Film Reviews by Steve

In 1949, James Cagney returned to Warner Brothers for an update of his early '30s prohibition films. He plays Cody Jarrett, a crazy, mother-fixated killer, like he is one of the most-wanted of the depression. There is a tension between this outlaw throwback, and the modern scientific police methods used 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 has the look of film noir. When Cody comes after his disloyal heavy (Steve Cochran) and unfaithful, degenerate moll (Virginia Mayo), it is as dark as The Big Sleep.

The characters are more nuanced than the pre-code gangster films, and the cops are smarter. It is a genre landmark which marries the punchy gangbusters of the early mob films with the gloomy introspection of post war film noir.  And it is as tense and exciting as a thriller.

There's a phenomenal star performance from Cagney, but the support is also superb. Especially Edmond O'Brien as a G Man who goes undercover with the most volatile crook in films, to plan a heist in an oil depot. The incendiary ending when Cagney literally burns up the set is film legend. 

A clique of 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 there is a lot of satire here.

Their hypocrisy contrasts with a teenager (Mariel Hemingway) who is Woody Allen's younger girlfriend. She is the only one able to apply a system of values to her actual choices. Woody plays quite an amoral anti-hero. But she gives the story some optimism, including the sweet wisdom of her fabulous closing line.

The real hero of the film though is Manhattan Island, magnificently captured for all time. Including that famous, beautiful shot of Woody and Diane Keaton against the 59th Street Bridge at dawn. Sometimes the background overwhelms the dramas of these urban creatives in tide of romanticism and nostalgia.

The performances are all brilliant and the script is outstanding: 'My analyst warned me, but you were so beautiful I got another analyst'. Diane is always special in Woody's films. Possibly the artistic serenity of the surface style has obscured its distressed depths. But that makes it a fascinating film to rediscover.

Preston 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 is usual with Sturges, this adapts familiar screwball scenarios: Claudette runs away from home and matrimony and flees across country without money or luggage, hoping to pick up a rich benefactor.

She is adopted by an eccentric oil millionaire (Vallee) while Colbert's husband (Joel McCrea) races her down to Palm Beach to save their marriage. The story kicks off at maximum speed and never lets up, the baffling opening scene satisfyingly resolved in a crazy finale.

 There is less physical humour 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 support 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, with the rich man's naive, homespun philosophy up against the runaway's streetwise wit. Arguably this is last great screwball classic, which brings to a close the golden age of comedy. 

*there are some racist caricatures.

Some bright young things are on a scavenger hunt among the homeless of New York. A ditzy socialite (Carole Lombard) explains this 'is like a treasure hunt, except... 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.

He becomes the butler to her anarchic family. The father (Eugene Palette) earns big in the stock exchange, but his dependents spend it bigger; his idiot wife (Alice Faye) and her freeloading protege (Mischa Auer, who is hilarious). The girl has a dangerous sister (Gail Patrick), who has the potential for the kind of 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. 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'.

It is a romantic comedy, and Powell and crazy Carole 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 skilled '30s screwball got at reflecting America back to itself.  

One of many fifties southern dramas influenced by Tennessee Williams,  which employ 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 is freely adapted from short stories by southern laureate William Faulkner. These opulent, atmospheric films are 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 charismatic as the ambitious, mysterious stranger, ingratiating himself into the secrets and lies of a rich family of cotton planters while romancing a repressed schoolteacher (Joanne Woodward). Lee Remick plays a sexy and manipulative siren married to the shiftless son of Orson Welles' overbearing patriarch.  

This is a dreadful performance from the hugely overweight Welles. He is unintelligible. But I really like this genre, full of poetic, philosophical digressions and obsessed with sex. The film has a wonderfully rich, dreamy ambience but it's a mostly a star vehicle for the young, handsome Paul Newman.

By the time he made 7th Heaven, Frank Borzage had been directing films for ten years which are now mostly 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. He just desires a better job and she dreams of a husband 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 now.

 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 portrayal of unconditional love and the 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 is mobile and expressive. It's not without flaws, but this is a classic silent romantic drama, sweetened by a lovely, sentimental Movietone score.

