Reviews

Like in "The Thin Man" there is an awful lot of drinking going on and some murder intrigue between the cocktails, but no Myrna Loy, and no Asta, instead there is Ginger Rogers who is not dancing, only acting, but doing well in keeping up the comedy, for it is a criminal comedy that desperately tries to keep some criminal intrigue going, which only gets mixed up in a lot of extra intrigues, while like one of the actors you desperately wait for the lost actress to turn up, who never turns up, no matter how much she is constantly discussed, and when someone like her at last turns up and with a shotgun she is just a disguised man. The music is good though, and gives the film a lot of fine atmosphere, as the main theme keeps constantly returning and forms part of the intrigue, because the singer of the song is the lost actress. That's the only way we get to know her.

There were four films made with Dennis Waterman as the reluctant agent who after the loss of his wife and child in a terror attack is unwilling to rejoin the game but is nonetheless persuaded to do so by chief Susan Jameson, a very cool dark lady in perfect control of many dark and weird and random operations, for which she succeeds in engaging the very hot-tempered and volatile Waterman who is constantly threatening to wander off and break all engagements, but who nonetheless seems to succeed in fulfilling them. This is not the best one of the four episodes, it is rather muddled, as Moscow interests and intrigues are mixed up with terror projects of the IRA, and there is a German agent mixed up also, a certain very unsympathetic Schroeder, whose motivation never is explained: he just acts "on his own behalf", but one suspects that he was mixed up in that German terror attack which killed Waterman's wife and child, lost some dear beloved like him and therefore had reasons for infinite revenge. Leo McCarey plays a former Soviet agent who too quickly is sorted out, like another IT expert agent as well, whom we actually see being murdered. There are too many thugs, violent murders, loose ends and unexplained mysteries and motivations here, although it is a great action thriller, though second to "Dark Secret", which probably is the best one of the four.

Each film of Chopin tells a different story. This is one of the best, if not the best, and could be the truest. For once George Sand doesn't dominate at all but is reduced not just to a second fiddle but to the last fiddle. His relationship with her is almost too realistically settled with, and not even her children are allowed to play any significant part. The story of the film is that of a late descendant of countess Potocka, a friend of Chopin's to whom he dedicated many of his compositions, who was married to a Polish nobleman who betrayed Poland to the Russians, who gave his wife many children who all died, after which she deserted him. Her late descendant claims in 1945 to have some letters written by Chopin to her, which indicate that their relationship was something serious, while at the same time the letters reveal some less flattering sides of Chopin. They cause a scandal, they are not published but suppressed, but the descendant insists on their authenticity, and when the Polish communist politruks threaten her and condemn her, she apparently commits suicide on the very 100th anniversary of Chopin's death, or was she defenestrated from the eighth floor, like so many of undesirables taken care of by the communists? The film has a startling documentary character, shifting between black and white (in all the modern scenes) and colour in all the 19th century scenes. Chopin is well portrayed by Paul Rhys, his music accompanies the entire film in wonderful, exquisite, sensitive and convincing interpretations by Valentina Igoshina, the countess Potocka is impersonated by three different actresses on different occasions, but on the whole the film is a masterpiece of an honest effort at consistent truthfulness. Its consistent realism is more than convincing, and its beauty is unforgettable.

This is actually a very competent thriller and extremely exciting as such, although it's just about a gambling house in Reno. "I am sure this system is infallible, because I made it," says the genius of the students, and they all go for it. The best actor is Brian Keith who sets the real thriller off, having had some post traumatic war syndromes and committed to a hospital, which he never wants to return to ever, while he himself will lead the way to it. There are many fascinating scenes here, the camera work is magnificent especially among the gambling crowds, and it's a virtuoso direction and dialog all the way, so this isn't just a B-movie. Anyone could be thrilled by its qualities, and anyone could be seduced by Kim Novak.

