Film Reviews by Steve

Brief, bullet paced B western full of offbeat narrative details: like the gunfighter's steel prosthetic right hand and the hero's duelling weapon of choice, the harpoon. And it's a vehicle for the director's audacious flourishes. The ultra-stark black and white photography allied to a percussive mariachi score, gives it a unique ambience.

Sterling Hayden plays a Swedish immigrant sailor who returns home to discover a rich landowner (Sebastian Cabot) has hired a gunman (Ned Young) to murder the farmers who have leased his territory, now he has discovered it is sitting on a sea of oil. The killer shot down the sailor's father. So it's a revenge western.

It was scripted by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo under a front, and this is ostentatiously about the failure of people to stand up to an oppressor. It is also a warning of the dangers of US capitalism. The terrified farmers wonder why one man should want everything. Hayden was another victim of McCarthy. He is terrific in this.

And it's an exciting work of genre fiction. There is phenomenal suspense for such archetypal situations. And the characters are vivid and moving. We really care about these persecuted farmers. This was Joe Lewis' last release before he went on to tv, but he was clearly still at his peak; and one of the great low budget directors.

Low budget psychological western raised way above average by the double act between nervy Anthony Perkins and cool Henry Fonda. There's a standard western plot; a bounty hunter/ex-lawman (Fonda) passes through town to claim on the body of killer. He stays around to help the inexperienced sheriff (Perkins) learn the facts of life in the old west.

The stranger lost his wife and child long ago, and the youngster has no family either. They form a temporary father-son relationship as the veteran teaches his protégé how to face down a contemptuous gunman splendidly played by ever loathsome bad guy specialist Neville Brand.

It's a liberal Hollywood picture and Brand channels the racism of ‘50s America which the sheriff must overcome to impose law and order. And it's a great looking western in fabulous widescreen b&w Vistavision. There's a plausible impression of period and a lovely romantic score from Elmer Bernstein.    

This is Anthony Mann at his peak, making fine entertainment out of genre conventions. But it's the simpatico pairing of Fonda and Perkins that makes the film so enjoyable. Though admittedly Perkins looks more like he belongs in High School Confidential than the old west.  

Ensemble western set after the Civil War. The title refers to our motivations: bounty hunter James Stewart is driven by revenge; wandering prospector Millard Mitchell by gold; and disgraced cavalryman Ralph Meeker by sexual depravity. All are distorted by greed and compete to take in a fugitive killer (Robert Ryan), for a cut of the $5000 reward.  

And the murderer will seek to divide his captors and escape with his girl (Janet Leigh) as they trail through the Rockies back to Abilene. Most of the entertainment is watching the crazy, glittery eyed gunman use the men's weaknesses against themselves, like Iago in a cowboy hat.

Ryan gives the dominant performance. He keeps his wild strategies secret, but plainly relishes the barbed malice he scatters in the path of his adversaries. No one could sneer quite as repellently as Meeker and he feels dangerous and completely mercenary as an ex-army rapist without any conscience at all. He's even more loathsome than the killer.

Stewart creates a complex impression of a peaceful man who survives the Civil War with (what we'd call now) PTSD.  It's an actor's film, but visually striking with magnificent colour photography of the Rockies. It's all shot on location and there's an exciting action climax in the rapids of the rugged, picturesque Colorado River. 

Faithful adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque pacifist novel which was a landmark Hollywood sound film and helped establish the conventions by which we imagine WWI on screen. Exhorted by a patriotic teacher, a group of naive German teenagers enlist, and over years of combat are transformed by their experiences, until mutilated, insane or dead.

There is no sense of strategy. The boys and their fatalistic mentors contest the same plot of French farmland in an absurdist exercise in futility. The soldiers create a society out of their irrational circumstances, and normality out of their fear. They come to view life away from the front as alien, even menacing.

Lewis Milestone fought with the US army in France and he does sensational work. He turns his cast into a believable band of misfits; brutalised, but processing their trauma through trench wit. The visual scope is epic, the camera is mobile and the editing lively. He portrays his huge battle set pieces with coherence, which few directors ever do.  

