THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
****
USA
The megalomania of a Hollywood producer is presented through his relationships with a glamourous star, a talented director and a cynical scriptwriter.
   Clearly biased, somewhat derivative and not quite as biting as it imagines itself to be, but nonetheless, a glossy, ambitious and entertaining treatise on Hollywood dealings. 
dir: Vincente Minnelli
cast: Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Barry Sullivan, Gloria Grahame

BEND OF THE RIVER
***½
USA
Anthony Mann directs Jimmy Stewart in this essay on the hardships that faced the Oregon pioneers in the 1840s. It features lots of sweeping vistas and is entertaining enough, but it's wobbly and lacks the complexity of the other Mann-Stewart Westerns (it's probably the weakest of the five).
   Arthur Kennedy plays the shifty though charismatic villain, and it's astounding how much sexual tension he musters up with Hollywood's most wholesome movie star. In the opening half-hour alone, they exchange enough heavy leers, pregnant pauses and ambiguous grins to fill several montages on gay subtexts and cowboys. Then there's all the innuendo about giving up one's wild ways and the psychological struggles of settling for the straight and narrow. The two continue sizing each other up for much of the film and Jimmy looks on with frustrated jealousy every time Kennedy forced himself to kiss the very pretty Julia Adams.
   Funnily enough, Rock Hudson also pops up in an early role, more to flash his blinding set of teeth than to do any acting.
dir: Anthony Mann
ph: Irving Glassberg
cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julia Adams, Rock Hudson, Lori Nelson, Jay C. Flippen, Stepin Fetchit, Henry Morgan, Chuby Johnson

THE CARD
**½

CASQUE D'OR
***½
France
When you think of France in the Belle Epoque, you conjure up a fantasy of a place so sensuous and otherworldly in its beauty that it could arguably never be captured by a mortal filmmaker. Several highly esteemed movie fans however, believe Jacques Becker achieves precisely that in this glowing romance between the immaculately sculpted Simone Signoret at her most bewitching and an intelligent though miscast actor called Serge Reggiani, who sports a moustache approximately three times the size of his head. The plot is very much in the pulpy noir tradition - a misunderstood convict falls for a femme fatale and finds himself trapped in the crooked dealings of the underworld - but Becker milks it for evocative mundanities and grounded emotions.
dir: Jacques Becker
cast: Serge Reggiani, Simone Signoret, Claude Dauphin, Raymond Bussières, Odette Barencey, Loleh Bellon, Solange Certin, Jacqueline Dane, Gaston Modot

CLASH BY NIGHT
***
USA
Fritz Lang transported this Clifford Odets Broadway-realist soap opera from Staten Island to an obscure fishing village. So as to undercut the staginess of the dialogue and situations, he shoots much of the opening act like a documentary - with natural light, on location and keeping his distance from the actors. The freshness and the detail are absorbing. But then the picture loses some interest as things turn hysterical and claustrophobic.
   World-weary Barbara Stanwyck marries a good-natured oaf and tries very hard to resist animal attraction to cynical, overtly sexual Robert Ryan. Guess what happens after - bear in mind, the anti-heroine has the option to end up destitute or domesticated.
   As soon as she strides into frame and downs a whisky Stanwyck dominates her scenes as well as everybody else's, which goes a long way towards making the film at least half-compelling. Another plus is an early supporting role for Marilyn Monroe. She's not yet giddy, glamourous or breathy, but she's already very lovely.
dir: Fritz Lang
cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, Paul Douglas, Marilyn Monroe, Keith Andes, J. Carroll Naish

