The Informer (1935)

Ford’s atmospheric film is superbly directed and visually impressive, despite some clumsy moments

Director: John Ford

Cast: Victor McLaglen (“Gypo” Nolan), Heather Angel (Mary McPhillip), Preston Foster (Dan Gallagher), Margot Grahame (Katie Madden), Wallace Ford (Frankie McPhillip), Una O’Connor (Mrs McPhillip), JM Kerrigan (Terry), Joseph Sauers (Bartly Mulholland), Neil Fitzgerald (Tommy Connor), Donald Meek (Peter Mulligan, D’Arcy Corrigan (Blind man)

It’s hard to make ends meet in the fog-filled streets of 1920s Dublin. Especially if you are a non-too bright former boxer with an eager eye for the bottle. That describes “Gypo” Nolan (Victor McLaglen), a tough bruiser totally at sea after being expelled from “The Organisation” (that’s the IRA to you and me). Desperate for a bit of cash, Gypo instinctively rats out old friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) to the British in return for £20, cash-in-hand. Guilt will slowly eat away at him over one long, self-destructive evening as his old colleagues from the Organisation ruthlessly hunt down the informer.

Ford’s richly filmed The Informer takes a limited RKO budget and makes it work to spectacular effect, disguising its largely unconvincing Dublin street sets with misty, Murnau-inspired photography from Joseph H August. The Informer is supremely atmospheric, fog coating around the edges of the frame and only interrupted by beaming streetlights or the odd shaft of light – almost all of which actually lead to danger (be it lighting the way to the British headquarters or the dreary basement where the Organisation measure out summary justice). The Informer still feels, in many ways, like a silent film – but in a good way, one where its story and the emotions would be perfectly easy to follow from the striking compositions that flood the frame.

This is Ford at possibly his most stylistic and impressionistic – influenced not just by Murnau but also clearly by Fritz Lang, the closing trial of Gypo feeling like a straight lift from Peter Lorre’s pathetic fate in M. As Gypo stumbles through the streets, he seems haunted by super-imposed images of the Wanted poster that instigated his betrayal – not to mention, his feet buffeted by wind-swept remains of the same poster. This fateful Wanted poster pops up repeatedly, even a version burnt by Gypo in a fire seems to sear through the frame as its edges disappear in flames. It’s a continual reminder to our hero of his weakness, foolishness and lack of character – his betrayal being so selfish that even the British toss the reward money to him with veiled contempt.

Our hero is played by regular Ford mucker Victor McLaglen, plucked from his regular pack to play the lead over the claims of several more prominent stars. Although it won McLaglen an Oscar, Ford selected him because he felt he was the sort of actor (a hard-bitten drinker, whose every fault was well-known to him) that could be manipulated into giving a virtuoso performance. McLaglen’s physicality is perfect for it – a former boxer himself, he’s got the perfect boisterousness and knuckle-ready force the part needs – but Ford also readily identified his vulnerability and nervousness. Deliberately keeping the actor on his toes, changing the shooting order on a day-by-day basis, Ford draws from McLaglen a performance of bubbling, hesitant, unaffected uncertainty. Gypo is forever stumbling over his words, glancing around waiting to be corrected, a sweaty nervous mess when the pressure piles on.

It’s a role that many actors could shine in, so rich is the material, and McLaglen doesn’t disappoint. The Informer follows his collapse in excruciating detail, as guilt leads to drink, leads to further guilt. Ford’s film surprisingly isn’t really awash with sympathy for this deeply flawed, child-like bruiser lost in the world of real men – despite the decency we discover in a man who was expelled from The Organisation because he wouldn’t kill an unarmed man. Chalk it up the director’s old-school ideas of loyalty and his notable Irish sympathies – not going to be easy to hold sympathy for a man who has betrayed both those elements.

Ford gives a striking martyrs death of McPhillip – played by his brother Wallace – who is caught in his home with his sister and mother (Una O’Connor, very good). He takes a few Black and Tans with him, before being machine gunned while climbing out of a rear window, our last view of him his hand disappearing over a ledge, nails scratching loudly on the surface. The members of the Organisation look like raincoat wearing hoods from Chicago, but fitting Ford’s sympathies they don’t leap to decisions (even if they execute anyone they find guilty), setting up a people’s court to trial those they suspect.

Their main suspect is an innocent tailor, excellently played with a mix of affronted innocence and weary defiance by Donald Meek, largely because they initially want to give the benefit of the doubt to Gypo and the string of half-formed, barely credible lies he has pulled together to shake the blame. Doesn’t stop them tailing Gypo during a night on the town, surrounded by ordinary people spending time with him for his new-found money, as he impulsively gives away the cash he has sacrificed his honour for.

The Informer does have a tendency to lay on its moral judgements a little too thickly. There are a few too many slightly sentimental shots of McPhillip’s grieving sister, a little too much of the moral judgement piled on Gypo, for all the passing sympathy for the boxer’s general lack of savviness. The Informer’s final ending, set inevitably in a church, is about as close as a great director like Ford can get to being flat-out bad: on-the-nose, clumsy, hectoring and simplistic and (particularly striking in a film as generally so beautiful as this) badly filmed. Max Steiner’s score similarly forces some of the emotional points a little too strongly, while his use of Irish Folk and Rule Britannia to hammer home points can wear a bit thin.

But there is still a lot to admire in The Informer, not least its extraordinary visual brilliance and the creeping paranoia and claustrophobia of its telescoped plot – you can feel the real influence it must have had on Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out with which it would make a fascinating double-bill. It might make its moral points with a little less subtlety than you would like, but it’s still an expertly executed, richly affecting film.

The Marvels (2023)

Messy sequel, that splits the focus between a host of unfamiliar characters and rushes from set-piece to set-piece

Director: Nia DaCosta

Cast: Brie Larsen (Carol Danvers), Teyonah Parris (Monica Rambeau), Iman Vellani (Kamala Khan), Zawe Ashton (Dar-Benn), Gary Lewis (Emperor Dro’ge), Park Seo-joon (Prince Yan), Zenobia Shroff (Muneeba Khan), Mohan Kapur (Yusof Khan), Saagar Shaikh (Aamir Khan), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury)

The Marvels carries some heavy baggage, being the first flat-out, unarguable mega-flop in the whole Marvel Franchise. It’s a follow-up to Captain Marvel, a film that itself drew a lot of fire from the knuckle-dragging depths of the internet for daring to have a woman in the lead role. The Marvels has no-less than three women in lead roles – although that split focus hardly helps it. After an accident in space, Captain Marvel (Brie Larsen), her honorary niece Monica (Teyonah Parris) – who grew up while an ageless Carol was lost in space – and New Jersey wannabe-hero Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) find themselves teleporting into each other places when they use their powers. Not helpful, when they are fighting to stop a radical leader (Zawe Ashton) of Carol’s old enemy the Kree from destroying a series of planets to restore her own.

That split focus is a big part of the problem with The Marvels, a light-and-breezy fast-paced piece of comic book adventure, so slight that a puff of wind could blow it away. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine there were any discussions about Thor, Captain America or Iron Man having to share the spotlight (and title!) in their first sequels with two other heroes. It’s hard not to feel that Captain Marvel is a supporting player in her own movie (the real POV character is Iman Vellani’s very charming Ms Marvel), struggling to find airtime for her own plot arc, character dilemmas and actions to come into shape.

