Film Reviews by Steve

John Huston's faithful adaptation of the WR Burnett novel is the common ancestor of all heist films. It wrote the rules of the genre and invented its three act structure: the development of a plan and assembly of a gang; the portrayal of the actual robbery; and a conclusion where it falls apart due to the tragic flaws in the logistics and the protagonists.

Doc (Sam Jaffe) works up an idea for a jewel raid worth a million dollars and interviews for a safecracker, a heavy (Sterling Hayden as Dix) and a getaway driver. He seeks finance from a crooked lawyer (Louis Calhern) who is financially ruined and intends to steal the haul himself. Great to see a young Marilyn Monroe as his sleepy-eyed, gold digging moll.

The heist mimics a legitimate business. As the lawyer says, 'crime is just a left handed form of human endeavour'. Dix is a dumb stick up man but the only one with any values (though rugged), a sense of duty (though distorted) and any loyalty at all. Jean Hagen plays his moll, the sort of bad luck dame who is always crying her fake eyelashes down a river of mascara.

Dix dreams of being back on the farm in Kentucky. But it's futile. As Doc says, 'we all work for our vice', and it's this that destroys them all. For Dix it is the horses. Doc is undone by his sexual fetish. It's a landmark film, full of imaginative flourishes and convincing jargon. It is a work of realism, but the pessimistic fatalism is ultra-noir.

Landmark early talkie with timeless songs by Rogers and Hart, which has the reputation of one of the great musical comedies. Rouben Mamoulian was a fine director, and plainly has the Lubitsch touch; it's a version of a high society play set in Paris which employs many Lubitsch regulars, including Maurice Chevalier, with a script by Samuel Hoffenstein.

Mamoulian fills the screen with innovation. Isn't it Romantic? starts with Maurice singing in his tailor shop, then spreads across the city all the way to the balcony of the woman he will love. The tradesman chases up a debt to her country estate and gets caught up in the arcane lunacy of the upper class.

There's an abundance of pre-code innuendo and sophisticated romance. Maurice and Jeanette MacDonald even share a bed together! There are weaknesses. Jeanette's operatic vocals haven't dated well and she lacks charisma. It's a satire of the aristocracy, but these toffs are so entitled that they are difficult to care for. The hunting scenes are unpleasant.

The bonus is a stunning, elegant Myrna Loy who steals all her scenes from the female star. But it's Maurice who brings joy, with his infectious comic sparkle and vivid interpretations of the classic songs, including his standard, Mimi. Maybe not everything works, but it's so fertile with imagination that there's still plenty to love.

This debut feature as director by playwright Kenneth Lonergan focuses on the special bond between a brother and sister. Their relationship is forged in the aftermath their parents' death, then challenged by the brother's long absence. Until he drifts home unexpectedly, broke and without direction.

There is a magical synthesis of character and actor.  Mark Ruffalo is the introverted, seemingly rootless loner; Laura Linney, a single mother who had to grow up fast to care for her now 10 year old son (Rory Culkin), raised without his father.

The subplot about a Linney's predatory boss (Matthew Broderick) is a dud. It's the siblings we care about. The script is so powerful because little is said, and so much is insinuated. We gradually experience the tenacity of their connection. There are no scenes where love is tearfully declared.

The last line in the film, which always squeezes the blood out of my heart, is a way of avoiding saying how much they mean to each other. It miraculously avoids sentimentality while being quietly overwhelming. This is one of the greatest films of the century.

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

This is the forgotten production in the creative big bang of Universal horror; an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's proto-locked room mystery set in mid-19th Century Paris. Not much Poe remains, but we do get the ape! Bela Lugosi is a carnival showman immersed in a maniacal scheme to crossbreed his simian sideshow attraction with a sweet, beautiful young lady.

Sidney Fox (she's a girl) gets top billing, maybe because she was dating the head of the studio. But Lugosi dominates as Dr. Mirakle, the carny with a sideline in cutting edge evolutionary biology. He trains the ape to scale an apartment building and kidnap her for his experiments. Which are pretty sordid, even for precode. 

