Film Reviews by Steve

Bruising cop drama influenced by the procedural docu-noirs that came out of Hollywood after WWII. And while Val Guest's revision retains stylistic riffs which have become genre clichés, once the exciting story kicks in these hardly matter. This is a gripping thriller, led by a typically laconic and impassive performance from Stanley Baker.

He plays a hard as nails detective- yes, married to his job and neglectful of his long suffering wife. While investigating the murder of a young woman in a holdup, the cop finds he is on the trail of an escaped convict (John Crawford) he sent down and who swore revenge. Now all the contacts of the killer are in danger.

There's a nice plot detail which adds a little social commentary. The stolen banknotes have been treated with a chemical which shows up on the hands of everyone who handles them; who become literally marked. The cops trace the stain of dirty money as it spreads through the criminal community. Because crime touches everyone.

This is a realist film, expressively shot on the streets of Manchester and the surrounding moors. But the title is a little misleading; the mean streets of the black and white city just provide atmosphere. This is primarily a violent, fast moving policier and an ideal vehicle for Stanley Baker as the classic crime-busting loner.

This late period British noir was bombed by the critics, but now looks like a genre classic. It was a big change of pace for its two stars. Richard Todd is a brittle middle class, middle aged wage-slave, drowning in debt and about to lose his job. Peter Sellers is a flashy, sociopathic racketeer who runs a criminal gang which steals cars to be customised in his Paddington lock-up.

When the desperate salesman gets his new motor nicked, he goes vigilante. He's tired of getting pushed around. But in fighting back, he destroys himself and his marriage. Though cast against type, this is the best performance of Todd's career, and while not realistic, Sellers is astonishing too. He literally rips up the scenery. Under pressure, both men fall apart.

This is the human jungle where the weak are exploited and the most ruthless get the rewards. The set up has been used many times, but rarely as well. Maybe best of all is the nasty, poetic script (Alun Falconer). There's an extraordinary scene when Todd's loving wife (Elizabeth Sellars) explains that he is a loser and she has settled for disappointment.

John Guillermin directs with a little unexpected style. John Barry composed the jazz soundtrack and scored the title song for Adam Faith, who plays a delinquent carjacker. Carol White is affecting as a pitiful, vulnerable teenager preyed on by the sadistic gangster. All staged in a tough, cruel London. This is one of the best British crime films of the sixties.

Groundbreaking British New Wave film adapted by John Osborne from the play he wrote for Laurence Olivier. Critics claim that Larry was far better playing Archie Rice on stage than screen, which is staggering. His performance here is among the masterpieces of English cinema. He killed the role for anyone else.

Archie is a soft shoe shuffle comic in the last days of music hall: bankrupt, lecherous and a little grotesque; barely scraping a living from an old seaside town while his options for the future are closed down. He has no reason to go on, but is unable to stop because it's all he knows. Olivier gives us a journey into his humiliation.

Though Archie is a scoundrel, the star makes it possible to empathise with his degradation. Eventually it becomes clear that this story of a derelict song and dance man still doing the old routines to an indifferent world is an allegory for Britain's diminished status made apparent during the Suez crisis, which is when it is set.

The support cast operates in the shadow of Olivier, but it is interesting to see the film debuts of Alan Bates and Albert Finney. The realistic location shoot in Morecambe during holiday season now makes the film look like a period piece, but the theme of a declining country divided by class, race and the generations is still familiar.

Sentimental WWII melodrama set in a convent in Tuscany in 1943 which operates as a safe house for the transit of Jewish children out of fascist Italy. After the assassination of Mussolini, the Nazis take over security of the nearby prisoner of war camp and threaten to brutally crush the humanitarian work of the nuns.

Its big strength is the location shoot in the sunny Italian campagna, especially the fourteenth century monastery, which gives the film atmosphere and authenticity. Some of the dialogue is excellent, particularly the psychological manoeuvres between the mother superior (Lilli Palmer) and the German officer (Albert Lieven).

The nuns are archetypes, with Sylvia Syms a sensual novice and Yvonne Mitchell a scary fundamentalist. The German officers are ultra-sadistic, but this feels more melodramatic than realistic, driving the suspenseful plot to a frantic climax. Will the Nazis discover the hidden kids during their (noisy) religious ceremony?