That split focus is surely partly why The Marvels flopped. With the franchise becoming ever more sprawling, it sometimes feels like you need a PhD to follow the ins and outs of who all these characters are and how they relate to each other. The Marvels never quite knows whether it should be introducing or not Carol’s two co-leads, both floated in from Disney+ TV shows. It says a lot that the final trailers for The Marvels became info-dump recaps of these two shows, and the origins of these heroes, desperately trying to assure people they could enjoy the film without seeing the shows. You can, you just might not really know who or what everyone is.

The Marvels feels like a film cut down to the bone to try and salvage entertainment from its carcass. You can’t help but feel a great deal of plot and context has been trimmed off into the bin while every single inch of the fight scenes (and these are shot with a great deal of dynamism by Nia DaCosta) has been left in. This makes The Marvels feel, almost more than any other film in the franchise, like a relentless rollercoaster to nowhere. Something thrilling or barmy happens every few minutes – from gravity defying fights to worlds exploding, to our heroes visiting a planet where everyone only communicates through song and acts like they are in a Disney Broadway spectacular – but it never quite hangs together. You never quite manage to land on why things are happening or why you should care. And the film hopes that you’ll be so entertained by moments like its lifting of ‘Memory’ from Cats for a key sequence that you won’t particularly mind.

Most unfortunately, the biggest cuts affect Carol and the villain’s plot line. It’s only late on that we discover Carol has effectively caused a catastrophic disaster on the Kree home-world that led to a decades long brutal civil war in the crumbled aftermath. Perhaps because The Marvels is terrified that we might sympathise less with Carol for essentially unilaterally deciding to take revenge on her past tormentors and accidentally triggering a series of catastrophic war crimes, both her guilt for her actions and the justified anger from the Kree (who see her as a sort of Hitlerian figure of mass destruction), it dials down and fudges these facts and tries to keep the material off-screen or buried in busy scenes. This also means Zawe Ashton’s villain is reduced from a woman seeking to re-build her lost homeland to a typical anger-filled baddie with a planet destroying weapon who we unquestioningly can’t sympathise with.

The Marvels tries to find some clumsy room instead for a plot line where Carol feels awkward around her guilt for not seeing Monica in about thirty years. This however get similarly fudged, not least since (good as Teyonah Parris is as a reserved, by-the-book astronaut with superpowers) Monica is a character largely dropped into the film with very little context who it’s easy to forget was even in the first film. Brie Larsen is also, as is the case throughout the film, given barely a second of interesting dialogue or reflective pause to even begin to try and sell these feelings, so determined is the film to fly hell-for-leather towards the next set-piece.

If there is a star, it’s Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan – not least because she gets all the best lines and Vellani’s winning ability to breathe naïve excitement into any single moment (who wouldn’t be thrilled at suddenly flooring bad guys with your heroes?) is incredibly endearing. Since we spend large chunks of this film seeing things entirely from her perspective – and her family get bucketloads of screen time as well – it’s hard not to start to feel the film is about her. Especially since Captain Marvel’s own emotional conflicts, moral failings and attempts to make amends have been so thoroughly de-fanged in editing.

The Marvels isn’t a terrible film. It’s just also not a very memorable one, a well-assembled, well-oiled piece of franchise IP that will entertain you on a Sunday afternoon (which is when I watched it). But it will barely scratch the surface of your memory.

The Defiant Ones (1958)

Kramer’s film is well-balanced mix of drama and message with two strong performances from the leads

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Sidney Poitier (Noah Cullen), Tony Curtis (John “Joker” Jackson), Theodore Bikel (Sheriff Max Muller), Charles McGraw (Captain Frank Gibbons), Lon Chaney Jnr (Big Sam), King Donovan (Solly), Claude Akins (Mack), Lawrence Dobkin (Editor), Whit Bissell (Lou Gans), Carl Switzer (Angus), Kevin Coughlin (Billy), Cara Williams (Billy’s Mother)

The Defiant Ones is a vintage Stanley Kramer message film, one of his best mixings of serious social issues with entertainment. Two convicts escape from a prison transport, making a run for it while chained together at the wrist. They are thief John “Joker” Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), imprisoned for standing up to a racist thug. Cullen is Black – and that’s a big issue in the racist world of Southern America. Forced to work together to survive, despite their mutual distrust and outright dislike, slowly the two form a curious bond – all while dodging the dangers of recapture and falling foul to vigilante ‘justice’ from ordinary people.

The message of The Defiant Ones is pretty clear to see, but Kramer’s film manages to avoid laying it on too heavily, mostly letting it be seen in everyday casual prejudice. Starting with Jackson’s constant use of the word “boy” – and his complete failure to understand why Cullen finds this grating. Jackson has already used the n-word the very first time he speaks to Cullen, side-by-side in the prison transport. Most of the police and enthusiastic deputies helping them are itching to release fierce dogs on the escapees (it’s clear why). The hostility Cullen immediately encounters when they are briefly caught by turpentine workers, accelerates with terrifying speed into ropes being flung over lampposts for a lynching (Jackson’s protest, that you can’t lynch a white man, is telling in itself). Even when they encounter a scared child, he jumps to Jackson to protect him from Cullen (he even assumes Jackson must be Cullen’s guard).

The constant repetition of the dangers and assumptions behind racism probably gained added force at the time because they a white man shared some of the chance of being suddenly murdered for looking the wrong way. Part of The Defiant Ones aim is to show through adversity that more connects us than not. This also comes out when the two men talk about their lives. When Jackson bitterly describes his life of working-class drudgery in a hotel, scraping and smiling for tips from the rich, Cullen quickly points out it places him only a mild rung above a Black man who wouldn’t even be allowed in the hotel unless he was holding a mop. Both are firmly wedged on the bottom of the social ladder, part of the film’s suggestion that, prejudice aside, they are natural allies.

Allies is what they become, a relationship that develops smoothly thanks to the skilled playing and excellent chemistry between Poitier and Curtis (both Oscar-nominated). They certainly were put through their paces physically – aside for brief doubles (or dummies) work when they traverse some rapids, pretty much all the difficult stunts (all the more so, since they were chained together) were done by the actors themselves. In particular, an awkward escape from a clay pit was remembered by Curtis as possibly the toughest thing he ever did on a film set. Kramer throws the two stars into a parade of dangerous terrain – wading bogs, fast rivers, climbing awkwardly up and down heights – which adds a narrative energy to his issues-based plot.

Poitier at this time had to carry the burden not only of acting, but also representing a significant share of the American population single-handed. Here, he’s sharper, rougher and more resentful than his reputation suggests. Poitier makes Cullen a no-nonsense fist, someone who refuses to take crap from anyone – least of all Jackson. Frequently he uses singing to express his refusal to knuckle down and be silent, and it’s his strength and resourcefulness that does the most to keep the men moving. If Poitier does have a disadvantage, it’s that Kramer’s film gives him less of a personal journey – it’s the world that must accept Cullen, not vice versa, and rightly-or-wrongly the character is little different from his journey (aside a personal loyalty to Jackson) than he was at the start.

