Graham Greene’s tense crime tale is as important as his classic The Third Man but nowhere near as well known. Down Brighton way the race-track boys have sharp ways of solving disputes and terrorizing the common folk — think ‘straight razor.’ Richard Attenborough’s breakthrough film is also a showcase for Hermoine Baddelely and a…
Welcome to the exciting, hesitant, guilt-laden and provocative world of Eric Rohmer, and his varied voyages of slightly intimidated romantic discovery. There are six Moral Tales (and some short subjects) and each finds a main character stymied by indecision: should he hew to the narrow moral path, or stop being so conflicted and let…
A top movie monster is back from filmic perdition, restored to his full might and power. Rabbi Lowe’s answer to the persecution of the ghetto is a mysterious unthinking automaton capable of terrible destruction. Paul Wegener’s indelible clay statue stands as a core myth in Jewish lore. But he’s still here, usually in allegories about…
For producer-director John Ford Columbia Studios was apparently a calm port in a hostile movie climate. Away from the bankability guaranteed by John Wayne, Ford never quite regained the power of his earlier triumphs, from the silent era to his socially conscious classics at Fox. The four Columbia-controlled pictures presented on Powerhouse Indicator’s lavishly appointed…
When does a silent classic really become a classic? When we can see a reconstituted full original version, which in this case meant decades spent waiting. G.W. Pabst’s celebrated 1927 jeopardy-soap has romance, treachery, murder, a revolutionary war and a score of terrific characters embodied by Brigitte Helm, Sig Arno, Vladimir Sokoloff and the weird…
Images from this picture were burned into our Boomer childhood brains … we actually sat still for almost three hours to watch it. John Sturges’ epic show is like a fine-tuned watch — its unbreakable story is populated by ideal characters that become instant heroes, just for acting like normal men that want free of…
Horror films aren’t only about vampires and goblins — Czech director Juraj Herz’s mind-chilling study of a Fascist opportunist communicates truths about aberrant psychology and Fascists, that audiences would never read in print. A bourgeois burner of cadavers leverages his Reich-useful trade into his own little warped empire of evil. Karl Kopfringl’s modus operandi hardly…
Not all Tennessee Williams film adaptations are successful, but Richard Brooks’ blend of romance, show biz venality and political thuggery is just too entertaining to dismiss. The entire cast is better than good, with Geraldine Page shining and Paul Newman well-cast. And the ingenue Shirley Knight receives her most iconic role, right at the beginning…
Director Agnieszka Holland pulls off a difficult task — her true-life Holocaust tale neither trivializes the horror nor glamorizes individualized victims at the expense of the big picture. Marco Hofschneider is the inexperienced German teenager who by strange quirks of fate becomes a staunch Stalinist in a Communist school, then a Nazi war hero and…
Exploitation films have their mavericks, their patron saints and their bad boys: this well-researched and lovingly assembled shock-bio introduces us to a particularly talented persistent filmmaker whose sexed-up horror & action grindhouse non-epics proved commercially viable even into the video age. Then comes the Ghastly Death part, a cruelly undeserved finish for a movie guy…
Here’s a pleasant surprise: one of RKO’s most popular releases of 1948 has suddenly emerged in an uncut version that’s a full twelve minutes longer than anything most of us have seen. The gentle, family-oriented frontier tale has an attractive trio of star performers, excellent location work and a thoughtful, teasing script. I must have…
Do you ever lapse into daydream fantasies to escape from everyday life? Tom Courtenay and John Schlesinger changed their destinies and that of Julie Christie with this brilliant (black?) comedy about what ought to be a tragic situation. The frustrated Billy rebels against his dull routine with outrageous lies and chicanery, but hasn’t the courage…
Lust-filled treachery in the steaming tropics! He dared to love a cannibal empress! Taglines like that suggest that it wasn’t easy to sell Carol Reed’s phenomenally good adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s classic, a tale of human self-degradation and malevolence in the tropics. Long difficult to see, it’s finally here to dazzle a generation that might…
