Film Reviews by Steve

Intelligent western melodrama which relocates Joe Mankiewicz's 1949 noir House of Strangers to the old west, and improves on it. Spencer Tracy plays an ageing pioneer who built up a cattle empire which will soon pass onto his four sons. The most loyal of these is Robert Wagner who is the issue of his marriage to a Native American. The other three sons belonged to his first (Irish) wife who died during the settlement.

The older sons are led by the more procedural Richard Widmark who wants to sell the land for oil and other minerals. But they are motivated by prejudice too. The film dares to allude to the racism of the 'Indian' wars hardening into a legal apartheid.

It's a story of the coming of law to the frontier. There's an audacious scene in a courtroom when Tracy goes on trial for dispensing instant justice. A grandstanding east coast lawyer puts him on trial, not so much for pulling down a copper mine which is poisoning his rivers, but for all the improvised law of the old, wild west.

It is shot on location in Arizona in gorgeous technicolor and cinemascope. This is one of the great westerns, a fascinating film with a brilliant script which presents realistic characters and complex ideas. Spencer Tracy is absolutely credible as the bullheaded, imperious patriarch who is an anachronism in his own lifetime. It's been called King Lear reimagined as a western! Which is tenuous, but gives an impression of its ambition.

There is so much knockabout farce and harmonising of Irish ballads in the third of Ford's cavalry trilogy that it's as much a sentimental musical comedy as a western. When the Native American attack finally arrives in the last reel, it gives the film an action climax but Rio Grande concerns itself little with the 'Indian' Wars. There is nothing here about the aims of either side. Or the justness of their cause.

The plot instead rests on the rekindling of a long ago romance between a cavalry officer (John Wayne) and his estranged wife (Maureen O'Hara). There is some chemistry there. O'Hara smoulders effectively and they would have a bigger hit with Ford in 1952 with The Quiet Man.

The Indian attack is well staged, but the best of the action is a boisterous but incongruous scene of the troops 'roman riding' during their initial training. That's standing on two horses while circuiting the corral, and even taking a few jumps. Apparently Ford got the actors to do this rather than use stuntmen. The era is plausibly recreated and Ford captures many fine images of his cavalry photographed against the Utah landscape.

Rio Grande relies on a tolerance of watching Victor McLaglen ineptly drill yet another set of raw recruits, the harmonising of Irish vocal group, Sons of Pioneers, and yet another comical punch up. But there is some sadness for the forgotten men of remote army camps engaged in a long war, largely unvalued by the politicians who posted them. And for the women scrutinising the returning column of soldiers, searching for their husbands.

One of a pair of films by Sam Fuller made during the Korean War. The other was The Steel Helmet. This could as easily be set in WWII, but it is staged against an actual long retreat of American soldiers. A rearguard of 48 men is left behind to protect the retreat and to keep Chinese soldiers tied up in the snow of a strategically critical mountain thoroughfare.

 Richard Basehart plays a Corporal who lives in fear of command and who must suffer the anxiety of seeing everyone senior die during the conflict, leaving him in charge. Fuller fought in the US 1st Infantry in WWII from North Africa to the concentration camps so his war films have an implied authority.

The men have little individuality or back story. We see their response to the intensity of fear, and demoralising hopelessness. It is staged on a small studio set in artificial snow, with no music or ambient sound or wind, with Fuller's camera mounted on a crane, searching out pockets of US soldiers trapped by fire into their tiny ice caves.

Fixed Bayonets! is a psychological war film. Most of the dialogue is a back and forth exchange of trench wit and the avoidance of the dangers at hand. It's not about the pity of war, or anti-war, or a propaganda film. It attempts to authentically capture the impact of combat on the men who are made to fight. Their interior war.

Romantic adventure featuring one of cinema's oddest couples, coming together to torpedo a German warship on Lake Victoria in WWI. It's a two-hander with Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnutt, a drunken, Canadian river-rat and Katherine Hepburn as a genteel, Methodist spinster travelling downstream on a ramshackle steamboat, the African Queen.