FORBIDDEN GAMES
*****
France
Probably the most honestly devastating of all war films, René Clément's only covers a couple of air raids, barely features any guns or soldiers, and for the most part takes place in an idyllic subsection of the French countryside, left entirely unscathed by the invading Nazis. This is where Paulette - played with uncanny naturalism by 5-year-old Brigitte Fossey - wanders off to, clutching her dead puppy and having just witnessed Nazi fighter planes mow down her parents. She's shocked, to be sure, and petrified. But - on the outside, at least - she isn't paralysed by her fear, or snivelling like every well-behaved, sufficiently briefed movie child ought to. The grief process she undergoes - or, more precisely, doesn't - is all the more viable, arresting and thought-provoking for being so unorthodox and unsentimental.
   Shock and denial and mourning and [non-]acceptance don't filter through her in any neat trajectory. They descend simultaneously in a nasty jumble. Despite her considerable resilience and tenacity, she isn't equipped to sort through it - even the most evolved 5-year-old is unequipped to grapple with death. But because of the war, Paulette is forced to, and - what's more - determined to. Death is set to define her worldview from this day onward, and she is bent on researching it and examining its every facet. Since her understanding of death and grief is unconventional, her means of coping with them are even more so.
   The only person in the village who can relate to her plight on a primal level is another child, Michel (the similarly indelible Georges Poujouly, who - as an actor - already possesses an adult's dignity and sensitivity). Michel isn't as struck by the morbidity and the absurdity of Paulette's eventual demands as he is by his desperate need to see her happy and at peace. So, if this means stealing crosses from the villagers' graves and constructing a miniature but (in their eyes) no less legitimate cemetery of their own, he is prepared to go along.
   In presenting their actions, Clément takes on an alert but unassuming stance to match the children's. Where others would pile on violins and restless pianos, he opts for a lyrical acoustic guitar or, more often, simple silence. Where others would prod lumpy crocodile tears out of their pre-pubescent puppets, he stands back to let them breathe and take in the surrounding circumstances spontaneously and without force. His images are stark and organic. He drains the picture of every drop of bathos or melodrama - in fact, he strips it to a core, non-invasive portrait of what is, from this perspective, a perfectly valid way of going about things.
   The adult characters' ignorance, confused prioritising and casual hypocrisy threaten to turn them into caricatures throughout the movie. But they're portrayed with an open-faced, mellow spirit, which - if it doesn't quite pass for warmth - still speaks of a basic, though weathered, humanity: a pattern of behaviour not easily perturbed and on many levels bizarre, but completely palatable within the context of an ingrown, unfussy day-to-day survivalism that has already withstood one war.
   If you're not prone to sympathise with these particular grown-ups, it's because you're given the sense that even war and brutality are no match for their obstinacy and self-preservation. If they're struck down, they can either succumb to that already-inevitable state of permanent peace (that doesn't seem all that removed from a content and uneventful life in the country), or they can get up and continue with the house- and field-work. There is very little conscience or compassion left in them for a war to extinguish.
   In this context the crucial terror of war doesn't lie in its maiming and bloodletting, but in the violence it can do to to an unformed, still-shatterable mind. The opening images of anonymous lives annihilated on a country field are horrific in a very immediate way. But their horror doesn't begin to compare to the final impact of watching an ocean of aid-seekers swallow up Paulette in her doomed search for the only human being that could offer her the warmth and understanding to combat a stolen childhood.
dir: René Clement
wr: René Clement, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
ph: Robert Juillard
m: Narciso Yepes
cast: Brigitte Fossey, Georges Poujouly, Amédée, Laurence Badie, Madeleine Barbulée, Suzanne Courtal, Lucien Hubert, Jacques Marin, Pierre Merovée

HIGH NOON
*****

IKIRU
*****
Japan
Akira Kurosawa is most famous for his sweeping medieval epics, but one of his best pictures is this intimate contemporary drama about a town hall official who finds out he has less than a year to live. Kurosawa is as adept at arranging warriors amidst a soaring landscape as he is at framing menial workers against claustrophobic, soul-deadening interiors. His pure, flowing visual style overwhelms the sentimental nature of his material. Rather than naïve and maudlin like many meditations on death and regret, this one is profound and richly moving.
dir: Akira Kurosawa
wr: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto
ph: Asakazu Nakai
cast: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kyoko Seki, Miki Odagiri, Kamatari Fujiwara, Makoto Koburi, Kumeku Urabe

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
***½

THE LIFE OF OHARU
***½

LIMELIGHT
***½

MONKEY BUSINESS
***½

MOULIN ROUGE
**
USA
Toulouse Lautrec's days spent at the Moulin Rouge.
   A beautifully photographed but leaden biopic, with a hammy central performance and a claustrophobic recreation of its famous setting. Cinematically it has been eclipsed by Baz Luhrmann's much later, much more potent version.
dir: John Huston
ph: Oswald Morris
cast: José Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Suzanne Flon, Claude Nollier, Mary Clare, Katherine Kath, Muriel Smith, Harold Kasket

