Author: Alistair Nunn

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Buñuel’s unique party-gone-wrong is a fascinating mix of comedy, surrealism and satire

Director: Luis Buñuel

Cast: Silvia Pinal (Leticia, “The Valkyrie”), Jacqueline Andere (Alicia de Roc), José Baviera (Leandro Gomez), Augusto Benedico (Dr. Carlos Conde), Enrique Rambal (Edmundo Nóbile), Luis Beristáin (Cristián Ugalde), Antonio Bravo (Sergio Russell), Claudio Brook (Julio), César del Campo (Colonel Alvaro Aranda), Rosa Elena Durgel (Silvia), Lucy Gallardo (Lucía de Nóbile), Enrique García Álvarez (Alberto Roc)

Imagine a party so good, you couldn’t bear to leave. Sounds great, right? Now imagine a party that wasn’t even that good, but you couldn’t leave anyway. A dinner party with the hoi polloi that locks you into a seemingly never-ending parade of days (or weeks) where you and everyone else were physically incapable of stepping over the threshold of the room you’re in. All of you forced to live in a tiny space, on top of each other, none of you having a clue why you can’t leave or why this is all happening. Imagine that, and you’ve got Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, a surrealist-tinged, open-ended mystery of a film that presents its situation and leaves you to make of it what you will.

Returning to Mexico after comprehensively incinerating his nascent re-alignment with Spanish cinema with Viridiana (a film made in Catholic Fascist Spain that mocked both the fascists and the Church), Buñuel creates a haunting elliptical masterpiece by harnessing an idea so compelling it’s been recycled, reframed and reexplored by countless films after. It’s an idea that has soaked into horror, of being trapped by some unknown force in a single place, unable to break free. It’s also sparked satire with its depiction of the thin veil of smug self-satisfaction over the bourgeoisie that collapses under the strain of covering primitive, violent instincts.

The Exterminating Angel tips us off from the start that we won’t be settling down to watch any old dinner party. As the guests assemble, the staff at the grand town house are practically falling over themselves to flee, as if subconsciously aware there is something wrong in the house. Buñuel throws the viewer off from the start by deliberately repeating scenes – a repetition so on-the-nose, that when watching I actually doubted myself about whether I had just seen what I thought I saw. We see the guests arrive – and make a forlorn call for their coats to be taken – twice in quick succession. It’s so blatant, even Buñuel’s editor gave him a panicked phone call about the ‘error’ just before the film’s opening!

Later the micro-repetitions of scenes, interactions and lines will pile up (it’s a film that rewards constant reviewing) making the whole set-up even more disconcerting. Two characters introduce themselves to each other three times, each time with a different emotional mood (from friendly to outright hostile). The same dinner toast will be greeted with rapture then complete indifference. Two couples will echo the same conversation. Oblique points about freemasonry and current affairs will be made over and over. Is Buñuel suggesting the whole whirligig of the social situation is just a slightly pointless merry-go-round where the same old bullshit happens over-and-over again and essentially means nothing? Sure, the characters notice they are literally trapped in the same room, but really aren’t they just metaphorically trapped in the same old rooms all the time?

Nevertheless, as the dinner party winds down, everyone is far too polite (or far too concerned with appearances) to openly say they feel like its physically impossible for them to cross the threshold and leave. Instead, the hosts quietly grumble that no-one seems to know when to go as the clock ticks into the wee small hours and the middle-class types here settle down in armchairs, on sofas or even on the floor to sleep. Come the next morning, polite embarrassment prevents anyone from saying exactly why they are still here. In fact, everyone promptly makes politely meaningless excuses about why they aren’t quite ready to leave yet: they’ve not had breakfast, nanny will look after their children, they don’t need to be anywhere quite yet.

In fact, I’m not sure anyone openly says they ever feel trapped. It’s like social faux pas everyone is horrified of pointing out. Not a surprise really as everyone here is from the height of professional society: doctors, conductors, army officers, businessmen, society grande dames. None of them wants to stand out like some panicked rube thrown by odd sensations. Instead, everyone slowly settles down into working around this bizarre situation no one wants to talk about. A cupboard is tacitly turned into a toilet. The food is carefully rationed. A water pipe is tapped into so everyone can drink. Sleeping areas are claimed. No one tries to solve the problem, because even acknowledging the problem feels like a cheeky liberty.

It leads into an increasingly fascinating blend of horror, dark satire and surrealist black comedy that Buñuel skilfully builds. A few shots show us the threshold of the room from the next room (a lush ballroom), and there are cuts to a crowd of rubber-neckers outside the house) who also cant enter. But otherwise, it’s all in this one room and as time – and the guests lose all track of that – drags on, the bonds of society both loosen under the polite instincts. Tempers fray, but there remains a formality even as the ravenous guests rip apart (off camera) and cook a sheep that wanders into the room. Some guests take advantage of the proximity to indulge in voyeuristic perversions, but when arguments erupt they are resolved with a Victorian duel mind-set. Only towards the end, as the world really fragments, does the danger of real violence (a suggested lynching of those judged responsible) flare up.

Buñuel would criticise himself later for not going far enough (if you want an idea of relatively tame he later thought it was, he argued cannibalism was one of the things he should have explored). But the fact that much of the behaviour remains grounded, recognisably stuck in a rut of upper-class restraint makes the film more effective. (Or as restrained as a party, where the cancelled ’entertainment’ at the original dinner was an unspecified event involving a tame-ish bear and three sheep, can be). Somehow, if the guests had regressed into the most animalistic behaviour possible, the film might have lost some of its enigmatic quality. As it happens, the fact the guests can never quite escape the trappings of their social rules makes it even more unsettling. It means that threats – such as the ferocity behind the ‘I’ll kill you’ response to a joke about someone being pushed out of the room – carries even more of a shock.

Buñuel throws in the odd surrealistic touch – after all he always claimed a dream sequence was in there when he had run out of ideas. We get two, one revolving about a nightmare of a disembodied hand moving freely around the house (it must be some sort of joke from Buñuel that the hand itself is the least convincing rubbery affair you can imagine) and later a sequence of disconnected images superimposed over a cloud filled sky. The film’s conclusion suggests a deadly, ever-expanding loop, based around the fact the characters suffer but learn nothing from it.

You can argue that The Discreet Charms of the Bourgeoisie, by allowing more physical freedom to its characters, allowed even more surreal, fascinating and intriguing exploration of the repressions, lies and hypocrisies of bourgeoisie life. But The Exterminating Angel has a claustrophobic horror to it, and the pressure cooker bubbling just below the surface of these trapped characters exposes class tensions in superbly unnerving ways. It makes for an expertly executed, shrewdly vicious social satire that lifts a lid on the many petty behaviours that govern so much of our lives. And it’s a mark of genius that you cannot imagine anyone other than Buñuel making it.

In Old Arizona (1929)

Early Talkie Western has moments of invention, around some awkwardly dated acting and plotting

Director: Irving Cummings, Raoul Walsh

Cast: Warner Baxter (The Cisco Kid), Edmund Lowe (Sergeant Mickey Dunn), Dorothy Burgess (Tonia Maria)

In Arizona, is a public nuisance is plaguing the authorities: The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter), a charming bandit who holds up stagecoaches, flirts with women and evades the lawmen with a swagger and a smile. But he’s a decent thief: he only takes from those who can afford it (he’ll hand the money back if he finds out otherwise). His Achilles heel is the flirtatiously ruthless Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), a vivacious sexpot who merrily cheats on him left, right and centre. She’s also quite happy to sell him out if she can get her hands on that generous reward money offered by Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) – who soon falls for her charms as well.