This means, Tony Curtis actually many of the more interesting character beats. If Cullen remains largely unchanged, Jackson progresses from holding thoughtless, knee-jerk assumptions into someone who forms his own opinions and loyalties. It’s very well-drawn by Curtis – who relished the chance to play such a complex character – as he slowly reveals Jackson as a vulnerable, regretful and lonely figure under the bluster. So much so, that his late realisation of where his true loyalties lie – an outburst of anger, expertly delivered by Curtis – feels completely earned, as an expression of all the character depth we’ve watched him develop. Its Curtis’ finest performance.

The Defiant Ones does lose some energy in its later stages. It splits, fairly naturally, into three acts: the convicts alone, the convicts at the turpentine camp and the convicts at the secluded home of a lonely woman (an Oscar-nominated Cara Williams) who takes a shine to Jackson. Each of these acts is, if I’m honest, marginally less compelling than the one before, in a film at its strongest when focused on the relationship between its two stars and their conflict with each other, the elements and the wild terrain. There is something more melodramatically familiar about watching Cullen resentfully face down would-be-lynchers, or Curtis’ flirt with a desperate woman who doesn’t even need to know his name to have the hots for him.

There is good work from the rest of the cast. Cara Williams does manage to make a lot of her quietly siren-like character, with surprising depths of selfishness and cruelty – even if her section is the film’s least narratively intriguing. Lon Chaney Jnr is very good as a work boss, appalled by the racist violence his colleagues are capable with. The police crew following our heroes – oddly soundtracked to a constant barrage of music from their portable radios (the only music in the film) – are little more than narrative tools, but Theodore Bikel (Oscar-nominated) finds a fair bit of humanity in his sheriff.

The Defiant Ones though is strongest with the focus on its two excellent leads, with the constant parade of obstacles and dangers it throws them into powering the film strongly without letting it lapse too much into moralising and preaching. It’s a very good balance of high-brow earnestness, and genuine entertainment, one of Kramer’s most successfully films.

Disclosure Day (2026)

Spielberg returns to Close Encounters in a film that explores interesting ideas but doesn’t quite no how to conclude

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Emily Blunt (Margaret Fairchild), Josh O’Connor (Daniel Kellner), Colin Firth (Noah Scanlon), Eve Hewson (Jane Blankenship), Colman Domingo (Hugo Wakefield), Wyatt Russell (Jackson), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Casper Boyd), Elizabeth Marvel (Sister Maura), Hettienne Park (Serena)

After almost fifty years, Spielberg returns to Close Encounters territory: the wonder and fear from learning we might not be alone. Disclosure Day wraps this up in a very modern conspiracy, a shady organisation keeping secrets, but still carrying the optimism and hope Spielberg’s previous encounters with Little Green Men had. Disclosure Day is a film awash in different ideas and concepts, assembled with the flair and skill you expect from Spielberg, but somehow not quite sensational enough to hold together as well as you hope it’s going to from its punchy opening.

It does start with the sort of guts that you only get after a lifetime of directing mega-hits, throwing us into the middle of the story and avoiding clumsy flashbacks and voiceover and trusting we will catch up as we go. Two very different people find their lives surprisingly changed: Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a mathematics genius, feels compelled to steal (to release to the public) a mountain of evidence of extra-terrestrial visitations (and our mistreatment of them) hidden by shady corporation Wardex, run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). And TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) suddenly finds she has the ability to know people’s whole live stories just by looking at them and to speak every language fluently, including a clicky alien dialect that sounds like dolphin chat but is clearly not of this world.

This forms the set-up for a mix of chase movie and earnest plea for patience, understanding and togetherness that feels very in-tune with Spielberg’s greatest hits. Disclosure Day is set in a world where, playing in the background of many scenes, the world teeters on the edge of World War Three – right down to panicked small-town citizens stripping a convenience store to the bones. There is a half-formed argument bubbling here about whether the world is ready for the revelations to come. Will it tip everyone into destructive panic? Eve Hewson’s Jane, a former novitiate, worries it could lead to a brutal shattering of faith – and rightly argues Daniel would have responsibility for the possible negative effects that might come out of whistle-blowing.

It’s avoiding this that is the justification used for by Wardex, our sinister corporation, with its small private army that uses its control of alien tech to call the shots with the government and hunt down whistle-blowers. They are represented by Colin Firth, perfectly cast as an imperiously gruff corporate suit who has just enough humanity bubbling under the surface to make you believe he regrets the things he does. Wardex uses alien mind-control tech, to form a psychic bond with people over great distances, something akin to heightened interrogation and mind-control. These sequences are the film’s stand-outs, Spielberg skilfully using simple effects (both parties pupils switch colour to a sky blue) and effective editing to cross-cut between two people talking while their bodies are miles apart (and he cleverly shows the punishing impact – especially on Firth of the strain of using the device) – as well as the creeping, unsettling horror of mind control pushing people to do and say things they don’t want to do.

It’s a perversion of what Disclosure Day holds up as the alien’s evolutionary advantage: their empathy. That’s the root of Margaret’s powers, which come so naturally to her that when she drops into Russian from nowhere when talking to her slacker boyfriend (a good performance of unreliable decency from Wyatt Russell) or enters into a long fast-paced Korean conversation with a visiting professor in her TV studio (so fast, the official translator can’t even keep up), she doesn’t even notice she’s not talking English. Similarly, her ability to “see” people’s lives – allowing her to offer small titbits of immediate advice that instantly disarm everyone she meets – happens so naturally, it takes her few moments to notice and become scared by her insight.

Her mixed feeling about these skills – which sometimes seem like a blessing and others a terrible curse – are beautifully played by Emily Blunt, who gives a stand-out performance of a driven, successful woman, increasingly terrified but still resolute in the actions she feels compelled to do. Blunt is able to handle the emotion and distress, as well as deliver on the comedy (there is a very funny sequence where, in pelting rain, she grows increasingly frustrated by Jackson’s inability to crush her phone by driving over it with her car). She finds a great deal of sensitivity and gentleness in Margaret, who mixes responsibility, fear, anxiety and exhilaration.

This all comes together very well in the momentum-packed first-half of the film, which sees Margaret and Daniel (a decent performance by Josh O’Connor, that largely fails to really stretch him) travelling together. It’s crammed with inventively shot sequences, such as Daniel and Jane’s escape from a blown countryside safe-house – a brilliant sequence of tracking camera-shots, inventive angles and nerve-tangling tension, helped by O’Connor’s rather sweet nervous fear (“What am I doing?”) throughout. Match that with Margaret’s engrossing pilgrimage across country, and the fascinating use of the alien bond-control device and it makes for a film that sets up a lot of interest.

It’s a shame then that the second half never quite pays this off. As the film proceeds, it feels compelled to start answering the questions that have been bubbling under most of its chase. It’s here the film’s deliberate narrative card-holding starts to work against it. Since our heroes don’t even fully know the questions they should be asking, Colman Domingo’s whistle-blower has to both ask them and then immediately answer them. It leads to a long ‘revelation’ scene, that rather overwhelms us with points about our heroes’ backgrounds stretching back to their childhood that feel both rather heavily delivered and not quite engaging enough.

