Film Reviews by Steve

A change of pace for Harold Lloyd, who plays a married, middle class suburbanite rather than his usual optimistic, enterprising go-getter. There is a series of three linked stories centred on his marriage to Jobyna Ralston and his relationship with her awful relatives.

It’s rated one of his lesser silent comedies. But there’s a hilarious sketch with Harold sent on an errand from ‘wifey’ to collect ‘a few things’ from the market- actually a long, long list of groceries. So many that he struggles to carry them all at once and always has just one too many to grasp onto.

At that least opportune moment he wins a live turkey in a raffle and must also take it home on a trolley bus. Following this standout sequence is a (WC) Fieldsian comedy of the horror of family. Harold takes them on a disastrous trip in his new car, and then (in a pastiche of German expressionism) imagines he has killed his mother-in-law.

Wishful thinking! It’s a funny gag driven sitcom which was a big success, though doesn't satisfy critics today as there is no single overarching narrative. However, it is still entertaining, and fun to see a rare silent comedy set among the aspirational middle classes. 

As the mood in Hollywood darkened with the world at war, this recalled the screwball comedies of the early ’30s. James Stewart plays a private detective on the run from the police, trying to clear his name. And pick up a reward. Claudette Colbert is the crazy poet who wants to help but endangers him at every turn.

There are many references to her Oscar winning performance in It Happened One Night (1934). And like most screwball classics, it's a road film. Ben Hecht contributes an extremely funny script, as the actors switch between comic personas. Jimmy is a hoot as a scout leader in thick spectacles which render him almost blind.

Colbert's lunacy is inspired. When she says 'I swear by my eyes’… it's her indication that she's about to lie. But it's fine because she used her tell. She's so good. Unfortunately, Stewart’s tough guy persona is misogynistic, and there’s a regrettable moment of typical '30s racism.

The murder-mystery at a provincial theatre hardly matters. It's all about the rapid-fire comic sparring between the stars. It is derivative; the quarrelling couple are handcuffed together like in The 39 Steps (1935). It's not profound.  But for pure laughs, it’s among the funniest comedies of the decade. 

The third time Leslie Howard and Bette Davis starred together for Warner Brothers (after Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest) is a change of genre but a similar level of quality. It's a screwball comedy about an egotistical, philandering Shakespearian actor who tries to shake off the attentions of a teenage fan under the close scrutiny of his on-off fiancée.

It's so funny thanks to a witty script and a flamboyant performance from Howard as the pompous thespian. Olivia de Havilland is young and pretty enough as the besotted adolescent. Her own suitor asks Howard to visit her father's country house and make himself as unpleasant as possible, to break her infatuation.

Which is a decent premise, because we are never sure if he is faking or really is that awful! Davis is fine as the bride-to-be, but screwball isn't her speciality. The central relationship is between the actor and his devoted dresser/finagler (Eric Blore). And that is a lot of lively fun as they seamlessly slip between roles the star has played on the stage.

It's a pacy farce set among the upper classes, with a lot of genuine laughs. It’s likely everyone involved has seen John Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934). It's not as good as that, but should be better known. And it's a fine opportunity for Howard to overact with theatrical abandon. 

This historical saga is the last of the Gainsborough melodramas and the first in colour. It doesn't feel like a movement that is running out of steam. The abundant plot loves along gleefully and the production was still able to call upon studio stars like Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc.

Many motifs of the series are revisited: there are three beatings whether by whip or cane; there's a gypsy with spectral gifts; and the aristocracy are decadent wastrels who abuse their power over the destitute tenants. A drunken patriarch (Dennis Price) loses his estate in a throw of dice to another dissolute idler (Basil Sydney).

Lockwood is the ambitious gypsy with second sight who ingratiates herself into the household and takes it over. The film is a primarily vehicle for her, with the lovely Patricia Roc disappointingly sidelined. Basil Sydney is a fine foil for the star in the sort of villainous role that used to go to James Mason.

The sets and costumes are sumptuous in Technicolor. Bernard Knowles' direction lacks the panache that this sort of material needs, but the speedy picaresque narrative is always moving on to some new adventure, so it never gets weary. It's all quite familiar, but the formula still works its magic. 