A former agent being tricked back into business to find out what is going on regarding an old friend and colleague of his blackmailing some unidentified person who has too much to hide. The mysteries are revealed only gradually, and you as an audience are as confused as Dennis Waterman as John Neal who suspects nothing but trusts no one and has reasons not to. His old friend and colleague Jim Caine (Sean McGinley) wants Dennis to cover him in his murky dealings which are too murky for his own or anyone's good. The film begins with a spectacular bank robbery which actually opens the drama, as one of the treasures found are Nazi mementos from the Second World War belonging to a family of very high status. We don't learn that until more than half way into the film, when innocent victims already have started piling up at the morgue. The less said about this M. P.'s progress and means the better, but no brutal murders can completely cover the truth. When Dennis finally takes his leave from his employers he hopes to never see them again. It's a fascinating thriller constantly developing and extremely skilfully written and done, and you just can't afford to miss any detail.

An insurance man (Dennis O'Keefe) comes to town to clear things up about a suicide committed by the leading man of the town, since there is no trace of the gun nor of any bullet he begins to suspect murder, which in that case would offer double indemnity to the beneficiary, which is why he finds the question important and doesn't tire of digging in it to stir up every kind of trouble in the town, making everyone nervous and unhappy, since it soon becomes clear that everyone had all reasons in the world to kill the so called suicide. The sheriff (William Bendix) has all the cards on his hand, he knows who did it but keeps as silent as all the town, and the key scene is when he and O'Keefe sit waiting in the dark in the house of the murder waiting for the murderer to turn up, and the sheriff tells Dennis a story. He is not allowed to finish it, since they are disturbed by another one coming. It is a very intelligent murder case with a wonderful dialog all the way, and Barbara Britton is splendid as the leading girl who in the beginning drops all her Christmas presents getting down from the train, which is where Dennis O'Keefe steps in. Everything is good here, the photo, the music, the actors, all covering up for an unfathomable mystery, while in the end the insurance man has to realise that some illusions should not be shattered.

The idyll is perfect with only one murder in the last 12 years, and then a corpse is discovered after an exclusive dinner party with all the local tycoons. Unfortunately that corpse is discovered by a former detective who was hoping never having anything to do with any crime again, but the police won't let him alone and persuade him to help them with the investigation with threads to all the most important people of the community. Fortunately he gets the local doctor to assist him, the beautiful Sarah Lind, who as the temporary coroner discovers what killed the poor young man, who at the party had some quarrel with the most important local tycoon, claiming he knew who his unknown father was and pressing suggested siblings for money. It's a tangle of course, but fortunately that ex-detective gets things sorted out, and although filmed in Canada and not in Martha's Vineyard the scenery is relishable throughout for its beauty and wild romantic character.

It's a fast thriller constantly gaining speed, and it is not easy to follow all the sudden turns for good and for worse in this violent action stew of intrigue. A scientist is successfully smuggled out of East Germany and hidden in "a safe place" at the harbour of Hamburg, a very rugged place to my liking, from where an English skipper (Forrest Tucker) is paid handsomely to get him out of there over to England. The problem is there are others also interested in this case of an important Polish scientist with advanced knowledge of matters beyond anyone's conception. So there are some hunts both to save him and to get him, and when finally the guns come out to force the situation, Forrest Tucker begins to have had enough of fisticuffs and assaults and atrocities hounding him everywhere, while Eva Bartok in what must be regarded as one of her best roles actually finally saves the situation by her own bold initiatives and civil courage. It's a fast and entertaining film, Val Guest knew how to make such films of sustained action and suspense, and at least you will not be bored.

Jeremy Brett makes a memorable performance here as the good soldier who is the ideal good man to everyone around him but who has terrible inner conflicts to battle worse than any war. The two couples meet at a German spa and spend a lot of time together associating with other prominent guests as well in an ideal environment with perfectly idyllic music (very much Schubert) and splendid weather, everything is beautiful, but it is all only appearances. The good soldier's wife has some outbursts, and then suddenly there is a drama present. The story and events are not very dramatic, although there are some surprising deaths and two suicides and a case of permanent insanity, but the appearances keep constantly in perfect style, there is no breach of etiquette, the constant politeness keeps dominating all the relationships and their innocent activities in a perfect paradise of idylls, while the tragedy ends up definitely dominating everyone's lives and future, while we naturally must wonder: whatever will the widow finally make of the whole thing?