This ranks high among anti-war films, and visions of WWI. There is a lot of vérité; the film shows us the logistics of mechanical war. We see a man blown away by an explosive leaving just his hands on the barbed wire. There is no music to evoke glory or sentimentality… Just the habit forming terror of trench warfare and the betrayal of a generation. 

Hollywood evaded WWI after the armistice, but this success launched a wave of productions about the war over the next 10 years. It was made only eight years after the US joined the conflict, so there must have been real life experience either side of the camera.

This invented the rules for platoon films, partly because it follows a predictable path: the initial patriotism on the home front; the drilling of a group of civilians into a fighting unit; the boredom of waiting and the virile furlough pursuits. Then the young soldiers confront the German army, and are stopped dead on the western front.

Yet there isn't an overwhelming impression of authenticity.  The story is dominated by a romance between its charismatic star- John Gilbert- as a rich doughboy, and the French Renée Adorée as an exuberant farmer's daughter. The cute comedy of their mutual incomprehension is utterly charming.

King Vidor’s epic gave audiences an initial vision of screen war: the fighter planes, the army camps, the anti-aircraft artillery and chemical weapons. A veteran may have felt too many punches are pulled in the interests of tasteful entertainment. It is groundbreaking, but better, more incendiary combat films were coming. 

The labyrinthine plot of Raymond Chandler's classic crime novel was simplified for the screen, though is still complicated by normal standards. But a surprising amount of the author’s approach survives, including a fair approximation of his tough, sardonic hero, Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell).

The star handles the comedy particularly well and tones down the toothsome vitality of his crooning days. In his screen debut, one-time wrestler Mike Mazurki is memorable as the giant ex-con who strong-arms the gumshoe into looking for his former sweetheart, a vanished showgirl. As cute as lace pants.

It's disappointing so little of Chandler's vision of Los Angeles makes the cut (the studio didn't go near a subplot involving the trading of drugs to Hollywood stars). But many other strengths remain. Powell's voice-over reflects the writer's immortal narrative style and trademark wisecracks.

A huge bonus is the noir photography, especially Marlowe's expressionistic descent into drug hell. Thanks to censorship, the streets aren't all that mean, but there is an impression of the class structure of the great sprawling west coast metropolis and the crazies and charlatans who feed on it. A proto-noir landmark. 

Platoon film set on the Burmese front during WWII which looks at the conflict through the eyes of the ordinary soldier. These special operations GIs have been together since Bataan and find they no longer run missions, but fight one seemingly endless battle. As malaria and typhus become endemic, they are physically and mentally burned out.

This is a psychological war film. The message is reinforced by the army doctor (Andrew Duggan) who runs a commentary on the state of exhaustion. This isn't really about combat with the Japanese, but the human cost of being out in the field for so long. Sam Fuller excels at presenting the group as a well drilled team, and the corrosive pathology of stress.

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

The CinemaScope is skilfully used, especially for a B picture. And this is a Hollywood Burmese War picture which acknowledges the presence of the British and Commonwealth army and the 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. 

Surprisingly faithful version 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 beasts. It's like a prototype for a video game with various 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 they acquire 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 ‘50s. Mason is wonderful. Top billed Boone is little more than cheerful (and wears a kilt), but Gertrude the Duck provides comic diversion. And there's a particularly good villain (Thayer David), who, astonishingly, 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 but lamenting man's capacity to make war absolutely anywhere. It’s the supreme Jules Verne adaptation of the period. 

Offbeat, code-busting melodrama which can be read as a parable on US capitalism. Tyrone Power plays a charismatic narcissist who works up from a fairground conman to the lucrative spiritualism racket. He exploits everyone in his path until he is destroyed by a similarly fake psychotherapist (Helen Walker) who sends The Great Stanton into a spiral that ends at absolute zero…

Which is a geek in a sideshow. This is the performance of Power's career as the unscrupulous, ambitious clairvoyant who seems to see into people's souls, and can turn it into cash. He is matched by a sensational portrayal by Helen Walker as the wellbred shrink to the rich Chicago elite. When one of them must be sacrificed, Stanton's lack of class ensures it is him.

