Film Reviews by Steve

This is Bette Davis' signature role- as an inhibited, lonely spinster who escapes from the persecution of her mother and blossoms into a confident, independent woman. It's pure escapism for the women on the homefront in WWII. She is freed from domestic duty and escapes to a liaison onboard a ship to Rio with an attentive but troubled architect (Paul Henreid).

This is a medical melodrama which draws on Hollywood psychiatry. Bette's initial neurosis is swiftly treated, mostly with wisdom, by Claude Raines' fatherly doctor. The homely girl blossoms into a stylish and wealthy Bostonian. Curiously, the film doesn't give us completion; her love isn't consummated because the man cannot be free of his diabolical wife.

But, they mustn't ask for the moon, when they have the stars. So Davis takes care of the architect's daughter who is mentally tortured by her own mother. And so the film becomes about sacrifice, a common theme in the war years. OK, this is a soap and some of the situations are unrealistic, but Davis does create an impression of a whole person.

Henreid is too lightweight to stand up to the vortex of Davis' performance. The best of the support cast is Gladys Cooper as the domineering mother.  Now, Voyager is also remembered for Max Steiner's legendary love theme. And for Henreid's trick of lighting two cigarettes simultaneously. It's one of the great Warner Bothers melodramas and the ultimate Bette Davis vehicle.

Musical melodrama which sets Bette Davis' wealthy landowner up against the Oscar winning Mary Astor as a celebrated concert pianist. So there's plenty of rousing Russian classics on the soundtrack to stir the emotions. George Brent is the (unconvincing) playboy aviator that the two divas fight over, but it's really all about the female stars.

Following Brent and Astor's swanky New York wedding they discover that her divorce wasn't finalised and the new marriage is void. So he flies south to marry an old flame (Bette) instead, before crashing his plane in Brazil on secret government business. When Astor discovers she is pregnant, Davis takes her to a shack in the Arizona desert to secretly give birth so Bette can keep the baby in return for dollars.

Which is a hell of a pitch! It starts off as screwball, with Brent plainly uneasy in Cary Grant's shoes, then turns into pure soap. Most of the fun is courtesy of the two female leads wringing all the showbiz out of the preposterous set up. Bette's Maryland mansion is staffed by African American character actors and while there isn't much dignity in their roles, Hattie McDaniel handles the comedy with expertise.

But this isn't so bad it's good. The events happen within the conventions and locations of classic Hollywood melodrama and it succeeds on those terms. It's extraordinarily entertaining, and for that we thank the stars, Max Steiner's soundtrack, Orry-Kelly's gowns and director Edmund Goulding for spinning magic out of such an outrageous premise.

Five years after Laura, Gene Tierney re-teamed with Otto Preminger for another film noir. There are many echoes of the earlier hit including the sour wit of Ben Hecht's script, and the lingering shots of a large portrait over a fireplace which has no impact on the narrative but is a reminder of their previous success. Preminger gives Whirlpool a similarly attractive noir look.

Tierney is a kleptomaniac who falls into the clutches of a cultured but degenerate hypnotist (José Ferrer) who uses her to kill off an inconvenient woman who has the goods on him. It's up to the husband, a brilliant psychoanalyst (Richard Conte) to clear her with a mixture of Hollywood Freud and good luck.

It's possible to see this a forerunner of those eighties yuppie thrillers where an attractive, privileged couple are terrorised by an out of control antagonist just because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like the characters in those films, the successful married duo are too entitled to be sympathetic.

There's nothing like an original story, but the stars make it work. Charles Bickford adds a little weight to the confection as a laconic cop. It's good to see the elegant Gene in contemporary clothing after a run of costume dramas for Fox and her fashions and the des-res sets have a period appeal. Whirlpool is a slender, dark film noir. And while familiar, it's still entertaining.

Olivia de Havilland won her second Oscar for this lavish mid-19th century period drama based on a Broadway adaptation of Henry James' Washington Square. And it's a perfect vehicle for the star, one in a series of exceptional roles she created after WWII, after she escaped from her unhappy contract with Warner Brothers.  

This is also one of William Wyler's many great films. Olivia plays a rich but gauche spinster from an upper middle class family who is suffocated by the authority of her dominant father (Ralph Richardson) who resents his daughter for not being as beautiful and sophisticated as his deceased wife.