In Old Arizona was the first Talkie Western – and it stands out from other early Talkies that it’s not set in rigid sets with bolted down cameras, but on location. Imagine the excitement of audiences sitting down to watch a scene in a bustling market, to actually hear the sounds of a church bell ringing (it’s showpiece opening), carriage wheels, passengers bickering and Mariachi bands playing, while the camera tracks through the scene. Of course, much of this was accomplished via synchronised sound, applied after shooting – most of the dialogue scenes are shot with a far more rigid style – but it was still gripping. Never again in film history, would a shot of bacon sizzling (audibly) in a pan attract as much comment as it did with the reviewers of this film.

Other parts of In Old Arizona teeter between sound and silence. As mentioned, when the dialogue kicks in the film falls back on theatrical-front-row framing. All three of the principles – the only actors billed – give performances leaning into the principles of silent acting, with the framing and make-up frequently giving added prominence to their eyes (the main form of communication in silent cinema). Dorothy Burgess, in particular, makes her film debut but finds all her prepared awkward theatrical poses to communicate emotion look increasingly out-of-date (much as she’s clearly enjoying playing this ruthless, faithless schemer).

She’s not alone in this. Warner Baxter lifted one of the first Best Actor Oscars and it’s an entertaining performance, full of swaggering, alpha-male cheek. Baxter makes the Cisco Kid somewhere between a scheming rogue and a Robin Hood. But he also strikes a pose a little too frequently and tends to over accentuate gestures and reactions, a clear hangover of his silent career. He does, however, dance through the dialogue with a rolling Spanish accent, and if the character ends in a slightly awkward territory between camp and ruthless, it’s not really his fault so much as the script. He’s certainly far more entertaining than the wooden Lowe, whose voice is flat and uninteresting.

In Old Arizona quickly turns into two shaggy dog stories, stretched out over about 90 minutes. It’s surprising how little plot there is: it could easily have zipped by in 60 minutes. The first act covers the Cisco Kid’s hold-up of a stagecoach and the aftermath; the second an unwitting game of cat-and-mouse where Dunn is at a serious disadvantage as he has no idea what the Cisco Kid looks like; the third the mutual seduction of Dunn and Maria, their attempt to kill the Cisco Kid for his ‘dead-or-alive’ ransom and the Cisco Kid’s ruthless foiling of their scheme. Each feels like a short story, joined together, so it’s not surprising to find it’s adapted from exactly that from O Henry.

By all accounts O Henry’s Cisco Kid was a far more violent and brutal character than Baxter’s jolly, tuneful, gadabout. Sure, the Cisco Kid can handle himself – there’s a fine little action sequence, where he plays possum to gun down three would-be ransom collectors – but by and large he’s a romantic, and it’s clear he’s genuinely in love with the shallow and unfaithful Maria. This feels like it’s been designed to make her betrayal carry some bite, but since she is so blatantly unfaithful it actually makes the Kid look rather dim and slow on the uptake.

Maria is interesting as a Pre-Code character nakedly open in her sexuality – it’s pretty apparent she’s, at-best, a good time girl. She very smoothly seduces the straight-as-an-arrow Dunn (who up until meeting her, makes a big thing of constantly checking his treasured photo of him and his sweetheart). Dunn is of course not the smartest tool – the Cisco Kid runs rings around him during their first meeting, deftly picking him clean of information while not only giving him no idea who he is, but also making Dunn rather enjoy the company of the man he’s meant to be hunting.

It leads into what feels today a troubling conclusion to In Old Arizona. Primed from so-many Westerns that followed, we expect a gun-on-gun ending between the rivals from opposite ends of the law (and, the film eventually suggests, opposite ends of the moral spectrum – the Kid is loyal and decent, Dunn a hypocritic and treacherous). Instead, it becomes more about the Cisco Kid’s deliberately deadly punishment of a woman who has wronged him. It’s hard not to feel that, selfish as Maria is, she doesn’t quite deserve the fate she meets – or the Cisco Kid’s triumphantly heartless Bondian one-liner afterwards.

It’s an uncomfortable ending to a film that in some areas pushes forward the world of commercial film-making (it’s hard not to credit Walsh for the film’s pacier, on-location sequences with their pre-Fordian landscapes, galloping horses and gun-toting action) but in others still has an awkward foot in both silent cinema and the clumsy world of the early Talkies. There are proto-Western ideas here – the sort of narrative ideas that the likes of Ford and Hawks would later finetune and master – but it feels a little too much like a historical curiosity today.

A Star is Born (1937)

One of the first iterations of the tale, and with two winning performances one of the best

Director: William A Wellman

Cast: Janet Gaynor (Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester), Fredric March (Norman Maine), Adolphe Menjou (Oliver Niles), May Robson (Lettie Blodgett), Andy Devine (Danny McGuire), Lionel Stander (Matt Libby), Owen Moore (Casey Burke), Peggy Wood (Miss Phillips), Elizabeth Jenns (Anita Regis), Edgar Kennedy (Pop Randall)

A Star is Born wasn’t the first time this story was told and it certainly wasn’t the last. Each generation in Hollywood has produced its own version of the story, not to mention a gallery of other culture creating their own unofficial and otherwise remakes. What Price Hollywood had even effectively told the same story five years earlier, and the entire concept has the air of a medieval ‘fortune’s wheel’ – two souls bound together, one goes up as the other goes down. There may in fact not be nothing new about A Star is Born at all but gave such a bright new polish to the familiar, that we’ve been inspired to come back to it again and again.

In the farmyard sticks, Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) has a dream: to become one of those stars of Hollywood’s silver screen. With grandma’s (May Robson) money in her pocket (‘What have I got to spend it on?’) she heads to Los Angeles, only to find the city is awash with similarly starry-eyed dreamers desperate for a big break. Esther gets hers in an unusual manner: serving drinks at a Hollywood party she strikes up conversation with famous star Norman Maine (Fredric March). Norman is very taken with Esther – in fact he’s almost immediately in love with her – and arranges a screen test. Soon Esther has a new career, a new name – Vicki Lester – and a new marriage to Norman. Problem is, as her star rises and she becomes the next big thing, Norman stops letting “his acting get in the way of his drinking” and his career slides into oblivion.

It’s high romance, very effectively filmed by Wellman, that requires – and gets – two very strong, highly relatable performances from its leads. Wellman’s film carefully gives both of them the space to grow a relationship that begins shyly and becomes deep and tender. Gaynor is bright, naïve and gentle with just enough ambition and determination to impress. She’s eager to please, but also firm and knows her own mind, far from a pushover in this town of press releases and media spin. Gaynor never lets us forget that under ‘Vicki Lester’ there’s that ordinary Esther Blodgett (could there be a more grounded, less starry name than Blodgett?), a woman with principles in a world of fakes.

Perhaps even better though is Fredric March (it’s the first indication, borne out by nearly all the remakes, that Norman is the better part). March is charismatic, engaging, funny, down-to-earth and everything you would want from a star – while also being a mean drunk with anger management issues. He’s introduced getting into a drunken scuffle at the Hollywood Bowl, and his love of booze makes him just as likely to laugh and flirt with Esther as it can make him take a slug at a guy who looks at him the wrong way. March’s drunk acting is very effectively restrained and he captures extremely well the self-disgust behind Norman at his weakness. March makes him a star who burns away his career through appalling choices, who fervently believes he can stay on the wagon until he can’t. In his hands it becomes a classic tragic piece, a Greek hero destroyed by his fatal flaw, his inability to escape the bottle.