It also builds towards a sort of modern recap of the ending of Close Encounters, but this time in a TV studio – and it’s interesting to see that Spielberg perhaps still believes that a TV news programme showing footage of aliens would be instantly trusted the world over, without any talk of AI fakery. This long sequence, spooling out the whole backstory of the film’s close encounter phenomena is also similar to Close Encounters in the sense that it’s a simple presentation – but differs in that it lacks the awe-inspiring scale and spectacle of that movie. Without it, it feels somehow slightly drier and more earnest, rather than carrying the sort of magical force the film needs.

It’s part of a sense that Disclosure Day throws a lot of complex stuff at us – our place in the universe, ability to empathise, the potentially dangerous impact revelations can have – but lets these drift away, in favour of a more reassuring and slightly simplistic ending that leaves you feeling its points have been underexplored. This is slightly more disappointing because there has been so much good stuff in Disclosure Day – Blunt is excellent, Hewson and Firth are very good, the direction and film-making on show is first class – but there doesn’t feel like a fully satisfying conclusion is found for everything we have seen.

Jezebel (1938)

A star turn helps to lift this bonkers melodrama into the realm of delicious entertainment

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Bette Davis (Julie Marsden), Henry Fonda (Preston Dillard), George Brent (Buck Cantrell), Donald Crisp (Dr Livingstone), Fay Bainter (Aunt Belle Massey), Margaret Lindsay (Amy Bradford Dillard), Richard Cromwell (Ted Dillard), Henry O’Neil (General Theophilius Bogardus), Spring Byrington (Mrs Kendrick), John Litel (Jean la Cour)

It’s pretty much the first line in any review about Jezebel so let’s start with it: rumour claims it largely exists as a consolation prize for Bette Davis after missing out on Scarlett O’Hara. It makes sense: Julie Marsden is a Southern Belle so similar to Scarlett they could almost be sisters. And Bette Davis is so wonderfully, passionately, brilliant playing her that, if it wasn’t for Vivien Leigh’s landmark performance, Jezebel could make you deeply regret Davis never got that role. But there is more to Jezebel than that, a handsomely filmed adaptation of a hit play by Owen Davis Snr, which predated Margaret Mitchell putting pen to paper. This is delicious, old-school, scandal-tinged Hollywood melodrama, with a star actor in a custom-made star role.

Julie Marsden is a fiery, independent-minded woman in 1850s New Orleans, convinced she can bend the world around her (and the wills of men) to her own whims. She’s engaged to strait-laced Pres Dillard (Henry Fonda), but flirts with playboy Buck Cantrell (George Brent) and won’t play by societies rules. So much so, she plans to attend the high-society Olympus Ball in a dress not of virgin white but Jezebel red. This goes down like a lead balloon; Pres effectively drops her in disgust at her wilful selfishness and a year later returns married to someone else. At which point Julie, a woman spurned, plans revenge even as yellow fever rips through the city.

Jezebel is a great big, melodramatic soap with a celluloid-burning turn by Davis (who won her second Oscar) at its heart. Davis dominates the film, a boundless force of charisma from the moment she sashays (late!) into her own party, whipping her dress up behind with a riding crop to when she departs the film, eyes full of genuine remorse, nursing a fever cart. She plays the role full of sinful flirtatiousness and playful certainty. No one will tell her what to do and where to go – from charging through a bank (captured in a beautiful tracking shot from Wyler) to drag Pres out for the day, to headstrongly ignoring all pleas to not wear her dress of choice, to holding court a year later in her own home planning revenge with burning, destructive glee.

It’s a portrait of bull-headed, feminine, self-destructive foolishness and pride that Davis would make her own, a marvellous star-turn that helps lift this otherwise rather silly melodrama with an inevitable message (this bull-headed floozy will learn the error of her head-strong ways) into something quite magic. That and the superlative richness of Wyler’s direction (and Gregg Toland’s sumptuous camera work), full of dynamic images, as well as a series of top-drawer performances from a strong cast.

Obviously, it’s hard not to spot that Jezebel lacks the scale and colour of Gone with the Wind (has any black-and-white film ever so openly revolved around colour as a source of drama?). But it has a lot of its dramatic energy, despite the fact you can sense its theatrical roots (it splits rather neatly into four acts, each set in a distinct location). Jezebel juggles its balls remarkably well, balancing a focus on Julie’s desire for attention and control with a fine portrait of two different men. George Brent, with a sly, self-satisfied grin as a Don Juan and Henry Fonda, prissy and stuffed-of-shirt (mouthing, at points, an awkward Southern accent) successfully making Pres profoundly wise, surprisingly weak despite his certainty, rigid and unpersuasive.

The pivotal ball-room sequence, and its build-up, works particularly marvellously. Despite Julie’s determination, its clear everyone around her feels it to be a terrible idea. Pres concedes to it with a grudging irritation and, once it becomes clear even to Julie it’s an appalling idea, forces Julie to be swallowed up in her public humiliation. After watching a parade of genteel ladies and gentlemen scurry away from her, as if in fear of catching her loose morals, Pres drags her to the dance floor (despite her pleas). Tracking back, Wyler shows the dance floor clear in moments, leaving just these two dancing alone (Pres even insists the band continues playing), cementing her humiliation. He’s made his point and, even though she slaps him later, even she knows he was right. Not that this will help either of them in the long run.

It’s part of the moral of the story, that sometimes women need a firm hand. (Sometimes literally so, as Donald Crisp’s grouchy Dr Livingston tells Pres). There has to be a punishment for Julie’s willingness to scheme, her constant placing of her own whims above everyone else and her inability to even consider that there might be dangerous consequences to her actions. It doesn’t wear us down though, because Davis is such a dynamic and forceful presence it’s hard not to rather like her. And then, of course, you sort of sympathise with her (even though she is awful and selfish) as a conga-like of damage and guilt leave her reeling before converting her into an ideal self-sacrificing woman.

Of course you watch Jezebel today and can hardly fail to notice that the greatest wickedness all these Southern gents and dames can possibly imagine is turning up at a ball in the wrong dress. Certainly not the slavery all around them. There is a parade of “yasum” slaves in Jezebel, all of them (like old retainer Cato) perfectly content in their lives of servitude. Pres may get a few loose critiques off about the South, but even those are focused on its economic and political short-sightedness: like everyone he’s paternally fond of his naïve property but wouldn’t imagine giving any of them freedom.

It’s another echo perhaps of Gone with the Wind and not a welcome one. Jezebel settles down for another genteel, Birth of a Nation myth of a sublime South doomed for being too noble. Not even the terror of yellow fever – and, at one point, the shooting of an infected man for fleeing his island ghetto – can get in the way of that feeling, that this way of life is not the problem, even if it does allow the odd bad apple like Julie to pop up.

That’s a more awkward political point, but it’s hard to imagine it crossing the mind of many at the time. And it doesn’t stop an enjoyment of Jezebel as a masterfully executed soap. Wyler’s direction is excellent, the filming wonderful and the actors firing on all cylinders. (Fay Bainter also won an Oscar for her fine performance as Julie’s horrified Aunt). Davis of course reigns supreme in the cinematic equivalent of an airport novel, a big, steamy, sex-fuelled melodrama with a handwringing ending of moral enlightenment delivered with such earnest, underplayed sensitivity by Davis and Wyler that it convinces. A big, brash, hugely enjoyable entertainment.

