Film Reviews by Steve

One of Lang's best American films. It has his characteristic expressionist look and the atmosphere of despair and malign destiny which would influence film noir. Henry Fonda plays a two time loser. After a stretch inside he marries one of his legal team (Sylvia Sidney), but going straight in the depression is a luxury he can't afford. When he gets framed for murder and armed robbery, they go on the run, supporting themselves through crime.

Like Bonnie and Clyde. Together with the moody photography and locations, the film excels thanks to the star performances. Fonda plays the ex-con as an ambiguous character. He is sympathetic because he struggles to provide for his family, but as a marked man there is no way he can escape his past. But he is also resentful, threatening and deceitful. Lang doesn't entirely rule out that he might be guilty of the heist.

Sidney is outstanding and the impression she gives of unconditional love for her husband, which is surely misguided, is frightening. She was one of the great actors of the decade and her unusual, liquid eyed beauty is haunting. She is all emotion. Despite Fonda's ambivalence, they make a sympathetic couple who are heartbreaking because of the seeming impossibility of them having even the most basic dream of life: a home, a job, a child.

This is liberal social protest which holds poverty, prejudice and inequality accountable for criminal activity. It is critical of the prisons which release its impoverished men back to a life which almost guarantees they will reoffend. Fonda and Sidney, stripped of hope and fleeing down the dark roads of rural California, sticking up gas stations, holed up in truck stops, make for one of the most poignant duos in thirties cinema.

Modern revisionist, western that reflected contemporary American civil rights as much as the historic persecution of Native Americans. Paul Newman plays a white settler who was adopted by Apaches as a young man. Finding himself a second class citizen on a hazardous stagecoach journey, he reluctantly employs his combat skills to save the lives of his fellow passengers when they are held up by bandits.

So it's a liberal reshuffle of the old western classic Stagecoach. Though John Ford is unlikely to have featured the avaricious Fredric March who starves Native Americans on a reservation and pockets the profit. Newman plays that archetype of American cinema, the isolationist who is eventually persuaded to act for the greater good.

It is a terse morality tale with few diversions. In the ensemble cast, Newman is effortlessly cool. Diane Cilento is moving as a sassy, wise but lonely woman facing up to middle age. As ever, Richard Boone makes a convincingly brutal outlaw.

There is an epic score and fine cinematography. The film deals with the oppressive, psychological violence of prejudice, and the personal injury of living in its grip. It's a philosophically interesting film, with plenty of suspense and strong characters, and a key star vehicle for peak period Paul Newman.

Motor racing melodrama about a driver who wins on the track but can't control his life when he's not behind the wheel. The racer falls in love with a regular girl but his obsessive compulsion to succeed shunts her off into the arms of a competing driver. Which sounds a lot like a pulpy airport novel.

The couple is played by the real life married team of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and they are so convincing that it feels a little voyeuristic watching them together. When Newman catches a ruggedly handsome circuit star (Robert Wagner) in bed with Woodward it feels suddenly, shockingly transgressive!

This works as a period piece, with the cocktail hour jazz of Dave Grusin's soundtrack, the ostentatious focus-pulls, the racetrack heat-haze rising up through the Panavision, and even the sad, lonely souls melodrama. The intense, introverted racer is such an archetype it feels like an omission that he doesn't return home to a fridge containing just a carton of rancid milk, and a hungry cat.

This is from the golden age of the motor racing film. The director doesn't capture the excitement on the track too well, but the drama away from the circuit is interesting. Newman is as charismatic as ever. He and Woodward give quite complex performances as older, experienced people who seem destined to be alone.

Supernatural western obviously influenced by Clint Eastwood's past association with Sergio Leone, but not as stylish, artistic and intelligent which is why it hasn't lasted as well. There is also a problem with the presentation of a revenge rape which is especially hard to accept because the tone of most of the film is comic.

We get an interesting story, with Eastwood's mysterious man with no name turning up in a remote mining town to avenge the death of the Marshal. The film hints that this drifter may be the Marshal''s brother, but more strongly proposes that he is the spirit of the dead lawman returned from hell to kill the three hired guns who whipped him to death, and to terrorise the citizens who hired them.

The ghost story is satisfying and there is a nice frisson to be had from watching the avenger turn the town into an inferno before taking his revenge. Eastwood's star persona is of its time, and while admiration of its mute brutality will depend on taste, the aggressive misogyny is especially tough to accept.