THE NARROW MARGIN
****
USA
A gangster's widow is reluctantly transported from Chicago to Los Angeles to testify at a trial with two hitmen stalking her.
   A tense, fast-moving sleeper in the Hitchcockian fashion that even compares favourably to work of the Master's very own. It boasts effective twists, fantastic camerawork and a strong concept, despite a tendency to overlook matters of logic practicality.
dir: Richard Fleischer
cast: Charles McGraw, Marie Windsor, Jacqueline White, Gordon Gebert

ON DANGEROUS GROUND
****
USA
A disillusioned city cop is sent to work in the country.
   Like most of Ray's films, this aims to present the unexplored aspects of a genre, and present even people's most despicable characteristics from a sympathetic, humanist view. The ambition overwhelms the execution and the anti-hero's disillusionment is typically overwrought, but the film is atmospheric throughout, absorbing and unexpectedly affecting. Several of its plot points were later employed in the "Insomnia" films (1997, 2002).
dir: Nicholas Ray
cast: Robert Ryan, Ida Lupino, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Anthony Ross, Ed Begley

OTHELLO
***½
USA/Italy/France/Morocco
Doused in ever-shifting shades of blackface, Orson Welles makes for a rather grotesque Othello. He's neither convincing nor compelling in the role. But with a more capable lead and a solid budget, this could have very easily made for a classic.
   Welles is one of a select circle of filmmakers fascinated but not intimidated by Shakespeare. Lesser talents are content to have famous actors recite the famous lines, dump the camera a metre in front of them and ensure that the movie experience differs as little as possible from the stage experience. Welles introduces drive and oxygen to the process of adapting Shakespeare on film. His approach is all frenzied movement, eerie shadows and canted frames. The photography is beguiling.
   The problem in this version is that the language gets lost in the flurry of extravagant but seemingly disjointed images. This seems to have come about as a result of insufficient funds more than due to any overt creative decision. The sound is poorly recorded and even more poorly dubbed. In order to avoid synching problems in post-production (and this didn't really work), Welles tried to show as little as possible of the actors speaking. So a lot of monologues are delivered from a great distance or with the actor's back to the camera.
   Welles shot the film at irregular intervals between 1949 and 1952 without ever securing a steady source of money. Actors were left to languish around the various locations (several had to leave mid-production due to conflicting schedules) until enough along the way of a budget arrived to shoot another scene. And this shows in the film: it feels patched-up and panic-stricken.
dir: Orson Welles
ph: Anchisi Brizzi, G.R. Aldo, Georges Fanto, Oberdan Trojani, Alverto Fusi
cast: Orson Welles, Michael MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier, Robert Coote, Hilton Edwards, Michael Lawrence, Fay Compton, Nicholas Bruce, Jean Davis, Doris Dowling, Joseph Cotten, Joan Fontaine

PAT AND MIKE
***½

RANCHO NOTORIOUS
***
USA
Fritz Lang brings all his German efficiency to yet another cheap, studio-bound Western about the taming of Marlene Dietrich, doing her standard, bang-up job as the aging dance hall hostess. This time the man to make her reconsider her sinful ways is played by weathered, bushy-eyebrowed Arthur Kennedy. In between spitloads of innuendo, Marlene repeatedly dubs him young, handsome and virtuous. This is that much funnier for the fact that Kennedy's google-eyed double-takes recall Peter Lorre's from an earlier, better Lang picture.
   This one is narrated in song - the kind of solemn, hefty folk anthem parodied in "Cat Ballou" (1965).
dir: Fritz Lang
cast: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, Gloria Henry, William Frawley, Lisa Ferraday

THE QUIET MAN
*****

SUMMER WITH MONIKA
***½
Adolescent lovers decide to leave civilization.
   Uneven in tone, but marked by a freshness and sincerity that makes it feel ahead of its time.
dir: Ingmar Bergman
cast: Harriet Andersson, Lars Ekborg

THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT
****½

VIVA ZAPATA
***½

THE WHITE SHEIK
***
Italy
Federico Fellini's first solo directorial effort was this gentle satire about country newlyweds at peril in the big city, with zealously gesticulating Leopoldo Trieste as the husband and hazy Brunella Bovo as the wife. It's pleasant, if arbitrary and drawn-out, for the most part, with the occasional flavourful section that hints at Fellini's future mastery of atmosphere.
dir: Federico Fellini
wr: Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, Michelangelo Antonioni
cast: Leopoldo Trieste, Brunella Bovo, Alberto Sordi, Giulietta Masina, Lilia Landi, Ernesto Almirante, Fanny Marchio, Gina Mascetti