Setting aside historical fidelity, ultimately the film is spoiled by an excess of the cutes. The performances of the children are badly misjudged, which is the director's fault. And this is exaggerated by the lush, romantic soundtrack. And transforming this holocaust story into a manipulative tearjerker feels like a failure of judgement.

Lightweight but fun comedy based on the satirical non-fiction of Stephen Potter, which entered the words 'gamesmanship' and 'one-upmanship' into the dictionary. Ian Carmichael is a passive washout who wants to romance the astonishingly cute/sweet Janette Scott but is always trumped by a pushy blowhard played by Terry-Thomas.

So the clueless schmuck goes to a school in lifemanship run by Alastair Sim and learns how to turn the tables and win the girl. It's a simple story which swerves the many possible complications of imagining a society of competing sociopaths and just goes for chuckles. And thanks to an ideal cast it delivers a blissful diversion.

This is an England of the wealthy. Even the supposed loser, runs an accountancy firm. Though he is bullied by the staff until he learns how to push back. The events take place in exclusive restaurants and country clubs, a long way from the class divisions which might have given the story some bite.

It was the last film directed by Robert Hamer, though it doesn't have the complexity of his best work. Or the sadness. Ill health meant it was finished by other hands, but there is no evidence of a troubled production. It's a typical British comedy of the 50s-60s, and if the familiar period sexism can be overlooked, this is among the best of its type.

Exuberant satire aimed at the stereotypes of labour relations which became entrenched after WWII. It's the workers versus the bosses and both sides are presumed to be dishonest and mercenary. Peter Sellers' performance as the trade union leader Fred Kite became a standard image of the shop steward; bumptious, intractable and defensive.

This is a sequel to the Boulting Brothers', Private's Progress, with most of the same cast; a formidable assembly of British comic talent from a golden age of character actors, including Terry-Thomas as middle management and Margaret Rutherford as a dotty aristocrat. Irene Handl stands out as Fred Kite's more conciliatory wife.

Ian Carmichael stars as a well meaning relative of the factory boss who takes a job on the shop floor, naively stirring up hostility to the benefit of the executives. While the film characterises everyone as self-interested, it is guilty of false equivalence; a factory worker seeking to hold on to his rights isn't really the same as a corrupt boss making a crooked fortune.

Perhaps the film actually did harm in embedding extreme caricatures. Unforgivably the workers are portrayed as stupid. Depressingly, there is a prohibition on black union members. But this England of factory chimneys is a long ago country now. This is a period piece with an interesting gallery of rogues, but only a few laughs.

Courtroom melodrama guilty of many shameless plot stunts but which also generates a few delicious dramatic flourishes. It is based on an old faithful of the theatre but updated to WWII. Though the woozy insanity of the narrative would better suit the Great War. Anthony Asquith and a quality cast bring a deep shine to the improbable intrigue.

Dirk Bogarde plays a pair of identical POWs captured at Dunkirk. One is permanently brain damaged in a breakout, while the other gets back to England to be the titled inheritor of a stately pile. But was the wealthy baronet nobbled by his snivelling lookalike, who was a skilled actor? Certainly, the third member of the escape party (Paul Massie) thinks so.

And, after a dramatic court case to establish identity, so does the aristocrat's wife. She is portrayed by Olivia de Havilland, who gets top billing, but this is really a star vehicle for Dirk Bogarde, who is adorably sincere in his absurd predicament. Robert Morley and Wilfred Hyde White are also a fun double act as the combative barristers.

There are no genuine feelings on display, this is pure melodrama. There is some reflection on the reliability of memory. Inevitably, justice is done and social equilibrium is restored, but there is pleasure to be had watching the haughty toff squirm for a while. And Asquith adds striking expressionistic strokes to another of his classic legal dramas.

Eccentric British comedy which channels the kind of absurd humour typical of The Goons and Monty Python. The impoverished Duchy of Grand Fenwick invades the United States, intending to immediately surrender and apply for war aid. But their troops, armed with bows and arrows, blunder into winning the battle by capturing an atom bomb.

Peter Sellers plays multiple members of the court, including the Grand Duchess, performed in the manner of Margaret Rutherford. He dominates the film and the rest of the cast play straight to his suppressed craziness. Jean Seberg contributes some elfin love interest. David Kossoff is effective as the nuclear scientist, like a daft Albert Einstein.

