Film Reviews by Steve

Screwball comedy about the diaspora of the Russian revolution... A married pair of destitute Russian aristocrats exiled in Paris take on a job as servants to the frantic family of a banker, and find living in the home of a capitalist to their liking. But when a prominent Bolshevik comes to dinner, old resentments are revived.

The problem with Tovarich is that the play by Jacques Deval is so wholeheartedly sympathetic to the aristocracy. Which probably suited Hollywood's anti-Red agenda going into WWII. The story completely whitewashes them and demonises the Communist. The film partly overcomes this impediment thanks to sensational performances and an unusually witty script.

Claudette Colbert and (a slimmed down) Charles Boyer are the émigrés forced into service. She is in a class of her own with comic dialogue of this calibre. The support cast is excellent, featuring an ominous performance from Basil Rathbone as the Soviet consul. There are evocative studio sets of the Paris ghettos which contrast with the wealth of the bankers.

The film ultimately gets bunged up with dubious politics. The best and funniest parts of the film are when the refugees ingratiate themselves into the rich French household, far more luxurious than they knew back home. Anatole Litvak's direction is mechanical, but the film remains viable thanks to the brilliant screwball stars.

The standard view of The Cocoanuts is that it is a dated revue and only bursts into life when the Marx Brothers are on. But actually, the synchronised dancing is excellent, and anticipates Busby Berkley. There are no hits among the Irving Berlin songs, but they are still enjoyable. It is a string of sketches by variety acts, orbiting the premise of running a dysfunctional hotel in Florida.

Still, obviously, everyone goes to this to see the Marx Brothers' debut film, a reprise of their 1925 Broadway success. It's a very early talkie and apart from the musical number, the actors stand around the static camera to say their lines. Groucho doesn't do his walk. The direction is perfunctory. But in spite of the impediments, their chaotic energy still entertains.

There is an hierarchy of insanity. Groucho antagonises the normal characters, but is rattled by Chico. And Harpo menaces everyone. Anyone watching for Zeppo should know that most of his scenes got cut over the years. Plenty of credit is due to the writers who gave wit to the anarchy and composed Groucho's streams of sardonic absurdity (Morrie Ryskind adapted George Kaufman's stage play).

In the early Paramount films, the brothers aren't necessarily likeable. They connive, they purloin, they dupe... They are an irrepressible vortex of illogicality which we enter for 90m and depart feeling a bit frazzled. There's no way of processing this whirlwind of farce in one watch. It's that rapid pace that gives this very early comedy its energy. There would never be anyone else like the Marx Brothers.

It is apt this film came at the back end of the cycle of post-war southern melodramas influenced by Tennessee Williams, because it is a story about the end of things. Natalie Wood is a sex bomb living in a small Mississippi backwater who falls for a stranger (Robert Redford) who arrives from New Orleans in the 1920s to shut down the railway works. He represents the escape she dreams of.

The film is expanded from a one act play by Williams and the closer the script stays to its elegiac poetry and symbolism the better. The screenwriters (including Francis Coppola) produced an uneven adaptation. The story is told by the siren's sister (Mary Badham), a child who has been left behind to live alone in the closed down guest house once run by her mother.

The property is condemned when the town fails to survive the loss of its industry. Natalie is property too, bartered for the value of her body by her rapacious mother. To her death. It's a story of the impact of the depression on the decline of the poor rural south, the land Williams grew up in. 

There are his familiar themes of guilt and escape, and particularly the failure of the impractical, romantic south to survive the realism of capitalism. There is a powerful evocation of humid summer nights on the river: Natalie Wood is so hot she is continually trying to lower her body heat! Of course she and Redford are beautiful leads. Not a critics favourite but a treat for fans of Williams.

This is an adaptation of the stage musical version of Federico Fellini's 1957 Italian drama Nights of Cabiria. Fellini's film is better, but this being a musical there are compensations. Which are three great songs and a couple of dance spectaculars; these coincide for the stunning staging of Big Spender, performed by the cast.

It's a perfect star vehicle for Shirley MacLaine, who back then was was the queen of kook. She plays Charity Valentine, a taxi dancer/prostitute who passes through contemporary New York looking for love and a future but only finds heartache. It's astonishing how often she played sex workers in the sixties! There is plenty of interesting guerrilla style shooting on the streets of Manhattan.

