Film Reviews by Steve

Chrome plated Lubitsch magic set in his beloved Paris in the twenties. It's a vehicle for Greta Garbo. Apparently, MGM had the tagline 'Garbo Laughs' before they had anything else.  But there is a darkness in this film.  

Ninotchka was an intuitive film, because it recognised that the era of screwball was about over, with the world at war.  It is about Russia after the revolution, a proto-cold war comedy. The script is by Wilder and Brackett and there's a lot of characteristic cynicism.

Three bumbling Bolshevik ambassadors take some jewels to Paris to sell. The aristocrat in exile who once owned them wants them back. The chilly, practical Ninotchka (Garbo) is sent to ensure they don't fall into the hands of the former oppressors of the workers. When she is courted by an aristocratic capitalist (Melvyn Douglas), she thaws, seduced by luxury and romance.  

Douglas lacks the charm necessary to make him sympathetic. Garbo is fabulous, but her character is schematic. Utterly humourless and logical when under the Soviet influence, totally frivolous when seduced by the capitalists. The genius of the Lubitsch touch ensures the whole confection doesn't get lost in bitterness. But this is a farce that isn't afraid to be intelligent.

As crime films were becoming more realistic, Aldrich made one of the most expressionistic and visually creative film noirs of the whole cycle. Kiss Me Deadly is an artistic knockout and it pushes at the boundaries of what a film could show, with the explicit violence and its antihero PI Mike Hammer who isn't as much ambiguous as utterly unscrupulous.

Kiss Me Deadly begins with a flourish. Hammer runs into a woman (Cloris Leachman) who has escaped from being tortured, and is barefoot on the freeway in only a trenchcoat. Hammer investigates her eventual death, not because he cares about the law, or her, but because he thinks there will be more money than his usual divorce racket.

Aldrich's Mike Hammer is fascinating. To a degree he recalls the unpredictability and ethical relativity of Sam Spade, but is much more mercenary. He is a philistine: narcissistic, sadistic and manipulative. It's a brilliant performance from Ralph Meeker which he would never equal.

Everyone is motivated by greed, and that greed justifies any possible means. When the stupid protagonists stumble on the 'great whatsit', without knowing what it is, it kills them and everyone else.  The motifs and themes of film noir have been reimagined and updated and there is a palpable sense of the dogs of censorship being called off.

Woody closed out the eighties with this well constructed comedy about a documentary film maker (Allen) continually eclipsed by his more successful brother in law (Alan Alda). But he audaciously couples this with a very dark drama about an ophthalmologist (Martin Landau) who has his lover (Angelica Huston) killed, to save his marriage and reputation.

Allen brings the two stories together with a satisfying serendipity. His characters may be destroyed by guilt for even the smallest transgression while others commit terrible crimes and (providing they are not caught) choose to be unaffected by the consequences. There is no moral law.

The script is clever, with unexpected twists and shrewd observations. Huston is very moving as an emotionally unbalanced woman chronically starved of love. Landau is chilling in a demanding role as a rich man without conscience or moral compass.  

Perhaps the most interesting parts of the film are a number of philosophical diversions voiced on tape by a (real life) professor of psychology at NYU, Martin Bergmann, the subject of Woody's documentary. This film is pessimistic, but moderated by intelligence and humour, and Bergmann (as Professor Levy) shines a flicker of light into the darkness. 

Early Howard Hawks comedy which would define the emerging screwball style: the fast talking dames; the played, disorientated male; the crazy, unlikely turn of events; the slapstick visual gags; all set in contemporary urban America.  

Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) is a Broadway impresario who discovers Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) and turns her into the star Lily Garland. Enraged by her svengali's constant egotistical dominion, she flees to Hollywood and becomes a triumph, while Jaffe slumps into debt. He must win Lily back while they travel to New York on the eponymous train.  

Barrymore is just hilarious, overacting brilliantly, with his melodramatic catchphrases, like 'I lower the iron door' for when he sacks someone, which is frequently. He is astonishing. Lombard gets buffeted a little in the whirlwind of his performance, but she puts up a fight in a role that would make her a big star (the final irony). The support cast doesn't stand a chance.  