When she is courted by an attractive, charming idler (Montgomery Clift), the patriarch seeks to sabotage the proposal by convincing her that no man could want to marry her because she is too plain and dull! We know that the gentleman caller is after her money, so the business of the film is to judge whether it is preferable for this isolated woman to be exploited, if it would save her from a life of emotional emptiness.

Olivia creates a powerful impression of an abused woman consumed by loneliness. She is a study of disappointment and repression. She has no artfulness but she learns how to deceive by finally closing down her heart to love. De Havilland's performance is sometimes raw, but she is also haunting, and tragic. 

This has a huge cult following; directed by critics' favourite Nic Ray, and with a once in a lifetime pairing of film noir superstars Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. And it starts promisingly with Bogart under suspicion for the murder of a cocktail bar hatcheck girl, and Gloria the witness who could clear him.

But like many Ray films, after the set up, it unexpectedly becomes something else. Once they fall in love, she becomes menaced by his violent jealousy. In the source novel, he is a serial killer and she is playing with fire. Maybe because of star protocol, in the film he is just responsible for an incandescent temper, probably due to PTSD after WWII.  

A mutual friend tells the girl that if she loves the man, she has to love all of him, including his volatility... Which is really bad advice! Grahame is sensational, and Bogart is impressively menacing. But he's too convincing to be forgiven when he turns out to be innocent. The only plausible conclusion was in Dorothy Hughes' book. 

It's set in Hollywood. Bogart is a scriptwriter and Gloria a minor actor in B films. There is some interesting insider chat about the industry. It looks great. But it's a disappointment. The suspect is such a dreadful, overbearing nutcase that no one would go near him. It's two different films implausibly welded together. Points though for the classic noir title.

It's not obvious which is more gorgeous, the sumptuous Technicolor location photography or Gene Tierney in her only Oscar nominated performance. No need for a line of dialogue explaining that she is hot trouble. Her beauty has bite too, feeding the narcissism which makes her a danger to anyone who threatens to come between her and her husband (Cornel Wilde).

Tierney creates a chilling portrait of a psychopath. The scene when she watches Wilde's disabled brother drown as she looks on from behind her shades is haunting, and it's astonishing that the Production Code allowed it to stand. Similarly when she kills herself while to frame her step sister (Jeanne Crain) who she suspects loves her man!

It has the dark pessimism of film noir, but in colour; the interiors are full of shadows and Tierney is a very malevolent femme fatale. However, much of the atmosphere of the film comes from its sunny rural exteriors, which isn't really noir. This is psychological melodrama.

A major weakness is Vincent Price's clodhopping performance as the idiotic lawyer who seeks to prove the crazy bombshell was killed by her sister. Wilde and Crain are fine, but the film is dominated by Tierney's stunning performance. This was Fox's biggest box office hit of the whole decade. While it's a little slow in places, it's a compelling, unsettling film.

Gothic romancer with supernatural themes which was a big factor in Gene Tierney's post WWII rise to stardom. She plays a farm girl from New England before the Civil War, who is invited to take a job as a governess in the stately home of an aristocratic relation. Vincent Price is the megalomaniac landowner who kills his wife in order to marry his beautiful country cousin.

Dragonwyck is the sort of old manor which has a haunted harpsichord. Where the servants mutter about strange goings-on. There's a lot of Poe in the story and that's a home draw for Price. His delusional philosophy conveys unmissable echoes of fascism. His performance is excessive, but it's not easy to imagine anyone else getting away with it.

There were many films in the forties about an inexperienced girl moving into a grand residence occupied by intimidating gentry and hostile staff. But this one isn't as fainthearted as most. Tierney plays her as a naïf, but she has ambition and stubborn values derived from her faith. Walter Huston is excellent as her unbending but protective father.

This was Joe Mankiewicz's directorial debut and he wrote the adapted screenplay. It creates is an impression of a believable, detailed historic society. It's a key American gothic film, and while the narrative is a little slim, there's a rich, eerie ambience thanks to Alfred Newman's score, the wonderful interiors, and the arcane language.

The first of Susan Hayward's trademark powerhouse performances which would make her the premier American female dramatic actor of the fifties. Smash Up gave her a debut Oscar nomination. She plays a nightclub singer who parks her career to bring up baby and support her crooner husband (Lee Bowman). Social anxiety leads to her becoming a drunk.

The Production Code didn't like this story at all, and many compromises were made. While the film is surprisingly realistic in its depiction of alcoholism, Hayward's descent into booze hell is much less ugly than in I'll Cry Tomorrow in 1955. Everything works out by the fadeout. But it's a typically emotional and volatile portrayal from the star.