The most fertile sub-genre of films about the '39-'45 war released over the following decade proved to be the special operation stories. This was a forerunner, and set a high standard, as well as establishing many of the conventions. The early scenes are mostly an explanation of what these units were.

It begins with the training of Belgian operatives by a support team of British boffins. Once primed, these ordinary men and women are parachuted into the resistance. The first half is episodic, as the spies are imbedded into the cause. This evolves into a single manoeuvre to release the underground leader from prison.

This cell is run by Simone Signoret, with Jack Warner and Gordon Jackson. There is immediately a huge shock as the relatable, avuncular Warner is uncovered as a German double agent and shot dead. The operation develops into a suspenseful action climax on the railways.

The cast of Ealing regulars is excellent, but Signoret elevates the film. The script goes into a lot of depth about the psychological trauma of spying, and the personal loss of these refugee heroes, who had to leave their families behind. It's film that acknowledges their astonishing bravery and incalculable sacrifice. 

Most of the cult of this low budget noir has gathered around Jean Gillie as its intractable, corrupt femme fatale. She married director Jack Bernard when he was stationed in the UK during WWII and he made this as a vehicle for her.

As they divorced before its release and she died soon after, it feels a quirk of fate this even exists. Gillie is the whole show as a rapacious, backstabbing criminal who won’t let anything at all stand between herself and a fortune stolen from an armoured car. Not even the laws of nature.

She springs her partner from jail by reanimating his corpse after it has choked in the gas chamber! She uses anyone necessary to get control of the bag of money. Then rub them out at the earliest opportunity to cut down on the split.

Greed permeates every scene, like the taste of cyanide gas… There's a nice moment where a cheap crook washes his hands in a sink so filthy that he could only get them dirtier by using it. And that's what it feels like watching these lowlifes scheme in pursuit of 400000 lousy dollars

Sombre and quite stylish spy thriller set on the French Riviera before WWII, but obviously entirely filmed in a studio in London. Even though the painted scenery is extremely artificial, it has a rustic charm which makes it feel like this is staged in a cute Provençal town from a dream.

James Mason plays an Austrian student with an interest in photography who gets into deep trouble when his reel of holiday snaps is developed to reveal pictures of military defences. So which of his fellow hotel residents swapped his identical camera by mistake and is a danger to the Republic?

The French police get the innocent tourist to investigate, threatening him with deportation into his Nazi controlled homeland. Well, they were different times. Soon Mason is chasing a convincingly sinister Herbert Lom across a precarious rooftop in Toulon in an exciting climax.

Lance Comfort is the key director of those named, and could be relied on to turn a small budget into polished entertainment. The hotel of diverse and gossipy guests under suspicion, is pure Agatha Christie. But Eric Ambler's source novel also draws on international intrigue. It's 1938 and France will soon be at war. 

This influenced the comedy caper for a decade, particularly the innovation that the sting is not only perpetrated on the mark, but also on the audience. Rather wonderfully, it is loosely based on real life criminals from the 1930s. Director George Roy Hill re-hires the old gang from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).

Robert Redford plays the small time grifter who is coached for the ultimate con by old hand Paul Newman. And their star chemistry combusts once again. Robert Shaw is suitable loathsome as their dupe, a Chicago gang boss who kills their comrade, a genial street swindler about to go straight.

So we are really on their side. The comic tone is drawn from Damon Runyon's folksy vignettes of the depression. The period costumes and set design are truly exceptional. The soundtrack of Scott Joplin's Ragtime jazz is evocative and led to a revival. It would be an advantage to understand poker, but not crucial.

The ten Oscar nominations and seven wins, including for best film and director, now seems like overkill. It's just a buddy picture. And the famous twist ending no longer induces whiplash. But it remains friction free entertainment with likeable stars and a meticulous period production. 

This stunning looking film noir has a classic genre premise about a war hero who loses his memory in combat and drifts back to Los Angeles to piece together his past. Where he discovers that he was a tough racketeer involved in illegal gambling and implicated in a murder. He has a wife who doesn't want to know him and his former gang intends to rub him out.