This is a parable, a mythic western. Even though it is derivative there is plenty to enjoy: the three grotesque outlaw killers are memorable; the story is vivid and haunting; the direction might be an inferior copy of Leone, but it still works. And Eastwood gives his charismatic, laconic macho performance which was so popular and influential in the early seventies. But it is this that has most dated the film.

Pioneering early sound gangster film. Credit to WR. Burnett who wrote the source novel, based on Chicago mafia boss Al Capone, which shaped the genre for the next ten years. It's a rags to riches story. A crime empire is built through violence, which is destroyed by violence, and the anti-heroes' hideous flaws. It's the darker side of the American dream.

Little Caesar invented the look of the mob film: the loud, expensive clothes; the big black sedans; the platinum moll in silver lingerie; the Tommy guns. But it is very dated. The scenes with dialogue are static and most of the support performances are creaky. A weeping Italian mother is unbearable. There's not nearly enough of Glenda Farrell, playing a pugnacious, fast-talking night club dancer.

There are the thumbprints of the studio lawyers all over the film. Rico (Edward G. Robinson) can't be a charismatic figure, so he is the worst man possible: vain, disloyal, stupid, arrogant. And just in case the audience doesn't get the message there is a written homily scrolled down the screen before the film starts. The moralising is too intrusive.

Robinson dominates the film and he creates one of the defining visual images of thirties Hollywood cinema, crouched over a machine gun in his vulgar duds, chewing a cigar. There's some punchy tough guy talk but we don't see much of prohibition or how the mob actually make their money. There is fascinating social history and it's a groundbreaking film but greatly limited by censorship and available technology.

The Public Enemy remains a great mob films because of its pugnacious script, William Wellman's pacy, imaginative direction and James Cagney's dynamic, star making performance. He is a pitiless, ambitious Irish gangster who rises on the prohibition crimewave only to crash into a spray of rival bullets and then dumped in a bloody parcel on his mothers doormat.

Cagney delivers the tough dialogue brilliantly, and he is on a different level from the rest. He is utterly believable. The script gives him many startling, offbeat scenes to bring to life: when he steals his first gun; when he shoots his boss' racehorse; and most famously when he pushes a half grapefruit into the face of his moll (Mae Clarke).

The main weakness is the stiff acting of the support cast. In particular the strange performance of Jean Harlow as the high maintenance frou-frou the public enemy aspires after. She seems to be in a trance. But this is one of the great early sound films. The pacing is slick, the camera moves and the frame is filled with exciting action.

One of the surprises of The Public Enemy is how frank it is about how the gangs make their money and compete for dominance. The film looks like a guide for how to get into prohibition crime! And it's unusually liberal. OK, Cagney plays a psychopath, but the film implies that crime is a product of poverty and the slums. It blames prohibition for organised crime. It's a miracle how candid it is, despite the censorship.

After Little Caesar, Hollywood revisited the national shame of Chicago gangs with Scarface. They are similar stories because they both draw on the life of Al Capone, and are shaped by the same pressure of censorship. Scarface stops the action for a couple of minutes while support actors representing public bodies discuss the social damage caused by organised crime.

But Scarface differs from other early gangster films in its style. Ben Hecht's script features much more comedy, usually at the expense of the idiot bootleggers. Howard Hawks paints the film in an expressionistic look, rich with raw symbolism, like the shadowy crosses that foretell each impending death. And there is more spectacle, with car chases and crashes and epic shootouts on big sets.

Paul Muni delivers a potent, unsubtle performance as the uninhibited killer who wages a one man war on his rival gangs and the police. There's a great moment when he gets his first Tommy gun, like a kid at Christmas: 'Outta my way. I'm spittin'! He is matched by Ann Dvorak as his young sister who he tortures with his incestuous jealousy. Karen Morley lacks fizz as the moll, but she's interesting as prototype of Hawks' fast talking dames.

The weakness of the film is the reactionary sermonising which criticises the national government, and suggests sending in the army, rather than finding cause in prohibition and America's economic crash. It scores with Muni's weird charisma and Hawks' atmospherics. This is a visually stunning film which shows evidence of Hollywood emerging from the inertia of early sound.

Handsome, decently acted but feebleminded Civil War western. The film is unmistakably indebted to John Ford, with its knockabout comedy, broad support characterisations and lengthy punch-up which all eventually gives way to some sentimental drama.

James Stewart is a Virginian farmer with so many boys it is only possible to count them when they are sitting down to dinner together, saying grace. He refuses to send his men to fight, arguing that they are needed on the farm and it isn't his problem anyway. Of course he eventually discovers if they don't go to war, the war will come to them, and he has to get involved.

