Film Reviews by Steve

This is Bette Davis' signature role. She is Charlotte Vale, an inhibited, lonely spinster who escapes from the persecution of her mother and blossoms into a confident, independent woman. It's pure escapism, a wish fulfilment for the homefront in WWII. Charlotte is freed from domestic duty and escapes to a liaison onboard a ship to Rio with an attentive but troubled architect (Paul Henreid as Jerry).

This is a medical melodrama which draws on psychiatry. Bette's initial neurosis is swiftly treated, mostly with wisdom, by Claude Raines' fatherly doctor. When she recovers, Miss Vale is transformed into a stylish and wealthy Bostonian. Curiously, the film doesn't give us completion; Charlotte's love for Jerry isn't consummated because he cannot be free of his diabolical wife.

But, they mustn't ask for the moon, when they have the stars. Charlotte takes care of Jerry's daughter who is mentally tortured by her mother, just as Charlotte was by hers. And so the film becomes about sacrifice, a common theme in the war years. OK, this is a soap and some of the situations are unrealistic, but Davis does create an impression of a whole person, and her journey to (near) fulfilment is a real crowdpleaser.

Henreid is too lightweight to stand up to the vortex of the Bette performance. The best of the support cast is Gladys Cooper as Charlotte's domineering mother.  Now, Voyager is also remembered for Max Steiner's legendary love theme. And for Henreid's trick of lighting two cigarettes simultaneously. It's one of the great Warner Bothers melodramas and the ultimate Bette Davis vehicle.

Musical melodrama which matches Bette Davis' wealthy landowner against the Oscar winning Mary Astor as a celebrated concert pianist. So there's plenty of rousing Russian classical music on the soundtrack to stir the emotions. George Brent is the (unconvincing) playboy aviator that the two divas fight over, but it's really all about the female stars.

Following Brent and Astor's swanky New York wedding they discover that her divorce wasn't finalised so the marriage is void. Brent flies down to Maryland to marry an old flame (Bette) instead, before crashing his plane into the Brazilian rainforest on secret government business. When Astor discovers she is pregnant, Davis takes her to a shack in the Arizona desert to secretly give birth so Bette can keep the baby in return for dollars.

Which is a hell of a pitch! It starts off as screwball, with Brent plainly uneasy in Cary Grant's shoes, then turns into pure soap. Most of the fun is courtesy of the two female leads wringing all the showbiz out of the preposterous set up. Bette's country mansion is staffed by African American character actors and while there isn't much dignity in their roles, Hattie McDaniel handles the comedy with expertise.

But this isn't so bad it's good. The events happen within the conventions and locations of classic Hollywood melodrama and it succeeds in that context. It's extraordinarily entertaining, and for that we thank the stars, Max Steiner's soundtrack, Orry-Kelly's gowns and director Edmund Goulding for spinning magic out of such an outrageous premise.

Delirious southern soaper set in New Orleans in 1852. Bette Davis is a headstrong, vain aristocrat of the slave owning class who loses her industrious, progressive fiancé (Henry Fonda) when she wears a scarlet dress to a ball when the convention was for maidens to wear white. After her capriciousness leads to the death of Fonda's brother in a duel, she seeks redemption during an epidemic of yellow fever.

The deep south setting allows an exotic, febrile melodrama even before the disease arrives. It's all top hats, billowing petticoats, neoclassical architecture and southern hospitality. Davis' blue blooded belle isn't likeable, but she gives star performance, creating a profound personality. The male characters are just context, even Fonda. She deservedly won the Oscar.

The portrayal of the slaves is uncomfortably careless. The North leaning Fonda is obviously a more liberal thinker, but the scene when the black characters express their excitement to be back on the plantation is hard to forgive. There is some mitigation. William Wyler portrays the haughty, rich southerners as misguided, even stupid, and about to be swallowed up by history.