 Which makes for the grandest of entertainment. The elderly pair fight each other before turning on the enemy. During their implausible campaign they rather sweetly fall in love. Bogart creates a variation on his reluctant heroes who come late to the cause. Hepburn plays the vinegary old maid Rose to far greater effect than she ever did her screwball ingenues of the thirties. Together they make Hollywood comedy magic, and Bogart won his Oscar.

The African Queen shows us almost nothing of the experience of the Africans. We see the country and the wildlife, but very little of the indigenous population caught up in a European war. It's a Hollywood romance and a vehicle for its great American stars. Jack Cardiff's technicolor location photography of the Congo is magnificent and like the whole film, represents an audacious triumph of logistics.

John Huston deserves credit for driving the production way beyond the normal comfort zone of a film made in the 1950s. And there is something enchanting about watching Charlie and Rose drifting via their heart of darkness to a foolhardy assignation. And inspirational and moving too. Through their journey we see that the pity of life for them isn't that they should suffer, but that another that they love should suffer too.

Warner Brothers adapted a true story from WWI, the war to end all wars, to make a case for why America must fight again. Alvin York was an uneducated farmer from rural Tennessee. He was a conscientious objector on religious grounds, but went to the Western Front in 1918 and reluctantly used his gift as a sniper, and his extraordinary bravery, to silence machine gun nests and capture 130 German soldiers in a single manoeuvre.

He became a decorated hero and a legend. Gary Cooper was well cast as the determined pacifistic who goes to war, and he won an Oscar. The first half of the film is about his conversion to Christianity among the enduring poor of the American south. Hawks creates this world with humour and affection. Margaret Wycherly is excellent as the steadfast, durable Mother York.

This isn't typical Hawks. There is zero screwball élan, no fast talking dames. The slow, introspective hero is an anti-Hawks character. He is a loner. The director performs a miracle in largely avoiding sentimentality, helped by Max Steiner elegant score. Though the film is unashamedly mystical.

 This was propaganda aimed at the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans reluctant to fight in another foreign war. The model of the peaceful man who decides he must act for the greater good was a scenario that Hollywood would use extensively in the war years. Sergeant York tells us that country and freedom must be fought for. A few weeks later, after Pearl Harbour, Hawks' film became a popular vehicle for patriotic America interventionism.

Wellman's low budget adaptation of the classic classroom text is set within the framework of the western, but really it is a dramatised polemic against mob justice. In Nevada, 1885 a popular rancher is reported dead and three cowboys passing through the territory are summarily lynched on insubstantial evidence.

Some of the men react to the supposed death of the local man with a lust for instant revenge. This desire passes through the group, but each has his own personal motivation for their reckless, unlawful action. There is little room for reason and even those who oppose the lynching are reluctant to speak in case the mob turns on them too. Once the craving is in motion, it must be satisfied.

And of course, the local farmer wasn't dead at all and the three strangers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and several of the mob are charged with murder. This is a brief film which makes its case with little diversion, which enables its impact to be precise and powerful. There is a fine ensemble cast, with Dana Andrews particularly effective as a victim of the vigilantes.

Henry Fonda is the lead actor. His role as one of the few opposing the murder isn't especially prominent, but it is interesting to place The Ox-Bow Incident as a forerunner of 12 Angry Men (1957). This is a real curiosity. Obviously hardly any money was spent. There is no incidental noise on the soundtrack, no extras, hardly any set decoration. The studio look is artificial. It's a skeletal, dark, schematic tragedy that lingers and haunts the memory.

Guadalcanal was the first land battle in the Pacific War between USA and Japan. The film was released the same year as the events. Sure, there is plenty of patriotism and propaganda, but for a Hollywood combat film made in the war years, this is relatively understated, and fairly realistic. It warns that the Japanese would be a formidable enemy and any victories for the US military would be hard won.

