Film Reviews by Steve

Landmark blockbuster set within the biblical story of Jesus of Nazareth. But it’s an account of another life which connects only occasionally with the gospels. An epic tale of seagoing adventures, a celebrated chariot race and heroic human endurance, staged over a demanding 3 hours and 42 minutes, including symphonies.

William Wyler is among the standout film makers of old Hollywood, but this is not the best example of his virtuoso visual storytelling. This is more about the prodigious production. The cast of thousands. The Panavision, the Technicolor and the stereo sound. But most of all, the inspired casting of Charlton Heston in the title role.

He is magnificent as the Jewish nobleman of Judea who is enslaved by a commander (Stephen Boyd) of the Roman occupation and swears revenge. And in doing so, becomes a Christian. The amount of naked male flesh has led some to detect a homoerotic theme, but it isn’t obvious. This is about spectacle, not subtext.

It is a triumph of set and costume design, of photography and music and logistics and the usual virtues of the studio system on the threshold of decline. It will entertain those with an interest in the period and its emerging faiths. But despite the record 11 Oscars, it’s a disappointment for disciples of its great director.

This is an atomic age paranoia thriller but its procedural approach recalls the documentary noirs of the postwar period. It’s a downmarket, low budget rip off of Panic in the Streets (1950). Only this time the public health hazard comes from radiation.

An escaped prisoner (Vince Edwards) steals a canister which he thinks is filled with cocaine but actually contains Cobalt-60, for use in nuclear reactors. His greed ensures he never lets it out of reach, while it gradually kills him and makes everyone he contacts dangerously sick.

Obviously this has potential as an allegory, but it’s played entirely for thrills as the police pursue the killer convict to save Los Angeles from a major catastrophe, while he tries to actually break into the cylinder to get his hands on the narcotics! And the situation is as tense as that sounds!

There’s another level of interest in the pushers and users who form the slowly dying fugitive’s’s support group, a gang of witless creeps and goofballs who just want part of the windfall for themselves. It’s a B film with a minor cast, but decent tough-guy dialogue and directed with some style. 

Sensual love story about a beautiful, privileged woman who feels trapped with her wealthy husband and unfulfilled by a frivolous affair. She discovers romantic and sexual fulfilment in a chance meeting which alters the path of her life. It’s an ideal star vehicle for Jeanne Moreau as the sad, elegant lady of leisure.

She and Jean-Marc Bory share a potent chemistry as the photogenic lovers. With the lonely, hazy country lanes, the classic cars and clothes and the shabby-chic chateau, this is just beautifully directed by Louis Malle, and photographed in ultra-widescreen b&w.

And scored too, with the romantic chamber music of Johannes Brahms. Despite an overload of good taste, this ended up in the US supreme court, though eventually acquitted of obscenity. The sexual content is almost invisible today but was a revolution in ’58.

Like Lady Chatterley, re-imagined by the Nouvelle Vague... There is some eroticism, but it is more philosophical about love. What else can you want from a French film! It’s a poetic daydream remarkable for a depth of romantic intimacy beyond the range of ‘50s English language cinema. 

Wordy WWII drama about the ethics of combat, which can’t quite escape its origins as a television play. The set designer creates an impressively dense swamp jungle, but it still all looks artificial and the action is static. It’s more instructive than spectacular.

Stanley Baker plays the inflexible, pragmatic leader of a dwindling and exhausted British army brigade which takes a Burmese village off the Japanese and gathers crucial intelligence by ruthless means, including the murder of civilians. When the enemy recovers the camp, the captain has to answer for his methods.

The brief moments of battle are well staged, and the situations- based on actual events- are tense. But this is mostly conversation, initially between the captain, a priest (Guy Rolfe) and a journalist (Leo McKern) attached to his tiny fighting force. And then Japanese intelligence (Philip Ahn).