All the cast are exceptional, with Ian Keith as the alcoholic deadbeat whose demise Stanton's story arc will imitate. His pitiful death is appalling. Joan Blondell is Oscar-worthy. This should have been a big award winner. It is an ambitious production; Fox built a large fairground and filled it with real carnival acts. The noir photography is another big plus.

This is pessimistic and disturbing and complex. It is surprising this cut was passed by the censors, especially as it equates religion with spiritualism... and Power and Blondell's relationship is sexually frank for the time. Director Edmund Goulding usually made romances but this allegorical noir is one of the great films of the postwar period. 

Low budget thriller which spent most of its bottom line on the stars, including film noir legends Lizabeth Scott and Dan Duryea. There's a familiar set up; a comfortable married couple (Scott, Arthur Kennedy) are out driving when a man in a passing car throws a blackmail payoff into their back seat. The sleazy extortionist, (Duryea, naturally) comes after them for his mislaid $60,000.

Duryea is a man you love to hate, but is outclassed. Scott plays one of the most relentlessly vicious femme fatales in noir. She will hold onto that windfall at any price. When her honest husband acts to hand it in to the cops, she shoots him and sinks his body in a lake. It's possible even to feel sympathy for the blackmailer when he is ruthlessly poisoned to settle who should keep the loot.

Scott plays a materialistic Californian housewife. Surely her absolute determination to satisfy her greed is meant to be satirical. She has never been poor, she wants money to give her status in the suburbs. So she’s not outgunned by the other wives. There is even a hint that she may have helped along the suicide of her first husband when he proved to be an insufficient provider.

The sets and back-projection are pitifully cheap but the strengths dwarf its limitations. Scott is gloriously degenerate in another of her noir bad girl roles. Sex is merely a negotiating stategy. There is something dreamy about her hushed, slurred delivery. She is aroused by wealth. Plausibility isn't always a priority, but this is a compelling morality tale, with a tasty script.

Comedy-thriller which smuggles in a few political themes under its sparkling surface. There is an ingenious premise: a big shot media mogul (Charles Laughton) murders his rainy day lover, and gets his fixer (George Macready) to plant evidence suggesting the killer was the newsroom's ace reporter (Ray Milland). The journalist investigates the crime and finds the trail leads to himself...

There are hints that the boss' unfettered corporate power implies the fascism that has just been fought in Europe. The ubiquitous big clock symbolises the range of his malign control. This is the era of HUAC. The Hollywood Ten were charged a year earlier. When Laughton threatens to have Milland blacklisted it must have shot a bolt down the spines of US audiences.

There's plenty of comic fizz. When Milland and the soon-to-be murder victim (Rita Johnson) go on a crawl of cocktail lounges they might as well be William Powell and Myrna Loy. Maybe better if they were as the smug Milland can be hard to like. This is also weakened by Charles Laughton's ludicrous yet soporific portrayal of the odious Mr. Big.

Still, Elsa Lanchester is adorable as the kooky artist who comes to the framed reporter's aid. The screwball makes it uncertain how serious all this is, but it just about works as suspense. The set design of the media empire, and the b&w photography make an attractive noir look. There are interesting historical themes but they don't burden the charming escapism.

Twisty thriller with an exceptional cast. Robert Young plays a dishonest playboy who is financially dependent on his wife (Rita Johnson) while dallying with Jane Greer and Susan Hayward. Greer's part is insubstantial but Johnson is excellent and Hayward gives the film a huge boost with her usual dynamism as an unrepentant gold-digger.

It's a murder mystery that rests on that familiar premise, the unidentifiable corpse. The story is narrated from the witness stand by Young who may well be an unreliable narrator. His uncorroborated testimony gives an already absorbing plot another twist.