While there is impressive technical work, the film gets tied up in thematic contortions and idiotic plot lurches. Stewart was a pro-Vietnam voice, and would have seen a parallel with his family of refuseniks being forced to go and fight in an unpopular war. But in taking the side of the pro-slavers he actually makes his intervention hard to admire. So it doesn't work as propaganda.

It's not just that the story is relentlessly absurd, it is also badly constructed. Scenes are so disconnected, they grind against each other. New episodes start that have forgotten how the last one finished. The finale when the youngest son, lost in the war, turns up at Sunday mass propped up on a crutch is the last straw. Too many plainly ridiculous things have happened.

A majestic production which is convincing in its period look but also epic in scope, which pitches the brawny action against the vast landscape of the Californian desert. The costumes, the weapons, the authentic steam train... the film is dense with evocative detail. This is impressive visual art.

The Professionals is a landmark action film for its one time only cast of tough, dirty, rawboned soldiers of fortune who are sent into revolutionary Mexico to retrieve the kidnapped wife of a filthy rich cattle merchant: Burt Lancaster (explosives), Woody Strode (tracking), Robert Ryan (horses) and led by Lee Marvin (weapons/strategy).

When they arrive in Mexico, the wife is the improbably beautiful/sexy Claudia Cardinale who further illuminates the screen. The weakness of the film (though it has advocates) is the script which lacks wit and sass. The actors really struggle to bring it to life. There is too much philosophical diversion which takes a fair while to say not much.

The film is all about its vision of mythic, transient heroes captured against a prodigious, timeless panorama, and the brilliant, groundbreaking action sequences. There's a lot of scenery blown up in The Professionals for sure, but with finesse. This film has been repeatedly copied, but even if the lavish production could be replicated, there will never be a substitute for those stars.

Sam Fuller's platoon film set in the Burma operation of WWII looks at the conflict from the perspective of the ordinary soldier. A group of special operations GIs, who have been together since Bataan, find they are no longer running missions, but fighting one seemingly endless battle. As malaria and typhus become endemic, they are physically and mentally spent.

This is a psychological war film. We definitely get the message because the army doctor (Andrew Duggan) runs a commentary on the men's state of exhaustion. This isn't really about the combat with the Japanese, but the human cost of being out in the field for so long. Fuller's very good at presenting the group as an experienced, well drilled team, but also of the damaging pathology of stress.

Jeff Chandler is extraordinarily convincing as Frank Merrill, the leader who has to live with the guilt of pushing his men ceaselessly against their limitations. Even the mule gives up... but still the men march on through the jungle! The film benefits from being shot in the Philippine jungle, which gives a realistic impression of the arduous terrain.

 The CinemaScope is utilised exceptionally well, especially for a B picture. This is a Hollywood Burmese War film that acknowledges the presence of the British and Commonwealth soldiers and the terrible suffering of the local population. It's a very moving experience and if it presents these soldiers as being exceptional and heroic, then, probably they were.

During the 1960s WWII films typically became big budget action blockbusters and began to seem less real. The Train has that kind of scale and spectacle but manages to remain plausible. It is expanded from a true incident about the French Resistance preventing the Nazis from removing priceless art to Berlin as the Allies closed in on Paris.

 Burt Lancaster is a railway worker, one of the army in the shadow. That star billing might undermine credibility, but Lancaster seems completely at home in the grime of the machine shop. He plays a conflicted character, who places little value on the art but is driven to oppose the similarly obsessive but degenerate SS officer (Paul Schofield) who has seized the paintings.    

The Train is an impressive looking film with the deep focus, widescreen photography lending it an epic feel. What is most impressive is how authentic it appears. The heavy black engines have an imposing physicality, a weight. The soundtrack of the clang and clank of metal (and the percussive score) and the ubiquitous shading of grease create an environment of heavy, sooty industry.

This is one of the great depictions of trains in cinema. But it is principally a tribute to the heroism, bravery and sacrifice of the proletariat fighters of the Resistance. It stops being about the paintings, or national identity, or patriotism and becomes a film about the need to fight oppression as a principle. It's an extremely entertaining and suspenseful film too and one of the very best ever made about WWII.

A cold war film about an error in the entrenched missile systems of USA and the Soviet Union which triggers a nuclear exchange. A computer malfunction fails to step down a resolved warning on America's satellite surveillance, releasing warheads which no human is able to recall.