This rich romantic tragedy builds wonderfully, Wellman keeping us deeply invested in this couple. The good times are really endearing: it’s hard not to grin along as they laugh and joke in a camper van after their elopement, or as they cover each other with encouragement and support for their careers. It makes the bad times unbearably painful: Norman’s drunken crashing of Esther’s Oscar win, a shambling monologue of self-pity and resentment, both heartbreaking and excruciatingly embarrassing. Norman’s fateful final decision is full of romantic imagery, as he smiling walks towards a sun-kissed beach, a beautifully staged inversion of a romantic ending.

A Star is Born’s other most interesting feature is its inside glimpse at Hollywood: or at least the version Hollywood was willing to present of itself to people. It even has a meta-theatrical element to it, the film book-marked by images of the shooting script describing the action immediately following or preceding it. Here Hollywood is a ruthless machine, chewing up the dreams of wannabes. An agent bluntly shows Esther the vast numbers of phone calls of wannabe extras they receive every day. Esther struggles just as much as assistant director Danny (Andy Devine) to find regular work. Careers are made and broken by chance, whims or the reaction of the audience to your face on screen. Names in lights one month and being pasted over the next.

Hollywood loves to be cynical about itself. A Star is Born delightedly shows its spin operation as ruthless, cut throat and controlling, planting stories about stars, covering up their misdemeanours (a regular requirement for the drunken Norman) and repackaging their lives into saleable commodities. Lionel Stander, as a heartlessly controlling press agent, is the heart of this, and the film doesn’t hold back on showing the dark powers of these studio fixers in action. But this is just a version of Hollywood: its telling that in A Star is Born while the middle management are condemned, the studio heads are absolved completely. Adolphe Menjou’s Selznick-like producer is an avuncular, uncle-like figure, endlessly caring and supportive of his stars who wouldn’t dream of any funny games to earn some money. This is a portrait of Hollywood where the top man is an affectionate saint – exposure only goes so far.

A Star is Born is also an interesting time capsule. Esther stares in admiration at a host of Hollywood Avenue stars of people must of the viewing public today would struggle to name (Norman Cantor anyone?). Seeking to impress while serving at a dinner party she’ll do impersonations of Garbo, Hepburn, Crawford and Mae West (the last even named). It’s a world where the continual production of content is even more on-going than on Netflix and the studios can start or end careers instantly. It’s a fascinating extra piece of interest in a highly effective, well-staged film. Even with its slightly murky early colour photography (it looks like a colourised black and white film), it’s a well-staged, effective romance with two very winning performances from its leads. Possibly one of the best versions of the story.

The Return (2025)

The Odyssey retold as an exploration of trauma and guilt in a rich and rewarding film

Director: Uberto Pasolini

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Odysseus), Juliette Binoche (Penelope), Charlie Plummer (Telemachus), Tom Rhys Harries (Pisander), Marwan Kenzai (Antinous), Claudio Santamaria (Eumaeus), Ayman Al Aboud (Indius), Amir Wilson (Philoetius)

War can tear your soul apart, even if it’s become an ancient clash of legend: the memory of the deeds you did and the lives (both friend and foe) you left behind can haunt you. The pain of guilt and trauma swims behind the expressive eyes of Ralph Fiennes’ Odysseus in this unique adaptation of Homer’s famous tale of the longest journey home. A version that, as the title suggests, jettisons the journey itself (along with all those Gods) focusing instead on the spiritual journey a soul must take to come-to-terms with things seen and done and to face the consequences on those left behind. Pasolini’s film does this with expressive, melancholic beauty, bringing a unique vision to a story told many times before.

A shipwrecked Odysseus is washed, naked, up on the shore of his kingdom of Ithica – although its heavily implied this is an accident as he is clueless at first to where he is. In fact, lying naked on the beach, suggests the cunning old warrior has in many ways been born again: this time to face the pain of those he left behind. That doesn’t just include his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) waiting fruitlessly for years for word of his whereabouts, but also his bitter son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) who deeply resents his absent father. It’s also the people of his kingdom, now poor and ravaged, the cream of a generation lost under his leadership, the island pillaged by a parade of cruel suitors for Penelope desperate to claim the kingdom. So great is Odysseus’ guilt he continues to conceal his identity – perhaps worried as much at confronting the truth about himself as he is the myriad people on the island with reason to hate him.

The Return replays Homer as an exploration of war trauma and PTSD. In many ways it has more in common with William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives than Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy. No matter the era, it’s never easy for warriors to find a place in a world of peace they left far behind. Powered by a deeply affecting, sensitive performance from Fiennes, The Return centres a man beaten down by shame and regret, barely able to look others in the eye. This is the lasting impact of conflict. While the war at Troy is already being mythologised by the young, Odysseus’s stories focus on the ordinary citizens of Troy, who longed for peace and met their end in fire and blood. Fire and blood, what’s more, that he visited upon them.

Mix that in with the constant memory of the boatloads of Ithica’s finest young men, who have not returned with him, their souls lost in conflict and at sea. No wonder Odysseus feels solely tempted to forget himself, to become just another anonymous beggar. The Return is the tragedy of an incredibly smart, cunning man shamed that his gifts are harnessed best for death and destruction. In battle he is ruthlessly efficient, using the strengths of others against them, constantly identifying every possible advantage.

It’s a fate that he – and Penelope – fear may absorb their son. Telemachus, played with a frustrated petulance by Charlie Plummer, has watched his father’s kingdom fall apart, felt abandoned by both his parents (one to war, the other to stoic silent) and straining at the leash to do something to prove himself. If that means testing how far the parade of Penelope’s suitors will go, so be it – even if their patience with this boy becoming a man is wearing fatally thin. Tension hangs over The Return: will Telemachus follow in those footsteps Odysseus so bitterly regrets – will violence consume the next generation as much as the first?

What it will do is leave more victims behind. Juliette Binoche – with an instinctive chemistry, gives a deeply humane but fascinatingly cryptic performance – simmers with the never-ending pressure of trying to keep home and family together, very aware her own home is now awash with dangerous men she can only just control. Binoche is a tight-wound bundle of tension, suppressed fear and unacknowledged anger at her betrayal. This is a woman clinging to hope of her husband’s return, as it offers the only escape from the trap he has left her in – and if that means forcing his hand so be it.

Ithica has become a ragged island. Pasolini’s visuals for the film, influenced by Baroque artwork in its parade of barely-clothed nudes in rural settings and run-down classical wrecks, not only look gorgeously artful but successfully conveys the impression of a kingdom on its last legs. With everyone thinly clothed and living in shacks, Odysseus’ palace crumbling and lives being cheaply taken whenever the suitors fancy, it’s clear the world he left behind has disintegrated. The suitors are largely a gang of louts, increasingly fed-up with waiting (‘This fuckin’ place!’ Tom Rhys Harris’ Pisander petulantly whines at one point after getting lost in a futile chase through the maze-like woodland). They are fragilely led by Marwan Kenzai’s Antinous, whose tragedy is that he genuinely loves Penelope. In another life, indeed, you can imagine him making a considerate and kind husband if unreturned affection hadn’t made him bitter.

These ideas and concepts bring a fresh vision to The Odyssey, grounding this adaptation in a world of post-traumatic guilt and the horror of violence, devoid of gods and monsters. Fiennes, his body muscled up like a burnt and tanned roll of taut rope, is a warrior struggling against awakening. We all know eventually he will of course – but the enormous psychological burden of once again using your wit and ingenuity to efficiently slaughter other people is always palpable. It doesn’t matter if the targets ‘deserve’ it: the psychological damage remains the same.

