Film Reviews by Steve

Handsome adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel about Germany after WWI, and the pacifism which gives way to poverty and the emergence of the Nazis. Three young men return from the western front to rebuild the nation but find themselves swept up in the rising tide of a new tyranny. Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone and Robert Young share a palpable rapport as the friends.

Taylor falls for a penniless aristocrat played by Margaret Sullavan. She has a strong screen presence; slim, poised, husky and cool. And looks elegant in a beret. Frank Borzage turns their relationship into the ethereal hyper-romance which was his speciality. The normally lightweight Franchot Tone brings gravitas in support, with perhaps his best performance.

This has the only screenwriting credit of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sullavan complained she couldn't speak his dialogue so it was rewritten by the producer, Joe Mankiewicz. These difficulties are not apparent; the script has poetry and depth. There is some editorialising. The censors wanted the bad guys to be communists, not fascists! But Borzage held firm!

Still the politics is vague for 1938. It's a pacifist story set in a studio's idea of middle Europe. Today it works best as a lyrical romance; a Borzage picture, full of atmosphere and suffering. Sullavan's death in a sanitarium is protracted but gives the film a mythic weight. It's a weepie, but a relatively sophisticated one.

The 1920s was the decade of jazz and Anything Goes, and the films of DW Griffith and Lillian Gish started to go out of fashion, with their Victorian moralising and sentimental melodrama. Gish was succeeded by urban jazz babes like Clara Bow and the austere exoticism of Greta Garbo. This is set on a farm in rural America.

But 100 years on, Griffith and Gish's films still live. This is partly because Griffith was a fine director and particularly talented at creating suspense though his editing. He always kept the drama in the frame. And he makes the most of Gish's wan beauty, with her huge eyes bathed in gauzy light in the long close ups.

And Gish is a fine actor. More naturalistic performers emerged in later silents, but she is very affecting here, telling the story through her pale, suffering face. The theme is the hypocrisy of a society which allows sexual freedom for men but prohibition for women, which would be a key preoccupation over the next decade.

It's actually exactly the same story as Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but with a happy ending! And it's that spectacular climax which stays in the memory, with Gish swept away in the ice floes of a frozen river. It's a long film. The comedy is a little homespun, but the drama is harrowing and engaging and Lillian breaks your heart a dozen different ways before the fade out. 

Lavish historical epic set in the French Revolution. It failed at the box office, maybe due to its lengthy and complicated narrative. This is further confused by DW Griffith's position on the uprising; it was made four years after the Russian revolution and is primarily anti-Bolshevik propaganda. By the climax it feels like the aristocrats prevailed!

The films of Griffith and Lillian Gish were out of fashion by 1921. The title came to stand for the excesses of Victorian melodrama. But this succeeds as a spectacle. The recreation of Paris is magnificent. The cast of extras is vast and the costumes are fabulous. Griffith manoeuvres Gish into another cliffhanger every 10 minutes and disentangles her at the last possible moment.

This works because the director is so good at suspense, and Lillian Gish such an immense screen presence. She transcends the classic archetype of early cinema; a virtuous woman who must suffer because the world is hostile, but who is rewarded for her purity.

Griffith doesn't frame Gish in close-up as much as usual. She is in long shot, a fragment trapped in the whirlwind of events. Inevitably the film builds to Lillian on the guillotine with Danton riding to the rescue! As melodrama it is formulaic, though entertaining. As history it is bunk. But as a spectacle and a vehicle for Lillian's immortal fragility, it is a triumph. 

The classic three act structure of the heist film- preparation-execution-disintegration- is the frame for a study of the conflict between three men who bust into a bank in upstate New York. Ed Begley is an ex-cop looking for a payoff to set him straight after a stretch. He recruits an unlucky gambler in hock to the mob (Harry Belafonte) and a volatile redneck no-mark (Robert Ryan).

See the problem! The ongoing racial war dooms the caper. There is plenty of raw, unsubtle symbolism. The gang face off on adjacent petrol tanks and literally blow each other up, leaving charred corpses which can't be distinguished. Though this sounds simplistic, the situations are complex and interesting.