Speed and truth was always the motto of Reuter's news agency, and those two characteristics certainly dominate this film, especially speed. Everything is fast here, the dialog keeps constantly firing off, and everything keeps happening at once. Whether you like journalism or not, it's a great story of faith and stubborn integrity constantly fighting incredulity and stupidity, and although it turns out critical at times, the truth always gets through in the end. Edward G. Robinson makes a great portrait of the fantastic news reporter who started with carrier pigeons, being called the "pigeon fool", but always followed the development and made his progress with it. Edna Best makes the endearing part of his wife, Eddie Albert is more interested in writing poems than in his master's craze about pigeons, Nigel Bruce makes a wonderful sponsor and friend both in need and in times of crisis, and there are other grand old actors contributing also. The height of the drama is the murder of President Lincoln and its stormy reactions, and William Dieterle has made a good job of it. This one of those classical biopics of Hollywood from the 30s on.

This is great entertainment from beginning to end mainly because of its brilliant dialog that works like cross fire all through in a labyrinth of constant bewildering complications of a murder case, in which the murderer immediately confesses to the murder and then is poisoned to death in jail. His reason for the murder was jealousy over his wife, who was seeing a certain racketeer called Lucky Conroy - the film begins with his murder. More will follow. The detective called upon to resolve this mess of amassing murders is a magician who constantly plays wonderful tricks on everyone around which certainly amuse the audience, especially the trick with the duck, called out from nowhere. It's a delightful thriller reminding of the best days of William Powell, Myrna Loy and Asta, the 'Falcon's dog Braintrust would have matched Asta perfectly. In the end there is one murder too much and even by mistake, but it's a long way before you get there through all the intricacies of a goofed up criminal intrigue.

They stick together and separate occasionally, taking opposite stands, sometimes with the confederates and sometimes with the unionists, but in spite of wide gulfs of differences they always end up together again, Joel McCrea, Zachary Scott and Douglas Kennedy, they are bound together by a ranch which they share called "Three Bells", and that's why they attach small bells to their spurs to make them tinkle more distinctly wherever they go. Two dames are also involved, the lovely and adorable Dorothy Malone, who is marrying Joel McCrea, and Alexis Smith as a saloon entertainer, singing occasionally and sticking her fingers into their business occasionally. She is the best acting performance here, with great nuances making her character the most intriguing, occasionally (when no one sees it) wiping off a tear or two. There is a great villain also, Victor Jory at his most unpleasant, a thoroughly vicious sadist who likes to burn ranches, kill people and steal any kind of loot. The frame of the drama is the civil war and how it affects Texas, being torn apart by unionists and confederates and ultimately in the hands of the Texas Rangers, and the political shifts of the drama add to its interest. Joel McCrea never gets his Dorothy Malone as another gets her instead, but he finds someone else, or perhaps she is the one who finds him, after having looked for him throughout the film.

The most memorable part here is Anne Baxter as Lucille, a nurse, who marries the eldest of the four brothers, William Holden, while that practically makes her the wife of all of them, since they stick together, live together and work together and even risk their lives together. That's the problem. In such a risky business there has to be some casualties, and they are devastating. In the 20s it was definitely risking your life challenging the weather if it was fog or rains or storms or snows or any rough weather, and unfortunately these daredevil flyers were not sensible enough to back down and refuse the challenge, especially if it gave you a bonus. So actually three of the four brothers end up badly, one of them survives but as a cripple, and one simply disappears completely. The fourth one was sensible enough to stick to the earth while he was still alive and got an ordinary humdrum job on the ground. But the other three had lives worth living.

It is all very well made but hardly convincing. Tom Payne is always good but seldom gets the opportunity to demonstrate any depth of character. Donna Reid is always lovely and charming and a good actress, but here her talents are rather wasted on superficial Caribbean intrigues so often repeated in other swashbuckling features. Lon Chaney makes a sympathetic performance, actually the most sympathetic character in the film, but he gets nothing for it. The boy helps the entertainment. The intrigue is muddled and complicated, there is no clarity, motives are banal and selfish, and the story is Caribbean pulp fiction. In brief, you have seen it all before and in better films than this.