There's a hot blooded face off between Hayward and Marsha Hunt as Bowman's lonely personal assistant who is in love with the boss. It's a great touch when Angie's swanky apartment fills up with gifts that her rival bought on his behalf. The feud finally erupts into a punch up in the girls-room, with the pie-eyed wife going in fists first.

Eddie Albert plays his standard best friend role with his usual warmth, and Marsha Hunt is excellent. Bowman is an insipid male lead. It's a pulpy melodrama with quite an expressionistic look as the singer loses her struggle with the bottle. The main pull is Hayward's star-making performance and she's on the screen all the way. She even has a soliloquy!

This is one of the great American dramas of the forties. It bears the signature of its German director Max Ophüls, who mostly made films in France. And it feels like the poetic realism that was popular there either side of WWII. It is set in turn of the century Vienna. Of course it's filmed in a Hollywood studio, but it does leave a persuasive impression of place.

Joan Fontaine plays an unremarkable, lower middle class child who falls in love with the handsome, talented concert pianist who lives in an adjacent building. Unknown to him. The man (Louis Jourdan) isn't a rogue but he is frivolous. She lives her life as a kind of homage to the musician but only meets him once, aged about 20. He leaves the girl with a child, and soon forgets about her.

The film isn't concerned with narrative realism; Lisa stands outside his house for years waiting for a chance to meet. When they do, they share a perfect day together, which for her is a kind of communion, but meaningless to him. It's a psychologically fascinating story framed in the masochism of the girl's obsession. She's the narrator, and it's not certain how much truth she tells.

The film confirms Fontaine's status among the great Hollywood film actors. Jourdan is exceptional too. Their initial meeting is a moment of cinema magic. It's such a beautiful looking film. Ophüls tells his story with a personal style and finesse; it feels more like a classic of world cinema than a Hollywood drama.

Bette Davis was always good when she was being bad, but here is poorly cast. She lack the looks her character is assumed to possess. She's ten years too old and wears so much makeup she's hard recognise. Davis plays a sociopathic monster who ruins her forgiving sister (Olivia de Havilland) by stealing her husband. After Davis compels him to suicide she comes back for Olivia's new fiancé...

The source novel won the Pulitzer Prize so perhaps it was more highbrow than this entertaining soap. This adaptation feels like the Hollywood southern melodramas of the fifties. There's a jazz soundtrack. The dichotomy between the good/bad sister is classic fifties. There is a corrupt, dying patriarch (Charles Coburn) who has a transgressive longing for his childlike niece. It's full of sexual innuendo.  

This was John Huston's second film and it's not typical of his work. Though maybe his liberal politics allowed for the more enlightened attitude to race, for the time. After the drunken bad girl kills a mother and child in a hit and run, she casually accuses an African American (Ernest Anderson) of taking the car. The film is explicit that her testament will be verified because she is white.

Amazingly the film wasn't allowed an overseas certificate because it represented USA as being racially biased! Possibly there is a much more intelligent film dormant within this production. What we get is a Bette Davis vehicle, and while she's grotesquely fascinating, this is not always for the intended reasons. It's an interesting, implausible curiosity.

This film is so tightly knotted to its theme of vanity that it eventually becomes a moral fable. Bette Davis plays a high society coquette who marries a modest but rich businessman (Claude Rains) to keep her crooked brother out of jail. Her marriage is no impediment to having a good time in the company of fast men. So Mr. Skeffington toils without love, filling her life with riches.

The unfaithful wife loses her looks after a bout of diphtheria, and learns valuable life lessons. By 1944, in a lifetime of heavy smoking, Bette looked middle aged and she is hardly convincing as a famous beauty. In fact there is a premonition of Baby Jane Hudson in her heavy makeup, even before the illness. But credit to Davis for allowing her later grotesque appearance.

She dominates the film, and haunts your nightmares. Rains gives a more subtle and touching performance as her rejected husband, a Jewish man who takes his daughter to Germany as the Nazis come to power. The film starts just before WWI and concludes with the world about to be again consumed by war. Bette gets to wear a compilation of classic frocks from the first half of the century.

There's quite a lot of humour (from Julius & Philip Epstein). The witty script keeps the drama fairly superficial. Almost nothing is done with the theme of anti-semitism. This is an epochal film in the history of classic cinema, because it was the final release of Bette's hated contract with Warner Brothers. And while not her best, it's a significant entry in that body of work.

