Reviews

I love Hitchcock, and the 39 Steps is possibly my favourite of his films. I'd heard that this was similar, and I've been waiting for the DVD release for years. Eventually, a British newspaper gave away a copy of the film as part of a series of classic movies, so I finally got to see it tonight.

It was very disappointing. On the plus side, Redgrave and Lockwood are great actors and keep this watchable. On the down side, the comedy-thriller balance is tiled well towards the comedy. I haven't seen another film in which Hitchcock played it for laughs to this extent.

The 39 Steps is from the same era, but hardly seems dated to me. This does - the plotting is clunky, and seems ludicrous at times.

Those who like Hitchcock but find his comic moments camp and unfunny might find that this is not their cup of tea. It resembles a Carry On farce in places.

I'm obsessed with the Third Man, and forever looking for similar movies. I get the impression that Carol Reed never made anything comparable to that classic, but this is an interesting, unusual film that is worth seeing in its own right.

It is a political drama about the struggle to control the means of production - no, really. Michael Redgrave and Emlyn Williams play two young men from a dour north-east mining town who escape, separately, to the bright lights of Newcastle. Redgrave's character is a scholarship kid at the university, while Williams plays a spiv who starts out working as a bookie but soon finds other dubious business interests.

They return home for different reasons, and clash over the future of the mine, which the workers suspect is unsafe. It's a surprisingly anti-establishment film for 1940, when Britain was deep into the Second World War, especially given Churchill's famously harsh treatment of striking miners in the 1920s.

This film has all the ingredients of classic noir without actually being a very good movie.

The biggest problem I had with the film was that the characters are an unconvincing blend of naivety and cunning. One minute they're suckered by an old man running a burger bar, the next they're foiling a blackmail plot hatched by corrupt lawmen and wielding guns like they're hardened gangsters.

The ending is equally unconvincing, with the protagonist happily latching onto his death sentence as some kind of salvation that gives him moral certainty in the amoral noir world he's been floundering in. It's as if this is a noir made by people who were anti-noir.

Noir will always involve a clash between innocence and experience but it's not convincingly handled here. It isn't the first noir I'd make that complaint against, either - things like SHadow of a Doubt and Night of the Hunter have a similar unreal atmosphere.

In my opinion the best noir is both believable and hellish; like The Third Man, Double Indemnity, Notorious or Chinatown.

The Wrong Man is in many ways a typical Hitchcock movie, but the fact that it tells a true story makes all the difference. Characters in Hitchcock thrillers are always put through the mill, but when they're real people, when story becomes history, everything changes. It is exciting to watch Richard Hannay being chased by police across Scotland because 39 Steps is only a film. It is interesting to observe the madness in Vertigo because it's symbolic, and a plot device. But The Wrong Man shows us a real, ordinary and very likable family being victimised by the law to the point of destruction, with the wife and mother sliding into mental illness and institutionalisation as a result. I found it extremely uncomfortable viewing, more like a gritty documentary than an escapist thriller. Apparently Hitchcock genuinely feared the police, and fear is the emotion that drives this film. Fear and worry. In fiction, suspense is exciting. In real life, it equates to worry, and I was drained by the end of this film.

Very well made, very well acted, but I won't want to watch it again.

The Pledge is a small but interesting film featuring a nicely understated performance from Jack Nicholson and showing considerable promise for the future career of Sean Penn as director.

It takes as its framework the conventional story of a retired cop who can't let go of an old case. Jerry Black (Nicholson) is hours from retirement when he comes across a murdered child and makes a promise to the mother that he will track down the "devil" who killed her. After handing his badge in he moves to the remote northwestern state where he has traced a pattern of similar killings. He buys a small gas station and tries to locate the murderer and his distinctive black station wagon.

Meanwhile of course his ex-colleagues try to dissuade him. They think he's sliding into alcoholism and madness, and as the film develops the interest revolves around the question of how far Black has retained a grip on reality. In the exhausted, paranoid, driven hero, and its icy northwestern setting, The Pledge strongly resembles Pacino's Insomnia. It's also characterised by a portentous and Mephistophelian atmoshpere reminiscent of Angel Heart.

It remains impressive in its own right, though, with a strong central performance, some stunning cinematography, and one or two unforgettable scenes. The denouement is handled with considerable subtlety and is far more impressive (and meaningful) than famous recent "twists" from films like the Sixth Sense.

The weaknesses of the film include the glamorous but ineffective supporting cast and an opening scene which, as the critic Jason Solomons argues, is possibly a mistake. Start the movie three or four minutes in and settle down to enjoy an intelligent and well-made thriller that will stay with you.

This is a cult movie in the making

This is a film which is outstanding in one particular area, its cinematography. It's shot in a beautiful Expressionist style and is gorgeous to watch.

The film also features a decent performance from Mitchum but is otherwise mediocre. The script has dated badly and I'm afraid this is one of those films where you think "how did audiences of the Fifties ever fall for that?" - the plot lacks interest as well as realism. It's also very twee, with the central characters being a pair of cute kids. At some stages it resembles a Scooby Doo episode.