It is very, very funny.  It isn't all that emotionally nourishing. But as pure comedy, it is a triumph. Preston Sturges did some work on this and his hand is very evident. It's so much fun watching Lily transform from a timid novice to an egomaniac, almost capable of going into combat with the great Oscar Jaffe.

In 1949, Cagney returned to Warners, home of his thirties gangster films, for an update which has become a genre classic. He plays Cody Jarrett, a crazy, mother-fixated killer, like he is one of the most-wanted of the depression era. This creates a tension between this obsolete outlaw and the modern scientific police methods employed to track him down.

This is primarily a gangster film. When Jarrett wants to break out of jail, he doesn't have a hidden map of the building and a plan; he busts out with a gun and improvises. But it is shot through a film noir lens. At times, like when Jarrett comes after Big Ed (Steve Cochran) and unfaithful, degenerate moll Verna (Virginia Mayo), it looks as noir as The Big Sleep.

The characterisations are deeper than in the thirties gangster films, and the cops are smarter. It is a genre landmark, marrying the punchy gangbuster pacing of the thirties mob film with the darker introspection of the post war film noir.  

White Heat is as tense and exciting as a thriller. FBI man Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien) goes undercover with the most volatile criminal in film history, to plan a heist in an oil depot. The incendiary ending when Cagney literally (and otherwise) burns up the set is legendary. The cast excels, but it's Cagney's film. He's phenomenal.

A group of successful New York intellectuals is unable to apply the ethics and philosophy they constantly reference to their own lives in even the most basic way. Their narcissistic, moral shiftiness is sugared by some witty dialogue, Gordon Willis' gorgeous black and white Panavison, and the Gerschwin score. But Manhattan is a  dark film.

Their hypocrisy contrasts with Tracy (Mariel Hemingway), Woody's younger girlfriend, who is the only character able to apply a system of values to her actual choices. Isaac (Woody Allen) is quite an amoral anti-hero. But Tracy gives the film its optimism, including the the sweet wisdom of that fabulous closing line.

The hero of the film is Manhattan Island magnificently captured for posterity. Including that famous shot of Isaac and Mary (Diane Keaton) against the 59th Street Bridge at dawn. The film overwhelms with its tide of romanticism and nostalgia.

The performances are brilliant and the humour is sharp: 'My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst'. Diane Keaton is always special in a Woody Allen film. Possibly the beauty of its surface has obscured its distressed depths. But that makes it a fascinating film to rediscover.

Sturges' best film is a very funny vehicle for comedy legend Claudette Colbert, but stolen adorably by crooner Rudy Vallee in a (mostly) non-musical role. As with many Sturges farces, this adapts familiar screwball themes: Colbert (Gerry Jeffers) flees from home and marriage and travels across country without money or luggage, hoping to attract a rich benefactor.

 She is adopted by eccentric oil millionaire John D. Hackensacker III (Vallee) while Colbert's husband (Joel McCrea) races her down to Palm Beach to save his marriage. The film starts off at full speed and never lets up, the baffling opening scene satisfyingly resolved in a crazy finale.

 There is less physical humour in The Palm Beach Story than usual for Sturges, though a motif of Colbert continually breaking Vallee's glasses with her feet is actually pretty funny. There is a typical Sturges supporting cast of oddballs, such as the very deaf Wienie King and the rifle shooting members of the Ail and Quail Club.

 But it is the opposites-attract chemistry of Colbert and Vallee that makes the film so special. They turn the dialogue into pure gold, whether Hackensacker's homespun, faux-naif philosophy or Gerry Jeffers' streetwise wit. The last great screwball comedy, bringing to a close a golden age of the cinema. 

A party of socialites are on a scavenger hunt among the homeless of New York. Irene (Carole Lombard) explains this 'is like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you find something you want, and in a scavenger hunt you find something that nobody wants'. She attaches herself to 'forgotten man' Godfrey (William Powell) in the most cynical meet-cute in pictures.

