Category: Female led film

Blonde Venus (1932)

Marlene Dietrich can only save her husband…by cheating on him in Blonde Venus

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Cast: Marlene Dietrich (Helen Faraday/Blonde Venus), Herbert Marshall (Ned Faraday), Cary Grant (Nick Townsend), Dickie Moore (Johnny Faraday), Gene Morgan (Ben Smith), Rita La Roy (‘Taxi Belle’ Hooper), Robert Emmett O’Connor (Dan O’Connor)

For their fourth outing together, von Sternberg and Dietrich made for the first time a film set in the modern era. Not that it mattered – von Sternberg would still turn the setting into his typical fever-dream of hyper-reality. It works as always though, because von Sternberg is a master of style and Dietrich is a true superstar. There might not be much more to it than that – and there isn’t really in this melodrama – but that’s still more than enough.

Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall) is an American chemist (although he sounds more plummy than King George) suffering from radiation poisoning. Fortunately, there’s a cure (this was a simpler time, before we knew there wasn’t any dusting yourself off from a deadly dose of radium) but it will cost. Ned’s German wife Helen (Marlene Dietrich) has to take to the stage again to earn the money to pay for it – but finally finds the real money is in essentially prostituting herself to playboy businessman Nick Townsend (Cary Grant). When Ned finds out his life has been saved due to his wife becoming a kept woman he is furious – and she heads on the run with son Johnny (Dickie Moore) as she’s terrified of losing custody of him.

The Blonde Venus of the title is Helen herself, that being her stage name. Blonde Venus is frequently punctuated by prolonged musical performances by Dietrich, filmed with a flowingly smooth camera by von Sternberg, now firmly able to marry movement and dialogue in his films (in a way Morocco fails to do). The most bizarre of these is “Hot Voodoo” which features exotic African-American dances and Dietrich emerging from a huge gorilla suit wearing a blonde afro. This sort of stuff is so strange that it still works as entertainment, and it strangely fits with von Sternberg’s dreamy approach to story-telling where everything feels a few degrees off reality.

Blonde Venus riffs on this fable like atmosphere pretty openly. It starts with Helen telling a story of how Ned and her first met. This opening shows Helen and several German women skinny-dipping in a pool in the days after the First World War (oh, those pre-Code days!) when they are approached by a group of American GIs, led by the completely un-American sounding Ned. They flirt, and the entire meeting feels very much like a fairy tale – which is exactly how Johnny takes it. The film will end with revisiting this story, this time the son wanting to use it as a comforting romantic vision to escape to. It’s all part though of how Blonde Venus is very consciously framing itself as fairy tale, a group of people living in a heightened reality that’s just outside of logic.

Pretty fitting as the plot leads into an almost bizarre sequence of Helen and Johnny on the run – Ned wants paternity (since his wife is now a floozy) so Helen and Johnny had down South into a Southern States of America which are bizarrely so unspecific in their setting they could be anywhere and later a Texas that looks like it’s come straight out of the Chinese market-place of Shanghai Express. Throughout the journey, like a Princess on the run from a wicked stepmother, Helen is pursed by policeman looking to find Johnny for a reward. Like an old morality tale, she is tipped into destitution (eventually arrested for vagrancy) but then almost as suddenly decides to turn her life around – literally the next scene she is in Paris, the belle of the French night club scene. This is the sort of rapid logic of a dream, and about as likely as a fairy tale would be in real life.

Alongside this fascinating narrative dreaminess, the film also carries a proto-feminist message. It sympathetically sides with Helen, a woman who has no choice but to prostitute herself in an attempt to save her husband’s life – only to be roundly condemned for it by the old stick-in-the-mud the moment he returns. Blonde Venus hardly warms either to Nick Townsend – played by a very raw Cary Grant, still years away from creating his persona in The Awful Truth – a selfish playboy who seems uninterested in consequences. By contrast, Helen is a martyr who consistently puts other people first and as a reward is branded a harlot and a bad mother. You can’t win.