The diverse assembly of archetypes feels like a Hollywood war film, though the constant moral debate doesn’t at all. But it is still interesting with a fine British cast, including Gordon Jackson as an extremely compliant sergeant. And Baker is superb. It’s a minor UK war film worthy of rediscovery.

The gangster films of the 1950s represent the growing influence of organised crime in postwar America. The criminals are not called the mafia, but that is who they are. Richard Conte plays a former accountant for the organisation who makes a new beginning in Florida and intends to start a family with his lovely wife (Dianne Foster).

Only you can never really leave. The mafia makes him an offer he can’t refuse- to seek out his brothers who are suspected of betrayal. Though Conte is a classic dupe and it’s in b&w, this isn’t film noir. It’s shot in bright daylight. The fashions, apartments, air travel and the cars belong to the affluent Eisenhower period.

This is more like a proto-60s gangster film. The vision of the mob as a parasite insidiously devouring its legitimate capitalist host is extremely plausible. They are embedded. There is nowhere for the eldest Rico brother to turn. At least until the unrealistic Hollywood ending, probably insisted upon by the production code.

Conte's role is paramount. Everyone else is in support. Larry Gates is best as the ruthless, duplicitous mafia fixer. There’s a fine script and the sound mix is sophisticated for its time. It has been forgotten because of the many more violent and stylish mafia films to come. But it feels like a landmark.

Alain Resnais’ debut feature is an innovative arthouse masterpiece which changed the language of cinema while also functioning as a memorial to the atrocity at Hiroshima in 1945. It’s a French/Japanese co-production shot by crews in both those countries which explores the ‘horror of forgetting’.

The picture is dominated by Emmanuelle Riva, playing what she is; a French actor in Hiroshima to make a film for the peace movement. She falls in love with a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) and to an extent this is a poetic romance with incredibly lyrical dialogue by Marguerite Duras, suggestive of TS Eliot.

And this is sensual and intense with extraordinary photography. Resnais’ master stroke is to understand that the aftershock of the detonation of atomic bombs is too overwhelming to be confronted directly. So he sublimates the emotions it provokes into a subplot about the actor’s love for a German soldier in WWII.

The way it cuts between reality and memory is extremely evocative. The subliminal flashbacks are now ubiquitous. It is more art than entertainment, yet it is seductive. This is an allegory which challenges our empathy and intuition. It attempts to keep the memory of a monstrosity alive so it may never happen again.

Andrzej Wajda’s arthouse masterpiece has always been controversial in Poland for its political moderation in an era of conflict and ideology. It is most potent as a lament for a lost generation trapped between the Nazi occupation and Soviet oppression. And for its haunting, poetic imagery.

Zbigniew Cybulski became a legend in Polish cinema for his role as a survivor of the Warsaw Uprising who finds he is being exploited by the leaders of the resistance to seize power while peace is proclaimed. Rather than murder a Communist as commanded, he chooses humanity.

Which Wajda implies, is not an available option. To an outsider, the political intrigue isn’t always engaging. Yet the melancholy romance between the disillusioned partisan and a hotel worker (Ewa Krzyzewska) is heartbreaking, as their lives are ground by the gears of factional opportunism.

Cybulski looks more like a star of the ‘50s than the war, but he gave Polish cinema its James Dean. It’s Krzyzewska and he together who endure, bonded by a brief experience of love which can never be more than a moment of intimate solace within a malign national destiny. 

Horrific and daunting psychological war drama based on the last few hours of the unsuccessful 1944 Warsaw Uprising by the Polish resistance against the Nazi occupation. The opening battle against superior German forces isn’t well staged, though the newsreel footage of the ruined city is astonishing.

But when the action moves underground as the few remaining partisans attempt to escape through the sewers, this becomes a distressing and profound experience. It was controversial in ‘50s Poland as it subverted as story of national heroism and turned it into a vision of terrifying hell.

These fighters are not disciplined, they are pessimistic and poorly equipped. It’s a study of their failure as they literally pass through the waste of humanity. This makes it sound surreal and impressionistic. And it is an arthouse classic, by a celebrated director. But it also feels unbearably, viscerally real.