Admittedly, this was done better in 1946 as Somewhere in the Night, but it's still a foolproof formula. However... although Robert Florey is a stalwart genre director, he really doesn't make the most of the setup. There's a lot of low-watt tough guy dialogue which never gets close to B-picture poetry and the rambling narrative lacks imagination.

It suffers most because of John Payne's impassive performance as the conflicted veteran; though as the amnesiac won the silver star, we know how this will end. His absence of charisma delivers a void into the heart of the film. But as none of the cast give much impression of why all this matters, maybe the trail leads back to the director.

Still, it's an LA noir and there's a typical portrayal of the lonely fall guy who walks the mean streets of the city at night. Florey is usually good at atmosphere, and has legendary noir cinematographer John Alton to work the lights. This is about as dark as the frame can get. And it's the definitive noir look which is the best part of the film. 

Bleak, hardboiled crime film with Sterling Hayden as the tough, laconic detective in pursuit of a pair of escaped jailbirds/cop killers who stage holdups for spending money; then move in on a parolee because the criminal code means ex-cons may be leaned on by the bad guys at any moment. They are never really free.

Gene Nelson is going straight with a good job in research and a beautiful wife (Phyllis Kirk) who believes in him. They are taken hostage by Ted de Corsica and Charles Bronson who plan one last job before they scoot. Postwar B-pictures are routinely tagged low budget, but the poverty of this one imposes the whole aesthetic.

The edits are long and there's zero noir lighting. It was completed in under two weeks and uses footage from other films. Everything feels threadbare. But there is a good script and an interesting cast, particularly Hayden as another cynical, world-weary cop. This time, he's on edge as he's given up smoking. See it just for him.

This is a brutal, macho underworld of victims, stooges and thugs. Among the supporting cast, Jay Novello makes an impression as a struck off alcoholic doctor always on call to take bullets out of gangsters. He isn't free either. The story is routine but its aura of tawdry despair and strip lit insomnia gives it an identity. 

Stylish genre pile up which includes elements of the '90s road picture, with the transient, nocturnal locations (motels, bars) and guitar atmospherics. Also the contemporary western, as it is set in the wreckage of what mankind did to Wyoming. But most prominently this is a neo-noir which is sure to appeal to fans of classic noir because it is a conscientious homage to its motifs.

Nicholas Cage is the hard-up male dupe back from war who gives way to temptation when a small town Sheriff (JT Walsh) offers him $5000 to murder his unfaithful wife. Lara Flynn Boyle plays the femme fatale who doubles the amount to eliminate the husband instead. And Dennis Hopper is the psycho-killer who was hired to carry out the hit in the first place. But got lost on the highway...

Cage isn't much of an actor but he makes an okay clueless fall guy. Obviously there's plenty of David Lynch there. But the conventions go back further. We know the beautiful wife is lying to entrap the corruptible drifter, because that's what happens in '40s noir. And it's the sort of parable about fate that those films often were, because of the Production Code.

The lovers fleeing their destiny will never make it to Mexico. They are trapped. They can't even leave town. This didn't make money on release but became a sleeper hit with a cult following. Of course, the plot is predictable to aficionados, and implausible to everyone. But there's a new twist along every few minutes and besides, this is all about the gloomy noir fatalism.

William Wyler elevates a standard range wars western into an epic memorial to the vast American frontier. Not so much to the settlers, as the land before it was changed by them. The big country is magnificently photographed (by Franz Planer) in widescreen colour. Gregory Peck as the recently arrived sea captain can't help but scan the horizon of his brave new world.

He intends to marry Carroll Baker, the daughter of the powerful landowner (Charles Bickford) who makes the law in the territory with his loyal ranch hands and their six guns. Particularly his foreman (Charlton Heston) who locks antlers with the newcomer, including a monumental fistfight. Jean Simmons co-stars in a lesser romantic role.