The Return explores all the subtly, with beautifully measured performances from Fiennes and Binoche and impressive supporting turns not least from Claudio Santamaria as Odysseus’ old servant, shrewdly aware of his master’s identity earlier than he admits and determined to rouse the king to take responsibility for his actions. Sombre, wonderfully filmed and a compelling reimagination of the myth, it’s a unique view of Greek mythology that carries real emotional impact.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)

Pioneering social issues film remains an impressively mounted film, made with real passion

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Cast: Paul Muni (James Allen), Glenda Farrell (Marie), Helen Vinson (Helen), Noel Francis (Linda), Preston Foster (Pete), Allen Jenkins (Barney Sykes), Berton Churchill (Judge), Edward Ellis (Bomber Wells), David Landau (Warden), Hale Hamilton (Reverend Allen), Sally Blane (Alice), Louise Carter (Mrs Allen)

What are prisons for? Just punishment or should they encourage reform and change? To many in the South, its clear prisons were solely about the former and had nothing to do about the latter. That, in fact, you couldn’t reform a criminal – after a prison sentence he would always inevitably come back for more. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, based on a true story, is all about exploring a dehumanising system designed to turn men into working animals, beaten for looking the wrong way. No chance of a pardon, just chain men to each other, shove a pickaxe in their hand and give them a thrashing if they stop swinging it against a rock for more than second.

Based on a memoir by Robert Burns, James Allen (Paul Muni) returns from fighting in World War One with dreams of becoming an architect. Instead, he finds the American workplace is not a welcoming place for a flood of returning soldiers, drifting from state to state for work. Until, in an unnamed Southern State, he accidentally ends up in the middle of a $5 theft and is sentenced to ten years on a chain gang. The prison is a hotbed of inhumanity, with prisoners frequently beaten, dehumanised and all but worked to death. After a year he escapes and finds his way to Chicago where he reinvents himself as a successful surveyor – only, years later, for a bitter wife to expose his secret. Can he trust the Southern State that his sentence will be commuted if he agrees to return and give himself up?

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang was one of the first – and probably one of the best – 1930s social issues films. It’s a surprisingly hard-hitting look at a cruel system, which (although keen to make our hero an unwitting participant in a minor crime, rather than clearly guilty like Burns) passes a sympathetic eye on criminals, asking us to question whether, whatever their crimes, they deserve this system. A system where prisoners can be randomly thrashed near to death by a thick leather belt, where pausing at work will lead to an instant beating. Where a prisoner tied to a post by his neck is such an everyday occurrence, the film is happy to throw it away in a passing shot. It makes a strong case that how we treat prisoners says as much about us as I does them – and that, sadistic wardens quickly become little better than the men they guard.

LeRoy’s film also makes a strong argument that we talk-the-talk but rarely walk-the-walk when it comes to supporting servicemen. James Allen returns a decorated hero – but his family, former employer and patronising reverend brother assume he will happily return to grunt work on the production line. War has expanded his horizons and ambitions, given him the skills to better himself. No one wants to hear it. He’s not alone: many drifters are ex-servicemen and when he tries to pawn his medals a pawnbroker sadly shows him a bucket full of worthless service decorations. It’s an indication that everyone has an assigned role and place and they shouldn’t for one minute expect to step outside this.

It’s no wonder that the prison sentence treats men like animals – a point LeRoy makes by cutting between donkeys and men both being chained up ready for a day’s work. IAAFFACG makes clear in this system all men are equal in their inequality, cutting back and forth from Black to white prisoners as they are prepare for the days work. (The film does make clear there is a higher number of Black prisoners than white). Allen protests at first, but learns to shrug his shoulders and turn away like the rest do. A freed prisoner showcases this indifferent acceptance of suffering, leaving at the same time as a deceased one, hitching a ride on the cart sitting merrily on a fellow worker’s coffin, striking a match for his cigarette on it. LeRoy shoots the prison beds where the men sleep chained together with a forbidding moodiness and the wide-open spaces where they slave in the beating sun with a scale and sense of heat bearing down on us.

Allen won’t be beaten though. His escape is a beautifully filmed and edited sequence, show-casing the film’s triumphant use of sound. LeRoy’s camera tracks both Allen and pursuers as they flee through the undergrowth, adding pace and intensity to the sequence, soundtracked to the bark of the hounds following him. It’s a sound you really notice disappear when Allen hurls himself into a river, using a reed as an air pipe, hiding feet away from his pursuers, in a series of underwater shots that have a haunting power. It’s superbly done, full of tension and fear.

Escaped, first thing James does is buy a suit and have a shave. Instantly he is above suspicion – even while he is perfectly described be a flatfoot cop sitting next to him in the barbers, not a trace of suspicion is placed on to him (thanks for the ‘close shave’ Allen drily says). Now looking like a respectable middle-class sort, James Allen – under his new name of Allen James – suddenly finds opportunities heading his way, moving quickly up the chain at his new job in Chicago. In this world, outward appearances make the man: and a guy in a new suit is always going to get the sort of attention a down-and-out can only dream of.

So much is Allen now an ideal prospect, he is blackmailed into marriage by Glenda Farrell’s hard-faced Marie, a decision that will bite him hard when he makes eyes years later at the sweet Helen (Helen Visnor). He’s pulled back into the world he thought he had left behind, only to find its not changed at all: to the ‘justice’ system his new professional achievements count for not a jot. To them he’s still the same subhuman scum he was before, an even harsher regime swiftly initiated to drive any vestige of humanity from him, even in the face of a national campaign.

At the centre of this film is a superb performance by Paul Muni. Sure, you can see touches of Muni’s love for melodrama, the odd overdone reaction. But this is an emotionally raw, deeply touching performance. Muni gives Allen a superabundance of energy, enthusiasm and hope at the film’s start all of which slowly drains away. The horror builds behind his eyes: it’s no surprise that, re-sentenced to the chain gang, Muni’s face crumbles into genuinely affecting tears of fear and hopelessness. Slowly, despite himself, Allen becomes the toughened, cynical, damaged man the system assumes he was at the start, strangling the hope and optimism that characterised him at the start. It’s a sensitive, deeply humane performance, of humanity being chiselled away.

It results, of course, in the film’s striking (and famous) closing shot, the now fugitive Allen whispering from the shadows, all chance of making an honest life gone. IAAFFACG has already symbolically shown how this system has twisted Allen: having dreamed his whole life of being a bridge builder, one of his final acts in the film is to destroy a bridge as part of a desperate escape. IAAFFACG doesn’t overegg its social commentary, but leaves a strong and lasting impression of how treating men like animals becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leave them no choice and a man must turn to crime: it’s as true for abandoned veterans as it is for chain-gang criminals. In making an appeal for a fairer, kinder world, IAAFFACG doesn’t miss that we are a long way from it right now.

The Talk of the Town (1942)

Overlooked but delightful comedy with three star actors at the absolutely charming top of their game

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Cary Grant (Leopold Dilg), Jean Arthur (Nora Shelley), Ronald Colman (Professor Michael Lightcap), Edgar Buchanan (Sam Yates), Glenda Farrell (Regina Bush), Charles Dingle (Andrew Holmes), Clyde Fillmore (Senator Boyd), Emma Dunn (Mrs Shelley), Rex Ingram (Tilney), Leonid Kinskey (Jan Pulaski)

Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) is in a heck of a fix. A passionate campaigner for worker rights, all fingers point straight at him when a local factory burns down leaving an unpopular foreman dead. Dilg rather than wait in the slammer for an inevitably (fatal) sentence, he escapes and find refuge in the country cottage of former schoolmate Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur). Problem is Nora has sublet her cottage to straight-as-a-die legal professor Michael Lightbody (Ronald Colman), in the running for the Supreme Court. With Dilg passing himself off as a gardener, can he and Nora convince the ultra-serious Lightbody there has been a miscarriage of justice?