Carol Reed could have made something of this, but Herbert Leder is no Carol Reed. There is nothing wrong about the story, but a thriller including children like this without any psychology becomes very thin. The best actor is Renato Baldini, and he makes almost every scene in which he acts interesting. Dolores Sutton as the mother is the only good person of any psychological insight, she knows her former husband, can read him and sees through his wicked intentions, while the main asset of the film is the great sequences around the monuments of Athens, when they are all chasing each other, one to carry through a murder, another to stop that at any cost, two fathers vying for fatherhood, and policemen all over the place without knowing what they are chasing or for what, while at least they know they have to rescue lives. As a Greek thriller drama about a child it is fairly realistic, while the child should not talk to strangers.

Philip Carey comes home from the war with a damaged leg and finds his wife dead with a fired gun in her hand. The police reports it as suicide but is very well aware that it is murder, but in order to bring out the murderer, who must make some mistake, he makes it official that it was suicide. Many are involved in the plot - Dennis Price, Christopher Lee, James Hayter and Pier Angeli as the star, singing at a night club. With some threads of the intrigue in her hand, but she says nothing. This muddled up murder mess ends up in a chase for a couple trying to get away, and here is perhaps the most interesting acting performance - Anthony Newley, still quite young, as the artful pilot chasing the fugitives by air and managing a miraculous landing in the Atlas mountains. Philip Carey has a hard time being driven out of his wits by this murder with several attempts on his life as well, but no one can guess the real story behind this intricate jealousy intrigue, while everyone lands safely after all.

One of them is a psychologist, and he claims to be the expert on fishy family business. The main plot of the story is the reading of a will, written by an old man of 20 million dollars ten years ago with the order that it should not be opened until after ten years. The family gather after ten years, but the main heir, an adopted daughter, has been missing for many years, no one knows where she is or what happened to her, and the lawyer reading the will suggests the others will vote that she is dead or not. All votes except one think she is dead. And then her death is investigated. This is very much like an Agatha Christie mystery, all gathered together to solve a mystery murder, but this is America, so there is not only poison but also guns are pulled and used, so there will be more deaths before anything is solved. Some may like it, others may not. The music is excellent though, and that's what kept up my interest the whole way. The actors are all good enough but no one especially outstanding. On the whole, it is good for not being Agatha Christie.

I would call this an impossible film to direct, with all those children and pirates playing around, the pirates getting more hysterical than the children because of their pranks, while Alexander Mackendrick actually keeps the whole polyphonic drama in very firm hands in spite of all its diversions and violently upsetting turnings, just the introductory storm scene when the tempest actually blowing the whole mansion of the family to pieces, is a masterpiece of cinematic innovation. At the same time it is a psychologically extremely interesting drama, especially for child psychologists, as the film shows exactly the natural reaction of the children to everything that happens to them. The pirates were not willing to get all those children on their hands, but once they had them they had to mind them with a vicious circle of consequences to handle, which finally brought them all down. Anthony Quinn is brilliant as captain Chavez, and he does get the last laugh.

This is psychologically interesting, since it delves into the mind of a recently released mental hospital patient, who was reluctantly released by his psychiatrist who didn't consider him cured well enough, but his colleagues insisted on the release, so our man got his chance. Did he succeed in becoming a normal person again? He probably would have if the jealousy of a blundering father hadn't interfered, when he fell in love with his daughter. A case like this needs some delicacy in handling, which the father was incapable of. He didn't get what he deserved, but our over-sensitive nervous patient of some liability might have cured himself in taking responsibility for his consequences. It is a beautiful low-budget film with a booming sea and exquisite music all along, so it deserves being considered as something more than just a B-melodrama.