As Helen, Marlene Dietrich gives another fine performance. By this stage, she was highly experienced before the camera and knew exactly how to achieve an impact on the audience. As Helen she is continually sympathetic but also a bright, confident and determined woman with a deep love and loyalty for her family. Dietrich works extremely well with her two male stars – although she rather overshadows both of them – and has an excellent chemistry with the kid. She nails the song and dance moments and her slight air of other-worldly mysticism lends itself very well to the fairy-tale feel of much of the film.

Blonde Venus is of course crammed with beautiful images and transitions. There is a lovely opening transition from that flashback to Ned and Helen’s first meeting to the modern day, where Helen’s body thrashing through the water slowly turns into Johnny beating water in his bath with his feet. The other worldly beauty of Helen’s run from Ned is beautifully presented, and von Sternberg draws some very good performances from his leads. It’s a very slight story – a classic melodrama – but its told with an artful skill that makes it a very rewarding watch.

Vera Drake (2004)

Phil Davis and Imelda Staunton are superb in Mike Leigh’s masterpiece Vera Drake

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), Phil Davis (Stan Drake), Peter Wight (Inspector Webster), Daniel Mays (Sid Drake), Alex Kelly (Ethel Drake), Eddie Marsan (Reg), Adrian Scarborough (Frank Drake), Heather Craney (Joyce Drake), Sally Hawkins (Susan Wells), Ruth Sheen (Lily), Lesley Sharp (Jessie Barnes), Liz White (Pamela Barnes), Martin Savage (Sergeant Vickers), Helen Coker (WPC Best), Vincent Franklin (Mr Lloyd), Lesley Manville (Mrs Wells), Jim Broadbent (Judge)

If you passed her on the street, you’d be sure to say hello and she’d be sure to ask after your family – and really mean it. She has a kind word for everyone and never thinks about herself. And, as far as the law is concerned, she’s a multiple murderer. Vera Drake mixes warmth and goodness with anger at social injustice and is stuffed with perfectly observed detail and marvellous acting. It might just be Mike Leigh’s masterpiece. Certainly, few other of his films carry such an emotional wallop.

In London in 1950, Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) spends her life helping those around her and is a devoted wife and mother. But what her husband Stan (Phil Davis) and children Sid (Daniel Mays) and Ethel (Alex Kelly) don’t know is that for decades she has been “helping young girls out” who find themselves unwillingly in the family way. All Vera wants to do is help – but with abortion illegal, her actions are a ticking timebomb, which explodes when Vera is arrested.

Vera Drake is a film about “the family way” – in every sense. Leigh’s unique film-making technique is familiar now: long weeks of research and intensive, improvisational rehearsals help the actors to create fully-fleshed characters who they know so well, they can predict their reactions in any circumstances. During rehearsals, none of the actors in the family knew Staunton was playing an abortionist until the actors playing the police knocked on the door mid-rehearsal – and even Staunton was completely unaware she was to be arrested. The genuine shock the actors felt feeds this intensely powerful scene – and every moment that follows.

In perhaps no other film has Leigh’s technique been more successful: every single character feels completely and utterly real. You could look in any direction and find a character with such a rich hinterland you want to know their stories. Just as intriguing films could be formed around the lives of the young women Vera helps out – Sinead Matthews ‘very young woman’ (and the boyfriend who waits outside), Tilly Vosburgh as a mother of seven with a sick husband, Rosie Cavaliero as a nervous married woman or Vinette Robinson’s scared Jamaican girl – as has been about Vera.

These women have fallen through the cracks – unable to support a family, but deprived any chance of making choices about themselves and bodies. There is a clear social gap – Sally Hawkins gives a sensitive, gentle performance as an upper-class woman, raped by her boyfriend, who obtains an abortion through psychiatric loopholes available only to the rich. No fault of hers – you can imagine she’d be horrified at how others suffer – but for the poor, their only option is Vera. It’s a huge flaw in the system – and removing Vera won’t solve the ‘problem’. It only means women will turn with more desperation to the sort of uncaring sleazy abortionists Denholm Elliott played in Alfie.

The film works because of its tenderness and the raw emotion of the performances. Leigh’s camera is a largely stationary and observatory, but that immerses us in the domestic charm of the first half as much as it does the horrifying coldness of the legal system in the second half. The Drake family home is small and cramped, reflecting their poverty, but also because it feels stuffed with love. Their children – the extremely shy Ethel and her outgoing son Sid – both reflect their intensely loving home, and her husband Stan is full of kindness, generosity and decency.

