Film Reviews by Steve

Slight, but attractive relationship comedy which owes a huge debt to Woody Allen- with the New York locations, the jazz score and the droll insights on the great game of love. Director Rob Reiner and scriptwriter Nora Ephron ostentatiously adopt Annie Hall (1977) as a model.

Indeed Billy Crystal, as the acerbic pessimist and Meg Ryan as the fluffy control freak appear to channel Woody and Diane Keaton. At the time all this was welcome as Allen was in his Ibsen period and had lost his audience. Whereas this was a critics' favourite and a box office success.

Yet it feels superficial in comparison; like a sequence of comic sketches drawn from magazine articles on the dating rituals of single metropolitan thirty-somethings. Harry and Sally meet occasionally over many years and though attracted to each other, sense they are not destined to be together.

There's a Hollywood ending, but it's welcome, and actually quite emotional. The observations are mostly astute. The famous scene in the delicatessen is hilarious (though out of character for such a fastidious character!) Sure, this is derivative, but still a superior romcom.

Dated low budget comedy which is interesting for its cynical, satirical account of corruption in American politics. It has points in common with Frank Capra’s pro-New Deal pictures of the late ‘30s. Harold Lloyd plays an ingenuous, humourless stooge who unintentionally gets elected mayor of a Californian city usually run by the mob.

So the novice attempts to remove graft from the machinery of local government, which results in chaos. Meanwhile he naively looks for a wife among the sardonic dames of the speakeasies. Having been raised with missionaries in China the patsy takes inspiration from eastern proverbs.

 The main drawback is the representation of his Chinese American cohorts is racist, if standard for the ‘30s. Also, while Harold was one of the standout comedians of the silents, he’s lacks the charm (and looks) to be the star of a screwball romance. Though everyone else is fine, including Una Merkel in the Jean Arthur type role.

There’s an interesting scene in a speakeasy with Harold flummoxed by the stripper and the girls from the chorus line. Which somehow escaped the production code. This could easily be from a story by Damon Runyon. It’s a minor comedy with many flaws, but still viable entertainment. 

The same year as Warner Brothers grabbed the zeitgeist with Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, Paramount released their own prohibition gangster film. This isn’t as violent or streetwise, but much less preachy. An honest, carefree fairground operator (Gary Cooper) joins the mob to get his crooked girlfriend (Sylvia Sidney) out of the big house.

So it’s also a romantic melodrama. There are the usual issues of the period with sound, and the actors in support roles are inflexible. While we're spared the editorialising moral sermons of those ‘30s Warners crime pictures, the influence of the Hays Office is still palpable.

But there are many positives. Rouben Mamoulian’s direction is impressive for an early talkie, with the tracking shots, the expressionism and cute perspectives. And though the audio is primitive, it is innovative. Dashiell Hammett’s only original screenplay lands a few punches. And there is Sylvia Sidney in her breakout performance as the bad girl gone good…

Neither she nor Cooper is quite there yet as an actor, but the screen glows when she is on. And this being precode, she gets to wear a stunning sexy/glamorous evening dress. It’s not really a landmark gangster film. But there is clever, unorthodox direction. And it’s a must-see for Sylvia Sidney fans. 

Faithful remake of the 1930 version, which itself is Journey's End revised for the war in the sky. The action footage is taken from the Howard Hawks original. Casualties are high among the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front in 1915. The dead are replaced by schoolboys, and the unraveling survivors self medicate their psychological traumas with whisky.

The remake looks patchy with so much recycled footage. But it has two main advantages: Max Steiner’s score, and the company of excellent (mostly) British actors. Errol Flynn is effortlessly charismatic as an ace pilot taking ever greater risks in his patched up fighter. He shares a riotous rapport with fellow flyer, David Niven.

Basil Rathbone plays the officer sending the men to their deaths as a cold eyed villain. And he’s chilling. With war again inevitable in Europe, it's interesting that this was remade after only eight years. Warners had a reputation as the most pro-intervention studio, but this is an isolationist film. It is not pro-British, or even anti-German. It just restates that war is hell.