Critics feel that this bombed at the box office because Dr. Strangelove was released earlier the same year and satirised a plot that Fail-Safe played for real. But it may also be because Sidney Lumet's film is quite cerebral and loaded with theory. Every aspect of the ethics and efficiency of the nuclear stand-off is discussed. Walter Matthau's character even delivers a lecture!

Though the themes are complex, they are interesting and accessible. And once the missiles are in transit to Moscow the film becomes incredibly tense as the President (Henry Fonda) ironically tries to help the Soviets shoot down American bombers. And then tragic as he negotiates a horrifying recompense for American bombs and the loss of five million lives.

There is no action in Fail-Safe, but it is one of the greatest war films ever made. It is always relevant. Fonda was born to play the US President, and pre-stardom Matthau is convincingly malevolent as a war games consultant who recommends exploiting the accident to start a conflict which will end Soviet communism. It's a story that seeks to educate, but it is also a phenomenally suspenseful encounter with the ultimate catastrophe.

Anti-war film set in the '50-'53 conflict in Korea which presents an astonishingly unflattering view of the US military. Sadly the clarity of the film's premise was compromised by a loss of nerve in post production and by its star/producer Gregory Peck's refusal to play his character as the less than heroic figure that was written.

Peck plays an officer commanded to lead three platoons to reclaim a stronghold from the Chinese army. The terrain has no strategic value, and the war is coming to a close with the politicians negotiating a treaty, but both sides feel that the territory changing hands would influence the balance of the ceasefire.

We see the US Government and military brass trading American lives for diplomatic leverage. It presents these leaders as not only indifferent to casualties, but incompetent. The soldiers are poorly trained and unmotivated. No one can explain the mission. Strategy is outdated, communications don't work and logistics are appalling. Out of 132 men, around a dozen survive.

 There is an element of what might have been with Pork Chop Hill. Peck took the film off Lewis Milestone and re-edited it, and the protest was muted. But even so, this condemnation of the American army was at least a decade ahead of its time. It's portrayal of events that are so baffling they actually feel crazy, anticipates the more satirical war films of the sixties.

Surprisingly faithful adaptation of Jules Verne's 1864 sci-fi novel. Four scientists/adventurers make a subterranean exploration via a cave in a volcano in Iceland, and discover a fabulous landscape of quartz and phosphorescent lakes, and eventually the remains of an ancient civilisation inhabited by prehistoric animals. It's like a prototype for a video game with different levels of jeopardy.

The group is led by James Mason, as the kind of cranky professor who has a tantrum when he has to take a woman along but it barely registers when the group acquires a pet duck. He and Arlene Dahl squabble like an old married couple. Singing student Pat Boone and strapping local rustic Peter Ronson fill the group out into a makeshift family.

This is a fun, child friendly adventure typical of the big budget studio blockbusters of the fifties. Mason is wonderful. The top billed Pat Boone is little more than cheerful (and wears a kilt), but Gertrude the Duck provides plenty of comic diversion. And there's a particularly good villain (Thayer David), who, astonishingly, actually eats the duck!

The sombre, proto-prog soundtrack is an unusual touch. Period costumes and set design are great. The vast, underground terrain is lavishly realised. There's even a message to take away, celebrating the fearlessness of human enterprise and lamenting man's capacity to make war absolutely anywhere. The best of the Jules Verne films of the period.

Saga of the ancient Roman world remains relevant, unlike many contemporary historical epics, because its themes are timeless and universal. Spartacus was a slave and gladiator who went to war with Rome to gain the freedom of his class. When Kirk Douglas as Spartacus rouses his army before the battle he is clearly also speaking to the contemporary American civil rights movement.

And just as plainly, Dalton Trumbo's brilliant script is referencing the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten and refused to name names to HUAC. The famous scene where the Roman general (Laurence Olivier) commands the survivors of the uprising to identify Spartacus and they all respond "I am Spartacus" must have gone straight to the heart of American audiences.

Of course, Douglas' performance is legendary, and he is matched by Olivier who manages to evoke decadent cruelty without overacting or even a flicker of camp. The whole cast is excellent, and Peter Ustinov steals his scenes as an unctuous, mercenary slave merchant. Alex North's innovative score does a lot of the dramatic work. The Roman world feels plausible, whether the intimate interiors or the huge hillside battle scene.

It's a grand spectacle which demonstrates that political miracles are possible, and it continues to inspire. Spartacus is the greatest film of its kind, not because of its epic scale but because of its powerful evocation of humanity and brotherhood. And Douglas' production broke the stranglehold of HUAC on American cinema, which may even be the film's greatest legacy.