Leigh carefully demonstrates the warmth of this family. There’s a tear-inducingly sweet romance between Eddie Marsan’s Reg (a beacon of human decency) and the shy Ethel. Stan’s brother Frank (Adrian Scarborough, marvellous) and middle-class wife Joyce (Heather Craney, wonderfully torn in her feelings) struggle to conceive a child. The family laugh and joke together, every day ending in smiles and expressions of love. It’s beautifully immersing and deeply moving – and makes the wait for this world to shatter even more dreadful.

As Vera, Imelda Staunton gives an astonishing performance. A quiet, polite, open-hearted lady whose greatest pleasure is other people’s happiness. Leigh’s film follows her acts of caring around the community – cleaning neighbours houses, looking after her ill mother, inviting lonely newcomer Reg to dinner – showing she applies the same heart-felt but unshowy care to those, as she does to her abortions. It’s twenty minutes before we see one of these, and what’s striking is the well-practised calmness Vera goes about this work, carefully repeating the same reassuring instructions. She never asks for anything (the posh doctor treating Sally Hawkins’ character takes £100). Lily, who puts her in touch with those in need, has no qualms charging £2 without Vera’s knowledge.

Then the arrest comes. This sequence – and the rest that follows – is frankly extraordinary. Staunton’s face when she sees police is a heart-breaking thing of wonder – a horrified realisation that what she has dreaded for decades has finally happened and the realisation that the world as she knew it is over. Throughout she is astoundingly fragile. Barely able to speak, mute with shock – and horrified to hear one of her girls nearly died (it’s never revealed what went wrong). Her first thought is the girls health and how this will ruin her family’s celebration of Ethel’s engagement. So warm and joyful has the first half of the film been, we feel the shocking coldness as the law goes about – albeit with a regret, beautifully underplayed by Peter Wight’s sympathetic detective and Helen Coker’s gentle WPC – the black-and-white business of cataloguing wrongs.

Staunton is extraordinary: she shrinks and diminish, terrified and mortified. The reactions of her family – confused then stunned and in some cases appalled – feel immensely true: some jump forward in support, others in anger. Phil Davis’ deeply moving performance sees Stan suppress his anger under love. Mays’ Sid rages, Heather Craney’s Joyce is resentful, Scarborough’s Frank is a pillar of support, Alex Kelly’s Ethel quietly holds her mother and will not her go. The emotion of this is so affecting as it feels so real: when Reg quietly shows his support and later gently says the disastrous post-arrest Christmas is the finest he has ever had, you’ll feel tears spring to your eyes.

The relentless march of the law is chronicled perfectly by Leigh. This is a director at the top of his game, creating a low-key film that switches on a sixpence from warmth and familial love to shattering emotional impact. Staunton’s performance is breathtakingly brilliant, avoiding all histrionics and will break your heart. The entire cast is astounding. The research and filming is exquisite. The film will quietly devastate you, but also remind you that nothing is more reassuring than the fundamental goodness of people. A beautiful, moving, masterpiece of a film.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

Carey Mulligan excels as a Promising Young Woman

Director: Emerald Fennell

Cast: Carey Mulligan (Cassandra Thomas), Bo Burnham (Ryan Cooper), Alison Brie (Madison McPhee), Clancy Brown (Stanley Thomas), Jennifer Coolidge (Susan Thomas), Laverne Cox (Gail), Chris Lowell (Al Monroe), Connie Britton (Dean Elizabeth Walker), Adam Brody (Jerry), Max Greenfield (Joe Macklemore), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Neil), Alfred Molina (Jordan Green)

It’s late at night, you’ve had a few drinks and someone nice offers to drive you home. If you’re a man you probably think, what’s the problem? If you are woman, this can be just the first act of a night of sexual assault. It’s depressing to think this is the world we live in, but if there is one thing #metoo taught a lot of men, it’s that many women experience danger in situations we wouldn’t think twice about. These ideas are wonderfully explored in Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut, the striking, witty and deeply suspenseful Promising Young Woman.

Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) goes out week after week to clubs. She lolls in the corner, slurs her words and waits for guys to offer her a lift home. Those taxis always swing past their own apartments, they always ask her to pop in for one more drink which swiftly turns into an attempt at sex. At which point, Cassie reveals she is entirely sober… Cassie’s revenge campaign is all about revealing to guys who think they are nice, that they are in fact not nice at all. Dealing with trauma over her past, Cassie’s only meaning in life is this campaign, at the cost of any personal life. But a chance meeting with Ryan (Bo Burnham), someone she used to go to college with, presents her with a choice – a new start or a settling of accounts with the man at the root of her trauma.

Emerald Fennell’s film is a superbly timely drama that brilliantly dances from genre to genre. It’s possibly the sweetest and most romantic revenge drama you’ll ever see, or the funniest shocking tragedy. But it’s primarily a film powered by righteous anger: the world shouldn’t be like this.

Many of the men are of course vile – and perhaps most of all because they are so superbly certain of their self-satisfied niceness. The film opens with one of these nights, Cassie pretending to be utterly wasted in a bar while three men chat about how drunk she is, but also how hot. The guy who seems the nicest pops her in an uber, takes her home, pours her a massive drink and takes her pants off. At which point Cassie, stone-cold-sober announces “What the fuck are you doing?”. Later Neil (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) will whine it’s not fair Cassie has “tricked” him into feeling bad (after he has already assaulted her). As if her not being helpless somehow makes him the victim.

But it’s not just men. Fennell’s film shows several times how many women conspire in keeping this status quo going. Cassie’s focused campaign against the people she holds directly responsible for the rape of her beloved best friend Nina starts with two women. One is the fellow student (now a self-satisfied mum-of-two, played with suburban smugness by Alison Brie) who thought that, by behaving like that, Nina basically had it coming. The second is the Dean of the university (a smoothly uncaring Connie Britton) who didn’t want to ruin the men’s careers. Both of these women are as much a part of the victim-blaming culture as the men Cassie shames on her nights out.

Fennell’s film is a brilliant expose of how toxic a certain kind of masculinity has become. And it’s not just the vile alpha-males responsible for the horror that happened to Nina (when we reach these people late in the film, their basic lack of humanity is staggering – even if Fennell strips them of any possible nuance by making them cartoonish in their Bullingdon-club vileness). The bulk of the men in the film are convinced that because they try and be nice, they therefore are nice.

But it’s still a film with a great deal of compassion. It notably isn’t a straightforward endorsement of revenge. It’s made clear what Cassie is doing is hugely dangerous – she has lucked out that the men she encounters are shamed into pleading and defensive whining. There is the distinct possibility that Cassie could be seriously hurt or worse – for all her planning and determination. That’s not to mention the psychological damage this has on her. She is a deeply disturbed, troubled and unhappy woman whose life is going nowhere.

It’s the emotional heart of Carey Mulligan’s wonderful performance. Mulligan nails the furious calm Cassie has on campaign – and her chilling authority in situations where she is on top. But she also shows Cassie’s emotional damage. She finds it impossible to open herself to any form of relationship, romantic or otherwise. She’s so shutdown she can’t even remember her own birthday. This crusade has sucked everything out of her life, and had a shattering emotional impact on her. Mulligan has never been better: a career defining performance, heartfelt and impassioned, dark and emotionally complex.

Fennell shoots the film with a real assuredness. When Cassie is in control, Fennell uses a series of carefully controlled static shots, often centring Cassie in the frame. Its only when events are out of her control that the camera shifts to greater movement and less stable shots. The confrontations are both darkly amusing but also chillingly edge-of-the-seat – because we can’t be sure whether everything will go wrong, or how far Cassie will go. Promising Young Woman is also very witty and even rather sweet – the slow, hopeful romance between Cassie and Ryan (a charmingly sweet Bo Burnham) is hugely endearing and gives the film a sense of hope. We’re torn: we want Cassie to have her revenge, but the damage to her is so huge that we also want her to move on.