This isn't war as hell. The film is intended to boost morale and reassure the homefront. Guadalcanal Diary is narrated by the character of a war correspondent, and it was based on a book by a Richard Tregaskis, a journalist who was reporting back for a news wire service. It follows the US Marines for six months, from landing on the beaches to being relieved by the US army. The voice over contributes some strategical and philosophical context.

The story mainly focuses on the ordinary soldiers, who are presented as classless and multi-ethnic. It's a vehicle for a range of fine ensemble performances. William Bendix stands out as a brave, determined but slightly dim GI Joe from Brooklyn, a role he would play a few times. These men are not really fighting for strategic gain or country, but for each other. And to survive.  

The film has a practical message for the homefront: send mail, give blood and buy war bonds. It warns them of what their returning soldiers will have experienced. By rowing back on the heroics, the film feels even more moving because it is credible. It shows death and suffering and told their families, and people of the future, that their sacrifice was worthy of respect.

Comedy-thriller set at the front in North Africa during WWII in a rundown hotel that keeps changing hands as the armies of Montgomery and Rommel advance and retreat. Franchot Tone is a British soldier who wanders in from the Sahara just as the Germans arrive, and he assumes the persona of the dead hotel waiter who turns out to have been a Nazi spy imbedded while the British were last in control.

The film starts with a stark and pessimistic image of the campaign so far, as a British tank full of dead soldiers moves randomly through the dunes. The main thrust of the film is propaganda, as Tone persuades a French, pro-Nazi maid (Anne Baxter) to side with the Allies. Erich von Stroheim plays Erwin Rommel as a stiff, aloof, hubristic Prussian aristocrat.

Most of the comedy is entrusted to Akim Tamiroff as the anxious, baffled but well meaning Egpytian hotel boss, in a fez. The McGuffin of where the Germans have buried their fuel dumps is slight but effective. The film ends with the British sweeping back into town and a moving reminder of the sacrifices that winning the war would entail as we discover the maid was shot by Rommel's men.

This is a typically witty Wilder confection adapted to a WWII setting. The fascists are portrayed as efficient and ruthless, not the fools they appeared in the British comedies of the war years. This has the rich production values those films couldn't dream of. The b&w photography is gorgeous. While it is a diversion, it is a handsome suspense film, and a morale booster that leaves its audience with optimism that the tide of the war is turning.

This is a WWII film which follows a platoon of US infantry from landing on a beach at Salerno to their primary objective, the seizing of a heavily defended farmhouse six miles away. Which they achieve through great loss of life. The film appears to be an attempt at realism. It is understated, and unheroic for a US war film. Much of the time, the men are waiting, or glimpsing distant flashes of combat. There is no propaganda.

 Yet, it is theatrical. There are three narrative voices on the soundtrack, including a sung commentary of ballads. The constant crosstalk of the soldiers is intended to be vérité; they rarely talk of the danger of their situation, but repeat verbal leitmotifs, usually pessimistic and ironic and expressed without emotion: "You kill me', 'Nobody dies'. This style is interesting, but unreal and dreamlike and feels literary.

 Despite this, it is a film that many returning soldiers claimed best captured their experience of being at war. The time is spent just walking from the beach to the assignment as members of their group are picked off. The Lieutenant dies on the landing craft and his second in command becomes incapacitated through fear. Dana Andrews gives a fine performance as the pragmatic Sergeant suddenly thrust into the role of leader.

 This is another ensemble war story that brings together Americans of many ethnic and social groups.The men capture the farmhouse with great bravery but the staging makes explicit just how reckless are the risks they take to achieve their target. It's a weary, noirish film which feels appropriate for men who have fought a war for three years with no impression of how it will end. It is one of the best US films of the war years.

This is the only major Hollywood film about the war in Burma made during WWII. It follows a platoon of paratroopers dropped into the jungle to blow up a Japanese radar station, which they achieve with little difficulty. But, when they fail to be met by air support, they must walk to their base through hundreds of miles of hazardous and unfamiliar terrain. The jungle becomes their enemy as much as the Japanese.