The end when Davis accompanies the dying Fonda to the plague island is plainly preposterous but it gets by because of the exalted climax to Max Steiner's score. There's a handsome production generally. The ballroom scene is classic Hollywood. Jezebel is the work of a talented director at a great studio but the iniquities of slavery are less a concern to Warner Brothers than Bette's costumes.

This quintessential Warner Brothers soap is long but has a slender plot, which is mostly the context for Bette Davis' star performance. She is one of the Trehernes of Rhode Island, a woman of inherited wealth and no responsibilities beyond a whirl of social events and the pursuit of pleasure. Only those headaches, and that blurred vision, are the early symptoms of an inoperable brain cancer.

It's a classic role for Davis which allows her to explore the many sides of her star persona: a socialite who believes in the superiority of her breeding; the chastened bride-to-be who faces surgery to save her life; then a reckless thrill seeker intent on blocking out the reality of her relapse; finally, the selfless wife in plaid/denim in snowy Vermont who accepts her death, compensated by a brief experience of love.

To allow Bette to shine more brightly, she was paired with her frequent leading man, the placid, faithful George Brent as the brilliant brain surgeon who can't save her, but does at least marry her. The film is a tribute to the medical profession, but this is Hollywood pathology. Davis' symptoms are crafted to fit the requirements of the plot.

It's pure escapism. We get a tour of the privileges of the rich: their homes, clothes and horses. There are a few oddities. Humphrey Bogart plays an Irish stablehand and Ronald Reagan a drunken playboy, which suggests it was someone's first day in casting. But Max Steiner's score is typically superb. The choral swell when Bette bids farewell to her dogs is a fabulous tearjerker. As is the film.

Extraordinarily sentimental tearjerker set in Philadelphia during the Civil War. Bette Davis has a brief affair with a Union soldier (George Brent) who is killed in action, and she has a child outside of marriage. This daughter is brought up as part of the family of Bette's manipulative cousin (Miriam Hopkins). Davis becomes the austere aunt of the girl who learns to love instead her mother-by-proxy.

And Bette grows old and shrewish, almost a monster. Davis was always better matched by another female star. No one ever cast George Brent opposite her for sexual chemistry or with an eye on cinematic mythology. Hopkins is a fine adversary, as she pecks away at her cousin's soul. This is something of a horror film, where the most terrifying outcome possible for a woman is to grow old without a child, without a husband.

And that brings a lot of suspense. Of course the focus is Bette's extraordinary performance as she (tastefully) ages from a girl with dreams into an elderly woman driven by bitterness. She has a powerful, intimidating presence. There's a touch of the gothic in her.

It's a period melodrama located on the home front in the Civil War, and with the onset of WWII, it was a premonition of sacrifices to come. It takes place away from the fighting in domestic situations. Bette's usual costumer Orry-Kelly creates a riot of crinoline and lace. Corsets are tight. Max Steiner scores. It's a handsome Warner Brother's production, and while ultra-conventional, it's still a heartbreaker.

Still the biggest box office hit ever, adjusted for inflation, David Selznick's lavish blockbuster is the ultimate Hollywood production of the studio era. It's a faithful adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's bestseller of the American Civil War and the epic romance between tempestuous southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and rakish soldier of fortune Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

It's a spectacular landmark, but flawed and the cracks now dominate the picture. Scarlett survives the burning of Atlanta, but the film doesn't, and the second half is episodic and repetitive. There's a birth or serious accident or death along every five minutes like a speeded up soap opera. Characters change and then forget they've changed. The portrayal of the slaves is heartbreaking and unforgivably cruel.

There is a sumptuous, colourful production. Max Steiner's score carries the second half of the film. Otherwise it's the performances that keep the film alive. Scarlett is an absurd archetype, but Vivien Leigh just about makes her credible over four hours through sheer star willpower. Gable has little to do other than twinkle roguishly but Hattie McDaniel and Olivia de Havilland at least make you care.