Godfrey becomes the butler to the anarchic Bullock family. The father (Eugene Palette) earns big in the stock exchange, but his dependents spend it bigger; his ditzy wife  (Alice Faye)  and her freeloading protege (Mischa Auer, who is hilarious). Irene has a dangerous sister (Gail Patrick), who has the potential for the political extremism sweeping Europe.

The butler survives the family, and inevitably saves them, teaching them humility and (by implication) the value of Roosevelt's new deal. As Godfrey, William Powell is sensational; charming, with an underlying dignity which is never tarnished no matter how reduced his circumstances: 'The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job'.

My Man Godfrey is a romantic comedy, and Powell and crazy Carole Lombard are adorable as a very odd couple. It is funny, and it is heartbreaking and it is also about the political dangers of the depression. It is a classic example of how adept thirties screwball comedy became at reflecting America back to itself.  

One of many fifties southern dramas influenced by Tennessee Williams,  which employed similar archetypes: the photogenic drifter; an ailing, corpulent patriarch obsessed with legacy; a cerebral, inhibited (but beautiful) ice-maiden; and a hot, earthy coquette. Plus the sickly remnants of southern aristocracy.

 All these are present in The Long, Hot Summer, which was freely adapted from southern laureate William Faulkner. These  opulent, atmospheric films were soundtracked by orchestral scores and the chirping of crickets.  Usually there is the cry of a lonesome steam train, though here it is a paddle-steamer.

 Paul Newman is terrifically charismatic as the ambitious, mysterious interloper, ingratiating himself into the secrets and lies of a family of rich southern cotton planters and romancing repressed schoolteacher Joanne Woodward. Lee Remick plays a sexy and manipulative siren married to the shiftless son of Orson Welles' overbearing patriarch.  

There is a dreadful performance from the hugely overweight Welles; he is unintelligible. But I just really like this kind of film, full of poetic, philosophical dialogue and obsessed with sex. Martin Ritt does a good job with the rest of the cast. The film has a wonderfully rich, dreamy ambience but it's a mostly a starry vehicle for the beautiful, young Paul Newman.

By the time of 7th Heaven, Frank Borzage had been making films for ten years which are now almost entirely lost and forgotten. This was a big breakthrough for him. It is a hyper-romantic silent melodrama about the jinxed love affair between a street cleaner and an abandoned waif in the sewers and garrets of Paris.

 The film is dominated by the performances of Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor (who is sensational). Chico just desires a better job and Diane dreams of a man and a home. Their relationship gets snagged on his overbearing pride, and her lack of self worth. But when they do fall in love it is with an operatic intensity that is impossible to imagine in a film made today.

 There are a few problems. The religious theme is ridiculous, and the subplot on the western front doesn't work. Its greatness rests on the vivid, amplified portrayal of unconditional love and the unreserved performances of its leads. It's an overwhelming experience. The vision of Gaynor appearing through the window in her wedding dress is a heartbreaker.  

The myriad social strata are richly portrayed from the sewers up to the dirty attic on the seventh floor where they find their brief happiness among the roofs and chimneys of Paris. The sets are great and Borzage's camera mobile and expressive. It's not without flaws, but this is a classic silent romantic drama, sweetened by a gorgeously sentimental Movietone score.

 The film explodes into life as a speeding train delivers a one-armed war veteran (Spencer Tracy) to a remote one horse town to take a medal to the father of a Japanese soldier killed in WWII.  Tracy discovers this desert farmer was murdered by one of the locals and the crime and covered up by everyone else.

And the suspense never really eases off. But what makes the introduction (scored with great vigour by André Previn) so stunning is the artistic spectacle of the cinemascope which has a huge impact. And there's the gorgeous colour, which captures the epic grandeur of the Mojave Desert and its big white sky.

The film is set in 1946 and seeks rapprochement for the victimisation of Japanese citizens in America after Pearl Harbour. It warns of the consequences of hate. A man was violently killed for his race. And the one-armed army veteran is next. No stranger was ever made to feel less welcome. 

Spencer Tracy leads effectively, but the film is carried by its all time great supporting cast of western rednecks: Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Walter Brennan. The atmosphere of threat is very potent. We empathise  so completely with Tracy's outsider/victim that it makes the anti-racism of the story's message extremely powerful.   