The final sequence of this film, of saving a ship in distress with very dangerous high explosive cargo, is very reminiscent of Powell-Pressburger's "A Matter of Life and Death" ten years earlier, where the final sequence was the dismantling of a booby-trap. It's the same supreme tension here, while here many lives are depending on getting the explosive cargo out of the ship, which is a very risky operation demanding very hard work under full storm. I always liked Stanley Baker's films, he always made them better than they really were, although he certainly was no dashing good-looking film star crushing any hearts but rather a grim silent tough die-hard with nothing attractive about him. Victor McLaglen gives a final bow here and makes a full brilliant show of it more often with bottles than without. Among the others you notice Robert Shaw offering some rivalry, Rupert Davies and a very young Barry Foster with no red hair, since this is in black-and-white. It's a magnificent adventure film with authentic north Spanish sceneries and exquisite guitar music all the way, but the best scene is when Victor McLaglen can't really hold back when his intended bride is changing clothes for something risqué. Especially in that scene McLaglen demonstrates the full scope of his uniquely personal art of acting.

Richard Dean Anderson makes a very gruesome part here as a police officer totally obsessed by his wife, whom he cannot leave in peace although she goes at any length to shake him off her life. There are bothersome lacks in coherence in this horror thriller which includes some random murders that are not logically explained. Susan Day as the harassed wife constantly brought to the brink of nervous collpase is pretty and has to fight hard to withstand all the horrible trials brought upon her by her desperately loving husband. No happy ending and they lived happily ever after here, on the contrary, the abyss constantly broadens and gets worse, and then the ending does not quite make sense either. The script is a bit thick, the atrocities keep mounting, and you don't want to watch all this again.

This is a very stylistic and almost surrealistic Italian neo-realistic drama from the last days of the war. The city without a name is bombed out, all you see of it is ruins, but in these ruins the remnants of people try to survive by any means possible. An American jeep picks up a boy who has run away from his seminary in a desperate search for his home among the ruins, but all he finds is death. A large part of the ruined city is out of bounds because of the infection risk since there are too many corpses still lying around. But even here people risk their lives for anything to eat. The boy is taken care of by a small company of outcasts, Anna Maria Ferrero in her first role as a delicate sickly girl, the company being supported by a burglar and a prostitute who plan to marry, but he is killed. There is a small girl also who never says anything as she is in a constant state of shock. The boy is played by Mischa Auer Jr, he is only 16 years and makes a gripping performance of a very young man who is faced by the facts of life in the ruins of the war. The story is by Cesare Zavattini, who wrote most of the scripts for Vittorio de Sica, and his name is a definite warrant for a noteworthy film. The music is very peculiar. The female lead is the beautiful Marina Berti.

True stories are always invaluable when they are reconstructed on film. The great actuing qualities of both Peter Strauss and Rachel Nicotin add to the convincing authenticity of the story, which must touch the hearts of any viewer, especially parents. There is not much drama here, no violence, only emotional passions, especally on the part of the father, and the general mood of the film is rather languid and soft. The one contrast in the drama is the surprise entrance of the biological father, who makes a rather bizarre supporting figure bordering on the ridiculous, underlining the obvious syndrome of an unnatural mother. The question is how the husband could trust such a mother at all, with her cocaine fallacy and spurious past, and who never told her husband anything, but he still gave her a chance with very interesting consequences.

Who could believe anything bad about this brilliant businessman, an executive at General Motors, a golden boy admired by everybody and who had an amazing way with women, but when his third wife dies by just dropping off after a night of orgies there has been one dead wife too much, since all of them brought him lots of very much desired money by their demission. But how did he do it, if he did it? That's the object of the investigation here, and there are a lot of flashbacks into his past and his past wives, and two of those cases were never resolved or even reopened. But the third one was just one too many.

This is like a panoramic documentary of contemporary Italian cinema in 1959. Almost all the leading actors of the day have a part in the film , they are like on parade one after the other, and they almost all play themselves. The story is commonplace: a local actor tires of the humdrum routines of his home town and goes to Rome to do something about his career, where he meets Vittorio de Sica as a director, Yvonne Samson as a film star with whom he embarks on a relationship, Amedeo Nazzari as another important man in Cinecittá, and many others. There are many comic instances, as this is a comedy, especially in the beginning before the Roman venture, but finally he gives it all up and returns to his girl at home, Virna Lisi, very young and beautiful. There are many social activities on the way but no drama, but the value of the film is the thorough and very spiritual insight into the sparkling Italian cinema life of that time.