Yes, by gaslighting her. Meanwhile, he seeks the rubies hidden in their house of shadows which eluded him years before when he murdered an old woman for them.

The action is mostly staged inside the home, but the studio exteriors evoke a pungent Edwardian London of fog and gas lamps, augmented by a rich orchestral score. The film subtly implies the insanity of the husband in how he uses religion to manipulate and frighten. The scene when he has the servants pray before breakfast is brilliantly freakish.

MGM insisted the negative and all copies be destroyed when they bought the rights. Obviously, they didn't succeed! While some themes have dated, it remains a powerful film about domestic abuse. Interesting how the maid is attracted to her employer's viciousness, without having the imagination to realise he might turn it on her. But primarily, it is a suspenseful thriller. 

With Alfred Hitchcock recently gone to Hollywood, Michael Powell shot a comedy-thriller in the master's style. The MacGuffin loosely draws on the war. A Danish merchant seaman (Conrad Veidt) is hauled into port to have his cargo inspected by customs. Then he follows his wilful, enigmatic passenger (Valerie Hobson) into a London full of German spies.

Naturally, she is working undercover for the British. And after they have worn each other out by squabbling, they fall in love. Veidt and Hobson were re-united following their 1939 hit, The Spy in Black. Veidt is a convincing sea captain, but not so much a romantic lead. Hobson is more comfortable with the romcom froth. Including a startling bondage scene.

The episodic spy story is a means to get the stars from one mysterious cliffhanger to another while they get to know each other over the long dark night. The comedy works better than the suspense, with the typically terse, tight lipped exchanges of the period. It is set in a blackout in the London fog which gives the film plenty of noirish atmosphere.

Hay Petrie is a bonus in a dual role as a sailor/restaurant owner. This is not as good as The Spy in Black, or Hitchcock's similar WWII espionage films. But the stars have a comic rapport, even if not credible as lovers. It looks like it was made quickly on a small budget, but it was a funny and entertaining diversion from the realities of the home front.

One of the best loved British films of the forties, and a classic train thriller. In the last days of peace before WWII, songwriter/spy Rex Harrison must rescue a brilliant Czech metallurgist from the Nazis, while sparring with his attractive daughter (Margaret Lockwood), as they escape to freedom on the German rail network.

This is a sort of sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), because it features the popular Englishmen abroad, Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne), who are in great form, and rather touchingly still catching trains through middle Europe with the continent about to go up in flames.

And both films are comedy thrillers written by Launder and Gilliat. The similarities between the two films emphasise that Carol Reed isn't quite the equal of Hitch, at least in this genre. But then, who is? It is still a fabulous entertainment with some classic lines and a drop dead climax on the last cable car into Switzerland.

How helpful of the Nazis to employ such a duffer as ticket collector on a crucial thoroughfare to freedom! Perhaps it's personal preference, but arguably Rex is a little too pleased with himself to be sympathetic. But the film sends that up. And it's a shock to see Paul Henreid in the Gestapo... But these are quibbles! This is the great British spy thriller of the war years.