Short and very sweet musical fairytale set in France after WWII, but really in an idealised provincial fantasy town of button shops and circuses. Leslie Caron stars as a homeless orphan who joins a carnival and falls in love with a philandering magician while being distantly admired by Mel Ferrer's inhibited, saturnine  puppeteer.  

As common with folktales, the story conceals a trauma. We never discover what past sorrow causes Lili to retreat in her mind to a make believe world of puppets, but its burden is palpable. Ferrer was disabled in an accident, but there is also an impression he remains distressed by the war. And the film acutely captures the pain of unrequited love.

 OK, Leslie Caron played many gamine ingenues in her career and Lili is that persona pushed to its extreme. But she is very moving as we watch her mature from shunned waif to a beautiful girl with a trusting but discerning heart. It is a story of wish-fulfilment, of a child learning how to love and becoming a woman.  

The puppets and the carnival world are wonderfully realised. The photography is lovely, with the primary colours of the sunny days absorbed into the inky blues of night. It is a whimsical, enchanting and optimistic film with virtue triumphant over cynicism.

This musical biopic cleaned up from Lillian Roth's bestselling memoir is transformed from standard fifties nostalgia for the musical theatre of the 1920-30s into a vehicle for Susan Hayward's huge, dynamic performance. It tells of Lillian's upbringing by her stage-door mother and her eventual alcoholism and hard-won recovery.

 There's a great big band sound from Alex North which adds a flavour of vaudeville era Broadway, back when Lillian's mother (Jo Van Fleet) pushed her child to auditions, teaching her to fake her true feelings and desires. When stardom arrives, Roth fills her emotional emptiness with the booze that drives her from pawnshop to fleapit to dives.

 Susan Hayward got to sing her own numbers, but the film doesn't really feel like a musical at all. It's all about Lillian's self destructive impulses, whether for the bottle, or men, or business choices. Alcohol completes her, and then destroys her.  

Daniel Mann creates a rich and credible ambience of backstage rootlessness and after show parties. He has a reputation as a good director of actors and credit to him for allowing Hayward to dominate to such fabulous effect. She is a sensation in one of the best performances of the decade.

A candidate for writer-director Val Guest's best film, about an investigation into a dismembered corpse found in a holiday home in a rather seedy Brighton, based on an actual case in 1924..

Investigating the murder is the sagacious, weary veteran Jack Warner, assisted by Ronald Lewis who does most of the leg work. They are a wonderful duo and handle the constant flow of dialogue with finesse. There are rich supporting performances all the way down the cast list.

There is a real flair to this film, with its credible and compelling screenplay, but mostly because of the sinuous, lively gaze of the camera, particularly during the examination of the murder scene. The neglected splendour of Brighton and Lewes and the big skies of the coastal suburbs convey a delightful melancholy.

All this achieved with a crew who usually worked on Hammer product, and without any incidental music at all. OK, Val Guest ended up making a Confessions film, and Space 1999, but at his peak he was a significant talent in postwar UK cinema.

Welles' debut is the most analysed and critically revered film ever made. Charles Foster Kane is plucked from obscurity by a quirk of fate. While he becomes a legend, the real Kane is so barely known that on his death his own newspaper launches an appraisal of his life , and the meaning of his final word: Rosebud.  

Kane was based mainly on media giant William Randolph Hearst but clearly also on Welles himself. The director arrived in Hollywood at 25 claiming to know nothing about the business, which is exactly how Kane announces himself on acquiring the National Inquirer newspaper. And at that age.

 Citizen Kane is a stunning looking film with Gregg Toland's glorious photography, and Welles' artistic visual imagination. Herman Mankiewicz and Welles' scenario is inventive and insightful and the dialogue laconic and witty. The performances have an offbeat quality out of step with forties Hollywood. It hums with the energy of innovation.  

Welles' classic is insightful on politics and capitalism and the type of men who succeed in those fields.  The film, and the character of Kane have become mythic and in the present era of populist/authoritarian political leaders Citizen Kane remains as relevant  as it did in 1941.