It's a bit slow and creaky like all early Universal horrors. Critics claim it borrows from German silent, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), especially the climax as the primate drags his victim over jagged rooftops. This isn't of similar stature, but it's a fair comparison. And the painted, expressionist city is memorable. 

There is plenty of atmosphere, but zero logic. Which is fine in the woozy trance of early horror. It's Lugosi's gift to seem to belong in this opiated fantasy. His performance is ridiculous, but absolutely appropriate! Robert Florey doesn't create much suspense, or any scares, but it's still transgressive stuff, and he gets it all done in an hour.

THE BLACK CAT

Occult face off between a satanist (Boris Karloff), and a vengeful psychiatrist (Bela Lugosi) who has just been released from 15 years in a Siberian prison during WWI, due to Karloff's betrayal. He later married Lugosi's wife... and then his daughter. It is the first pairing of the supreme horror stars of the '30s.

It's a fabulously deranged story. As well as the satanism, there's an implication of necrophilia. Karloff, inhabits a modernist mansion built on the site of the historic castle where he oversaw genocide. The contemporary style is unusual for '30s horror. But in the old cellars he keeps the bodies of women he has loved, preserved in their youth. Including Bela's family.

The sluggish pace is its main weakness. Plus the vacuous newlyweds (David Manners, Jacqueline Wells) who stumble on this house of insanity. She reminds the rivals of the woman who married them both, so they play chess for her. Karloff intends to sacrifice his prize in a black mass and add her to his gallery of beautiful corpses!

The stars overact splendidly. Lugosi is limited yet there is a startling moment when he delivers some dialogue in Hungarian, and suddenly sounds natural. Karloff with his lisp and deco-effect makeup is more memorable. But hey! Horror is the winner.

THE RAVEN

If anyone knows anything about this minor Universal horror, it's that it triggered a prohibition on scare films in the UK which lasted for a decade, and a shorter pause in the US. Naturally, there's nothing shocking here. Now it looks like an irreverent, if transgressive romp. There's even a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe through the medium of interpretive dance!

It's a loose mishmash of plots which mostly involve Bela Lugosi as an infatuated doctor planning to murder the family of a beautiful woman (Irene Ware) he desires. While he deliberately botches cosmetic surgery on Boris Karloff to ensure he assists in these nefarious schemes...

The mad medic has a secret torture chamber with the freaky guillotine from The Pit and the Pendulum. But otherwise, there is little Poe here. It has that awkwardness many badly directed early talkies have. Like everyone is struggling to make conversation. But now it's 1935 so there are no excuses.

Still it's always fun to see the two stars engaged in diabolical conflict. Karloff sends up his role as Frankenstein's monster. And at barely a hour, there are few longueurs. Lugosi comes up with a new atrocity every ten minutes. But the main takeaway is that the censors/critics must have been crazier than Lugosi to ban this.

This adaptation of an epic medieval saga supposes an origin story for the German people. And it's easy to understand why it engaged the emergent Nazi party with its dynasties of Aryan warriors and implication of a superior race. It's the same story as Wagner's Ring, stretched over a challenging 280 minutes!

Though it breaks into two parts. The more interesting is Siegfried, where a low born swordsman with mythic powers (Paul Richter) survives multiple challenges to become a player in the treacherous intrigue of court, and then murdered... In the second part, his widow Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) exerts her monumental revenge, which lead to many extensive battle scenes.

The narrative can be difficult to follow. The unruly script is poorly edited, and scenes are allowed to spool on without purpose. The cutting is baggy and by the fifth hour, even the most scholarly may feel discouraged. However the action scenes are ambitious, and the artistic impression of Germany in the middle ages is awesome. Plus the costumes.

Though the magical effects are no more than standard for the period. It will be of interest to students of German Romanticism more than admirers of Fritz Lang. The actors look perfect, but the performances are limited. Schön has many long close ups, but registers a single emotion, of imperious obsession. This isn't about nuance, but epic scale, and national myth-making.

This is the film Alfred Hitchcock liked to think of as the first to carry his signature- though it took years for him to make good on its promise. It is his strongest candidate for the best British silent.  Admittedly, Anthony Asquith apart, that's not much of a contest.