It's an ensemble film. Ryan is compelling as another of his combustable, stubborn bigots. Gloria Grahame is memorable in a cameo as a dumb, overripe tease. Harry Belafonte produced and he gives himself an elegant blues song.  Its unique atmosphere is also due to a fantastic cool-jazz soundtrack by the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Best of all is the phenomenal photography. This is visual art and one of the great picture books of New York. It has an expressionist look, not because of the sets, or lighting, but the distorting effect of the lens. It's one many classic genre films Robert Wise directed before he made blockbusters. Beyond its noirish fatalism, this is pure arthouse. 

Sam Fuller took the Hollywood gangster film to Tokyo and transformed its classic b&w expressionism into glorious Technicolor. It is a remake of the 1948 film noir, The Street With No Name. Robert Stack goes undercover in occupied Japan to infiltrate a gang of former US soldiers who have established a syndicate.

While the film is staged against a backdrop of national regeneration, it isn't political. It captures Japan in the spasm of great change, but its vision is more touristic. There's a fabulous lingering shot of Mount Fuji. There's the Imperial Hotel, and an exciting (Hitchcock influenced) finale on the rooftop of the Tokyo Amusement Park.

The mob is led by Robert Ryan, who has the hoodlum's customary vanity; his gunmen wear some amazing suits and are as stylish as any screen gang, ever. He has an unmissable homosexual relationship with a sidekick, which makes a deeper impact than the tepid inter-racial romance between Stack and Shirley Yamaguchi. Both were contrary to the production code.

This doesn't have the energy or scuzzy underworld scenarios typical of Fuller. It wasn't a project he initiated, or his screenplay. But there are some stunning locations and camera setups and a fair amount of suspense. It wasn't the first colour crime film of the '50s, but the striking use of CinemaScope makes it groundbreaking and he adapts the technology with flair. 

Buster Keaton had no regard for this silent romantic comedy, maybe because he didn’t originate the project. It is adapted from an old stage play (by Roi Cooper Megrue) which is more like the director/star’s early features. But it’s grand entertainment and was a huge success.

Buster plays a lawyer faced with financial ruin who will inherit $7 million if he gets married before 7pm… the same day! When his neglected girlfriend turns him down, the would-be heir enquires after the other seven women he knows… and finally advertises.

Until he is chased across town by hundreds of potential brides. Which admittedly is a run out for being pursued through LA by a herd of cattle in his other 1925 release, Go West. Famously Keaton ends up fleeing a rockslide. Some critics are dismissive because it’s not- apparently- the work of an auteur!

But it’s excellent; both the rather conventional romcom and the frantic action climax. It’s crammed with superb visual gags and Keaton relates the satisfying narrative with clarity. There are even scenes in Technicolor! Don’t miss uncredited Jean Arthur on the switchboard, sporting a black bob… 

Loose adaptation of an early novel by Georges Simenon, which would be remade with some success as Monsieur Hire in 1989. The attraction for Julien Duvivier in 1946 was the portrayal of mob mentality which reflects the improvised law of France in the months after WWII.

So Monsieur Hire (Michel Simon) is fitted up by his neighbours as the killer of a lonely spinster, purely because he is unpopular and different. This subplot unfortunately squeezes out the stronger theme of his voyeuristic obsession with a woman just released from prison (Viviane Romance).

 And she unconditionally loves the real murderer (Paul Bernard). Anyone used to Hollywood crime films will be struck by how sleazy this is. The Production Code wouldn’t permit the assassin’s impassive revelation of utterly sordid sociopathy. Or the futility of the law… Or the post coital intimacy of the degenerate lovers.

Michel Simon is ideal casting as the resolute, deviant misfit. And there’s the eccentric community of sex workers, bumptious minor officials and ineffectual petit bourgeoisie standard in French crime pictures. This feels like the poetic realism of the ’30s. War is over but an ambient pessimism still hangs over the city, like fog. 