The Talk of the Town is a hugely enjoyable comedy with more than a pinch of social commentary, that gives three charismatic stars tailor-made roles under the assured hand of a skilled director. It’s a great mix of genres: it opens like a dark thriller, segues into an odd-couple-house-share comedy via a romantic-love-triangle, transforms again into a slightly zany detecting comedy with road-trip vibes and wraps up as courtroom drama with a Capraesque speech and happy ending. The fact all this hangs masterfully together makes The Talk of the Town stand out as a consistently surprising and enjoyable comedy, full of zip and smart, funny lines.

Stevens choreographs the film superbly, specifically in its initial set-up where the three lead characters weave in and out of each other’s lives in the house. Initially Grant hides in the attic – signalling from a window his desire for food (an excellent running gag is the amount Grant’s character enthusiastically eats), with Arthur going to acrobatic lengths to hide his presence from Colman. You can imagine other films getting an entire hour out of this: The Talk of the Town is brave enough to shake-up this set-up within twenty minutes, as Grant nonchalantly wanders downstairs to introduce himself, quick thinkingly introduced as a gardener by an as-surprised-as-us Arthur.

It’s a surprise, but a perfect one – after all it would be hard easy to consider Colman’s character a head-in-the-clouds dullard if he had been fooled for long by Arthur’s increasingly unusual behaviour. And The Talk of the Town needs us to like and respect all three of these characters, to root for all of them. What better way, but to get them rooting for each other?

The odd houseshare comedy that takes over Talk of the Town is all about its principles effectively falling in love with each other (there is a thruple version of Talk of the Town waiting to be made). Grant learns to respect Colman’s self-effacing, shy wit. Colman learns to enjoy Grant’s instinctive intelligence. Both of them find deeper feelings growing for Arthur’s feisty Nora, just as she finds herself drawn to the charm, good nature and honesty of the other two. Talk of the Town becomes delightful as we watch the three of them eat meals together, play chess and chat about the law late into the night. Few films have shown as skilfully friendships organically growing.

The tension that takes over is whether outside forces will tear this friendship apart. Namely, if Colman finds out Grant’s identity will he swop from buying Borscht for his friend (sweetly, Colman remembers a throwaway comment about exactly how much he likes it) to being duty bound to shopping him to the cops? Grant and Arthur are aware of the danger: they’ve been drop-feeding references to the unsound accusations against Grant throughout, all while desperately making sure he never sees Grant’s mugshot photo in the papers (right up to pouring eggs over the front page) – the way Colman eventually finds this out is a beautifully done reveal.

All of this entirely relies on three actors at the top of their game. Grant seems, at first, an odd choice for a worker’s rights campaigner, but this is one of his lightest, most overlooked performances: wry, knowing and playful. Arthur is excellent as the electric centre of this love triangle, energetically torn between two very different men and terrifically determined under the occasionally scatty surface. Colman is dapper, upper-class charm to a T, but full of egalitarian charm and surprisingly willing to begin to question his own views in conversation with others.

Colman’s initial rigidity is represented – in a plot point that’s slightly on-the-nose (literally) – by his goatee, which he wears as a metaphorical shield between him and the world (it’s also another neat running gag, as it garners endless unflattering comments). When Colman inevitably shaves it off (a moment so overplayed, his trusted valet breaks down in tears at the sight) it’s a sign that he has accepted there is more to the law than just its letter. It plays into the film’s final shift, as Colman fills the final act with a passionate speech to silence a crowded courtroom ready for a judicial lynching (hilariously littered with direct quotes from his Grant’s character).

Much to my surprise, the social commentary and democratic praise never outweighs the comedy. The film gives space to earnest debate, but still has time for a madcap chase that ends with Colman hiding up a tree from police dogs. Stevens successfully mixes styles, from Fritz Lang thriller to Preston Sturges comedy to a mix of Hitchcock and Capra. Stevens fuses all these together perfectly, making a film funny, exciting when it needs to be, but always engaging with characters you really root for.

The Talk of the Town is overlooked but a very well-made treat and an exceptional showcase to three charismatic, hugely engaging actors. It marries comedy and social commentary extremely well (it even has a Black character in Rex Ingram’s wise valet whose race is incidental to his personality, quite a thing in the 40s) and bowls along with a huge sense of fun. It’s definitely worth seeking out.

The Alamo (1960)

Wayne’s historical epic is a mediocre labour-of-love that takes a very, very long time to get to its moments of interest

Director: John Wayne

Cast: John Wayne (Col Davy Crockett), Richard Widmark (Col. Jim Bowie), Laurence Harvey (Col. William Barrett Travis), Richard Boone (General Sam Houston), Frankie Avalon (Smitty), Patrick Wayne (Captain James Butler Bohham), Linda Cristal (Graciela), Joan O’Brien (Sue Dickinson), Chill Wills (Beekeeper), Joseph Calleira (Juan Seguin), Ken Curtis (Captain Almaron Dickinson), Carlos Arruza (Lt Reyes), Hank Worden (Parson)

John Wayne believed in America as a Shining City on a Hill and he wanted films that celebrated truth, justice and rugged perseverance. To him, what better story of fighting against all odds and to the bitter end for liberty, than the Battle of the Alamo? There, in 1836, a few hundred soldiers and volunteers from the Republic of Texas bravely stood before an army of over two thousand Mexicans to defend the Texas Revolution’s independence from Mexico. Wayne put his money where his mouth was, pouring millions of his own dollars into bringing the story to the screen. Furthermore, he’d direct and produce himself, convinced only he could protect his vision.

The end result isn’t quite the disaster the film has gained a reputation for being – nor is Wayne’s directorial efforts as useless as his detractors would like. But The Alamo is a long, long slog (almost three hours) towards about fifteen minutes of stirring action, filled with pages and pages of awkward speechifying, hammy acting and painfully unfunny comedy. While a bigger hit than people remember, Wayne lost almost every dime he put in (he said it was a fine investment) and even a muscular series of favour-call-ins that netted it seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture!) couldn’t disguise that The Alamo is a thoroughly mediocre film that far outstays its welcome.

Wayne collaborated closely with his favourite writer, James Edward Grant. Both had a weakness for overwritten speeches and there is an awful lot of them in The Alamo’s opening half as we await the arrival of the Mexicans. Wayne gets several speeches about the glories of the American way such as (and this is cut down) “Republic. I like the sound of the word…Some words can give a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words” or a musing on duty that takes up a solid five minutes (it’s ironic Widmark’s Bowie refers to Harvey’s Travis as a long-winded jackanapes, since Wayne’s Crockett has them both beat).

There is only so much portentous, middle-distance-starring talk one can take before you start twitching in your seat, even for the most pro-Republican viewer. With complete creative control, there was no one to tell Wayne to pick up the pace and trim down these scenes. So enamoured was Wayne with Grant’s dialogue, whole scenes are taken up with the Cinemascope camera sitting gently in rooms watching the actors pontificate about politics, strategy and duty at such inordinate length you long for the Mexicans to damn well hurry up.

For a film as long as this, there is an awful lot of padding. The first hour shoe-horns in an immensely tedious romantic sub-plot for the increasingly-long-in-the-tooth Wayne (who had been playing veterans for almost 15 years by now) with Linda Cristal’s flamenco-dancing Mexican. We know she’s a hell of a dancer, since we get several showcases for her toe-tapping skills as Crockett’s Tennessee volunteers wile away the evenings. There is a sexless lack of chemistry between Wayne and Cristel, re-enforced by Crockett’s gentleman-like rescuing of Cristel from a lecherous officer, and the whole presence of this sub-plot feels as like a box-ticking exercise to appeal to as many viewers as possible as does the casting of young heart-throb Frankie Avalon in a key supporting role.

