Film Reviews by Steve

Or maybe trophy wife vs. career girl. Clark Gable is a filthy rich New York publisher with servants and a vast Manhattan apartment who is happily married to Myrna Loy's chic homemaker. But everyone warns her that all men will stray given the chance. So watch out for the sexy girl-Friday (Jean Harlow) who runs his office.

MGM wasn't a prime studio for screwball. This is more of a social comedy drawn from a familiar contemporary scenario. Today, the most striking feature is how astonishingly sexist this world is. Not just because the boss calls his secretary 'toots' but how diminished she is. She doesn't have any status, but significantly helps run the business.

This was a makeover role for Harlow. The platinum blonde look has gone as she aims to broaden her range beyond the shrill floozy. Loy is well cast as the elegant, playful wife who is slow to be jealous but goes all the way when she is. Gable is least convincing. He's fine as the alpha male, but doesn't feel right on Madison Avenue.

Clarence Brown directs with his customary fluency, but doesn't raise any sparks: the class differences imply a friction which never happens; and the script finds little fault with the entitled male. Yet, it's possible to care about both women, because of how invidious was either role in '30s America, which trivialises both wife, and secretary. 

Ominous and fatalistic pre-noir which captures a vision of London just before the blitz. Michael Redgrave plays a construction worker who thinks he sees the murder of a young woman in a boarding house. It turns out to be a fake, but he becomes involved in the internecine intrigues of the girl (Sally Gray) and her would-be killer/magician husband (Paul Lukas).

This is a fusion of melodrama and Soviet style realism. The sensational story is a remake of a French film, but shot on location around London. And both aspects work well. The unrealistic narrative is unusual and absorbing, and the realist montages bring a vivid impression of the developing city; primarily the building of Waterloo Bridge.

Redgrave probably isn't everyone's idea of a crane driver. Or even a romantic lead. But he's an engaging presence. Patricia Roc is as adorable as ever as his working girl wife. But the real star is the beautiful and sulkily sexy Sally Gray as a low rent femme fatale. With Hollywood about to enter the era of film noir, it's a mystery why she wasn't snapped up.

The weakness is Paul Lukas as her charmless and jealous husband. Why did she marry him? He's not even rich. Apart from the outside locations, there are fascinating interiors, of clubland and the music hall. The featured comedy act is hilarious! The drama is overstated, but the portrayal of working class Londoners is sympathetic, and not patronising.

Oddball genre mashup which kicks off with a gunshot as if it's going to be a melodrama with a touch of noir, like Mildred Pierce (1945). But then wanders off into comedy, as if Nicholas Ray got bored during the extensive, troubled production. The police detective's screwball wife ends up taking on the case!

Maureen O'Hara plays an ex-singing star who lost her career to a throat infection and plans to manage a protégée (Gloria Grahame) to the big time, assisted by the wolfish piano player (Melvyn Douglas) who keeps a lascivious eye on them both. When the gun is fired, the ingénue goes to intensive care and the svengali to prison.

So a grizzled, stalwart detective (Jay C. Flippen) investigates. With his interfering wife (Mary Philips). There is an interesting- if familiar- premise in the spirit of James M. Cain. But it is squandered through poor direction, script and editing. And probably the usual interference from RKO boss, Howard Hughes.

The characters are anaemic and inconsistent. The main asset is Gloria Grahame as the small town dumb blonde who just happens to emote like all the sorrows of the world. GG shows she can do comedy, though her singing is dubbed. She's photographed beautifully and gets all the best lines. And Ray married her shortly after production wrapped. 

The quintessential 1970s conspiracy thriller is also an extraordinary true story and one of the best political films ever made. It is adapted from the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about their investigation for the Washington Post into surveillance ordered by the US President on the Democratic opposition, which was covered up by all the highest levels of state.

But you don't have know anything about Richard Nixon... This is so brilliantly directed by Alan J. Pakula, that the story is compelling even though there is a surplus of information to absorb. The state of the art editing, sound and photography all contribute, and William Goldman's Oscar winning script tells the complex events with clarity. And for maximum suspense.

Remember, follow the money... The portrayals of the journalists by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are understated. There is no odd couple comedy. This is all about the politics. The support performances are muted, except perhaps Hal Holbrook as the informer. There is realistic detail of how serious newspapers once worked and how stories like this were broken.