Sensitive, melancholy reflection on the social revolution in Japan after WWII; particularly related to the changing status of women. This was a common theme in the period, but rarely dramatised with such poignancy.

Kinuyuo Tanaka plays the last of a declining dynasty of long ago aristocrats holding onto her small plot of land. She and her young cousin (Akihito Katayama) cling to this vanishing sense of tradition and order, while others exploit the permissiveness of the new laws and westernised moral code.

Her property is inexorably swept up in the expansion of Tokyo. She no longer belongs in the new society. Sometimes this feels like melodrama. And then, tragedy. Admittedly, an appreciation of this scenario depends on an interest in the postwar reconstruction of Japan…

Or at least empathy for the vulnerability and isolation of women throughout history… Still this is a film by Kenji Mizoguchi and is elevated by the poetry of his visual style and command of the cinematic art. Just on a sensual level, this is a rare, exotic experience. 

This is adapted from a Theodore Dreiser novel set in the US at the turn of the 20th century, though without the political bite. It follows a riches to rags story arc more typical of depression era melodrama. But its great director, WIlliam Wyler, elevates the material somewhere closer to tragedy.

Jennifer Jones in the title role plays a country girl who moves to Chicago and starts a disastrous affair with a middle aged man (Laurence Olivier) who steals and commits bigamy to keep her. They escape to New York where they live in poverty. The star was a very beautiful woman, so it's easy to accept the obsession of the man who destroys himself for her. 

But she was also a limited actor and is eclipsed by Olivier, who performs wonders with a dreadful archetype; trapped in a midlife crisis and a loveless marriage, desperate for another chance. There are fascinating thematic complications, with Carrie utterly dependant on mediocre men, and harmed by pointless social conventions.  

The film benefits from Wyler's intelligent visual storytelling. He fills the frame with fascinating detail. It's a prestigious production with excellent sets and costumes. The Production Code means there is too little anger on screen, but it is still pessimistic about the myth of the American dream. 

Delightful proto-campus comedy with Harold Lloyd in fine form as the brilliantly naff title character who frantically strives to fit in with the jocks and it-girls of the undergraduate elite but fails worse the harder he tries. When he trials for the college football team they put him on the bench out of pity. Or to humiliate.

Still, when they are losing in the final with time running out, well, what’s going to happen? The freshman is one hell of a dweeb, but this is Hollywood. The comedy of awkwardness gives way to a feelgood triumph, which is satisfying because there is a story arc, rather than just a sequence of visual gags.

The jokes are amusing and imaginative and feed into the redemption narrative. This was a huge box office success and is pretty much flawless. Jobyna Ralston has little to do as the good-girl who believes in the underdog, but that was the usual burden of the female lead in a silent comedy.

One of the more heartening details is how the real college hero (James Anderson) is actually a decent guy and doesn’t join in on the cruel ragging. Harold does his familiar go-getter schtick as the cringingly uncool college kid who learns he should just be himself! This is the silent superstar at about his peak.  

Lesser Buster Keaton comedy which is true to his usual formula but lacks the sort of innovative concept that made Sherlock Jr. so special a year earlier. This time the Great Stoneface leaves the hustle of the big city to be a cowboy.

So there is a collection of visual gags out on the ranch. And it’s true that no-one could take a nosedive like Buster, but it’s still a man falling off a horse. The typical bashful romance is replaced by an attraction to… a cow! He really has no eyes for the farmer’s daughter (Kathleen Myers).

Which conveys a touch of the surreal. For the action finale the novice cowhand drives a herd of cattle through Los Angeles to market- to meet a contract and save the day. It looks like the crew went to a lot of trouble, but it’s not one of Keaton’s better set pieces.

Eventually he borrows from the Keystone Kops, which suggests a lack of inspiration. There is an impression that all of this could have been done well enough as a short. Still, even a minor Buster Keaton comedy is superior to most of his contemporaries. 