There is a little satire built around such dunderheads having control of the means of global destruction. And maybe there's a hint that Fenwick is Britain in its diminished status after the recent Suez crisis. But mostly this is just cartoonish high jinks full of extraordinary plot complications which are often inspired.

But is it funny? Well of course that depends, but those who enjoy the classic surreal British humour will laugh at this. Or Irish, as the writer of the source novel (Leonard Wibberley) was from Dublin. It has lost most of its topicality, but the clever script and Sellers' multifaceted comic talent keeps the comedy fresh.

Like J.Lee Thompson's Ice Cold in Alex a year earlier, this brings together a loose alliance of uprooted mavericks who travel in ramshackle transport across a war ravaged country with a traitor on board. This time it's British India in 1905, and an army officer (Kenneth More) must get an infant Hindu prince to a safety by train, as north-west India spills into civil war.

And he's accompanied by a party of diverse civilians, with Lauren Bacall as a proto-feminist in her best post-Bogart role. Herbert Lom is typecast as the saturnine villain. IS Johar plays the obsequious Indian train driver as a dated stereotype, but he is charismatic, self deprecating, and ultimately a hero. And then there's a huge cast of extras.

This is an epic adventure which fills the magnificent CinemaScope with spectacular action. There is some thematic talk of colonialism and religious conflict which strays into clumsy editorialising. But this is broken up by incredibly suspenseful cliff hangers, particularly the nerve shredding crossing of a blown up railway bridge...

Spain effectively stands in for occupied India. While some of the attitudes are of their time, there is quite a critical attitude to the British Empire, compared with the Hollywood Raj films of the thirties. Kenneth More makes a dashing Ripping Yarns style hero. While maybe too verbose for some, it's a thrilling and good looking British blockbuster.

Strange, eerie adaptation of a Daphne Du Maurier story which smooths out the novel's lumpy plot complications and instead offers a simple, haunting impression of a lonely, morally exhausted man trying to find a reason to go on. Though never admired by critics, it has the deep poetic melancholy which is typical of Robert Hamer's best films.

The doppelganger device is pure literary artifice. Alec Guinness plays a language professor from an English University on a driving holiday in France who meets his double, a decadent aristocrat. So Guinness has a dual role. Naturally, the bankrupt toff changes places with the academic to provide an alibi for the murder of his rich wife.

Only the fall guy has found solace in his new home and doesn't want to give it back. On a realistic level, this is all ridiculous. But as the story of a fanciful, enervated sentimentalist who imagines an unlikely, but romantic end to himself, this becomes a poignant fantasy. Thanks in large part to Guinness wistful performance.

The locations around the town and country estate of Le Mans add much to the atmosphere, and there are sensitive, subdued performances from the cast. Bette Davis is a counterpoint in her wholehearted cameo as a frumpy, drug damaged matriarch. The big plot twist comes as no surprise, but this can still be enjoyed as a sad, ethereal daydream.

The final release from Ealing studios is an Australian film noir about a prison break. Brawny Aldo Ray is sprung from stir and hiding out with his pals in a former penal colony on an island in Sydney Harbour, now a tourist attraction. They take a family of caretakers hostage while the fugitive demands a retrial from the State Governor.

And most cinematically, the gang's former naval gunner (Victor Maddern) has trained the battlement's functioning cannon on a ship in the bay loaded with explosives, ready to fire if their demands are not met. It's a wild plot, but the main attraction is the unusual historic location of Pinchgut, and the wider use of Sydney.

It's fascinating to see the city before its modern transformation into a great metropolis. Just a big sunny provincial sprawl. There's a memorably eerie scene in the empty streets, evacuated beyond the range of the threatened explosion. Local actors got some minor parts, but Ray is the star and he dominates as the charismatic, headstrong convict.

Ironically he breaks out of one prison, only to be penned into another. The great Ealing studio brought down the curtain with a production which reflected their penchant for social realism. And their ambition, with Harry Watt making his third film in the lucky country. It's not among their first rank of classics, but still a tough compelling noir.

Just another quota quickie among hundreds made in the UK between 1928 and 1960. Though intended to promote the home film industry, the legislation led to the production of low budget filler which ended up on the lower half of double bills. And few of these micro-budgeted relics survive as much more than obscure curiosities.