Breaking Away (1979)

Charming and very witty coming-of-age cycling and friendship tale, told with real wit and zip

Director: Peter Yates

Cast: Dennis Christopher (Dave Stohler), Dennis Quaid (Mike), Daniel Stern (Cyril), Jackie Earle Haley (Moocher), Paul Dooley (Ray Stohler), Barbara Barrie (Evelyn Stohler), Robyn Douglass (Katherine), Hart Bochner (Rod), PJ Soles (Suzy), John Ashton (Roy)

It’s a sports film, coming-of-age film. a romance, a rivalry and a film a father and son. It’s about half-a-dozen things, with a bit of Mendelssohn and Rossini like a garnish on top. All the sort of stuff our hero loves. He’s Italian-culture fixated (because he loves their cycling team) Dave (Dennis Christopher), who sprinkles his conversation with Italian turns of phrase – to the exasperation of car-dealer dad (Paul Dooley) – and spends his days either cycling or shooting the breeze of just-left-high-school drifter pals Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley).

But it’s tough being working-class kids in Bloomington, Indiana when the students of local Indiana University treat you like scum, tarring you with the nickname “cutters” (from the local limestone quarrying industry). After one dust-up too many between boys and students, the University President decides to invite the locals to enter a team into their mini-500 cycling tournament (500 laps of the track, winner takes all). The “cutters” rely on Dave to win it – but will he take part when it might mean exposing to his student girlfriend Katherine (Robyn Douglass) that he’s not an Italian exchange student?

All of this breezily comes together very well in Peter Yates’ hugely enjoyable comedy, with a semi-auto-biographical Oscar-winning script by Steve Teisch. Like the smoothest Peloton, Breaking Away is perfectly stream-lined, fast-paced and builds expertly to an exciting chase finish. Along the way, it balances a host of tones and emotions with a delightfully light touch. It’s a very easy film to sit down and relax in, wonderfully shot in a series of pitch-perfect Bloomington locations, most strikingly a former quarry now converted into a beautiful mini-lake.

That’s the favourite haunt of our four friends, all of them (in their own ways) plucky underdogs with chips on their shoulders. Theirs is a life without obvious opportunities and escape routes from this small-town life, with even the local cutting industry slowly withering away. This is made even worse by seeing the rich kids of the University, their whole life ahead of them, swanning around and their town (and that quarry) as if they own them. (Hart Brochner, later to be a bullet-catching punchline in Die Hard is the perfect face of semi-decent entitlement as the leader of these students).

These four are played by a dazzling collection of actors – it’s a bitter irony that Dennis Christopher is the only one of them that didn’t go onto bigger and better things since he is excellent here. Quaid’s Mike is a bullish former-jock, so worried his best years are already behind him that he swings wildly between throwing himself foolishly into things to prove his manhood and giving up immediately before he can be embarrassed. Stern’s Cyril is a lanky, geeky oddball, constantly awkward in every situation. Haley’s Moocher is a secret-romantic, with a trigger-temper when his shortness is bought up (he’s more than capable of punching out a punch clock after one gag too many about his height).

Christopher though is the star, a playfully impressionable optimist who throws himself into things with gleeful abandon. There are no half-measures with this kid. When he loves Italian cycling, he’ll immerse himself in every part of Italian culture – music, food, language, the lot. It’s rather sweet to see his bouncy delight, indulged by his warmly supportive mother (an Oscar-nominated Barbara Barrie in a lovely heart-felt turn) who cooks endless Italian meals (to the frustration of his father, who wants not all this “zini stuff” but American food “like French fries”).

It’s as playfully sweet as his courtship of Katherine – even if that is founded on a great big whopper (and the film is mature enough to know part of growing-up is owning up to this fib). A perfect expression of the film’s everyday joy is a lovely moment where Dave, serenading Katherine with an Italian aria, enthusiastically throws out his arms only to whack his hand on a lamppost, shrugging off his obvious pain with a fixed grin. It’s a moment that you can counter-balance with the rollicking slap Katherine later gives him and their gentle reconciliation as he sits slumped against a different lamppost.

Yates’ film really captures youthful, idealistic joy – best seen in a marvellous showpiece scene where Dave races a truck (ironically full of Italian goods!) on a freeway, Yates not only shooting with pacey thrill, but letting the classic Italian music soar over the soundtrack as Dave keeps pace at 60mph. This scene is then heartbreakingly contrasted with Dave’s encounter with the Italian cycling team he has hero-worshipped – only to find they are ruthless professionals, who see him an upstart they are happy to cheat of victory. Christopher’s vulnerability here during this crushing moment of disillusionment (and the little-boy-lost reassurance he eventually seeks from his parents) brings a real lump to the throat.

Breaking Away is also about bonds of loyalty. The friends may feud and argue, but they are willing to go to bat for each other without a second thought – whether that’s one of them beaten in a fight or one of them struggling in the quarry waters. The commitment of the four of them to winning the race – wearing shirts that proudly proclaim them as cutters – is a perfectly assembled display of race filmmaking (Yates bought a lot of skills across from Bullitt) that builds towards a well-judged feel-good ending.

What might be the most moving beat in Breaking Away though is the father-son relationship between Dave and his dad. Paul Dooley is excellent (and cheated of an Oscar nomination) as this gruff, old-fashioned man who won’t say what he feels and believes in hard-work, sweat and the homespun American life who can’t wrap his head around his more cultured life. (Dooley is also hilarious in capturing Ray’s used-car-salesman cheapness – never has the word “Refund!” raised such laughter). These two spend half the film barely understanding each other, but still loving each other – and the shift in their growing warmth and support is genuinely very moving. While still leaving us room to say “Bonjour” to a neat closing gag between them.

Breaking Away is unfussy, perfectly formed and incredibly sweet and entertaining. It’s a genuinely, heart-felt, well-meant, feelgood film that balances laughter, warmth and drama perfectly. It’s one of those small-scale treats you long for among blockbusters.

East Lynne (1931)

Nearly-lost Best Picture nominee is a bland melodrama that owes what fame it has to its rarity

Director: Frank Lloyd

Cast: Ann Harding (Lady Isabella), Clive Brook (Captain William Levison), Conrad Nagel (Robert Carlyle), Cecilia Loftus (Cornelia Carlyle), Beryl Mercer (Joyce), OP Heggie (Lord Mount Severn), Flora Sheffield (Barbara Hare), David Torrence (Sir Richard Hare)

East Lynne is one of the three hardest historical Best Picture nominees to find today. Along with The White Parade (1934), only one print of it exists held by UCLA (which is better than Ernst Lubitsch’s The Patriot from 1928, of which precisely no copies exist). That fact is probably now the most famous thing about it, with Oscar afficionados (like myself!) hunting down bootleg copies (thanks go to WestLynne for posting a copy, including the hard-to-find final ten minutes) on YouTube. It’s possibly one of the oddest illicit films you could hunt down, not least because in many ways it’s a hilarious dated piece of misery porn, soaking in melodrama and some stilted acting.

It’s loosely based on a tragic Victorian misery novel by Ellen Wood (who, at one point, was nearly as famous as Dickens) – I say loosely as that was written in 1861 and this film is largely set during the 1871 Franco-Prussian war (presumably because it was a cooler backdrop). Isabella (Ann Harding) marries wealthy Robert Carlyle (Conrad Nagel), to become mistress of his house East Lynne. However, that’s in name only as the shots are really called by Robert’s domineering sister Cornelia (Cecila Loftus) who loathes Isabella with a Mrs Danvers-like fury. Lonely in her own home, she flirts with old friend (and professional rascal) Captain William Levison (Clive Brook) but that’s as far as it goes. Cornelia reports her to Robert as a shameless hussy and, despite Isabella’s denials, Robert divorces her.