The troubled pre-production shows. There were many writers and three directors. The film has fallen apart. Politically it is hard to stomach. Late in the film it is strongly implied that Butler and a few male cohorts have joined the Ku Klux Klan! Now the film has become sucked into controversy it is promoted as an opportunity to reflect on the values of a vanished civilisation. But that's too much to ask.

This isn't a sequel to Frank Borzage's Three Comrades made a year earlier, but it follows on from its historical timeline, as the Nazis come to power in Germany. Margaret Sullavan returned to star. Both films are set in a similarly artificial studio recreation of middle Europe. The most significant change is that this film names the Nazis, and portrays them as a threat to humanity.

Which makes this a landmark Hollywood film, and of course it was banned in Germany. The narrative starts with the news that Hitler has become Chancellor. Instantly, the population of this small, idyllic Alpine town becomes possessed by hate. It's like a contagious trance that passes from person to person. The aura of threat is appalling.

Though a drama, this is one of the great horror films of the decade. The people are possessed by militarism, populism and racial hatred. Those who are immune have no one they can trust. Every stranger is a threat. Eventually Sullavan and James Stewart, flee over the Alps to seek refuge. Robert Young as their former friend turned Nazi is extraordinarily ominous in their pursuit.

It's a Borzage film so this is about the transcendent nature of love, which is as elemental as creation. Humanity is the mortal storm. Stewart and the ethereal, agonised Sullavan as the lovers caught up in its turbulence are pitifully moving. The film doesn't attempt to suggest reasons for the rise of the Nazis, because there is no justification for the madness. It mattered because Hollywood, and MGM, had taken a side.

Six years after Of Human Bondage, Bette Davis starred in another Somerset Maugham adaptation. But this time, with the Production Code at full tide, greater compromises had to be made. Davis empties her revolver into the body of her lover because he has has married a Chinese woman in colonial Singapore, but she cannot go unpunished as she does in the source play.

Bette gives one of her best and most interesting performances. Her character is lying for most of the film and she performs behind an inscrutable visage which doesn't signify a stiff upper lip, but her intent to not betray her guilt. And the suppressed Malayan locals are similarly impassive, unable to express themselves honestly before these corrupt, entitled occupiers.

The scene between Gale Sondergaard as the grieving wife and her husband's murderer is a meeting of masks. The unctuous facade of Victor Sen Yung as a Singaporean lawyer acting as a go-between for the two women is another deception. James Stephenson is excellent as Bette's biddable British lawyer who hides behind a mirage of ethical purity. The message is plainly anti-empire.    

The studio recreation of the east is exotic but plausible. Davis' costumes by Orry-Kelly are elegant. The camerawork is mobile and eloquent and very artistic, with the expressionist photography painting the fluttering, white-laced and guilty heroine within its shadowy net. Though censorship was an impediment, this is one of William Wyler's greatest films.

Based on a scandalous true story about the murder of a woman by her aristocratic husband, which got entangled in the 1848 revolution in France. Bette Davis stars as the notorious Henriette D-, the governess to their children, rumoured to be having an affair with the Duc (Charles Boyer). Warner Brothers intended this to be a rare sympathetic role for Bette.

It doesn't entirely work that way. The neurotic Duchess goes crazy with jealousy over the impeccable Henriette, but the tutor does actually entirely take over the household and win the love of the husband, even if they don't share a kiss. Davis captures the eye, as she always does and Boyer is compelling. They have a decent chemistry together. Oscar nominated Barbara O'Neil overacts terribly as the Duchess.

 This had a big budget and it is a visual banquet and a sumptuous recreation of the interiors and costumes of Restoration Paris. Colour might have been a worthwhile choice. Like many productions intent on touring you around the scenery, it is a little slow, stiff and formal.

Much of its long running time is spent watching the acting talents of a large number of Hollywood kids, and this appeal is very much to taste. Personally, this ranks with religious awe as the stickiest features of classic cinema. Especially when one of the moppets gets sick. It's not the best of Bette's Warner Brothers melodramas, but there's a fine score from Max Steiner and first rate production values.