Now it seems like nostalgia for a golden age of journalism, when the press told truth to power- but without bias. Could there even be a Watergate now, in the era of fake news? Woodward and Bernstein convey that truth and integrity are necessary for democracy to survive, but may be lost without tenacity, curiosity and toil. This now stands as a memorial to such ideals.

King Vidor's spirited adaptation of Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize winning play is one of the 1930’s ultimate melodramas. The director thrillingly frees his camera from the restrictions of early sound cinema and explores the set of an impoverished New York tenement, where the ensemble cast pursue their various conflicts, usually sparked by intolerance.

An elderly tenant has ideas which could improve their lives, but is ignored, or called a Red. His notions are complicated. And it's too hot. Tempers are shredded. Money is scarce. And then a gunshot... Vidor's staging of the panic that follows is spectacular.

It can seem the precode era was just about salacious censor-baiting. But there was social realism too, usually adapted from the New York stage. Sylvia Sidney was the star in many of these. Her gift was to be ordinary without exposing much frivolous Hollywood glamour. She’s in a class of her own among a pretty decent cast.

She communicates an intense adversity while being relatively impassive. There's a Gershwinesque score from Alfred Newman and an exceptional screenplay. But this is Vidor's triumph and one of the best early talkies. It might not be as visually stunning as his landmark silent, The Crowd (1928), but given the impediment of sound, this is just as impressive.

Short spy drama which triumphs over its meagre budget and minor stars. The premise is taken from a novel by a political journalist (Leonard Mosley) which draws on topical cold war themes. A Whitehall civil servant (André Morell) is sentenced to hang for murder. But if the Home Office agrees to overrule his conviction, he will reveal the identity of a dangerous Soviet mole.

So an agent for counter-terrorism (Terence Morgan) investigates. Which is a good set up. The script is by Val Guest and Val Valentine who came from British comedy, and they bombard the narrative with a constant stream of wisecracks. The film is drily funny, but the director (also Guest) is able to switch on the suspense at key moments.

The main recurring gag is about Morgan never getting to any of the dates he arranges with his girlfriend, played with panache by the director's wife, Yolande Donlan. And there is some enjoyable banter between Morgan and his sidekick (Anthony Oliver), though neither has much star charisma. Morell is better as the manipulative, condemned man.

The production values are shocking, but the script raises it above the ordinary, and Guest tells the story with clarity. It's a cheerful, fast paced B film with car chases and helicopters, which climaxes with Special Branch chasing a rogue scientist who has escaped with a disguised nuclear device... A minor diversion, but fun.

Oddball precode melodrama which is so squalid it's hard to believe your eyes! There's enough plot for a four hour epic, yet Mervyn LeRoy bundles the whole lot into a reckless 63m! Three ex-school pals meet sort-of-by-chance for lunch and light up their cigarettes on one match. Apparently, this means bad luck and the third will be dead in a year!

It actually starts as a comedy with the girls in school. Ann Dvorak is the girl most likely, Joan Blondell the dirty blonde and a pre-stardom Bette Davis the goody-two-shoes. Dvorak marries into money (Warren William), but after the fateful smoke, her life goes into a tailspin. She gets divorced and shacks up with bootleggers while on a strict booze and cocaine diet.

She neglects her incredibly annoying little boy and launches herself- literally- into the gutter. This is astonishing stuff which delivers an onslaught of unforeseeable delights. Best of all is Dvorak who gives a sensationally out of control performance. The male quintessence of precode sleaze, Warren William, is buttoned up, but can't hide that instinctive seediness.

Blondell is typically fine as a sassy good-time showgirl and it's fun to see Humphrey Bogart- who kidnaps the kid- and Davis in eccentric early roles, scrapping for screen time. Glenda Farrell turns up for mere seconds as a reform school dropout. Every minute delivers either a good laugh, or a twist that is completely off the wall. It's ludicrous, but unmissable.

My pick for the best precode Hollywood melodrama, which exploits a range of standard situations, but elevates them... This is partly due to the superior dialogue lifted from Robert Sherwood's Broadway play. And even more for James Whale's fluent and sensitive direction. But most of all, Mae Clarke's stunning lead performance.