Separated from their child, she has no choice but to live with William who indeed turns out to be a selfish rascal – and a near-traitor and crook into the bargain. The two are stranded in Paris during that 1871 war, Isabella denied all access to her son – and it’s all downhill from there. She’s near-blinded in an explosion, uses the last of her failing sight to return home and see her son, is thrown out again and promptly walks off a cliff – just as Robert (inevitably) realises the error he has made in chucking this saint in the first place. Cue the hankees.

East Lynne falls very naturally into the Hollywood trend at the time of suffering women, constantly judged by society and chucked into ever more damaging, depressing and fatal, tear-jerking situations by cruel fate. Because, I suppose, few things are more satisfying than feeling sorry for someone whose life is unquestionably more miserable and disastrous than yours. The film makes tweaks to the novels set up to dial up the injustice – the book’s version of Isabella is undoubtedly guilty of infidelity, whereas the film version is tempted but certainly doesn’t give in. (Also neatly making her more sympathetic to conservative Hollywood audiences).

That is if we believe her denials of course. No reason not to, since Ann Harding’s affronted denials of misdeeds followed by her despondent desperation, hammering on a door to be allowed back in to see her child are clearly meant for us to believe in. To be honest, watching it today, it’s hard not to see (cruel as Robert is in severing, Karenin-like, Isabella from her child) that Robert has a point. There is more than a little enthusiasm in the passionate kiss Isabella shares with William on the night in question – and Lloyd’s decision to cut the scene with Isabella’s bedroom door closing on her and William leaves us with only her word that she instantly threw him out.

A slightly more interesting film therefore lurks under the surface – especially since Isabella adapts very quickly to a life of semi-disgrace among the more flexible society of Vienna and Paris, sharing a home with William after her divorce. I’d actually prefer a version of this story where Isabella at least made some independent choices (although it would give even more of an air of punishment to her ‘reward’ of being abandoned, blinded and killed for it). Especially since Robert – played with a rather wooden stiffness by Conrad Nagel, which at least makes him suitably boring – is hardly anyone’s idea of an ideal husband.

Especially since he’s utterly controlled by his sister, introduced with a tracking zoom shot by Frank Lloyd which hammers home the cold lack-of-welcome she gives this woman who she sees as, at best, a crude interloper in their home. It’s very easy to see the roots of Rebecca’s Mrs Danvers in Cornelia – did du Maurier see East Lynne as she planned that novel I wonder? – sharing with her the same dislike and subtle bullying designed to undermine Isabella’s position. Cecila Loftus does lack the vicious, insinuating, two-faced venom the part really needs (she’s really more of a smackable snob) but again it’s an interesting idea.

East Lynne is a film however full of decent ideas that never quite deliver, not least because it’s all dialled up to the melodramatic max. Isabella’s eventual fate is only the ultimate expression of it – the sight of Ann Harding stumbling through a wood, her hands reaching out in front of her, audibly provokes laughter in the UCLA audience on the bootleg, and who can blame them. The misery piles on and on relentlessly, Isabella tumbling through a conga-line of misfortune, scorn and miserable denial. Not helped of course by the fact the Clive Brook – whose patrician manner and cut-glass accent seem ill-suited to playing the sort of rogue he is here – makes William an utterly selfish rogue.

Ann Harding pushes through all this with maximum commitment, her voice throbbing with emotion as yet more tricks of cruel fate lash her. She has to go for it, since even the slightest doubt or reserve would probably make the ridiculousness of the film stand out even more. But Harding manages to make Isabella just flawed enough to not be a saint – those little touches of good-time-girl that attract William – while unquestionably capturing her devotion and love as a mother. And no one could have sold that arms-out-stretched “blindness” acting that East Lynne closes with.

East Lynne is exactly the sort of competently-made but basically bland melodrama that makes for a very odd Best Picture nominee over 90 years later. The fact that its fame largely rests on its scarcity is fitting – otherwise it would quite happily have been lost altogether and no one would probably have batted an eyelid. Certainly, it wouldn’t challenge any retrospective lists of the great films of 1931.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

The gentlest and least action-filled of all the Star Trek films is one of its most successful outings

Director: Leonard Nimoy

Cast: William Shatner (Admiral James T Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelley (Dr McCoy), James Doohan (Montgomery Scott), George Takei (Hikaru Sulu), Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Catherine Hicks (Dr Gillian Taylor), Mark Lenard (Sarek), Jane Wyatt (Amanda), Robin Curtis (Saavik), Brock Peters (Admiral Cartwright), John Schuck (Klingon Ambassador), Robert Ellenstein (Federation President)

Most people’s Bingo cards probably didn’t have “biggest Star Trek hit film is about saving Whales”. In fact, when I told my wife this was the plot of Star Trek IV (which she had, resignedly, agreed to watch on a Saturday night) she immediately assumed I was pulling her leg. I guess this might also be what Paramount thought when Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer pitched this: time-travel with comedy for the crew, no villain, no battles and not a single photon torpedo fired in anger. There wouldn’t even be a proper love interest. But the formula was such a surprise hit, Paramount tried to repeat the trick again with Star Trek V and promptly fell flat on their faces.

After the events of Star Trek III, Spock is back from the dead and the crew are heading home to face the music after their riot of breaking orders, sabotage, theft and blowing up the Enterprise from the last film. (Since they’ve also not changed clothes since the start of that film, they must also be a bit whiffy). Before they arrive back though, Earth is thrown into chaos by a mysterious probe whose powerful signal is draining the planet’s power. Turns out the probe is trying to contact Humpback whales – which mankind hunted to extinction in the late twentieth century. Kirk, Spock and the crew take their stolen Klingon bird of prey on a perilous time-travel slingshot round the sun back to 1986, to grab a pair of whales and bring them back to their present. But of course, it’s not that easy.

There is something very refreshing about Star Trek IV, one of the entries in the series that really attempted to go its own way. It manages to pull this off pretty well, the crew settling into the fish-out-of-water comedy of being stranded in modern San Francisco without inducing eat-your-fist levels of embarrassment in the viewer (not a trick the franchise managed in other lighter entries, such as Insurrection and of course Star Trek V). Perhaps it’s because, by and large, the cast don’t overplay or force the comedy too much and the mix of both apocalyptic dread in the future and horror of the butchery of whales in the present counterbalances the comedy rather well.

In fact, Nimoy proofs to have a deft touch (he went straight from this to directing Three Men and a Little Lady and he was pretty much button-holed as a comedy director from hereon). He latches onto the rare chance for a Star Trek film to go fully on location – surely a nice change from the blatantly papier-mache sets of the Genesis planet in Star Trek III – neatly capturing the slightly dazed characters, dodging traffic in busy San Francisco streets, grabbling with the complexity of using money and struggling with the parade of “colourful metaphors” that pepper Twentieth century speech.