This is still preferable to the rather lamentable comic relief from a host of Wayne’s old muckers, playing a collection of Good Old Boy Tennesse volunteers. These jokers swop wise-cracks, prat-falls, good-natured fisticuffs, but (inevitably) also drip with honour and decency. Chief among them is Chill Wills as Beekeeper, a scenery-chewing performance of competent comic timing that inexplicably garnered Wills an Oscar nomination. Wills made real history with an outrageously tacky campaign for the golden man, shamelessly publicly pleading for votes and including a full-page Variety advert (‘The cast of The Alamo are praying harder than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo for Chill Wills to win!’) that even Wayne denounced as tasteless.

Wayne believed the real Oscar nominee should have been Laurence Harvey as ram-rod stickler-for-form Colonel Travis, commander of The Alamo. He’s probably right (if you were going to honour anyone here), as Harvey’s abrasive style and stiff formality was a good fit for the role and he turns the brave-but-hard-to-like Travis into the most interesting character. He’s more interesting than Widmark’s rough-and-ready Bowie, who looks uncomfortable: he would have been better casting as Crockett. That role went to Wayne, after investors said his presence in a lead role was essential for the box office (reluctant as Wayne was, he still cast himself in the most dynamic, largest role).

There are qualities in The Alamo – and they are largely squeezed into the final thirty minutes as the siege begins in earnest. This sequence is very well done, full of well-cut action and shot on an impressive scale. The money is certainly up-on-the-screen – The Alamo built a set only marginally smaller than the actual Alamo and recruited a cast of actors not too dissimilar from the size of the actual Mexican army. (The only nominations The Alamo deserved were related to production and sound design, both of which are impressive). The relentless final stand is undeniably exciting – whether it’s worth the long wait to get there is another question.

The Alamo largely avoids vilifying the Mexicans. Their commanders may be little more than extras, but Wayne’s was aware that in the Cold War, allies were crucial so the film is littered with praise for the bravery, courage and honour of the Mexicans as battle rages (‘Even as I killed ‘em, I was proud of ‘em’ one volunteer muses). However, in many ways, The Alamo is incredibly simplistic and naïve about American history – especially the ‘original sin’ of slavery, the banning of which in Mexico was one of the main reasons for the Texans revolt. It’s hard not to feel it’s a bit rich for Wayne to make a big speech about freedom, when Crockett and co were literally laying down their lives for the Texan Republic’s right to keep slaves. The only slave in the film is so overwhelmingly happy with Bowie, he literally refuses his freedom and lays down his life to protect his master.

But then that’s because The Alamo is a proud piece of propaganda, celebrating a rose-tinted view of American History that avoids complexity and celebrates everyone as heroes. It’s not the disaster you might have heard about. It has its moments. But its still a dull, tedious trek.

The Racket (1928)

Silent crime drama has some real moments of interest, before it gets bogged down in stagy framing

Director: Lewis Milestone

Cast: Thomas Meighan (Captain James McQuigg), Louis Wolheim (Nick Scarsi), Lucien Proval (Chick), Marie Prevost (Helen Hayes), G. Pat Collins (Patrolman Johnson), Henry Sedley (Spike Corcoran), George E. Stone (Joe Scarsi), Sam De Grasse (DA Welch), John Darrow (Dave Ames)

In an unnamed city that-could-be-anywhere (but is definitely Chicago), the corrupt political machine is under the thumb of “The Big Man”. And he’s in cahoots with Caponeish gangster Nick Scarsi (Louis Wolheim), a kingpin pedalling Prohibition-breaking booze and knocking off opponents when and where he pleases. In this bent city, the only straight shooter is police Captain James McQuigg (Thomas Meighan) – and he’ll do everything within the law’s power (but no further) to bring down Scarsi. Banished to the sticks of the 28^th Precinct, he gets his chance when Scarsi’s feckless kid brother Joe (George E. Stone) is arrested for a hit-and-run but leaves his girlfriend Helen Hayes (Marie Prevost) to take the rap. Can she help McQuigg bust the case?

Interestingly, The Racket only survives today because a copy was among the films in Howard Hughes’ personal collection. Hughes produced this late silent film – and also a talkie remake in 1951 starring Roberts Mitchum and Ryan. The Racket was adapted from a work-a-day Broadway play that gave Edward G. Robinson a big break as the snarling Scarsi and was one of the first Oscar nominees for Best Picture. Directed by Lewis Milestone it’s a strange mixture of the inventive and the mundane, surprisingly daring in its subtle cynicism about government, with intriguing opening half giving way to a final hour that feels trapped by its stage roots.

It starts with a (silent) bang – literally. Milestone’s camera tracks two assassins overlooking a deserted street, watching a target late at night. As thee unwitting figure walks along, they take their shot and miss, their target ducking for cover into a doorway – where he meets Scarsi and we discover this was (literally) a warning shot. We have to wait for the next scene to discover the target isn’t a gangster (as we assume), but a Police Captain called McQuigg. It’s a tense and intriguing opening, well shot and edited, that sets up a personal struggle between two men that the film doesn’t always deliver on (a Cagney-era film would have made these two childhood friends, turned rivals on different sides of the law).

The first act of The Racket follows in this vein, with a series of fast-paced, tense sequences which will culminate in Scarsi’s defiant murder of a rival in front of a roomful of witnesses and McQuigg’s being despatched to the sticks for rocking the boat far too much for “The Old Man’s” taste. Milestone throws in a large-scale street battle between Scarsi and a rival gang, with bullets (and bodies) flying, cars crashing and an army of McQuigg’s cops charging into settle the peace. A retaliatory hit attempt at Scarsi’s club may see Milestone fail to find the sort of sultry tone Sternberg found for nightclub scenes during Marie Prevost’s singing, but his quick cutting from Scarsi’s face to the various hitmen gathering at tables builds tension well and he introduces a truly imaginative shot, from under a table, focused in close-up, on Scarsi’s gun and his target in long-shot. The invention continues at the resultant funeral, where rows of gangsters face each other, a cross fade revealing their black hats all hide pistols.

It’s a shame the invention dies out as we arrive at McQuigg’s 28^th Precinct over one-long-night, and the film hues extremely close to the one-location ins-and-outs of its Broadway roots. Exclusively taking place in the Precinct reception and McQuigg’s next-door office, the film turns becomes much less visually interesting, more stationary and theatrical as characters enter and exit and the world of the film shrinks with only the odd montage of newspaper headlines reminding us of the bigger picture. Considering the expansive world earlier, it also introduces logic gaps – McQuigg doesn’t recognise Scarsi’s brother despite having clearly seen him earlier and (even more baffling) half his cops don’t even recognise Scarsi himself. With just this second act, it’s hard to imagine The Racket would have stood out from the crowd at all, as the action becomes increasingly stunted and theatrical.

What helps is the performance of Louis Wolheim as the thuggish Scarsi. Wolheim had an excellent line in smug brutality – his looks really helped here, his broken nose (he was contractually banned from repairing it) giving him a thuggish look. Wolheim is full of simmering potential violence, something he exploits well when during a striking bit of business he fans his coat while talking with one of McQuigg’s cops (leading us to expect a gun) only to produce a wodge of cash for a bribe attempt. It’s a striking performance of menace and potential violence, far more interesting than Meighan’s strait-laced, formal playing as McQuigg.