Pure Hollywood magic from Ernst Lubitsch, set in his beloved Paris in the '20s. And it's a late career success for Greta Garbo. Apparently, MGM had the tagline 'Garbo Laughs' before they had anything else.  But it is also a political satire which conveys quite a lot of sadness.  

It is an intuitive film, because it acknowledges that the screwball era was about over, with the world at war again. There are serious themes about Russia after the revolution. And it's a proto-cold war comedy. The script is by Billy Wilder and  Charles Brackett so there's plenty of characteristic cynicism.

Three bumbling Bolshevik ambassadors arrive in Paris to sell some jewels. 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 a rich capitalist (Melvyn Douglas), she thaws, seduced by luxury and romance.  

Douglas lacks the charm to make him sympathetic. Garbo is fabulous, but her character is too schematic. Utterly humourless and logical when under the Soviet influence, totally frivolous when seduced by the capitalists. It's the genius of the Lubitsch touch which ensures all this doesn't get lost in darkness. 

As crime films became more realistic in the '50s, Robert Aldrich made one of the most expressionistic noirs of the whole cycle. This is a visual knockout which also pushes at the boundaries of censorship, with explicit violence and an antihero-Mike Hammer- who isn't as much ambiguous as utterly unscrupulous.

It kicks off with a bang. The private detective (Ralph Meeker) runs into a woman who has escaped from being tortured, and is barefoot on the freeway in only a trenchcoat. He investigates her eventual death, not because he cares about the law, or her, but he thinks there will be more money to be had than his usual divorce racket.

Meeker's version of Mike Hammer is fascinating. It's a stunning performance. To a degree he recalls the ethical relativity of Sam Spade, but is much more mercenary. He is a philistine: narcissistic, sadistic and manipulative. But everyone in his world is motivated by greed. And no one can be trusted.

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 are reimagined and updated to the cold war era, and there is a palpable sense of the dogs of censorship being called off. This is sleazy but stylish pulp fiction.

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

Woody brings the two stories together with a satisfying click. Some people are destroyed by guilt for a minor transgression, while others commit terrible crimes and-providing they are not caught- choose to be unaffected by the consequences. There is no moral law.

There's a clever script, with unexpected twists and shrewd observations. Huston is very moving as an emotionally unbalanced woman chronically starved of love. Landau is chilling as a rich man whose crime is masked by respectability, and dumb luck. And his lack of conscience...

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

This early Howard Hawks comedy is a landmark of the emerging screwball style of the early '30s, with the fast talking dames, the duped, disorientated male, the crazy, improbable consequences, and the slapstick visual gags- all set in contemporary urban America.  

John Barrymore plays a Broadway producer who discovers a smalltown wannabe (Carole Lombard) and turns her into a stage sensation. Enraged by her svengali's constant egotistical dominion, she flees to Hollywood and becomes a triumph, while he slumps into debt. He must win her back while they return to New York by train.  

Barrymore is just hilarious, overacting brilliantly, with his melodramatic catchphrases, like 'I lower the iron door' for when he sacks someone, which is often. 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 Carole transform from a timid novice to an egomaniac, who almost capable of going into combat with the great impresario.

After 1990 Woody Allen started make genre films. Shadows and Fog is expressionist horror. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is film noir. This a musical comedy about the romantic diversions of an extended family of rich New Yorkers. These are usually pastiches, but made with love.

Everyone Says.... may be a homage to the great Hollywood musicals, but the actors are not natural singers and the choreography is perfunctory. This a standard Woody Allen film, but with the periodic insertion of song and dance. Aside from a ballroom  number by the Seine with a wired-up Goldie Hawn, the musical episodes are uninspired.

The comedy is lacklustre and it's difficult to care much about the love affairs of these lightweights. So other irritants are exposed. Like (a 61 year old) Woody Allen and- much younger- Julia Roberts swept away in contrived sexual passion. Why is Edward Norton actually doing a Woody Allen impression?  

The characters are so privileged they are difficult to relate to. There is a gentle, undemanding romance in among the classic songs. The photography (Carlo di Palma) is lovely. The locations are stunning. Drew Barrymore has never looked more beautiful. But... this is my candidate for Woody's worst film. 

 This is my favourite of Woody Allen's London trilogy. It is a supernatural comedy thriller with Scarlett Johansson as a journalist who is made to disappear by a hapless magician (Woody) at a magic show.  During the trick, she encounters the ghost of a dead newshound who tips her off about an aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) who may be the Tarot Card Killer, the serial murderer of sex workers in London.