Anyone who only knows her from having half a grapefruit shoved in her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy (also '31) is in for a shock. She is heartbreaking in an extremely natural portrayal and really delivers in a some agonising closeups. This is one of the great dramatic performances of the decade.

She plays an ex-chorus girl forced into sex work when the theatres close down during WWI. She meets a Canadian soldier (Douglass Montgomery) on leave and gets the customary glimpse of redemption before fate, and her overwhelming shame, closes down all hope. This doesn't deal with the facts of life as bluntly as the play, but it's still pretty candid.

Plus the 23 year old Bette Davis has an early support role! The vast painted Thames and the slum interiors bring atmosphere. It wasn't seen for decades after the code was enforced in '34. Then the cleaned up MGM remake (1940) became popular. But Whale's version is supreme and much more realistic. And features Clarke's definitive portrayal, as yet another casualty of war. 

This is one of those pictures where Hollywood satirises itself. A humourless, straight-arrow East Coast accountancy wonk (Leslie Howard) runs a small, loss making production company through his number crunching logistics. But all his investigations into standard practice meet the noncommittal response of 'well that's the movie business'.

The naive mathematician falls in love with the movies during the shooting of a jungle picture, with its alcoholic producer (Humphrey Bogart), the temperamental Russian director (Alan Mowbrey) and a cute stand-in (Joan Blondell). He discovers that the bosses are deliberately losing money as the studio is worth more to them bankrupt. Sounds familiar?

But this will put thousands out of work… And so we realise this is a low budget riff on a Frank Capra new deal comedy. Howard faces the angry mob and insists capital and labour can work together. The Hollywood insider stuff is fun, and the politics works fairly well too.

The problem is that Tay Garnett is a journeyman director, and no Capra. And the script needs a rewrite. Howard is likeable as the artless genius who finds his soul through working for the people. But the support is second rate. Even (a pre-stardom) Bogart makes little impression. It’s an interesting film, but still a screwball comedy without many laughs. 

Arthur Wontner appeared in a series of five low budget British produced Sherlock Holmes pictures from 1931-1935. They weren't the first sound films to feature the great detective, but his performances are the most celebrated portrayals of the great detective in the early talkies, and this is the best of these.

It's quite startling to realise that Arthur Conan Doyle was still writing the stories only five years before this was released. But the scriptwriter isn't too concerned with being faithful to the novel, as many liberties are taken. Most notably, the long flashback is moved to the beginning. So it's 22 minutes before Holmes makes an appearance.

Sadly, existing prints are terrible. Some of the support cast overact- particularly Isla Bevan as the woman in peril- and production values are creaky. But it's still an entertainment. Wontner remains a fine Holmes and has a good rapport with Ian Hunter as the faithful Watson. Who, thankfully, isn't a bumbling fool. And there is a little visual style.

The changes to the source don't work. Much of the legendary dialogue is parked to make way for some undeniably witless deductions! But as ever, Doyle's great adventures and the Holmes-Watson dynamic are indestructible. Once more, the flotsam of the empire washes up in London to challenge the illustrious consulting detective, and the magic works again.

This sporting biopic is on the Vatican list of inspirational feature films, presumably because of the theme of personal sacrifice. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is a Scottish sprinter who prepares for the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, and also a future as a Christian missionary in China. He runs on the inspiration of his faith and in a crucial plot twist, refuses to compete in his qualifying heat- on a Sunday.

In contrast, Harold Abrahams is a British Jew who runs as a personal protest against antisemitism... They both won gold medals on the track, but there is also some interesting divergence in how and why they get there. Harold's approach is to employ a professional coach (Ian Holm) in a time of amateurism. And there is also plenty about the inflexible bigotry of the UK establishment after WWI.

The main problem is, while Colin Welland's Oscar winning screenplay tells the story well enough- though with some liberties- there is little depth and no wit so this feels quite superficial, yet worthy. The director Hugh Hudson came from advertising and is much better at delivering a memorable image and punchy editorials than any muscular drama. Though clearly the Pope disagrees.

The actors make credible athletes and the track montages are elevated by Vangelis' rousing synthesiser score. There is a sumptuous period feel; the Oscar for Best Picture seems less deserved than the win for its costumes. Then at the climax, the choirboys sing Jerusalem at Abrahams' funeral, and there is emotional overkill. This isn't subtle, but still, an ever-present in lists of favourite sporting dramas.