Exuberant comedy-thriller from Henri-Georges Clouzot which feels like a prototype for those British murder-mysteries produced at Ealing Studios after WWII, like Green for Danger (1946). And it works as a compelling suspense story as well as a gleeful spoof of an ensemble of French caricatures.

This is irresistibly entertaining and directed with style. A serial killer is tracked to the address of the title, which is a guest house of established residents. So an urbane, droll detective registers as a priest (Pierre Fresnay), inconveniently followed by his dizzy girlfriend (Suzy Delair)…

She wants to drum up publicity for her nightclub act and adds a shot of screwball. There’s an amusing support cast of character actors who play the eccentric, theatrical suspects, like the unemployed magician (Jean Tissier) and the evasive doctor ( Noël Roquevert) with a suspicious past…

There’s may be subtext about the Nazi occupation but this is so frivolous it hardly registers. Clouzot shifts between moods with considerable finesse, but this isn’t realism. It hasn’t the weight of his more famous thrillers. Hard to believe it was made in a time of such despair. 

Long, episodic adaptation of Norbert Jacques’ novel about a criminal mastermind who exploits the anarchy of post WWI Germany; like the Sherlock Holmes stories were written from the point of view of Moriarty. It’s an idea that seems simultaneously both obvious and inspired. Unfortunately Fritz Lang’s fabled epic is a disappointment.

If this is a classic crime picture, then it's concealed in 4.5 hours of overkill. The period decadence is potent and the action begins well with Mabuse crashing the stock exchange. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is definitive in the title role as the shapeshifting manipulator of zeitgeist who runs the Berlin underground.

And there’s an interesting support cast of sordid aristocrats, proto-celebrities and deadly henchmen. But the narrative is padded to the point of obsession. Scenes are repeated to no positive effect… Long speeches are made without inter titles… Many moments of suspense are fluffed.

There’s not even any expressionism! Thea von Harbou’s script is a disaster and Lang just lets it spin out eternally. There have been shorter, better edits by other hands. The legend is compelling- of the mythic criminal Übermensch feeding on degenerate Weimar Berlin, presented in the high style of silent German cinema. But this isn’t that film. 

Typically energetic early Buster Keaton feature, with the silent comedian this time squeezing the gags out of an adventure at sea. He plays his usual inscrutable stoneface, but now as a clueless, entitled millionaire with little experience of real life.

When his naive marriage proposal to a wealthy neighbour (Kathryn McGuire) is spiked, Buster- for complicated reasons- finds himself alone with the same woman on an ocean going steam ship, which becomes a playground for Keaton’s trademark gymnastics.

Eventually as the couple adapt to their environment, their absurd gadgetry seems to anticipate Wallace and Gromit! There are also some underwater routines. The jokes are not always of superior quality, but there are plenty of laughs and Buster is engaging. It gathers momentum for the blockbuster climax…

Though this encounter with a tropical island of savage cannibals will offend modern sensibilities. Still, McGuire has comical input beyond standard for the love interest in a silent farce. It’s a bit uneven but still fun, overflowing with the great man’s acrobatics and cartoonish daydreams.  

Maybe it’s a shame that the stunt which made Harold Lloyd famous is towards the end of one of his otherwise lesser comedies. He plays his familiar character, the young optimist who struggles through the postwar recession but believes in the American dream and imagines he is a go-getter. If only he could get a break.

Harold leaves his small town for the big city with a plan to send for his girl (Mildred Davis) when he has scaled the corporate ladder… but he only lands a job in sales. This supplies a steady stream of gags and a few laughs. But then… the wage slave must climb the whole department store to drum up publicity.

One of the premier comic action sequences in pictures climaxes with the shop assistant swinging off the flagpole and the hands of the giant clock. It’s simply breathtaking and expertly staged and performed. Lloyd became an icon and the film elevated among the silent masterpieces.

Davis has little to do as the ditsy fiancée who is similarly status hungry. But she’s fun. When she watches her intended (spuriously) boss about the corporate minions it seems to give her sexual pleasure! So the hour it takes to get there is no hardship, but this is remembered for the star’s climactic vertigo inducing acrobatics.