Scarsi is also at the heart of the one of the film’s more interesting subtexts. He’s fixated on McQuigg (who he seems obsessed with as a worthy rival) and constantly talking about how women are ‘poison’ to him. With his closest confidante Chick (Lucien Proval) a fey figure, it’s hard not to read a homoerotic context into the macho Scarsi. I doubt any of that is intended, but it makes for interest today.

Just as its interesting to see The Racket be so subtly negative about elected officials. The authorities running the big city are utterly corrupt, everything managed for the benefit of the unseen “Old Man”. The DA lacks any scruples, elections are openly fixed (Scarsi owns half the precincts), and anyone inconvenient can be judicially murdered. The film concludes with a brief paean to the government by professional that on paper reads as praise, but after what we’ve seen is almost certainly intended as a subtle dig at how utterly corrupt all these professionals are.

It’s an interesting, surprisingly bitter and cynical ending – our hero even spends the last few moments mostly with his head in his hands – that restores interest in The Racket right at the final beat. Too much of the second act feels trapped by its stage roots, but Milestone creates several touches of visual and cinematic interest, Wolheim is great and it’s opening acts of gang violence may be dwarfed by the sort of action we’d see only a few years later in The Public Enemy but still provides excitement today.

Kitty Foyle (1940)

Odd romantic fable, with a star-turn, that doesn’t seem to fully realise how judgemental and puritanical it is

Director: Sam Wood

Cast: Ginger Rogers (Kitty Foyle), Dennis Morgan (Wynnewood Strafford), James Craig (Dr Mark Eisen), Eduardo Ciannelli (Giono), Ernest Cossart (Pop), Gladys Cooper (Mrs Strafford), Odette Myrtil (Delphine Detaille), Mary Treen (Pat), KT Stevens (Molly)

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did…[but] backwards and in high heels”. So goes the famous quote about the famed dance pairing. But Ginger Rogers also did something Fred Astaire never did: she won an Oscar. That was Best Actress for Kitty Foyle, a reminder that Rogers was the girl-next-door who was a fine actor, accomplished dancer and natural comedienne. Rogers is great in Kitty Foyle, an otherwise fairly average, at times painfully dated ‘women’s picture’ where flashes of wit conceal character flaws the film is unaware of and a series of frequently depressing messages about love and women’s choices.

In the early 1930s, Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) is a young Philadelphia woman enjoying the opportunities the new world of emancipation gives her. Working as a secretary for a small magazine, she and its editor Wynnewood Strafford IV (Dennis Morgan) fall in love – but he lacks the courage to propose to a woman far below his family’s social standing. Moving to New York, Kitty works in a fashionable department store and meets with Dr Mark Eisen (James Craig). The two begin a tentative relationship – until Wyn returns and proposes, which Kitty eagerly accepts.

However, since the film plays out in flashback from 1939, we already know the Wyn-Kitty marriage is doomed to divorce since Wyn is re-married (with a kid!). Indeed, we’ll learn Kitty left her marriage because she felt the social differences between her and Wyn were insurmountable, in her (secretly) divorced state becoming engaged to Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle plays out a cliffhanger question: which of these two men will Kitty choose? Of course, there is zero tension in this decision – is there any chance at all that in a Production Code film, Kitty will choose a rich married family man over a hard-working doctor who we are introduced to tending to the poor of New York gratis?

Nevertheless, Kitty Foyle is structed through a series of snow globe-inspired flashbacks, narrated by Kitty’s reflection (who objects to herself being tempted by Wyn’s offer – hammering home the implicit moral judgement the film soaks in, even Kitty’s reflection thinks she’s a hussy). These snow-globe framed flashbacks are one of the most interesting things about Kitty Foyle today – largely because, if you think of 40’s snow globe flashback films your mind immediately turns to Citizen Kane (both from RKO!). It’s hard not to wonder if Orson Welles and/or Herman J. Mankiewicz remembered the device when they put their script together?

The other most interesting thing about Kitty Foyle is that neither Kitty nor the film can even pretend to raise much interest in its Code-approved romantic figure, Dr Mark. Fair enough, since Dr Mark is a crushing prig and self-important bore. Played with a humour-free smugness by James Craig, he’s the sort of guy who enjoys sitting on buses passing superior medical opinions about those around him. On his first date with Kitty, he unilaterally cancels a dinner to sit at home and play cards – which he later reveals was a moral test for all his first dates to see whether a potential partner is a gold-digger (it’s amazing he’s single). We get very little sense he is remotely interested in the real Kitty, instead preferring an idealised version of her as a potential assistant-in-all-but-name. In nearly every sense, he’s is the sort of stuffy, self-important, worthy man most comedies of the era saw the heroine’s apologetically jilt to enjoy true love with Cary-Grant.

Of course, Wyn is no Cary Grant. Played by Dennis Morgan with a wonderful sense of shallowness, he’s far too easily-led behind his charm for that. Wyn is a weak man, who struggles to take responsibility for (or make) his own choices. That doesn’t change the fact that Kitty has a passion for him she never once raises for Dr Mark. Kitty Foyle essentially agues his weakness and social status as the scion of a banking family (he is, we are not allowed to forget, the third man to bear the name Wynnewood Stafford), could never make him an appropriate match for the reassuringly middle-class Kitty.

There is a real inverted snobbery around Kitty Foyle, where the upper-classes of Philadelphia (represented, among others, by Gladys Cooper as Wyn’s imperious mother) can only-just-about suppress their discomfort about Kitty’s lower standing. (Their suggestion, when presented with the fait accompli of Kitty-Wyn’s marriage is to suggest Kitty attends a finishing school). Saying that, the family don’t object to the marriage and (in their own way) their suggestions are based around helping Kitty. The two-way snobbery is neither they nor Kitty can imagine a middle-ground: she is just as adamant she will not change anything about herself, as they can’t imagine accommodating her middle-class interests. The film wants us to blame Wyn for his upper-class background and spreads a depressing message that the classes should never mix.

Brutal assumptions people make about each other are at the heart of Kitty Foyle – and the film has absolutely no idea about this. The film never once questions the character flaws of certainty that lead Kitty, Wyn and Mark to all reach (false) conclusions about others. Kitty brutally decides, no matter what Wyn says, that she will divorce him because she doesn’t believe he will give him his wealth. And maybe she’s right – but she never asks him and makes a series of selfish decisions about their life that he has every right to be at least involved in. Kitty Foyle sees absolutely no issue with this, which you can bet its bottom dollar it would if the shoe was on the other foot. The is probably the only romance from Hollywood’s golden age that condemns true love in favour of cold-headed pragmatism and sensible (not passionate) choices.

All of this doesn’t mean that Ginger Rogers isn’t very good, as she carries virtually single-handedly the whole film. Kitty is feisty, determined, smart, shrewd, funny and brave. It gives her opportunities for light comedy and serious emotions. She’s very funny in comedy sequences, such as Kitty’s accidental pressing of the burglar alarm rather than stock room button on her first day on the job in a New York department store (I blame the woeful design flaw in putting these poorly-labelled buttons right next to each other!). But she’s also quietly heart-breaking in the film’s final segment where she faces a series of painful events. Rogers invests these with a quietly melancholic sadness laced with real dignity. It’s a fine performance that lifts an otherwise mediocre film.

It’s also a mediocre film that opens with a jaw-droppingly anti-feminist sequence to explain why girls are working. A series of silent flashbacks play out in silent-film-style dumb-show openly mocking suffragettes and the misguided passions of women for freedom that took them away from a live of ease being looked after by doting husbands. The whole point seems to be how unwise they were to fight to be foisted into a world of hard work and not being given a seat automatically on public transportation. It left me wondering how far into this script Katherine Hepburn got before she turned it down?