A serial killer is murdering lone women in London. Handsome matinee idol Ivor Novello plays the jittery innocent man who the police and public assume is guilty. So, he is the prototype of the wrong man struggling to clear his name. And the motif of the blonde victim is unmissable.

Hitch returned from Germany influenced by expressionism. There are many memorable visual images; most famously, when the landlord's family discuss their new tenant, and the ceiling disappears to reveal the agitated lodger pacing the room above... 

It's full of classic Hitchcock riffs (including a cameo from the director). The story is told with clarity and suspense, with moments of humour, and there's a thrilling action climax. For the first time, his camera comes alive.

If Alfred Hitchcock took one thing from the success of his previous film, The Lodger, it wasn't that he was the emerging master of suspense… It was the handsome, delicate Ivor Novello who co-wrote this theatrical melodrama.

And he stars as a promising and privileged public schoolboy wrongly accused of theft, who tumbles slowly down to the worst flophouses in Marseilles. Hitch does a decent job. His dissolves, point of view shots, visual humour and character cues are all satisfying.

And there’s an effective dream sequence/hallucination in which the ill-fated youngster is tormented by his misfortunes. Unfortunately, Novello's script invites our sympathy for this wealthy boy reduced to the ignominy of poverty… But there is no compassion at all for those born into it!

This describes a reality where the vulnerable and the poor are ruthlessly exploited, but doesn't draw any conclusions. Its solution is the rich kid alone should be saved. The great director is wasted on this material even though only he is to blame for the clunky symbolism. 

Apparently Ernest Hemingway did not approve of this, the first screen adaptation of any of his novels. And that's understandable as this precode Paramount release is channeled more in the spirit of its director than classic literature. It's a Frank Borzage hyper-romance, a place of almost metaphysical melodrama- rather than a realistic vision of the Great War.

And on those terms, this is a triumph. Borzage has come into vogue, and his admirers will love this. There are great stars of the period with Gary Cooper as a volunteer US ambulance driver on the Italian front who falls profoundly in love with a beautiful, suffering English nurse- played by Helen Hayes. And their tragic devotion overcomes all obstacles, except death.

Even the remarkable difference in height! The stars inhabit the separated, anguished lovers with great sincerity. Cooper is still a raw actor at this time but well cast and handsome and Hayes is heartbreaking. Borzage's direction is innovative; there are no rules. What most enhances the soul of his ethereal, narcotic cosmos is the extraordinarily gorgeous photography.

Charles Lang won an Oscar for cinematography. It's an early talkie, but no matter; it got another for sound. This may be a little slow for many. But the main problem is it is in the public domain and most prints are poor duplicates. And usually of the 1938 Warner Brothers re-release which was heavily censored. Though the entire 88 minute Paramount version is actually out there on bluray.

This initial feature length adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 bestseller is a cinematic landmark for its incredible action sequences and for its recreation of the ancient world. The famous 1959 remake far exceeds this in scale of production... but for my money the legendary chariot race* is more astonishing in the silent original.

And there is a more exotic, decadent dimension, most obvious in the costumes... Plus the moments in primitive Technicolor.  The massive Francis X. Bushman is one of the great screen villains as the Roman who commits Ben-Hur to a living hell on a slave galley. Ramon Novarro is impassively hunky/sexy as the obsessive hero who swears revenge.

There are problems with the pacing. The initial 15 minutes which recreate the birth of Jesus is sluggish, unnecessary and sticky with the usual Hollywood awe for religious themes. The dialogue scenes are inevitably difficult in silent films and this could have been more sharply edited. And the sentimental melodrama is off the scale!

But this matters less than it sounds because it is mostly action. There is the famous visual effect of the miracle of Ben-Hur's mother and sister's recovery from leprosy, within a single edit... but this probably has little impact unless you're looking for it. This is not so much a classic silent picture, but remains an impressive and epic action spectacular.

*Warning. Many horses had to be shot because of the barbaric attitude to animal welfare.

This is available as an extra with the 1959 version.

THE MYSTIC

This is unmistakably the work of Tod Browning, with the carnival setting and the outré storyline about the post WWI vogue for occult communications with the dead. A trio of Hungarian sideshow charlatans are tempted to New York to run fake seances to scam the rich.