It’s what makes Promising Young Woman a kaleidoscope of a film. Every time you shift it, your perspective changes. We thrill at seeing Cassie shame bad men, just as you worry for her safety every time. We never know what to expect from Ryan – after all we’ve seen so many men like him turn out to be predators – but we want him to be genuine. You’ll laugh one scene and have your stomach in knots the next. It culminates in a confrontation that shifts shockingly from black comedy to simply pure dark, more disturbing and difficult than you can imagine. Fennell – and a magnetic Mulligan – maintain all these different beats perfectly. A wonderful, and hugely timely, film.

Chocolat (2000)

Juliette Binoche changes people’s lives with sweet treats in Chocolat

Director: Lasse Hallström

Cast: Juliette Binoche (Vianne Rocher), Judi Dench (Armande Voizin), Alfred Molina (Comte de Reynaud), Lena Olin (Josephine Muscat), Johnny Depp (Roux), Victoire Thivisol (Anouk Roucher), Hugh O’Conor (Pere Henri), Carrie-Anne Moss (Caroline Clairmont), Peter Stormare (Serger Muscat), Leslie Caron (Madame Audel), John Wood (Guillaume Blerot), Elisabeth Commelin (Yvette Marceau), Ron Cook (Alphonse Marceau)

In 1950s France, expert chocolatiere Vianne Rocher (Juliette Binoche), and her six-year-old daughter Anouk (Victorire Thivisol) travel the country following the North Wind accompanied only by Anouk’s imaginary kangaroo. If that sentence alone has too much whimsy for your stomach to take, don’t invest two hours of your time in the rest of the film. Vianne and her daughter rock up in a very traditional town, run by the Comte de Reynaud (Alfred Molina), a stuffed-shirt who won’t admit his wife has left him. The austere Comte is horrified when Vianne’s sweet goodies prove super popular with the townspeople, whose lives suddenly start to change in profound and exciting ways as the quality of the chocolate helps them discover their own suppressed desires.

As if the title alone wasn’t enough of a warning, Chocolat is almost impossibly sweet, like being water-boarded by hot chocolate. Shot in a village that can only be described as chocolate box, it’s twee, sentimental and exhibits practically all the worst elements of cosy women’s fiction. With Miramax muscle behind it, this heavy-going confection briefly persuaded the world it was some sort of easy-going arthouse picture – rather than a smug fable of cliched situations and characters, coated in an unsettling number of scenes of actors eating chocolate with orgasmic grins.

It will not surprise you to hear that Vianne’s arrival in the village is the catalyst for huge change – the sort of change a trailer would surely describe as “their lives were all starters, until she showed them the importance of dessert”. Vianne is played by Juliette Binoche channelling Nigella Lawson as a yummy mummy domestic goddess. Her shop operates with the sort of business model that only exists in escapist fiction: customers spin a sort of Rorschach wheel and whatever they see in the picture decides the chocolate they will buy (no one would dare ask “Do you just have a box of milktray?”). The whimsy is nearly as thick as the molten goodies in the mixing bowl.

The village is stuffed with esteemed actors going through the motions. Judi Dench shows Maggie Smith that she can play crusty-old-women-with-hearts-of-gold as easily as her, as a grandmother who has been refused access to her grandson by his over-cautious mother. (It’s the sort of role people love to see veteran actors do, and duly landed Dench an Oscar-nomination). With some flatly written lines, Dench provides a bit of sparkle in a role she could play standing on her head. Carrie-Anne Moss is pretty good as her daughter, a repressed fusspot, who won’t let her son have fun. John Wood plays a crusty bachelor with the hots for war widow Leslie Caron. You don’t need to be a master confectioner to mix these ingredients together into the expected resolutions.

Hallström keeps events ticking gently along, in a film so soothing it seems designed to help you fall asleep. For a while Hallström was the go-to-guy for middle-brow, unimaginatively “prestige” adaptations of middle-brow, popular novels (this was his second after The Cider House Rules – and he had several to follow – each progressively a bit worse than the one before). The closest genuine emotion comes from Lena Olin’s abused wife of bullying café owner Peter Stormare. Sure, Olin’s problems are solved in about a few minutes, but the threat to her from Stormare is an intrusion of something that feels genuinely dramatic in what is otherwise a souffle. (Olin gets the film’s only memorable line, whacking her husband over the head when he attacks Vianne with the words “Who says I can’t use a skillet”, a line that’s both rather funny and bizarrely out of place.)