It loses dramatic tension in the middle period, and the individuality of the resistance fighters isn’t well defined; they are flawed and all that unites them is their cause. But there is an extremely strong conclusion in a moment of surreal absurdity. These events have been told many times, but never with such macabre credibility.

Unique collaboration between (maybe) the most celebrated director of the late silent era, and its most famous documentarian. FW Murnau and Robert Flaherty conceived a dramatic narrative which would also be an ethnological depiction of the people of the South Seas. Flaherty soon left the project because he felt there was too much drama and not enough ethnology.

So Murnau directed solo a story drawn from the indigenous population of Bora Bora. It's a silent film, but with an embedded musical soundtrack. He used local people as his cast and crew, assisted by an American cinematographer-Floyd Crosby- who won the Oscar. And he was fortunate to discover two charismatic amateurs to play the leads.

The actors are credited in their character names. Reri is a young girl chosen for the traditional role of a sacred virgin. But she is in love with Matahi. They run away to an island inhabited by the French colonialists, but are pursued by the indigenous elder (Hitu) and the foreign administrators and police who don't want a tribal war.

Many events are photographed at sea because the people survive off the ocean. And Matahi makes a living as a pearl diver when he escapes from his home. It's a tragedy which probes the iniquities of empire and explores a way of life unfamiliar to western audiences. It benefits hugely from being the (final) work of one of the greatest ever film makers.

Billy Wilder's trademark cynicism is applied to the newspaper business and the American people. No surprises then that the press reviewed this negatively and the public stayed away. But it feels modern and maybe better reflects the present time, with the media (still) making up the news and their readers easily manipulated. Plus the current idea that the truth is negotiable.

Kirk Douglas is well cast as the standard Wilder finagler; a big city reporter who washes up in a New Mexico backwater looking for a quick fix on his career slump at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. When he happens on a local man trapped in a cave he spins the small scale rescue into a national event, even though it means risking the life of the injured party.

He slows down the emergency recovery. And others are willing to exploit the casualty's misfortune. Including the wife, a disenchanted concrete blonde brilliantly played by Jan Sterling. She isn't too fussed about his return and the family diner does gangbusters out of the ensuing media circus as the locality fills up with news crews, rubberneckers and bored holidaymakers.

After WWII, Wilder was engaged by encroaching corruption in American life, and the threat of fascism. His films are suspicious of capitalism and the docility of the public. This isn't the best of these; occasionally the narrative gets stuck. But it confronts the issue most unsparingly. It was felt to be unpatriotic, and didn't find an audience. Yet it never stopped being relevant. 

New York melodrama based on a Broadway success about a Korean war veteran hooked on morphine. Though it becomes clear that his addiction is as much a consequence of his insecure childhood as combat trauma. His brother is an alcoholic. And the situation comes to a crisis when his father comes to town.

This is an actors film, which is only superficially opened up from its stage origins. Though there is a neorealist feel to the big city locations. Don Murray is the junkie who can’t hold down a job and grubs around the city at night in search of a fix. Eva Marie Saint is his neglected, pregnant wife and Lloyd Nolan excellent as the insensitive parent.

Best of all is Tony Franciosa who lifts the drama (and won an Oscar) as the anguished but enduring brother. Fred Zinnemann directs with insight and intelligence though doesn’t make much of the possibilities of CinemaScope. This is dated and cleaned up, but still made by significant talents.

There were the usual battles with the production code. Two years earlier, The Man With the Golden Arm covered similar territory and drugs went on the list of prohibited subjects. As a case study intended as a revelation of unfamiliar lives this is mostly obsolete, but an affecting emotional authenticity remains. 

Striking, ultra-stylish b&w western in CinemaScope. It recycles the principal theme of 1950s cowboy pictures; the coming of law to the old frontier. But Samuel Fuller (who wrote, produced and directed) brings originality, humour and imagination to the model. And his use of widescreen is impeccable.