MacLaine is funny, and touching and appealing enough and squeezes all the laughs out of Neil Simon's Broadway script. But legendary choreographer Bob Fosse's debut job as director is uneven and the film falters badly in places. Even the choreography is variable. Rich Man's Frug is stunning, but the staging of Shirley's signature song, If My Friends Could See Me Now, is a drag.

The star's performance eventually gets crowded out in a narrative told without skill or insight. MacLaine was a cinch to play the dumb optimist with a big heart, yet it was fumbled. There are moments that make it worthwhile, but Fosse wasn't yet a film director. And the 150 minute running time for such a frothy confection is crazy.

There was an unusually tortuous path from Christopher Isherwood's 1939 collection Goodbye to Berlin to the Oscar strewn classic musical Cabaret and many changes made along the way. This film strays from Isherwood's stories, but captures their spirit. There is eloquent work from director Bob Fosse and a fabulous career defining performance from Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles, singer in the KitKat Club.

It's a character led drama which places Liza centre stage all the way, performing many legendary ragtime showstoppers including the title number and The Money Song. Michael York is well cast as Sally's inhibited, naive, bisexual English lover, and Joel Grey memorable as the cabaret MC. While the couple live in exile in divine decadence, way off downstage the Nazis are taking over Germany.

The scene where the reality crashes through their delusion is brilliantly conceived by Fosse, with a blond boy singing Tomorrow Belongs to Me in a rural bierkeller, gradually revealed to be Hitler youth, enthusiastically endorsed by the gathered revellers. The tolerance and political satire of the twenties cabaret is now an anomaly.

The weakness is there is little impression of the poverty which was the context for the Nazi's rise to power. But it is frank about the way Sally and her sometime lover lived which wasn't possible in earlier versions. It uses music only where it might naturally occur and the choreography is restricted to the stage. Which helps maintain an impressive impression of social realism.

Glossy, irresistible romance which successfully reimagines the 'women's films' of the Hollywood golden age. It's a wish fulfilment as a homely New York Jewish liberal agitator (Barbra Streisand) falls for an impossibly handsome WASP/jock (Robert Redford). Although they make a life together, inevitably their differences make them incompatible.

But they will always have the memories, so cue the lovely, sentimental Oscar winning title song. If this sounds like a story about stereotypes, the brilliant script (by Arthur Laurents) actually works hard to make Katie and Hubbell rounded characters. And it doesn't take sides. There are a few laughs, but even more tears and the ending is a heartbreaker.

The subplot about the effect of the McCarthy blacklist on Hollywood is interesting but regrettably shifts the focus from the two stars, and it isn't given time to resolve anyway. While Streisand and Redford are magnetic and we really want them to be together, this is really all about the woman and we see everything from her point of view.

Barbara gets the Bette Davis role, and Redford the George Brent, in a story that takes them from the depression to the seventies. She gives a moving performances, conveying the humiliation, bargaining and vulnerability that comes with being the junior partner in an unbalanced relationship. It's one of the great Hollywood romantic films, and a triumph for Streisand.

One of the better films about the romantic adventures of American women in a touristic Europe that were popular at the turn of the 60s. And there is an interesting premise. Olivia de Havilland is a rich American taking an extended holiday with her beautiful daughter (Yvette Mimieux) who attracts the attention of a young, prosperous, handsome Italian (George Hamilton).

Only the girl has a brain injury and the mental age of a ten year old... and as she is such a blonde head turner, her mother has to keep her one step ahead of the constant attention she gets. Mimieux does well with the part, which is pure Hollywood daydream, though Hamilton's clumsy Italian caricature is a big negative.

When the mother captures the attention of the suitor's father (Rossano Brazzi), she re-evaluates her own marriage and expectations and this is the best part of the film. There's a long standing motif in cinema, the woman who finds herself in the liberating Italian sunshine... And maybe that's a convention, but Olivia and Rossano are so good together that it succeeds yet again.

The film makes an equivalence between mental disability and the assumed simple Italian love of life! Which is an amazing insult. But the film works for a typical reason; the photography and locations are sublime. It's possible to feel a little emancipation, just watching. It's a fantasy and the screen is filled with convenient magic, where the daughter can meet a rich husband, and the mother can find freedom.

This was supposed to be a rematch between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford following their success in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, but early in the production Joan threw in the towel, so Olivia de Havilland strapped on the gloves. Olivia wasn't as combative on set, and she and Bette got on, but she's well cast as a ruthless villain operating behind a mask of respectability.