However, I can't emphasise enough that the cinematography is *so* good, it would justify anything. If I could watch any film on a big screen, it would be this one.

Shadow of a Doubt is a very watchable film with an impressive performance from Joseph Cotton. I liked its slow pace and simplicity. Like other movies of its kind - Cape Fear, Night of the Hunter - it sets up a family reeking of ordinariness for an encounter with the macabre, but the menace here is very slow to develop.

It doesn't date too badly, but there is a laugh-out-loud scene where Cotton reveals his murderous past with a complete lack of subtlety. Strange that such a measured, low-key thriller should be so clumsy in its psychology - but then it's easy to say that sixty years later.

One of the kiddy actors, Edna May Wonacott, had me laughing, but she doesn't seem to have acted beyond childhood.

Martin Blank is a hitman who attends his High School reunion, reluctantly. While trying to dodge the question "So what do you do for a living?" he also has to dodge the various heavies and gunmen who would like to put him out of a job. All this while having to explain to an ex-girlfriend why he stood her up on the night of the Ball a decade earlier.

It's a funny story well-acted by the underrated John Cusack and Minnie Driver, and it has a soundtrack of pure 80s camembert which is deeply uncool but (if we're honest) really good too. Anyone who grew up in the 80s will find something to enjoy here.

On another level, though, the film is a very impressive commentary on the career of its lead actor. Cusack made his name playing romantic leads in some of the 80s' tackiest American high-school flicks, and at the time of Grosse Point Blank's release he was a faded star who didn't fit in with the harder-edged films of the Tarantino era. In this film he reinvents himself while paying his respects to Cusack Mk I, launching the mature stage of a career which moved on to classics like Being John Malkovitch. Not bad for a spotty nerd from the 1980s.

Rumble Fish is a teen movie shot in black-and-white, based on the existentialist fiction of Albert Camus and featuring references to Greek poetry. This helps to explain why - despite the presence of 80s stars Matt Dillon and Mickey Rourke - it never played at cinemas in the US and exists today as a video curiosity. It's more likely to appeal to adults than kids but will alienate some older viewers by its showy intellectualism. As Alex Cox said, "it's really pretentious. But it's really good, too".

Among the good things are the beautiful cinematography, the outstanding but neglected soundtrack by ex-Police man Stewart Copeland, the best-ever performances by Dillon and Rourke, and not least the stunning Diane Lane, back in the movies recently after an up-and-down career.

It's a film that oozes cool and which Coppola apparently regards with considerable affection. Give it a chance and you might find it a forgotten classic, though some will simply find it irritating.

I'm not surprised that Pierce Brosnan was chosen for the lead in the 90s remake of this film - it has an awful lot in common with the 007 series in which Brosnan made his name. Ian Fleming's Bond stories were written for post-war, depressed Britain, and aimed at an appeal based on materialistic extravagance as well as thrills. Like Bond, Thomas Crown seems to have stepped straight from the pages of GQ magazine: he wears the finest clothes, drinks the best brandy, eats at the best restaurants, plays golf at the most exclusive clubs, and relaxes by flying planes or playing polo. Of course, he also attracts the most beautiful female police detective to hunt him down after he organises the perfect crime as a kind of hobby alongside his million-dollar financial trading company.

With the plot lacking real excitement and the film noticeably humourless, everything hinges on the relationship between Crown (Steve McQueen) and his pursuer (Faye Dunaway). They are actors with great charisma but pretty one-dimensional in this film, and it has to be said they compare badly with the performances of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in similar roles in the more recent Out of Sight.

The outstanding features of this film are the slick direction (very flashy for the 1960s) and the soundtrack, made famous by the song 'Windmills of your Mind'.

The Third Man is a noir thriller set in postwar Vienna which tells the story of a couple of Americans trying to renew a childhood friendship in a foreign country after growing up to be very different people. Like all of Graham Greene's fiction, the film makes themes of betrayal, the loss of innocence, and the true difficulty of forming apparently simple moral judgements.

Many people count this as their favourite movie, which is remarkable for a British film of the 1940s. It is just a very successful coming-together of many wonderful talents: Greene wrote a classic screenplay, Carol Reed's direction is inspired genius, and Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Joseph Cotton and others contributed unforgettable performances. Anton Karas's theme music is legendary. The cinematography is stunning.

You can become obsessed with this film, and if you do you will want to read Charles Drazin's excellent 1999 book "In Search of the Third Man". I also recommend the reviews by the eminent British critic Philip French, who has much of interest to say about the sources for Greene's screenplay.

Carol Reed fans who are looking for another Third Man will be disappointed by this earlier picture, which has some great cinematography and stylish touches but lacks a story or enough interesting characters. It begins promisingly by focussing on the tensions within a rebel gang in Belfast but, after the inevitable heist, degenerates into an episodic ramble though the city streets, James Mason playing a mannequin's role as a wounded man incapable of sustained dialogue or action. Robert Newton goes to the other extreme, overacting his part as an eccentric artist, though there are good performances elsewhere in the cast. People who know more than me about film-making will appreciate this film for it's cinematic technique, but it dates very badly as a piece of entertainment.