Why is David Lean’s stirring ode to British aviation so historically and technically bogus? Because at heart it’s a science fiction film! Ralph Richardson drives his test pilots and his own son to die on the altar of aviation R&D, in a tale focused firmly on futurism and the push to the stars. Nigel Patrick…
Timothy Spall stars in a fascinating, surprisingly non-morbid look into the life of Albert Pierrepoint. England’s reluctant celebrity hangman dispatched hundreds of convicted killers including Ruth Ellis and John Christie, not to mention 47 Nazi war criminals in a literal marathon of the gallows. The artist of the noose kept up a double life to…
James Stewart’s final western of the 1950s is a high-gloss family show with more than its share of spirited desperados and adventuresome women. But it’s really the split-up project that ended the productive Stewart-Anthony Mann filmmaking combo. The ‘folksy’ touches could only have come from Stewart himself, who hopefully didn’t show up to parties with…
Buster Keaton’s first full feature is a real accomplishment, a little masterpiece that deftly balances comedy and drama. Buster’s star appeal is on full display as an 1830 lad who returns to the hill country to resettle the old homestead and lands in the middle of a murderous feud — with the girl he loves…
Jean-Pierre Melville’s most accomplished, most personal movie gets a new reissue. Ignored in 1969 and released in the United States only 37 years later, this somber look at the French resistance has never been equalled. Forget thrilling adventure tales with daring escapes, patriotic oaths and beautiful spies; Melville presents resistance activities in the Occupied territory…
Don’t do it Vittorio! The Italian master’s last neorealist project was done ‘in collaboration’ with American producer David O. Selznick, who proceeded to crowbar his way into every directorial decision. The resulting ‘creative differences’ spoiled Signor De Sica’s Italian version, but that wasn’t enough. Selznick put it through a sausage machine for the American release,…
Can a war movie be reassuring in a time of crisis? Each of the films in this excellent collection stress people working together: to repel invaders, escape from or attack the enemy, and just to survive in sticky situations. All are inspirational in that they see cooperation, organization and leadership doing good work. See: the…
Van Johnson steps into adventure-guy shoes more suitable for Humphrey Bogart in this European-shot thriller. Daring Martine Carol provides the sex appeal as the mystery dame who entices Johnson to smuggle a man out of Red Albania. The movie is practically a proto- James Bond film: it’s directed by Terence Young, includes Sean Connery and…
Look out, it’s an X-Ray Death Ray! We rushed this review out, and it’s only 104 years late. One of the feature films on a new disc devoted to an unheralded woman filmmaker is The Intrigue, a nascent science-fiction thriller of the ‘deadly invention’ variety. It’s all from 1916, when WW1 was being fought. Julia…
A CineSavant Article A mention in a book by Tom Weaver of an odd shared visual in two Universal-International movies of the 1950s prompts a quick frame-grab comparison, and also some thoughts about how movies were really made back when twenty dollars was probably considered a big budget expenditure. Some savant I am … I…
They swim, they play, and they talk. They love George C. Scott and call him ‘pa.’ Mike Nichols’ paranoid sci-fi classic combines Lassie Go Home and The Manchurian Candidate. It works up a good guys versus bad guys conspiracy storyline — until the message arrives that what the adorable dolphins Fa and Bee really need,…
It’s a classic from the Golden Year of 1939, directed in fine style by Wild Bill Wellman and well cast with Paramount stars Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston, and with Brian Donlevy as one of the movies’ most hissable villains. The popular story has been remade and spoofed innumerable times, yet this remains…
3-D Blu-ray isn’t going away, even as the equipment to show it becomes hard to find — and the 3-D Film Archive keeps reviving vintage features and getting them shown in special venues and on Blu-ray. This second Rarities disc gives us some interesting odd items, including a pleasing gallery of vintage 3-D ‘Realist’ stills,…