This is one of the last gasps. It clocks in at 62m and betrays many typical flaws. There is basic, flat lighting which makes the black and white look drab. There are limited interior sets, and lesser known actors. Director Wolf Rilla made some more auspicious films but this doesn't have any visual style.

However, it is one of the best quota quickies ever made. The queen of the British Bs Patricia Dainton plays a resourceful blind woman helping the police investigate the murder of her elderly neighbour, exclusively through what she has heard. It mainly stands out for the intelligent script which takes a little time to reflect on its themes.

Rilla tells his story coherently, which almost never happened. There is some chemistry between Dainton and Conrad Phillips, as the Inspector. And Nigel Green is properly intimidating as the killer who returns to eliminate the witness. It's a woman in peril film which owes a debt to to The Spiral Staircase (1946), but survives on its own merits.

For an hour, this adaptation of Wolf Mankowitz's stage production about the showbiz promoters of Soho shapes up as one of Britain's greatest film musicals. There is an impression that Mankowitz, and director Val Guest knew the seedier pavements of the West End pretty well. This is enormous fun.

And the film benefits from a crazy, out of control performance from Laurence Harvey as a personal manager of uncertain integrity and reliability. And accent. He discovers a coffee bar teenager ripe for exploitation by the cynical London music machine. Cliff Richard brings some chubby star quality into the spotlight as the surly young rocker.

This is easily Harvey's most likeable screen performance, and the problem with the later part of the film is his character spends time off screen and the energy is lost. The songs are variable, with the numbers from the theatrical version generally strong, and those added to showcase Cliff's real life chart pedigree, not so hot.

Still, in places it is extraordinarily good, particularly the fast, funny, motormouth script and the portrait of the sleazy bright lights of fifties Soho: the strip club worked by Harvey's rainy day girlfriend (Sylvia Syms); and the the cappuccino shops where the beatniks hang out. It's a fabulous period memento, topped by Harvey's garrulous performance.

The last of Carol Reed's three Graham Greene adaptations is an eccentric cold war spy satire filmed in Cuba around the time of the revolution. It's an unusual and complicated spoof with many offbeat, ironic flourishes, though these are all cerebral rather than providing much spectacle.

Alec Guinness plays an agreeable vacuum cleaner retailer in Havana who is recruited by the British secret service to keep an eye on political instability. And he finds that by inventing his agents and their intrigues, he makes far more money to spend on his teenage daughter (Jo Morrow). But these creations have real world consequences.

The unassuming spy is a stand in for the author. He contrives a narrative which leads to conflict and then unexpected outcomes. What we now call 'meta'. But the interesting premise is marred by dull acting. Guinness is unusually inert. The mostly Hollywood support cast is fine, but poor substitutes for, say, Denholm Elliott and Michael Hordern.

It is the least of the Greene/Reed collaborations, but then the others are immortal. It works better as a novel. But the location CinemaScope photography of Cuba at a turning point in history is artistic and the rumba soundtrack brings atmosphere. There is an outlook of sharp political cynicism and wit. And actually, a few clever laughs.

Erratic World War II prison drama, set in Italy in '43. While the narrative mostly addresses the murder of a suspected collaborator, it is staged at an interesting time in the campaign, with the Italians about to surrender to the Allies, and the Nazis intending to take over the camp. Only every single prisoner escapes before the changeover!

Earlier scenes rely on the skilled acting of many veterans of the screen war, because the script is packed with witless banter and high jinks. In fact, so flippant and conventional are these scenes that it's almost a send up. But the POW film is a resilient breed and when the mood darkens for the climactic breakout, its motifs work again.

Richard Todd is top billed as the dour Scot running the escape committee. But the screen time is spread evenly among a large cast. With the early focus on comedy, Michael Wilding and Dennis Price are prominent as a pair of thespian fops putting on Hamlet. Later on, Bernard Lee is typically unflappable as the senior officer.

This is less about the experiences of captive British soldiers, than a pastiche of other POW films. And it's just possible to sense the last gasp of this durable genre. Maybe so many were made because budget requirements were modest. But it's still an entertaining film, and ultimately exciting, despite overfamiliarity.