Charlotte (Davis) was assumed to have cut off the head and hands of her married beau back in 1920s Louisiana. Now she's a rich old spinster, going crazy. Her cousin (Olivia) aims to gaslight her into a madhouse so she can profit from the property development taking over Miss Charlotte's plantation. There's an audacious climax which will stun anyone who's never seen Les Diaboliques.

It's the sort of sixties family horror that traded on re-situating the great stars of the golden age in a kooky contemporary context. Joseph Cotten supports and there's an appearance from Mary Astor. Agnes Moorhead does some scene stealing as Charlotte's cranky maid. But they are all ultimately merely context to Bette Davis' self-parodic scenery chewing.

It's Southern Gothic, with plenty of atmosphere and genre archetypes and gossiping townsfolk. There is a house full of shadows and the big scenes are scored with thunderstorms rattling the blinds. It's mainly a battle of the divas between Bette and Olivia, but credit to director Robert Aldrich for keeping such a ripe confection so digestible. And it's a lot of fun for fans of the stars.

Lerner and Loewe's stage sensation became the last great Hollywood musical. It's a Technicolor and Cinemascope epic which takes George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and crams it full of amazing songs. It's a hugely ambitious production full of startling fashions and set decoration, and treasured performances from its stars. When it's good, it's fabulous.

But it's far from a perfect film. It seems disinterested in all of the philosophical themes that the narrative touches upon. It hardly acknowledges the profound misery of the poor or the entitlement of the wealthy. No one learns anything. Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) ends up the same misanthrope and misogynist he was at the start, except he is in love (sort of). It doesn't climax, it just stops.

However, the songs are immortal. My personal favourite is the Cockney-blues of Wouldn't It Be Loverly. The lyrics are witty and intelligent. In terms of the usual standards, the dancing is no more than perfunctory. But... My Fair Lady ultimately triumphs because of the brilliant performance of Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl who becomes a phoney princess.

She gives the film its heart. Eliza is tied into a web of exploitation and cruelty, and Hepburn makes that pathos come live. Even when miming the songs. Harrison does well to make his curmudgeonly aristocrat just about tolerable. George Cukor keeps the musical romance light and entertaining over its long, long running time (plus interval).

Vivien Leigh's penultimate screen appearance was a return to Tennessee Williams, after her Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951. And she plays another vulnerable woman seeking refuge from the passing of time and her fear of death. Karen Stone is a middle aged American actor fleeing artistic failure to the ruins of Rome.

Where she becomes reluctantly absorbed into a human marketplace where rich Americans of a certain age, travel to Italy to find sexual diversion among the gigolos and ingenues of a country still palpably defeated and impoverished by WWII.  Warren Beatty is a beautiful, penniless aristocrat who pursues Mrs. Stone for the luxuries that his birthright no longer provides.

There is an impression of fallen dynasties. Karen is a stage legend who feels the grasp of time on her shoulder. Her lover is an aristocrat with no land, compelled to hustle for dollars and jewels. They drift through the ruins of the capital of an ancient empire like ghosts. They have no real function, so they lash out and hurt each other.

It's a haunting experience. Mrs. Stone is literally stalked by death! There's a moving performance from Leigh, as her own life was beginning to unravel. The script is poetic, and the portrayal of Rome before the era of mass tourism is spectacular but poignant, even pitiful. It's a political film which reflects on the buying and selling of humanity. And it's a human tragedy about the last days of a lonely woman.

The film asks how prepared was the US station at Pearl Harbour for the Japanese bombers in 1941. And it's a damning report. The military was at war with itself, undermined by incompetent officers and undisciplined soldiers. It's surprising that the US army co-operated in its production, but they did demand major changes to James Jones' bestseller.

The film centres on a pair of GIs (Montgomery Clift and Frank SInatra) who are far more interested in heavy drinking and hanging out in a brothel than doing the day job. Burt Lancaster is their tough sergeant, the kind of competent enlisted man that each company needs to keep the engine running.

Clift stands out among the actors in uniform, but the film is stolen by a stunning and moving performance from Deborah Kerr as a lonely woman on barracks, isolated by her womanising husband. And of course, her love scene with Lancaster in the Hawaiian surf is cinema legend. She creates a powerful impression of a damaged woman grasping at romantic lost causes.

This was a huge hit, and while hacked up by the Production Code, it lightly touches on the kind of adult themes that would become established in Hollywood dramas of the late fifties, including a frank depiction of adultery. It won eight Oscars, including for Sinatra and for best film. It's not the sensational exposé of army life it might once have seemed but it still lands some big punches.