 And of course their racket succeeds, then falls apart. Without the director’s usual star- Lon Chaney- there are minor actors, but still a decent ensemble cast, with Aileen Pringle charismatic as the exotic medium. And she gets to wear some eye-catching art deco costumes.

The early scenes are spooky and unsettling, and it remains interesting as the tricks of the trade are exposed. But eventually the narrative stalls before recovering for a decent climax. In the middle period there is an impression of filler to get it up to feature length. But this always is a handsome production.

The home video release has an eerie score (by Dean Hurley) with ambient audio effects, similar to the Movietone soundtracks of later silents. And this enhances the picture… This should be of interest to fans of Browning’s weird, dreamlike idiosyncrasies. And surely was an influence on Nightmare Alley?

FREAKS

This is such a groundbreaking horror picture mainly because it emerged from an existing community; the human exhibits exploited by travelling carnivals. Many of the actors actually made a living out of displaying their deformity. And also because what is on the screen is so subversive. Sometimes, it's hard to believe your eyes.

There is a love triangle between two ‘midgets’ played by Harry and Daisy Earles (actually brother and sister) and a 'big person’, a normal bodied trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova as Cleopatra). She wants his inheritance and so marries the much smaller man with the intention of ending his life.

This is an exploitation film. There’s a framing story which explains how Cleopatra  became a sideshow curiosity after the revenge of the 'freaks' which puts us in among the interested by-standers. We've bought a ticket, and we are voyeurs. And as the events are told by a carny barker, maybe the whole story is a fantasy and we are also mugs.

And perhaps the freaks aren't those with genetic mutations, but the normal woman and her accomplice, who seek to murder out of greed. The famous scene where the 'freaks' accept the bride, by chanting ‘one of us' is spellbinding. It’s an extraordinary experience, and not always easy to watch. There’s nothing else like this.

THE UNKNOWN

The wildest, craziest plot ever imagined. It is set in Madrid and claims to be a true story told by carnival workers! Lon Chaney plays a serial killer known to the police only by his unique double thumbs. So he binds up his arms and joins a travelling circus as a knife act, throwing daggers at a very young Joan Crawford with his feet. Who he loves...

Because of previous abuse, the girl can't stand to be touched. So she is neurotically repulsed by the attentions of the circus strongman (Norman Kerry). As the police close in, to hide his incriminating thumbs and to indulge her fetish, Chaney has both his arms removed by a surgeon he is blackmailing! 

Unfortunately, by the time he returns to the circus, the showgirl is over her phobia and married to the muscleman. The now insanely jealous knife thrower devises a hideous revenge! Phew! This is pretty uninhibited stuff. It was created by Tod Browning who left home as a child to join a circus. Chaney's upbringing was similarly unconventional.    

Many silent horrors have the illusory mania of a fever dream. And that is the attraction here. And it's a lot of fun watching Chaney (and his stand-in) act with his feet. There was an alchemy when Browning and Chaney worked together. It feels like absolutely anything is possible.

What looks like being Woody Allen's last American  film is a simple diversion about a pair of college kids separated in the eponymous circumstances who are snagged up in contrasting adventures. In a way, it takes us back to the director's early New York comedies...

Not just that Timothée Chalamet plays a lascivious/intellectual update of the old Woody persona, but more enjoyably, Elle Fanning clearly channels Diane Keaton in a delightful portrayal as a ditsy naif from small town, USA. She gives the screen a lot of light and energy.

And it takes us back to contemporary New York after the director's European period, to the sidewalks of the early classics. Fifty years on. If it all fades out with two lovers meeting in Central Park in the rain, it would feel appropriate. 

There's little plot, just a loose chain of events evoking the charm and romance of life (for the lucky) in the great metropolis and the sweet benevolence of chance. It doesn't feel like the work of an artist running down on inspiration and motivation. It is still fascinated by the hazards of the human heart.

One of many Alfred Hitchcock films made in a Hollywood studio but set in England with a predominantly British cast. It is a thriller from a novel by Francis Iles about a frumpy spinster (Joan Fontaine) who marries a dangerous sociopath (Cary Grant) and grows to fear for her life.