And that's some cast, even before mentioning Burl Ives' (slightly baffling) Oscar for best supporting actor, as Bickford's rival who wages a long feud over territorial water rights. The resolution is anti-western. The impasse is not breached through violence, but mediation. With Peck in the saddle, it's like Atticus Finch goes west. And his star identity of implicit honour is a huge bonus.

So much so, that the film diminishes when he is offscreen. But there is always that mythic panorama of the Arizona landscape, energised by Jerome Morass' famous score. This is 166 minutes long and it loses impetus in the final act. But Wyler tells the story with his usual expertise. There is a very familiar western scenario, but revitalised by a great director. 

The second- and best- of three Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies which now seem to define an image of conservative America between the Eisenhower boom and the permissive society. An industrious, straight-arrow female designer attempts to take down a rival advertising executive/playboy who gets his contracts by offering bachelor friendly add ons.

Like Pillow Talk (1959),  it's a comedy of mistaken identity as Rock pretends to be a sexually naive nerd in order to sabotage Doris' plans to ruin him. And it's the usual candyfloss about sexual propriety as the virginal career woman truly imagines sex outside marriage is a fate worth than death. Though naturally, it's ok for the man to play around...

All the Day-Hudson pictures benefit from Tony Randall in support, here as Rock's skittish Madison Avenue boss. The main interest is the period feel of Manhattan in the golden age of advertising.  Plus the upmarket locations,  the chic fashions, the bachelor pad set decor and the dayglo colour scheme. As was the vogue, DD sings the title song over animated credits.

This was once a date night picture for middle class married couples; predictable, but not without wit. Now it's mainly nostalgia. What's most unexpected is all this froth is directed by Delbert Mann, who came from tv and is known for edgy social realism. Maybe in 1961, the studio thought portraying a woman as a competent self-reliant professional was avant-garde!

This is the sequel often cited as an actual justification for sequels. Like The Godfather, it won the Oscar for best film, but this time, also best director for Francis Ford Coppola. And it is even more elaborate and epic. The costume and set design are more sumptuous. Mysteriously, the gloomy sepia of Gordon Willis' gorgeous photography wasn't nominated.

This is the resumption of the bloody dominion of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) but woven into the origins story of his father. Young Vito is played by Robert De Niro, who also won an Oscar. But the dual storyline doesn't cohere, and very slowly becomes cumbersome and unfocused. This was later addressed when the two films were recut for tv as The Godfather Saga.

But the main problem is the script, which is bloated with uninteresting digressions. The director seems more interested in using up his improved budget than telling a concise and exciting story. This is even longer than the original, and far too much screen time is spent dwelling on Pacino's impassive introspection. Yet other significant characters barely feature...

Which means some important dramatic moments hardly register. Coppola relates the story with little discipline, and indulges in extravagant excess. Apparently there was a difficult production and maybe some faults have been overlooked in the universal critical acclaim. Unforgivably, at times this feels like a nostalgic memorial to sociopathic murderers.

There have been vigilante pictures going back as far as the dawn of the western, which usually also share a conservative agenda. But this is surely the source of the present day surge in urban revenge fantasies. The agencies of the state are corrupt- and unmanly- and the only way the self-reliant individualist can protect his family is with the gun, and his own moxie.

And it inspired four sequels of its own. Charles Bronson plays a middle class/aged pacifist whose faith in liberal democracy is demolished by the sexual assault on his daughter and murder of his wife. So he fights back against the junkie inferno of 1970s New York. Naturally he guns down the muggers and rapists with his old wild west style Colt revolver.

There is that grim/gritty location photography suggestive of New York during the bin strikes, scored by Herbie Hancock. Plus it's the role that made Bronson an international star. But the script is a foolish polemic which doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It pushes the buttons with such fatuous reasoning that it becomes more idiotic than an emotive, voyeuristic crowdpleaser.

OK, this is an entertainment which isn't in search of realistic solutions. The tide of feral delinquency is the stuff of right wing nightmares, and its pro-gun propaganda will land better with that kind audience. But for everyone else, the simplistic manipulation eventually feels insulting. The social protest films made at Warner Brothers during the depression are far more sophisticated.