The film begins with documentary style realism and focuses on the logistics of running the audacious operation. The ensemble cast of diverse Americans is unfamiliar for a major studio film. The leader of the group is played by Errol Flynn, who gives a commanding, moving performance. The latter part of the story deals with their formidable escape. As their ordeal becomes increasingly forlorn and arduous, their endurance becomes epic.

It's a stirring film, brilliantly photographed (James Wong Howe) and scored (Franz Waxman). Walsh directs with his typical laconic toughness. There is an impression that the American attitude to the Japanese has hardened even more since Pearl Harbour. When the US soldiers encounter the butchery of the Japanese torture of POWs we are confronted by the real horror of war. And so we become even more inspired by the men's cause.  

Operation Burma! became infamous for its impact in the UK, where it was accused of overlooking the British efforts in Burma, and was withdrawn. I don't think this is fair. Hollywood was telling one story of its own soldiers. Other stories would be told. It is a film about the heroism of a group of ordinary men who were dropped into a jungle wilderness and abandoned by their own side, but somehow survived. It's a relentless, inspirational war film

This is a companion to Wellman's anti-vigilante western The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), sharing the same writer and some of the cast, as well as its laconic style, abstract studio sets and absence of music. There is a different photographer, but similarly stark, ominous high contrast black and white. It's a fascinating, schematic heist narrative from a story by WR Burnett.

Six men (Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark, et al) rob a bank and are chased into the salt desert of Death Valley. Rather than give themselves up, they continue into the barren, hostile wilderness. As their resilience gives way the outlaws stumble on a ghost town occupied by an old gold prospector and his rugged grand-daughter (Anne Baxter).

 It unfolds like a medieval parable. The men destroy themselves as their desire for the gold and the woman open up their already significant divisions. It's really an anti-western. The men are ruined by their individualism, and the only survivor is Gregory Peck, the gunman who develops the capacity to compromise with others and not be ruled by impulse.

Predictably Peck plays the tough leader who develops some integrity and Widmark is the cruel, mercenary killer. There's little dialogue, just the visual impact of the derelict shacks huddled in the desert as the men betray each other. It's the gloomy atmosphere of the film and its melancholy cynicism that are most memorable. This is one of the first of the western noirs that emerged after WWII, and one of the best.

Classic meditation on greed which is sometimes credited as a western, but isn't really a genre film. It is set in Mexico in 1925, beginning in an unprosperous town where desperate, impoverished American drifters congregate and chisel out a few lousy pesos from other crooks. After lucking into a little money, three nomadic bums decide to fund an arduous trip to search for gold in the mountains.

When they find it, they become possessed by the mesmeric lure of wealth. The gold distorts the men who find it. This is no surprise to Howard (Walter Huston) the old prospector who has seen it all before. Curtin (Tim Holt) becomes suspicious of the others and fiercely protective of his good fortune, to the point of murder. But Fred C. Dobbs (Humphrey Bogart) is consumed entirely by the power of greed.

And he becomes violently paranoid. This is a parable of immense intensity and persuasiveness. The location work gives the film a vivid realism. But it is mainly an actors film. Holt is very good in a more neutral role. Bogart is astonishing as the shifty lowlife who is destroyed by his own moral weakness. Best of all is Walter Huston who is absolutely convincing as a grizzled veteran of both mining, and human frailty.

These have become legendary film characters. It's a hugely unconventional and influential work for John Huston. Unfortunately it didn't find an audience at the time, maybe because people were unsure of what it was, and perhaps it was too unconventional. Few films end as bitterly and brutally as this one. There are no good guys. It feels epic and eternal, like a biblical tale.