And that premise conceals a number of difficulties. In 1941, Fontaine was a very beautiful young woman and there is little about her character that is unappealing. And Grant was the great screwball star of the period, but a limited dramatic actor and his portrayal is idiotic.

But the main problem is derived from Hollywood star etiquette. The plot continually stretches plausibility until it eventually rips apart during a climax purely devised because RKO wouldn't let Cary Grant play a murderer. Still, despite these fundamental weaknesses, it's an entertaining film

This is mainly thanks to the Master's imaginative visual approach. It is shot in the emerging film noir style with its ominous house of shadows. Fontaine won the Oscar she deserved for Rebecca a year earlier, playing another vulnerable new wife. It's a flawed woman in peril thriller with a few nice moments of black comedy. 

Stunning crime melodrama, which in some ways hardly feels like an Alfred Hitchcock film at all; it's similar to the wave of b&w docu-noirs which swept US cinema in the '50s, in the wake of Italian neorealism. The premise of the innocent man accused of crime is pure Hitch, but this is much more naturalistic.

During the opening credits, a woman suddenly looks into the camera, to stress that this is intended to look like a documentary and a long, long way from the Hitchworld of spectacular set pieces and sexual innuendo with an icy blonde on a speeding train. He then throws in some jump cuts....

Henry Fonda plays a night club musician wrongly accused of robbery by a negligent and mediocre judicial system. And his life and marriage fall apart. Fonda and Vera Miles give deeper performances than we expect from Hitch. And Robert Burks photographs New York on location- in that candid Weegee style- at least as well as anyone else in the period.

Hitchcock introduces the film, to emphasise this is a true story. There are familiar themes of guilt, mental instability and the imperfection of justice, and it's as suspenseful as his thrillers. But this is different. Instead of a MacGuffin, we get social realism. This is Hitchcock goes New Wave. And he succeeds completely.

Like much of '30s screwball, this reflects on the economic realities of the depression. A Wall Street banker (Edward Arnold) is so enraged by his family's profligacy that he throws his wife's new mink coat over the balcony of his Manhattan penthouse. It lands on a working girl (Jean Arthur) on her way to the office, knocking her out of the orbit of her ordinary struggles.

She is sacked for the moral improprieties she is presumed guilty of to get the coat. But because she is thought to be the mistress of the third richest man in America, luxury traders lavish her with valuables when they draw the same conclusion. By chance (!) Arthur ends up giving a room in her penthouse suite to the slumming son (Ray Milland) of the banker..

Arthur is really very good as a bewildered working stiff carried far away by the tide of fate. Her hunger in the early scenes is palpable. She never feels fake and eclipses the faintly drawn support characters. Preston Sturges' script allows her to experience both sides of the depression.

There's a remarkable scene in an automated restaurant. The unemployed protagonist can't afford even these prices. A man washes in a glass of water. And we wonder how such extremes of wealth can co-exist. The banker treats everyone in his kingdom with contempt. The politics is woven into a charming and entertaining farce. But in Hollywood terms, this is quite subversive.

Billy Wilder revives the screwball comedy, about 20 years after its golden age. As was typical of his mentor Ernst Lubitsch, the director returns to Europe for his story, a '30s French farce called Fanfare d'Amour, and transplants it to the US, to the Chicago of the jazz age and prohibition.

Two musician pals (Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon) witness a gangland hit and go on the run in drag as part of a female swing group, fronted by Marilyn Monroe.  Screwball was usually about boy meets girl. Here, the two men drive the narrative. What we now call a bromance...

Their relationship is complicated by the predicament that they are disguised as two female jazz musicians and travelling with a party-hard girl band. Like most screwball comedy, it is a masquerade; characters pretend to be something they are not. The exception is Monroe, who doesn't know that Curtis is a man, so exposes her heart.

Marilyn was famously impossible on set, but delivers a performance (and a couple of good vocals), not just dumb blonde schtick. Lemmon and Curtis are inspired. On the threshold of the '60s, Lemmon succeeds Cary Grant as the great comedy star of his era. This is a fabulous spectacle of comic imagination.