The innuendo and slight trace of camp takes this a long way from John Ford. But so do the ostentatious visuals, like the pop art perspectives, expressionist flourishes and especially a five minute tracking shot right through the Twentieth Century Fox western standing set.

Barbara Stanwyck is a frontier matriarch who makes the law on her cattle ranch and the nearby settlement; backed by her rowdy cowhands, the 40 guns. Because might is right. Barry Sullivan is the old time lawman now working for the government who intends to arrest one of her men.

Both she and the hired gun are obsolete within their own lifetime. Stanwyck is ideal casting, though hardly so gorgeous that ballads are written about her; the woman with the whip. Fuller creates an abundance of dramatic tension. His rather scattershot innovation makes this unique among ‘50s westerns. 

Most noir fans will know this for the once-only combination of all time genre greats, Sterling Hayden and Gloria Grahame. And they are the best part of film; he is a tough cop sacked for leaning on a murder suspect with powerful political friends, and she is a pitiful cantina chanteuse in love with the wrong guy.

Gene Barry is also interesting as the connected criminal who obsesses them both. Hayden because he is convinced the superficially upright citizen is a sociopathic cop killer. And Gloria because she wants to marry the scumbag even though he treats her so bad. And he's already married! He makes a potent villain; slippery, entitled, whiny….

In fact he seems like a model for Scorpio in Dirty Harry (1971). He gives the film most of its pull because we want to see him taken down, badly. The ex-detective goes vigilante and tracks the accused to a Mexican border town where he gets the shop soiled torch singer to switch sides.

This clearly draws on GG’s bad girl role in The Big Heat, a year earlier, but here she’s a shabby pushover who never got any breaks. The story is fine and the scuzzy, lowlife location gives the film atmosphere. It’s just a B-picture by a director who mostly did tv. But the three stars make it feel like something more.

Uneven sci-fi-horror which is mainly remembered for Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion giant amphibious octopus which takes apart San Francisco at the climax, most famously, the Golden Gate Bridge. Columbia ripped off the title from Universal’s It Came from Outer Space (1953), but this is unrelated.

It is more of a companion to another monster picture, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), because Harryhauson was also animator, and they are both semi-aquatic atomic paranoia stories. The mega-octopus is the result of US H-bomb tests in the Pacific.

Though there isn’t really an ecological or anti-nuclear message. It’s just a creature feature which reserves all of its meagre budget for the effects of the colossal sea creature on the rampage. The first hour might as well have been made for radio, as the scientists exchange exposition in front of crude sets.

And it’s completely inert. The buff Navy Commander (Kenneth Tobey) pursues the foxy marine biologist (Faith Domergue), sometimes in beachwear. Which provokes an unexpected oration about ‘50s feminism. But the climax with the colossal radioactive beast stomping on ‘Frisco Bay is sensational, and legendary. 

Maybe the most influential thriller ever made. The look of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s seminal masterpiece- particularly the distorted surfaces which obscure a mysterious threat- was ripped off for years, most extensively by Hammer studios. But more innovative was the big twist that subverts everything that went before.

Like in The Usual Suspects (1995) and The Sixth Sense (1999). This has become the mother lode of the modern thriller. And obviously credit is due to the Boileau-Narcejac novel which invented the legendary climax, so expertly staged by Clouzot. Shot film noir style for maximum suspense.

In a decaying private school in provincial France, the wife (Véra Clouzot) and the lover (Simone Signoret) of the brutish principal (Paul Meurisse) seem to be plotting his murder. But the consequences continually confound the intention. The reveal only works once, but the whole experience is always compelling.

Typical of French films in this period, there’s a colourful support cast, led by Charles Vanel as the meddlesome detective. There is some subtext that the wife and lover are also having an affair. Its pleasures are slowly exposed, which will frustrate some. But it’s extraordinary; a cinematic landmark.