Culture clash comedy which is a nice memento of the star appeal of Ivor Novello in early British cinema. He plays an exiled Russian prince of no fixed address who moves into the home of a conventional English middle class family and changes their lives. It was adapted from Novello's own stage play.

The strength of the film is the humour which deals in the usual motifs of the sitcom, like social climbing and class etiquette. And the ensemble work of the cast sparkles. Remarkable to see a barely recognisable, and very young Ida Lupino as a shopgirl shacked up with her boss...

Novello stands out as the languid, decadent aristocrat who introduces the family to unfamiliar freedoms, mostly sexual, as he transforms their suburban home with his balalaika, exotic cigarettes and Russian gimcracks. And vodka. He is charming, handsome and elegant under the makeup. And just a little camp.

His comic timing is exceptional. It's easy to see why he was such a big star. Some of the acting in smaller roles is theatrical, but still, very funny and the cast squeeze all the laughs out of a pretty good script. The main negative is that when they pull the message together at the fade out, it seems to be- know your place! But it's fun getting there.

Intelligent and very funny social comedy which was a massive box office hit. It looks a knockout with the pop art visuals, stunning use of widescreen, quirky editing, striking Technicolor... And directed by Mike Nichols with an innovative and surreal imagination.

Dustin Hoffman (in a star making role) is home from college and seduced by a friend of the family (Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson), which proves an impediment when he wants to marry her daughter (Katherine Ross). It is labelled a counterculture film, but that's not really what is on screen.

The graduate may be experiencing generational friction with his parents and their bourgeois pals. But he is not rebelling against their wealth or hypocrisy. He is a product of them. He has no causes. He is just drifting. He has as little to communicate as his materialistic relatives.

It's a generational film, but Hoffman is not playing a hero/anti-hero. He's just another thwarted American life, alienated, inarticulate and lost within his own familiar subculture. A landmark second film by Nichols, with standout use of brilliant Simon and Garfunkel songs.

Punishingly energetic High School musical from the Broadway stage which made a star of Ann-Margret. She's a girl from Sweet Apple, Ohio who wins a competition to kiss a popular rock and roll bad boy (Jesse Pearson) before he goes in the army. And, that's pretty much it. Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh were nominal stars, but it's a showcase for Ann-Margret.

Not only for her astonishingly dynamic dancing and faux-naif vocals but her alluring freshness. And abundant sex appeal. The film is kinetically directed in primary colours and widescreen by musical veteran George Sydney. Including split screen effects. The huge peak is the extended Lot of Livin' to Do, which belongs among the great ensemble dance routines in cinema.

The song everyone remembers is Dick and Janet's duet on Put On a Happy Face. He complained there was too much Ann-Margaret, but actually the screen misses her when she is absent. Of the rest of the cast, Maureen Stapleton is funny as Van Dyke's incredibly passive-aggressive mother. It's a surprisingly sophisticated topical comedy.

And it's a satire of small town America and rock and roll hysteria. Pearson is unambiguously Elvis Presley. Some of the routines are filler, especially a dance number for Janet Leigh which feels like it was included to pump up her screen time. It's the bright, shiny surface of this joyful film that attracts. And Ann-Margret's magnetic, vibrant performance.

This is a very funny social comedy which makes satirical observations about English class system. It is compassionate about the suffering of the poor and critical of the pitiless entitlement of the rich. It's difficult to watch without comparing it to the musical remake, My Fair Lady. But Pygmalion is too good to be lost in its shadow..

Phonetics expert Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) makes a wager that he can pass off grubby flower seller/beggar Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) as a lady at a grand ball... But this isn't really a romance, and the pair do not become a convincing couple. Eliza has no status and her modified accent prevents her from rejoining the working poor, so she no longer has any home.

Howard is excellent as the arrogant, careless Professor. But it's Hiller's film and she is both extremely moving, and really very funny. The bath scene, when the housekeeper scrubs the filth off the indignant pupil is hysterical. Eliza has her own moral code, and an awareness of her social position, which is a notch above a prostitute.

And that difference is crucial to her self respect. Hence her catchphrase: 'I'm a good girl I am!' It's a kind of fairytale, but while Pygmalion is clearly not social realism, there is far more care for the realities of poverty than in My Fair Lady. It's a handsome production with an Oscar winning script and wonderful cast performances. And Wendy Hiller is a sensational Eliza.