It’s fun to see the suspect play the field before his complicated comeuppance. But the strongest emotion in play is just how trapped he is in his marriage and work. The gilded cage from which he never escapes. This allows Young to make his ill-fated character at least a little sympathetic.

The fatalism gives it a noir edge, though there are no mean streets or expressionism. The big plus is how Irving Pichel's direction speeds us through the chicanery of many intricate plot complications. And there's a fine, pessimistic script. Young felt his counter-casting as a villain made the public stay away; they all missed a stylish, exciting crime picture.

Cult film noir set in New Mexico after WWII. Robert Montgomery returns from the Pacific with his pal who gets rubbed out by a mafia boss (Fred Clark) for trying to put on the bite for a crooked Government contract. The ex-GI tracks the gangster south to San Pablo during the fiesta, while being tailed himself by an FBI agent (Art Smith).

There isn’t a strong expressionist look; this isn't a town of shadows. It is film noir because of its political cynicism. The promised postwar settlement fell through. Semi-legitimate gangs and crooked politicians got rich while a generation of young men fought in Europe and the East.

The traumatised hero lost his girl and his friend and his faith in his country. He can’t trust the law which let the killer go free. Criminality is normalised. But in San Pablo he meets honest citizens among the Mexican poor; the trusting, guileless Wanda Hendrix and an optimistic fairground worker (Oscar nominated Thomas Gomez). This challenges his racism and pessimism.

The enigmatic title hints at the socialist message stowed inside a low budget thriller. Perhaps it was this which attracted A list writers Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, and Montgomery, to such a minor production. It was released in the year the Hollywood blacklist was introduced to prevent films like this being made. It works best as a woozy, dreamlike political allegory. 

Cheerful locked room murder mystery from the Philo Vance series. William Powell returns as the gentleman sleuth which is a perfect fit for his sophistication and comic élan. There's a standard genre premise; a wealthy but hated man is found dead in his bolted bedroom with a gun in his hand. Everyone has a motive. The idiotic police are happy for the amateur to take charge.

There are the weaknesses usual with golden age mysteries: the solution is preposterous; anyone could have done it; and the cast of suspects are archetypes. There is no impression of the misery caused by the act of murder. But given these limitations… it is one of the better entries in a detective series.

Michael Curtiz keeps the the action moving. Despite the meagre budget, Warner Brothers draw on a fine support cast of familiar contract players, like Mary Astor, Eugene Pallette and sexy Helen Vinson. So at least we know who these people are. The precode humour fizzes, and crucially, the director tells the complicated story with lucidity, which rarely happens in serials.

There are sterile sets and a static camera and the typical impediments of early talkies. But it’s also a lot of fun and so slick it speeds by. We get the cosmopolitan setting and the stereotypes and clichés we go to the classic detective story for. Powell gives it sparkle. This was his last go at Vance, but he would play similar roles throughout the ‘30s, with charm and a lightness of touch.

This is famous for Humphrey Bogart’s star making performance as killer Duke Mantee, modelled on depression era gangster, John Dillinger. But the best part is the opening 30 minutes of romantic dalliance between Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. She is a dreamer trapped in the Arizona desert. He is a rootless poet running low on hope. Their ethereal chemistry is very poignant.

They meet in The Petrified Forest, a desert of fossils, a wilderness where obsolescent creatures come to die; like Mantee, the last of the western outlaws, or the poet who is a disillusioned, exhausted idealist. A few other archetypes gather in the lonely diner where Bette marks time as a waitress: there’s a patriot, an athlete, a wealthy couple…

After the exceptional opening, the dialogue becomes aimless and overwrought. But the film maintains its grip. This is too early for film noir, but it has that feel. Partly because of the slowly darkening restaurant as the night falls, but mainly because of its sadness, its atmosphere of pessimism and malign destiny.

Bogart has a presence, and he dominates later scenes, but he is awkward and not yet a star. The staging of Robert Sherwood’s poetic realist play is rich and full of mythology and wistful symbolism. But it's the melancholy rapport between Howard and Davis that cuts deepest, both searching for meaning in the haunted desert as world sinks into the depression and fascism.