The role of film diva Alexandro Del Lago, seeking refuge from the reality of her lost youth, has become a favourite for female stars of a certain age. Geraldine Page played the 'princess' first on stage and screen and she's pretty definitive. It's a familiar Tennessee Williams persona, a vulnerable artist running away, and running out of time.

The princess is burning up on drugs and booze after her screen comeback ran aground on a disastrous close up. She finds herself serviced by an ambitious gigolo who aims to use her to break into Tinseltown; Paul Newman as the ominously named Chance Wayne! He takes her to his hometown where he has unfinished business with Heavenly (Shirley Knight), the daughter of a shady politician.

The best part of the film is the interplay between Page and Newman... two monsters who claw at each other in pursuit of sordid self interest. The lesser subplot concerns the schemes of the hypocritical, Trump-like Boss Finlay (Ed Begley) who corrupts everyone and everything. It's a cynical film about the American dream, its imperious winners and downtrodden victims.

Inevitably there were problems with the Production Code which undermined the ferocity of the message, but it's still surprisingly frank in places and its political and existential themes survive. It has a beautiful look too. It's not as intense as most Williams adaptations but there is characteristic poetry in the lines and Page and Newman make a volatile screen duo.

From Warner Brothers, the home of the prison film, this is the greatest women-in-prison picture ever made. The story is familiar: a naive and exploitable first offender (Eleanor Parker) arrives at the Big House as a 19 years old; she is consumed by fear, but among the crazy lifers, the mentally sick and the dumb victims, she transforms into a tough con. A survivor.

This is a liberal film which asserts that punishment further harms these damaged suckers and a progressive approach would be more effective. But there is no money for therapists and teachers. The film creates a powerful impression of an institution: the brutal hierarchy, the crooked officers, the insensitive, aloof parole board.

Eleanor Parker is phenomenal as the inexperienced girl who goes into prison pregnant and is forced to give up her baby by law. She breaks down and rebuilds herself in a new shell, like the more resilient convicts. Hope Emerson is formidable as the butch screw who runs the wing. Jan Sterling excels as an uneducated sex worker.

The slang has dated, but this is a credible film which was obviously intelligently researched (by screenwriter Virginia Kellogg). Yes, there's a shower scene, but this is no exploitation flick! Though surely it invented some of the cliches of the genre. It's an extremely moving film because of the pitiful and futile realities of the penal system, and for Parker's heartbreaking performance.

This was Elizabeth Taylor's first dramatic role as a grown-up actor. She was seventeen and while she doesn't have the weight to match Montgomery Clift, their star power is a big part of the film's legend. Partly because they look so magnificent. Taylor's pristine beauty made her perfect casting as the rich dreamgirl that Monty's penniless outsider aspires to marry.

Clift is a poor relation who gets a job on the shop floor of his wealthy uncle's factory. The money that he aspires to is beyond his reach, so he dates a girl from the production line (Shelley Winters) and gets her pregnant... just as it appears a rich bombshell (Taylor) is in love with him. So, he can stand by his rainy day girl...

...Or he could get rid of her in a boating accident and marry the wealthy, lovely debutante... There's a lot of film noir in the story, but George Stevens' film seems to consciously steer away from the laws of noir. This is a prestigious studio production with A list stars and is framed as straight drama. Unfortunately this approach is sometimes ponderous.

The film was made at an unfortunate time: censorship prohibited much of the impiety in Theodore Dreiser's great American novel, and McCarthyism kicked its critique of capitalism into touch. It won six Oscars, but no longer feels like a landmark. What remains is a signature performance from Clift and a star making role for Taylor, and they do make screen magic together.

This is an adaptation of a Theodore Dreiser novel set  America at the turn of the Twentieth Century, but without the political bite. It follows a riches to rags story arc typical of silent and depression era melodrama. But its great director, WIlliam Wyler, elevates the material somewhere closer to tragedy.

Jennifer Jones has the title role, a country girl who moves to Chicago where she 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. Jennifer was a very beautiful woman, so it's easy to accept the obsession of the man who destroys himself for her. 

But Jones was also a limited actor and she 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 direction and visual storytelling. He fills the frame with fascinating detail. It's a prestigious production with excellent sets and costumes. There's too little anger on screen (thanks to the Production Code) but it is still pessimistic about the myth of the American dream.