This offers an insight into the lives of rich sophisticates in thirties America; a celebrated and entitled -but alcoholic- lawyer (Lionel Barrymore) and his reckless, free spirited daughter (Norma Shearer). It is interesting that with fascism gaining influence in America and Europe, MGM gave us heroes who see themselves as above the law and normal standards of behaviour.

Barrymore successfully defends a prohibition gangster (Clark Gable) from a murder rap and Shearer falls in love with him and his expensive lifestyle. And if that's starting to look like an impressive cast, there's Leslie Howard second billed as a well heeled polo star in love with Norma. They stand around expensive apartments in swanky clothes drinking cocktails as their laissez faire decadence reaps a whirlwind.

Barrymore won the best actor Oscar and Shearer was nominated, which is a bit of a stretch. They give stilted, mannered performances. Much of the problem is in the direction of Clarence Brown who abandons his stars to lengthy long or medium shots, like actors on a stage. Brown's work got nominated too and he became a star director of soaps at MGM.

The main interest in A Free Soul today is to see Norma Shearer, a huge star of the early talkies, and the frivolous precode hedonism. The film opens with a discussion on Norma's scanty lingerie. The writing is unpolished, the sound is poor and it has a flat, uninteresting look. But it's fascinating to hear what Hollywood was talking about before the censors took over. And to see the costume design, by Adrian.

Sparkling and very entertaining Hollywood comedy-drama... about Hollywood. This was shamelessly ripped off in 1937 for A Star is Born. Mary Evans is a Los Angeles waitress who becomes a big star while the drunken director who discovers her sinks into oblivion and then kills himself. It's full of cynical insider snippets about the trials of showbiz life: the obsessive fans, the paparazzi, the gossip columns.

Constance Bennett, as Mary, is especially good at the comedy. She performs an understated Marlene Dietrich impression when she sings a ballad on a night club set. She makes an appealing personality for the audience to identify with as she scales the hierarchy of celebrity. There's some screwball, but the character is not as dizzy as that suggests and the story becomes increasingly melodramatic.

Mary marries again to that ultimate signifier of early talkie male glamour, the polo playing millionaire. The support cast is capable but un-starry. Louise Beavers makes an impression as the archetypal black maid with a sassy tongue. George Cukor was perhaps Hollywood's ultimate director of quality soaps and he keeps it light and frothy.

This is one of the more amusing examples of Hollywood self-analysis. There's a polished script which is relentlessly witty. There's some art deco to look at. Max Steiner's score is sophisticated. Bennett was one of the biggest stars of the early talkies. She's not remembered so much now, but this is a wonderful vehicle for her gift for romantic comedy.

More foreign intrigue from Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg, set in the mysterious east during the Chinese Civil War, though naturally shot at Paramount studios. Sound technology had advanced since they made Morocco two years earlier and the camera moves with greater freedom. But it's still all shadows and cigarettes and shooting though diaphanous nets.

There's a cast of chain-smoking western fugitives with dubious pasts who might not be all they appear. Marlene used to be the respectable Madeline, but now she's a notorious adventurer. As she unforgettably clarifies: 'It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily'. Clive Brook is an old flame who was burned by Madeline many years ago.

So will the spark reignite as they travel by train though the hazards of war to Shanghai, and a ship for home? Clive Brooks was a terrible ham in everything he did and this is his signature role. And yet, the stiff, terse, detached Englishman is such an archetype in early talkies that he actually seems perfect casting! Anna May Wong makes an impression as a Chinese courtesan.

There's a remarkable moment then the director holds a close up of his star looking up into a light for a long thirty seconds... The story is very slight and slow and predictable. The film is more about the director's eye for an artistic image and Marlene's glamour at the peak of her allure. On those terms it doesn't disappoint.