Viridiana (1961)

Luis Buñuel’s brilliant, multi-layered satire is a superb, darkly hilarious, masterful film

Director: Luis Buñuel

Cast: Silvia Pinal (Viridiana), Francisco Rabal (Jorge), Fernando Rey (Don Jaime), Margarita Lozano (Ramona), Victoria Zinny (Lucia), Teresita Rabal (Rita), José Calvo (Don Amalio), José Manuel Martín (“El Cojo”), Luis Heredia (“El Poca”), Joaquín Roa (Don Zequiel), Lola Gaos (Enedina), Juan García Tiendra (“El Leproso”)

In the 1960s, Luis Buñuel was invited back Spain after years of creative exile to spearhead a new wave of Spanish filmmaking. He produced a film that not only bit the right-wing hand that fed it, it snapped it clean off and chewed it up. Viridiana must have been the last thing the authorities had in mind. Gloriously exposing the guilt and vanity of the upper classes and charity, it was lambasted by the Catholic church for blasphemy and showed an organised world teetering on the brink of chaos, with the powerful either perverts or playboys, the poor singularly ungrateful for the paternalistic patronage they receive and our lead character a hopelessly naïve former nun. Not surprisingly it was instantly banned and Buñuel never made a film in Spain again.

Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is our naïve nun, called to her uncle Don Jaime’s (Fernando Rey) home for one last visit before her confirmation. Don Jaime though has plans: Viridiana has an extraordinary resemblance to his late wife and Don Jaime intends to first get her to cos-play his wife and then marry him. Or failing that, to drug her and rape her. Guilt stops him from the rape – but doesn’t stop him from claiming he did it, a lie he instantly (fatally) regrets but which leads her to abandon her dreams of becoming a nun. In the aftermath, Viridiana and her cousin (Jaime’s bastard son) Jorge (Francisco Rabal) divide the estate, with Viridiana aiming to continue her religious ideals through excessively generous charity with quietly resentful local paupers, who she has a vision of turning into a religious commune. It does not turn out well.

Viridiana benches much of the surrealism of Buñuel’s most famous work, but it loses none of his acute social satire and ability to inject the absurd with sharp dark humour. It makes Viridiana a startingly complex work, brilliantly assembled by an artist where every frame has a different idea, all of which comes together into a darkly entertaining whole. Its not hard to see why the strictly Catholic Fascist Spain found the film so outrageous, with its mocking of religious imagery (from the crucifix that becomes a flick knife to the famous scene of the paupers forming a drunken, pose-perfect, tableau of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper), it’s acknowledgement of a host of fetishes and perversions among the upper-classes (orgies, feet, hinted necrophilia, incest) and the utter ineffectiveness of any system, no matter how charitable, to control the human spirit, with the poor frequently resentful under their veneer of deferential gratitude.

Viridiana splits neatly into two acts, both revolving around a complex relationship with guilt and how it guides our actions. Don Jaime (a superb performance of corrupted grandeur from Fernando Rey) is a lonely man, plagued with guilt and regret over his wife’s death, locking himself away in a time-locked country pile like a perverted Miss Havisham. In private he fetishistically admires her clothes (which he blasphemously keeps like holy relics) and admires his feet in her shoes. He’s fascinated by Viridiana’s resemblance to his late wife and fantasises that she might be persuaded to renounce the cloth to live as his wife.

With the convenience of his servant Ramana – an equally lonely, repressed soul tenderly played with a burgeoning sexual desire by Margarita Lozano – he guilt-trips Viridiana into dressing for one night in his wife’s bridal clothes, drugs her drink and takes her to bed. He even arranges the sleeping Viridiana into the exact pose his wife had when she was before him, adding hints of necrophilia to an already disgusting assault. Shame stops him from committing the deed and guilt then corrupts both of them. Don Jaime at his selfish lie, Viridiana at her indirect role in her uncle’s death and the forced abandonment of her vocation.

Inheriting her uncle’s home, alongside playboy cousin Jorge (Jaime’s bastard son, who he has barely met), Viridiana redirects this guilt into a commune for the poor and needy, where charity, work and faith sit side-by-side. Her efforts to essentially introduce a benign feudal church-system contrasts with Jorge’s modernising efforts, introducing electricity and other mod-cons. Buñuel demonstrates the discomfort of these two worlds with a beautifully assembled scene where Viridiana’s leads a group pray intercut with a series of shots of acts of manual labour (hammers smashing walls, cement splatted on bricks etc.), making he prayer meeting (which we know the attendees think is a pile of bunkum) seem even more outdated and ineffective.

Viridiana isn’t cruel about these characters though – it looks at them as real people, with faults and virtues, some good some bad. It’s also remarkably clear-eyed about charity. There is something performative about Viridiana’s efforts, as well as a clear sense it is as much for her (subconsciously – she’s too naïve for cynicism) as it is the welfare of the beneficiaries. Those beneficiaries are a brilliant series of pen portraits of people who take offered charity, but resent the paternalistic attitudes that come with it. The working classes are not passively grateful for religious charity – but they are smart enough to take a meal ticket. No wonder the church was furious: Viridiana ruthlessly exposes the lip-service the downtrodden give religious charity, while refusing to reshape their lives and views according to instruction.

The peasants remain earthy, irreverent and full of their own pleasures and prejudices. Despite Viridiana’s best efforts they abuse a (possibly leperous) beggar, tying a cowbell to him so they can hear him coming. When left alone in the grand house, they do what many of us might well do in their place: like teenagers resentful at their parents, they throw a drunken party and trash the place. Viridiana’s ‘dinner-party’ scene is Buñuel’s masterclass in riotous joy that slowly turns darker and more dangerous. Mockery leads to over-indulgence, anger and eventually violence. Viridiana will discover to her cost her attempts at kindness has done nothing to change their basic characters and it is as likely for someone to be downtrodden and deeply unpleasant as it is for them to be decent.

Charity in Viridiana doesn’t really change the world. It can improve lives, but not the system. And using it to shape people into what you want them to be is doomed to failure. The peasants are (mostly) not bad people, they just don’t feel want to reshape themselves into pious substitute nuns for Viridiana as a pay-off for room and board. Jorge is distressed to see a working dog tied to a cart and forced to run alongside it. He impulsively buys the dog – which to its original owner is not a pet but a working animal that must own its keep. Jorge clearly feels good about saving this dog: but seconds after he walks away with it, Buñuel pans across to another identical dog running behind a cart. Who was this charity for? The dog or for Jorge? The peasants of Viridiana? And did this one act change anything? And for some charity is entirely self serving: Viridiana visits Don Jaime solely out of thanks for his charity in paying for her time in the convent – surely an act only carried out for Jamie’s own perverted reasons.

None of this is what the Church or Spanish state wanted to hear. A downtrodden class that isn’t grateful to its leaders for lifting them up, but resents them for their patronising strictures. Lords of the manor, one of whom is a lonely pervert, the second a libidinous playboy who sleeps with multiple women. A deeply religious woman, who is completely naïve and fails utterly. And an ending – an ending Buñuel was ordered to change from the script and in doing so made even more suggestive and blasphemous – that implies the household will settle into a sexual menage.

It’s brilliantly, pointedly not what he was asked for – and stunning condemnation of the flaws in an entire system, caught in a brilliant parable. It’s superbly directed by Buñuel, by now a master of camerawork and editing with a beautifully judged performance by Silvia Pinal who makes Viridiana someone we deeply admire even as every decision she makes seems doomed for disaster. It’s a fiercely challenging, involving and complex work and infinitely rewarding for reviewing and patient consideration – no wonder Spanish critics later named it the greatest Spanish film ever made.