There is a pleasingly family-friendly quality to all this, continued with the missions Star Trek IV splits the crew up to achieve. Each of these is well-tailored to cater to the strengths of characters and actors. Naturally, Russian-accented Chekov winds up hunting for “nuclear wessels” to re-power the ship, including a desperate chase across decks of the real battleship USS Enterprise. Nimoy also captures some neat observational comedy with Chekov and Uhura plaintively asking non-plussed passers-by for directions to a Naval base (including a blank faced cop, and a flustered extra who parrots back the naval base name in her confused directions – Koenig nailing the polite exasperation of Chekov’s bemused response).

In addition, we get a Scotty struggling to understand why he can’t talk to computer and then not caring when he hands over future technology secrets in return for free plexiglass for a whale case (timelines be damned!). Or an increasingly grouchy McCoy railing against medieval medicine in a cutting-edge hospital, subtly handing over kidney restoring medicine to an ailing granny. And, of course, Kirk and Spock chasing down whales, shouting down road hogs (“double damn ass on you!”) or neck-pinching rude punks on buses and struggling to work out when to tell the truth and when to lie.

The whale part of the Star Trek IV works rather well. Shots of the butchery of whales is quite chillingly graphic, Spock’s mind-meld with whales George and Gracie (during an unauthorised swim in the aquarium pool they live in – met with slack jawed despairing shock by Kirk) stresses the animals intelligence and empathy (these whales are not just tools to do with as our heroes please). It’s easy to see why the film helped the cause of Greenpeace no end, especially since George and Gracie’s near-fatal encounter with a ship of scruffy whalers is genuinely tense as we dread seeing a harpoon in the side of an animal we’ve grown fond of. Catherine Hicks also gives a nicely judged performance as a passionate whale expert, who also manages to see through the crew’s (not particularly well disguised) bullshit.

That’s not to forget the destructive impact of the probe in the future, as its distinctively intimidating “froom-froom” boils oceans, scorches skies and leaves starships (crewed by an ahead-of-its-time diverse series of officers) drifting in space. It’s a neat metaphor for the results of mankind’s thoughtless impact on the planet. But also, its genuinely quite exciting, just as is the crew’s risky flash back in time to the past, Takei sonorously reporting their ever-increasing speed as the ship shakes. A final attempt to save the whales from a sinking Klingon bird-of-prey does feel like it’s been chucked in to give Shatner some final act heroics. But you can cut it some slack, considering that its genuinely tense.

Above all, Star Trek IV shows that you can make a successful Star Trek film without trying to make it as much like Star Wars as possible. This is the sort of conundrum the show used to deal with all the time, cleaning up our own mess and learning lessons along the way. It also allows the cast to relax and to be genuinely engaging, without drowning us in cringe-worthy comedy. Star Trek IV is what it needs to be: a really accessible way to get into the show, that riffs on things you’re likely to be familiar with, without needing a PhD in the show’s canon. Mix that in with a well-judged (Oscar-nominated) score by Leonard Rosenman that gets the tone just right between playful and epic and the fact that all that location shooting means the limited special effects budget could be used to ace effect, and you’ve got one of the best of the franchise.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

Laughton dominates in a dry, rather stately adaptation of the romance between the Brownings

Director: Sidney Franklin

Cast: Norma Shearer (Elizabeth Barrett), Fredric March (Robert Browning), Charles Laughton (Edward Moulton-Barrett), Maureen O’Sullivan (Henriette Barrett), Katharine Alexander (Arabel Barrett), Ralph Forbes (Captain Surtees Cook), Marion Clayton (Bella Hadley), Una O’Connor (Wilson), Leo G Carroll (Dr Ford-Waterlow)

The poet Elizabeth Barrett (Norma Shearer) is confined to her bed (she hasn’t stepped out of the room let alone gone downstairs or stood up in years) and in love with fellow poet Robert Browning (Fredric March), a love he returns with all the giddy enthusiasm of a schoolboy. But despite what you might think, that’s not the real drama in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and there are precious few emotional obstacles between these two. The real drama comes from Elizabeth’s relationship with her father, Edward Moulton-Barrett (Charles Laughton), a possessive control-freak with an unhealthy concern for his daughter who he wants to keep locked away so only he can possess her. Can Elizabeth escape her gilded prison?

Adapted from a highly thought-of Broadway hit, and about two of the most famous poets of the nineteenth century, it’s not a surprise Barretts of Wimpole Street was singled out as another perfect vehicle to cement Norma Shearer as the leading actress of her age. Despite her Oscar-nomination here, as is often the case with Shearer, when called upon to do ‘serious drama’, her mannered breathlessness can be a little trying. That quality is present throughout Barretts, her delivery crammed with heightened earnestness and dramatic intensity. But, there is a real commitment, and she gives a decent performance, capturing Elizabeth’s complex feelings towards her father and the fierceness of her determination – even if it’s a performance that always feels like she’s trying too hard to be taken seriously.

You can say much of the same thing about the rest of this, at times very stately, film, which wears its theatrical, single-set roots very heavily. Shot with a safely staid camera, that frames the action with little invention, it can feel slow and artificial. As with so many other films about writers, we also get little sense of what drives them. The only moment we touch on this is the first meeting between Browning and Elizabeth, with March’s Browning bounding around the room apologetically trying to explain his work while distracted with romantic attraction. For Elizabeth herself, other than settling at her desk once with pen in hand – Shearer cocking her head to the left with a wistful stare as she thinks carefully – you could quite easily forget she is a celebrated poet.

What is perhaps refreshing is how uncomplicated the romance element of the story is. There are no doubts at all about the affections, and no sense of compromise or danger that anything (other than her father) will come between them. March actually seems slightly lost on some level with how little there is to play with Browning: other than a giddy enthusiasm and romantic earnestness, he has almost nothing to do and is all but banished from the film’s most dramatic moments. There is an undeniable chemistry between him and Shearer, but so little stakes between them – and Browning remains largely a pleasant cipher – that it’s very hard to really find much interest in their scenes.

But then that’s because the drama is at home, and the ogre dominating the Barrett household. Franklin communicates the dread this figure holds over his children, even subconsciously, from the start: during the opening shots, we are shown repeated close-ups of Shearer grinning as each of her several siblings enter, culminating in a shot of fixed neutrality when her father enters. This domineering monster controls every inch of his children’s life, makes it clear that disobedience (like getting married) will be met by instant disinheritance and banishment from the family home. A home that is run entirely to his whims and personal tastes.

Who better to play this vile bully filled with fear and loneliness, than Charles Laughton? The film had to remove all references to Edward’s potentially incestuous interest in his daughter but, as Laughton so memorably said, the censors couldn’t ‘cut the glint in my eye’. And they felt fine leaving in dark implications that Barrett’s later children were not “born of love”. Laughton’s performance is towering, a ramrod stiff body of frustrated desires, whose instinct when he feels threatened is to lash out with cruel, verbal and physical violence. He thinks nothing of literally twisting the arms of his daughter Henriette (a very good Maureen O’Sullivan) to extract her confession of loving another man, just as he feels free to browbeat her into swearing on the bible to renounce him.