This is a familiar WWI, with the young patriotic recruits, the brittle facade of business as usual and the capricious plans executed at a terrible cost. There is the class hierarchy that permits the flyers to drink with aristocratic German prisoners, but not their own mechanics. It's a persuasive impression which asks us to remember the fallen and implores, never again…

MGM weren't a big horror studio but they did have Tod Browning under contract in the '20s-'30s and he made a handful of strange and atmospheric horror/fantasy films for them. This one is typical Browning and reminiscent of the eerie and perverse silents he made with Lon Chaney.

Lionel Barrymore escapes from Devil's Island where he was banged up for embezzlement from his bank in Paris, which was actually committed by three of his former colleagues. He returns with a mad scientist who once experimented on shrinking living things in a crackpot scheme to save mankind...

However, the banker will use the technology to destroy his enemies, who grew rich and powerful while he rotted in his prison hell. So there's a lot of camera trickery of tiny people carrying out his revenge. Maureen O'Sullivan adds some contrasting sweetness as his lovely daughter.

Barrymore doesn't camp it up, even in his disguise as an old woman. Rafaela Ottiano is memorably menacing as the wife of the crazy inventor. The effects are decent for the period. And there's a superior score from Frank Waxman. It's just a low budget shocker, but worth seeing for fans of that sort of thing. 

The end of WWII sparked a big bang of British B noir which lasted until colour and tv became dominant in the mid-'60s. This is among the best, and features a rare leading role for Herbert Lom as identical twins who are gypped out of their lottery win by a wide boy (Terence de Marney) and his grifter girlfriend.

Lom plays hot blooded trapeze artists and the action is staged among real life circus acts. Budget restraints mean that often the screen presents the back of the stand-in's head, but when both twins are in the frame, the camera effect isn't bad. And there's plenty of gloomy atmosphere to hide the threadbare sets.

The femme fatale is played by Phyllis Dexter who was more famous as a nude artiste at the Windmill theatre. She can't really act, but her constant, rigid smile gives this a touch of the strange. Watching her situate herself between the high wire performers, who rely on trust for their safety, feels awkwardly squalid.

The narrative plods occasionally, but the conclusion delivers a thrilling dramatic twist. And this is powerfully performed by Lom, who is a revelation. It's a brooding circus noir with a knockout punch. And a lingering aftertaste of melancholy. British crime cinema is rarely as satisfying as this. 

In the 1930s, the Hollywood studios discovered that screwball comedy blended with the golden age detective story with the sparkle of a gin fizz. And was popular with audiences. The success of The Thin Man series led to many imitations. William Powell shared his urbane, nonchalant smarts with a few other female comedy stars. And was so irresistible, it always works.

This is among the best of these. There is a serviceable mystery about the murder of a jockey with a black widow spider when just about to take the lead in a horserace loaded with large, dubious bets. The cast of suspects is a little grey, but it intoxicates because of the sparring of Powell with screwball great, Jean Arthur.

He is a police doctor, the kind who lives in a huge, deco apartment and employs Eric Blore as his butler. She is a chic, successful writer of detective stories who was divorced by Powell because she kept involving him in madcap murder mysteries. And she tries to win him back, by tangling him up in... tracking down the dangerous killer of a jockey.

James Gleason gives fine support as the long suffering Irish detective. There's a funny/crazy script. The stars are superb and this could easily have been a successful series. Arthur has a lot of fabulous gowns. Powell is so practiced at opening bottles of champagne that he can hit a gong with the cork at ten paces. It's charming and effortless studio-age escapism.

A major strength of the Harold Lloyd silent comedies is the stunts and visual gags are usually pulled together into an enjoyable narrative. And this starts out that way, with the star playing a complacent super-rich fop who strays onto the wrong side of town.