Marlene Dietrich wrote the story for Blonde Venus and it seems she made an attempt to broaden her exotic appeal. She's still a cabaret singer. And she meets her husband (Herbert Marshall) while she's swimming naked in a lake in Germany... but then the narrative diverts towards a more conventional Hollywood soap with Marlene suffering poverty and disgrace while having to provide for her son alone.

The best (and most famous) scene is a night club number when she passes through the tables in a gorilla costume, only to remove the disguise and sing the excellent 'Hot Voodoo'. But the glamour and the naturalism clash. Dietrich complained the film was damaged by censorship and it's possible to see that her descent into the gutter might have been intended to be more realistically brutal.

Josef von Sternberg wasn't the director for social realism though. When his star is compelled to live in a flophouse, he creates the most beautifully lit flophouse in cinema. The milieu is exotically sleazy. Marlene does a lot more acting than usual rather than being a model for von Sternberg's adoring lens.

There's a pre-stardom Cary Grant as an unlikely gangster. Sidney Toler is good in a cameo as a squalid, shifty detective. It's an unusual film. No one else can walk on the wild side with Marlene's insouciance, but it just doesn't compute when she washes dishes to make ends meet. That's what Lillian Gish does in a Griffith film, not Dietrich in a von Sternberg. It's an interesting digression but only intermittently successful.

This is the role Bette Davis went to war with Warner Brothers to get, and which made her a star. It's Davis in the days of the bleached hairdo; she plays a Cockney waitress who cruelly breaks the inoffensive student (Leslie Howard) who is in love with her. Mildred doesn't care about Philip, but she humiliates him because she has the power and it is in her nature

He is obsessed and would rather have her spite than nothing. It's a psychosexual power game. The adaptation was compromised because of censorship. So, Mildred dies of poverty and TB, while in the book she becomes a sex worker and contracts syphilis. The difficulty of condensing an epic meditative novel into an 82m melodrama would have meant trade-offs anyway. It's still a transgressive film.

Philip is a medical student, but as he falls under Mildred's spell, anatomy begins to seem alien and meaningless. His physical injury (he has a deformed foot) has marked him as a victim and is a symbol of his emotional inferiority. She is inarticulate and ordinary but has a sexual charisma that prevails. There is nothing else quite as extreme as this in thirties cinema, even precode. Her death scene is phenomenal.

Davis is astonishing. Her accent isn't like any you've heard before. She is raw and wild, but this is one of her best performances. Howard is too old, though excellent, but Bette is dominant, as she should be. It's like watching a sadistic, predatory creature torment its victim. It's not a realistic portrayal, it's more than that: it's horrifying and among the great performances of the decade.

Bette Davis didn't get an Oscar nomination for her sensation in Of Human Bondage and it seems standard to assume that a year later, the Academy gave her the award for Dangerous to make up for the oversight. But this scenario ignores that Claudette Colbert deserved her win for It Happened One Night, and that Bette was pretty good in Dangerous too.

There are signs that this film was jigged to offer the audience a few echoes of her star-making role, but her character is completely different. She plays an intelligent, high class girl, a great stage actor who has fallen on hard times and into alcoholism but finds a way back through the support of Franchot Tone's principled, wealthy, playboy-architect.

It is a melodrama and there are many sacrifices made before the characters manoeuvre towards a conclusion acceptable to the new Production Code. This hasn't the prestige of a Somerset Maugham adaptation. The plot is clumsy, though there is a splendidly witty script. The direction is dreadful, but this is Warner Brothers and there's enough talent on board to compensate.

Bette is fabulous and makes many archetypal situations a lot of fun. Including when she manipulates the engaged Franchot to kiss her for the first time in a thunderstorm. She is the sort of predatory girl you don't leave alone with your man. Her solution to her inconvenient marriage is to accelerate herself and her husband into a tree and see who survives! It's that crazy. And it's that irresistible.