Silent melodrama that starts off as the sort of dirty joke that Alfred Hitchcock (on his debut as director!) might tell, about a pair of music hall dancers and the wolves and jackals that queue at the stage door.... But ends with murder in the tropics...

The twist is that the chorus line dame from the city (Virginia Valli) is the virginal good-girl, and the ingenue from the country (Carmelita Geraghty) is the gold digger. Both are American actors, though it is more interesting to see Miles Mander and John Stuart near the start of long careers in UK cinema.

It’s really only one for the completionists; there is little visual style and the editing is clumsy. But Hitchcock is rarely boring and he never just coasts; he always gives interesting cues and in the context of British silent cinema this is actually better than average.

Indeed, the production supervised by Michael Balcon and the location shoot on Lake Como suggest this was a prestigious project. But this is mostly watched now because of Hitch, and stands out as his only other UK/German picture, The Mountain Eagle (1926) is sadly lost.

The degree 1950s television encroached on the low budget crime feature is flagged up by the response of a ritzy night club singer (Ida Lupino) to being grilled by the flashy cop (Steve Cochran) she intends to turn into a reliable income: 'I've seen all this on Dragnet'. Still, at least this is in widescreen.

It's a slender morality tale of two detectives who run down a heist that ends in murder, but decide to keep the swag for themselves. Howard Duff falls apart, but Cochran is fundamentally dishonest and is fatally tempted by the windfall he needs to bankroll the avaricious chanteuse.

The film scrutinises the condition of being a police officer doing a dangerous job for little reward. And it’s possible to sympathise… Until Cochran shoots his partner in the back anyway. He is memorably sleazy. Duff contrasts as a family man struggling to provide for his long suffering wife (Dorothy Malone).

Lupino is a touch mature for the femme fatale. Siegel handles his location shoots with skill, using silence to good effect. Like on the tv, the story is rounded up by an homily from a narrator. Maybe the box in the corner would eventually lead to the demise of film noir, but rarely did it as well as this.

Dreamlike romance which updates the classic themes of gothic melodrama to contemporary California. So the old dark house is now a Frank Lloyd Wright built into the rocky coastline. The mysterious portrait of the deceased bride-to-be becomes abstract modernism. And the second woman isn't a frightened naïf, but an actuary in a firm of accountants.

Betsy Drake's wan, willowy ethereality may not have been in vogue in '50s Hollywood, but she is perfect casting. She falls in love with the rich, sensitive architect (Robert Young) who is either a dangerous paranoiac... or being driven out of his mind. The biggest change to the rules of gaslight melodrama is it's she who has agency, rather than being the victim.

And the architect is the man in peril. He is superstitious, and she is rational. There is a lot of psychological hokum typical of studio productions after WWII, but it's all to service the unsettling narrative. The dreamy orchestral score, the desolate locations and b&w expressionism create an atmosphere of uncertainty. These are routine genre motifs, but still effective.

The story loses momentum on the hour, perhaps due to the many flashbacks, but recovers for an interesting climax. James Vern was a minor director who mainly did tv, but he creates a handsome production from his moderate budget. Though presumably there was no money left for a thunderstorm! It all feels very ominous and is surprisingly memorable. 

Routine crime thriller boosted by a proper star in the lead role and the services of a quality director in Basil Dearden. Stewart Granger plays a shipping executive with a shady past who is blackmailed by his dentist. When his office safe is turned over (incriminating the slippery tooth extractor) the cops suspect an inside job...

Bernard Lee is the chain smoking detective on his last case before retirement and there's a decent cast of familiar character actors to share the suspicion. Haya Harareet- last in Ben-Hur- plays Granger's beautiful, estranged wife, who is sure to be more than she seems. And adds a touch of chic.

The corkscrew plot isn't probable, or even possible, but that doesn't always matter in this sort of film. The hokum keeps moving forward with momentum. There's a sudden, unexpected twist every few minutes and a big reveal at the climax, which is fun even if not much of a shock.

Dearden handles the suspense well. The location shoot around London and the mod interiors bring in some cosmopolitan sophistication. The jazz soundtrack even evokes the French new wave. This isn't a prestige production, but is clearly a cut above most of the low budget crime films abundant at the time.