Aroused, she sets off in pursuit of/falls in love with the titled psychopath, with a reluctant Woody in tow, posing as her father. Scoop wasn't given a cinema release and later debuted on tv. The critics announced that Allen was finished, though it's the film after one of his biggest hits, Match Point.

The script is so-so, but it scores with Scarlett and Woody's screwball chemistry which is infectious. She is sensational as an intrepid girl reporter. Their intuitive comic rapport recalls his partnership with Diane Keaton, many years ago.

The director said he was going for a feel like the Thin Man films of the '30s, with Nick and Nora. Well, he doesn't really get that because this is across the generations, and Woody plays a coward. It's more like a good Bob Hope film. There is a lot of genuine suspense for a comedy thriller. There's beautiful photography of London. This is a lot of fun.

Since Sight and Sound voted it the critics' number 1, Vertigo often gets labelled the ultimate Alfred Hitchcock film. Maybe it deserves that status in recognition of a coming together of key collaborators: costumes by Edith Head; orchestral score by Bernard Herrmann; Robert Burks' innovative camera effects; script by George Tomasino; and Saul Bass' title design and effects.  

They say Vertigo is personal to the director, as it imitates a film making process; of turning an actor into a character. James Stewart plays an obsessive detective who transforms Kim Novak into the image of a woman out of his troubled past. While it does mimic that exercise, it doesn't draw any profound conclusions. This is primarily a thriller with a twisty, disorientating plot.

Hitchcock uses motifs of spirals and falling which make us vicariously experience the cop's psychological trauma. Stewart was far too old, though he is effective.  Kim Novak is excellent in both her roles. The San Francisco locations and local myth making add plenty of atmosphere.

Hitch and his team created their own genre, which many others copied. Film noir is reckoned to end in '58. The Master's films in this period would be a standard model for the thriller for a decade. It's not my favourite Hitchcock, but it is a summation of his art at the time of his Hollywood peak. 

Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor meet cute and fall in love against a background of an ecological apocalypse. The people of Bodega Bay, lost in trivial diversions, are blind to an inconvenient truth. From being initially oblivious to the gathering danger they are finally overwhelmed by the sudden, inexplicable onset of war by all birds on mankind.  

So maybe there's some strike through to present day anxieties... The Birds is full of famous horror moments.  Like the flock of crows which gathers at Tippi's back as she smokes a cigarette outside a school while the kids sing a nursery rhyme. Which has some of the gothic frisson of Poe.

Alfred Hitchcock's only science fiction film was a huge box office hit and the spectacle of the attack of the birds is a triumph of set design and camera illusion. The soundtrack of bird sound processed through a synthesiser was innovative and creepy. Inevitably, the actors take a back seat to the effects but it's that kind of film.

The story lacks an ending and it would be nice if Hitch had done a little more with the theme of man at war with nature, but it is a one of the best of the end of the world films of the cold war era. Each scene is imaginatively designed and assembled to set an eerie note of fear against an ominous symphony of catastrophe.

James Cain's depression era novel is turned into film noir with the addition of a murder. This prompts a flashback about a waitress who builds up a restaurant chain, but loses everything else. Mildred Pierce was the role of Joan Crawford's life. She surely identified with a woman born into poverty who works to gain wealth but alienates her child through dogmatic parenting.

It's a powerful film with strong studio virtues. Much of the dramatic thrust is provided by Max Steiner's orchestral score. The gorgeous high contrast black and white photography gleams like a highway in the rain.  The sassy, hardboiled dialogue is classic Warner Brothers.

There isn't as much of an urban setting as other '40s noirs. It is mostly situated in the LA suburbs, but still makes expressive use of its locations; the beach towns and highways of Southern California. And the lavish Malibu beach house where the murder takes place.  

The big strength is its depiction of psychological frailty: it's an opera of passive-aggression; an epic of bartered love; of sex and greed rendered so frighteningly sordid that they both mean the same thing. The casting is spectacular. Crawford deservedly won the Oscar. Ann Blyth- only 17- is horrifying as Mildred's spoiled, sociopathic daughter.