His creepy parental desire – at one point he sits with Elizabeth and earnestly desires her to stay with him, with all the intense longing of a lover – is palpable, his frustrated sexuality clear. There is a great scene where Marion Clayton’s lisping cousin Bella playfully sits on his lap and asks him to kiss her: Laughton grabs the back of her head for a full-on snog, then leaps instantly to his feet as if terrified that she will detect his obvious arousal. At another, he sweeps a tired Elizabeth into his arms like some sort of Rochester to carry her up to her bedroom.

This but scratches the surface of Laughton’s portrayal of suppressed desires. All of them are bottled up in an intense fear and vulnerability that Edward has of being abandoned – Laughton almost trembles with fear at the prospect of any of his children leaving. At great length with Elizabeth, he hammers away at her confidence, a torrent of passive aggressive words stressing her weakness and incapability to survive. It comes from a deep insecurity but, whenever we feel even a moment of sympathy for this psychologically damaged man, he reverts to bullying, shouting and a willingness to commit acts of petty, damaging cruelty.

Laughton’s superb performance (rightly he was immensely put-out not to be Oscar nominated) not only elevates the film (all its most memorable moments feature him) but also draws some of her best work out of Shearer, who raises her game to match him in their confrontation scenes. The drama of these sequences is the heart of a film that otherwise fails to bring much energy, despite some good performances (including Una O’Connor, giving one of her finest maids, full of exasperated, supportive patience). Away from Laughton, the film feels slight and slow. But with him, it’s a portrait of creepy possessiveness and misdirected desire. Even if, of course, no one could say that at the time.

Night Moves (1975)

A private detective out of his depth in this excellent 70s conspiracy-thriller tinged noir detective drama

Director: Arthur Penn

Cast: Gene Hackman (Harry Moseby), Jennifer Warren (Paula), Susan Clark (Ellen Moseby), Melanie Griffith (Delly Grastner), Edward Binns (Joey Ziegler), Harris Yulin (Marty Heller), Janet Ward (Arlene), James Woods (Quentin), John Crawford (Tom Iverson)

“Yeah, but he didn’t see it. He played something else and he lost. He must have regretted it every day of his life. I know I would have.” That’s how Harry Moseby – PI, retired footballer and chess enthusiast – explains the fall out of a 1925 chess championship game, where the losing player failed to spot a checkmate in three through a brilliant flurry of knight moves. There’s a reason why a tweaked version of this makes the title (Penn argued it was because so many key scenes were set at night, though I suspect he just worried the alternative would either be too confusing or tip the wink too much). Turns out the case Moseby is investigating is just like that chess game, with himself as the losing player failing to spot the killer checkmate move.

That’s the set-up for a very seventies private detective movie, where the hero is effectively living out a fantasy of being Marlowe or Spade, turning down every opportunity to bring himself into the modern world (via a near-fangled database-using detective agency, awash with cash) and pays a heavy price. Because, rather like Matthau in Charley Varrick, Moseby sees himself as last of the Independents, but without (it turns out) the nous or ruthlessness to succeed. Instead, Harry misses everything that turns out to be important, heads down blind alleys, focuses on the wrong motives and ends the film like he spent it, drifting in circles drenched in defeat.

Harry (Gene Hackman) is hired by an ageing former Hollywood starlet (Janet Ward) to find her daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith), a case he solves with relative ease since she is staying with her estranged father-in-law Tom Iverson (John Crawford) and Tom’s wise-crackingly flirtatious marinist girlfriend Paula (Jennifer Warren). Easy peasy right? Wrong, as Harry finds himself embroiled in a further mysteries and deaths, revolving around links between the family and the world of Hollywood stunt drivers, led by the good-natured Joey Ziegler (Edward Binns). As he scratches the surface of the mystery, he will discover to his horror he is way out of his depth.

Arthur Penn’s detective drama soaks in the paranoic style he virtually made his own, mixed with grimy depression at the world gone to hell. “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” Paula asks Harry who responds with a weary sigh of “which one?” Everything feels sordid and shabby: Harry’s job is essentially trailing unfaithful wives; Hollywood is a cheap exploitation flick machine and alcoholic ex-starlet Janet bemoans how good her breasts used to be. It’s a film shot with a grainy, dirty detail by Bruce Surtees and edited with a deliberately disjointed suddenness by Dede Allen, scenes often feeling like they end abruptly or jarringly, leaving us as off balance as Harry is. There is, throughout, a creeping air of confusion and uncertainty – Penn designed the film to require multiple viewings and even then questions remain – not least since vital clues and hints are dropped in with marked casualness, while major red herrings are flashed in front of us.

In the middle of this, Harry wants to be a resourceful, determined, ingenious private eye plucked from Chandler. But he’s far from that, not quite smart enough to realise he’s not that smart. His naïve cluelessness should be clear, since he stumbles only by chance on an affair his wife (Susan Clark) has been having for some time. He lets his prejudices and opinions get in the way of conclusions – most especially in the instant dislike he takes (who can blame him) of James Woods’ snivelling bitter mechanic, a casual boyfriend of Delly, who looks more beat up and scarred every time we see him (a nice hint he’s not the criminal-in-waiting Harry assumes he is). On the other hand, since he likes Edward Binn’s jovial stunt driver Joey, he seems to forget in their first meeting he watched Joey violently rough up a young man in a bar for trivial reasons.

He’s superbly played by Gene Hackman, who makes Harry full of vulnerability and shyness that marks him out as a slightly naïve lost soul, despite his more hard-bitten outer shell. Hackman understands perfectly that Harry is really a big kid, living out a fantasy, but without the instincts or the skill to pull it off. He’s flustered by women (Delly’s casual teenage sexuality, in particular, disorientates him no end) and his all-too-obvious crush on Jennifer Warren’s very well-played mix of femme fatale and wisecracking sidekick is rather sweet. Hackman also invests Harry with an old-world decency and (knightly!) sense of chivalry: he’s disgusted at Tom’s sleeping with his step-daughter (“There should be a law against it” Tom sighs; “There is” Harry contemptuously states) and quickly feels a protective feeling towards Delly.

But despite this, he’s as much a clueless patsy in all this as he is in his marriage, unable to see the wood for the trees. Just like Chinatown, he ends up out of his depth – the difference being the case turns out to be far more mundane then he suspects. In fact, Harry turns out to be the main destructive force of the film: his ham-fisted persistence in delving deeper, panicking characters into murderous actions, even while Harry fails to understand for a moment what he is involved in and who he should be wary of.

It’s a great visual metaphor that Harry only realises (possibly) what’s been going on in the whole film, when he stares down through the sea-view window of Paula’s boat at a vital clue he’s missed all this time. Harry has to strain to interpret what he can see, water and bad lighting obscuring his view. It’s the murky, obscured world of the film bought to visual life. A film during which Harry has closed his ears and eyes to all the crucial details, failed to appreciate the real meanings of the things he has focused on and left himself alone and adrift in a sea of carnage, only just beginning to piece things together (but far too late).

It makes for a superb, labyrinthine detective drama, laced with paranoia and unsettling mystery, with a superb Hackman full of a mix of bashful charm, world-weary cynicism and tragic naivety, clinging to a fantasy that can’t survive contact with reality. Penn’s film might rival Chinatown as the definitive hard-bitten detective drama of the 70s, one where the hero’s every action leads to disaster, every decision is misguided in some way, every conclusion flawed and learns only too late how wrong he was. If that’s not hard-bitten 70s cynicism I don’t know what is.