And he falls in love with the adorable Jobyna Ralston who runs a Christian mission for the poor. To get near her, he helps with their effort to bring the criminal class closer to the bible. Unfortunately director Sam Taylor and his team of writers use up all the plot inside 30 minutes….

What might have been a classic short, is inflated with a sequence of stunts to bring it- barely- up to feature length. Which is fine, but the story is lost and Jobyna disappears. Until then it’s engaging to see a pro-New Deal comedy more typical of the ‘30s, as the wealthy and the left behind find common cause.

And it’s apparent that Harold is not just playing the go-getter enthusiast of his usual comic persona; he creates a character. This isn’t the great comedian at his absolute best, yet it’s interesting to see the comical take on social issues. And the knockabout action is still madcap fun.

Sweet silent comedy with Harold Lloyd as a small town boy who hesitantly romances a rich girl from the big city (Jobyna Ralston). He writes a book on attracting women even though he is scared stiff of them and goes into a paroxysm of stuttering at every encounter. They meet-cute while he takes his awful manuscript to a publisher.

Most of the comedy is derived from the would-be Romeo's awkwardness. The scenes where the bashful hero imagines seducing girls of every race, nationality and creed must have occurred to Woody Allen when writing Play it Again, Sam (1972).

Lloyd wanted to develop comedies based on character, rather than a sequence of stunts. And that succeeds to a point; the stars share some romantic chemistry. But it still climaxes with one of the great screen chases as the boy has to get to a church by any means possible to prevent the girl from marrying a bigamist

Which was surely familiar to Mike Nichols when directing The Graduate (1967). It’s a spectacular 25 minute cycle of breathtaking acrobatics. Harold makes a likeable leading man in a charming, well plotted romcom where the imaginative gags always move the story onwards, towards its spectacular finale. 

This is staged in one of those studio set villages so beloved of '40s British cinema. It was produced as a tribute to the voluntary work of the Women's Institute towards the war effort. Now WWII is over and thoughts turn to what peace will mean. But what is stark is that the social fabric of this community has been torn apart.

Relationships between men and women have changed irrevocably. Traditions have been swept aside. The function of the class system has broken down. In the 24 hours the WI have to prepare for the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt, this rural backwater is in crisis. And the men who return home from combat must not be abandoned like the soldiers of the last war.

Like the absurd drunkard played by Eric Portman, still holding onto his old regimental rank because he never found another role. He is shored up by his heroic wife (Flora Robson) and his sensible but anxious daughter (Sheila Sim) who is marrying for security, and not for love or with optimism. Their intense performances are the film's main strength.

But for a patriotic title card, this would hardly be a tribute to a stalwart institution at all, but a reflection on the psychological frailties of a country coming out of war. Hope is most potently expressed through the continued support of the Americans. The villagers assemble at the end to wave flags at Mrs. Roosevelt. Britain has survived. But what now?

A change of pace for Harold Lloyd, who plays a married, middle class suburbanite rather than his usual optimistic, enterprising go-getter. There is a series of three linked stories centred on his marriage to Jobyna Ralston and his relationship with her awful relatives.

It’s rated one of his lesser silent comedies. But there’s a hilarious sketch with Harold sent on an errand from ‘wifey’ to collect ‘a few things’ from the market- actually a long, long list of groceries. So many that he struggles to carry them all at once and always has just one too many to grasp onto.

At that least opportune moment he wins a live turkey in a raffle and must also take it home on a trolley bus. Following this standout sequence is a (WC) Fieldsian comedy of the horror of family. Harold takes them on a disastrous trip in his new car, and then (in a pastiche of German expressionism) imagines he has killed his mother-in-law.

Wishful thinking! It’s a funny gag driven sitcom which was a big success, though doesn't satisfy critics today as there is no single overarching narrative. However, it is still entertaining, and fun to see a rare silent comedy set among the aspirational middle classes. 

As the mood in Hollywood darkened with the world at war, this recalled the screwball comedies of the early ’30s. James Stewart plays a private detective on the run from the police, trying to clear his name. And pick up a reward. Claudette Colbert is the crazy poet who wants to help but endangers him at every turn.