Hawks' legendary western is bursting with points of interest, but there are too many flaws for it to succeed as more as a genre picture. It is the archetypal cowboy story as a group of men move cattle from Texas to Abilene just after the Civil War. Thomas Dunson (John Wayne) has built his huge cattle empire up from the dirt, and must transport the stock through 'Indian' country with Matt Garth (Montgomery Clift), the foundling he has brought up as a son.

Dunstan assumes the role of law and order among his men, which he enforces with his gun. It was a breakthrough for Wayne; quite a complex role which he fortunately elects to underplay rather than go the whole Captain Bligh. Clift competes with great élan in his debut, as Matt takes over the cattle drive. In the early scenes, Hawks seems to have Clift and John Ireland salaciously sparring like he used to get Bogart and Bacall.

But there is too much evidence of a troubled production. Ireland just disappears from the film after a promising start. The later episodes are badly scripted and the plot resolves poorly (with a typical Hollywood ending). Joanne Dru's character and and dialogue are disasters and she's not good enough to salvage such a terrible role.

It's an entertaining film which captures an impression of the expanses of the west and its intrinsic dangers. The photography and score are excellent. While Wayne is obviously at home in the skin of his western archetype, it's Clift that makes the greater impact. It's a generational film (James Dean took much from his performance). Clift is an exciting, unconventional presence and must be one of the quickest on the draw in all Hollywood.

The great strength of Fort Apache is Henry Fonda's multi-faceted portrayal of a narcissistic and mediocre cavalry officer, Lieutenant Colonel Owen Thursday. If a new leader announces himself with 'I am not a martinet but...' you know where this is heading. Fort Apache is a remote camp intended to simply keep Native Americans on their reservation but Thursday's vanity escalates this task into the bloody massacre of his own men.

The other impressive factor is its interpretation of the 'Indian' wars, which isn't flattering towards the Americans. The Apaches are portrayed as sophisticated warriors who fight in harmony with their environment and who have been wronged by political expediency. Ford deserves credit for revising the representation of Native Americans usually seen in Hollywood westerns, and indeed in his own films.

However these themes and Fonda's great performance are set adrift into a vast epic of sentimental Irish whimsy. The constant, idiotic quest for whisky supplies. The knockabout horseplay and punch-ups. The singing group harmonising nostalgic Irish ballads. The comedy cliché of the bad drilling of new recruits. The actual story constantly wanders off into long diversions of high-spirited tomfoolery.

Ford's stock company of character actors is well capable of carrying off this broad comedy and slapstick. The photography and the familiar locations are fine. John Wayne has a badly written support role as a more experienced veteran of the Indian territories. There is the standard western theme of what too much power does to the few that exercise it. Fonda dominates, but what is intended as comic relief ultimately overwhelms the film.

Hard to imagine that this folksy, corny biopic could work without the everyman qualities of James Stewart. But it does work, and became a big box office hit. Seven years after Pride of the Yankees, Sam Wood returned to baseball and miraculously manages to excise nearly all the sentimentality from the life of Monty Stratton, a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the thirties who recovered from an above knee amputation to play again in the minor leagues.

It's the epitome of Hollywood Americana, the story of a country boy, from rural Texas who who made good in the major leagues before overcoming his hunting accident. The rags to riches narrative of the first part of the film draws on the myth of the American dream. And the star gives us a character we can unconditionally cheer for. It adds up to cheerful optimistic cinema.

It's a true story that demands the audience suspend their cynicism but it only once strays into mawkishness; after Monty has shot his leg and commands his dog go for help... There are familiar archetypes; the unconditional love of his stoical ma, the drunken hobo ex-baseball star who cleans up to mentor Monty on the finer points. Peppy June Allyson plays James Stewart's romantic interest for the first time.

There are cameos from major league baseball stars to convey a little authenticity on the field, though Stewart is clearly no demon pitcher. There's a great script which allows Monty Stratton far more wit than the usual Hollywood country boy. And there's lively camera work out on the diamond. It's easy enough to mock its good hearted ideals, but for me it's the best baseball film of the studio era.