There are many references to her Oscar winning performance in It Happened One Night (1934). And like most screwball classics, it's a road film. Ben Hecht contributes an extremely funny script, as the actors switch between comic personas. Jimmy is a hoot as a scout leader in thick spectacles which render him almost blind.

Colbert's lunacy is inspired. When she says 'I swear by my eyes’… it's her indication that she's about to lie. But it's fine because she used her tell. She's so good. Unfortunately, Stewart’s tough guy persona is misogynistic, and there’s a regrettable moment of typical '30s racism.

The murder-mystery at a provincial theatre hardly matters. It's all about the rapid-fire comic sparring between the stars. It is derivative; the quarrelling couple are handcuffed together like in The 39 Steps (1935). It's not profound.  But for pure laughs, it’s among the funniest comedies of the decade. 

The third time Leslie Howard and Bette Davis starred together for Warner Brothers (after Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest) is a change of genre but a similar level of quality. It's a screwball comedy about an egotistical, philandering Shakespearian actor who tries to shake off the attentions of a teenage fan under the close scrutiny of his on-off fiancée.

It's so funny thanks to a witty script and a flamboyant performance from Howard as the pompous thespian. Olivia de Havilland is young and pretty enough as the besotted adolescent. Her own suitor asks Howard to visit her father's country house and make himself as unpleasant as possible, to break her infatuation.

Which is a decent premise, because we are never sure if he is faking or really is that awful! Davis is fine as the bride-to-be, but screwball isn't her speciality. The central relationship is between the actor and his devoted dresser/finagler (Eric Blore). And that is a lot of lively fun as they seamlessly slip between roles the star has played on the stage.

It's a pacy farce set among the upper classes, with a lot of genuine laughs. It’s likely everyone involved has seen John Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934). It's not as good as that, but should be better known. And it's a fine opportunity for Howard to overact with theatrical abandon. 

This historical saga is the last of the Gainsborough melodramas and the first in colour. It doesn't feel like a movement that is running out of steam. The abundant plot loves along gleefully and the production was still able to call upon studio stars like Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc.

Many motifs of the series are revisited: there are three beatings whether by whip or cane; there's a gypsy with spectral gifts; and the aristocracy are decadent wastrels who abuse their power over the destitute tenants. A drunken patriarch (Dennis Price) loses his estate in a throw of dice to another dissolute idler (Basil Sydney).

Lockwood is the ambitious gypsy with second sight who ingratiates herself into the household and takes it over. The film is a primarily vehicle for her, with the lovely Patricia Roc disappointingly sidelined. Basil Sydney is a fine foil for the star in the sort of villainous role that used to go to James Mason.

The sets and costumes are sumptuous in Technicolor. Bernard Knowles' direction lacks the panache that this sort of material needs, but the speedy picaresque narrative is always moving on to some new adventure, so it never gets weary. It's all quite familiar, but the formula still works its magic. 

The most fertile sub-genre of films about the '39-'45 war released over the following decade proved to be the special operation stories. This was a forerunner, and set a high standard, as well as establishing many of the conventions. The early scenes are mostly an explanation of what these units were.

It begins with the training of Belgian operatives by a support team of British boffins. Once primed, these ordinary men and women are parachuted into the resistance. The first half is episodic, as the spies are imbedded into the cause. This evolves into a single manoeuvre to release the underground leader from prison.

This cell is run by Simone Signoret, with Jack Warner and Gordon Jackson. There is immediately a huge shock as the relatable, avuncular Warner is uncovered as a German double agent and shot dead. The operation develops into a suspenseful action climax on the railways.

The cast of Ealing regulars is excellent, but Signoret elevates the film. The script goes into a lot of depth about the psychological trauma of spying, and the personal loss of these refugee heroes, who had to leave their families behind. It's film that acknowledges their astonishing bravery and incalculable sacrifice.