Naturally, the stuffy village learning needs to learn to cut lose a bit and embrace life, love and happiness. Alfred Molina’s Comte is the sort of chap who browbeats the local priest (who loves himself a bit of Elvis) into parroting the conservative sermons he’s written for him about the virtue of being miserable. Of course, the Comte is actually a decent guy (when he finds out what a bastard Stormare is, he banishes him at once), just old-fashioned and as much in need of the orgasmic power of chocolate to heal his pain as everyone else. Did Cadburys and Hersheys sponsor this film?

Just when you thought the film’s cosy warmth and supreme heritage gentleness couldn’t get more trying, it tops itself with the arrival of a punch of whimsical Romani people even more smackably smug than Vianne. Worst of all they are led by Johnny Depp at his most lazily teenage dream-boat, sporting a pony-tail and a bizarre Irish accent. He’s even more of a free-spirit than anyone else, strumming his guitar at the drop of his hat. You’ll dream of a hole in his boat taking him to the bottom of the Seine.

It all ends as you might expect: everyone discovers lovely things about themselves and each other, everyone settles down, Depp and Binoche get-it-on (and keep the relationship going as he drifts in-and-out town), the Comte becomes a top bloke and the invisible kangaroo skips away on the North Wind. Eat a box of Quality Street instead.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Three stars are at the top of their game in this classic screwball-style comedy

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Katharine Hepburn (Tracy Lord), Cary Grant (C.K. Dexter Haven), James Stewart (Mike Connor), Ruth Hussey (Elizabeth Imbrie), John Howard (George Kittredge), Roland Young (Uncle Willie), John Halliday (Seth Lord), Mary Nash (Margaret Lord), Virginia Weidler (Dinah Lord), Henry Daniell (Sidney Kidd)

In 1938 Katharine Hepburn’s career was over. After the flop of some now forgotten (wait, hang on…) screwball comedy called Bringing Up Baby, she took centre place on the Independent Theatre Owners list of “Box Office Poison”. Flops after flop hit Hepburn (all of them are classics today of course), and the studios did their damnedest to drop her. So, Hepburn returned to the stage, developing The Philadelphia Story with Philip Barry – and creating a lead role for herself that would play to all her strengths and help win back public affection. And which (with a little help from Howard Hughes) she would own the rights for: so, if and when they wanted to make a film, she could insist she starred. The rest is history.

The Philadelphia Story is perhaps the best example of the Code-approved genre, the “remarriage comedy” (because the code wouldn’t countenance the idea of a couple cheating). Daughter of a rich Philadelphia family, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) is to marry her dull fiancée George Kittredge (John Howard). George’s main attraction is he’s the complete opposite of her charismatic ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). Dexter crashes the build-up to the wedding, bringing along reluctant society journalist (he’s really a renowned short-story writer) Mike Connor (James Stewart) and press photographer Elizabeth (Ruth Hussey), promising to introduce them as distant friends of the family so they can report on the wedding. But then Tracy finds herself drawn to Dexter and Mike and George as well – who will she end-up walking down the aisle with?

Perhaps the best thing about The Philadelphia Story is that you really don’t know who it will be – and the film successfully keeps the question both up-in-the-air and deeply entertaining. There even seems a chance (unlikely as it is) that Tracy really will stick with George (a tedious nouveau riche businessman with priggish middle-class morals who can’t even mount a house – imagine!). Directed with the sort of unfussy smoothness Cukor excelled in – and helped get the best out of actors – it’s a superb comic treat, with a sparkling adaptation by Donald Ogden Stewart.

At the heart of it, Hepburn is superb in a role that riffs considerably off her own public personality. Hepburn was smart enough to know most audiences saw her as far too clever by half. Her sharpness, acidity and no-nonsense unwillingness to suffer fools had made her hard to relate to. Quite correctly, she felt she needed a role where she could “fall flat on her face”. Which , by the way, is more or less the first thing she does – a hilarious prat fall while throwing Cary Grant’s Dexter out, him responding to her snapping his golf clubs by gently putting his hand on her face and pushing her off-balance (only Grant could have got away with that by the way).

Tracy Lord is a version of the Hepburn many people felt they knew. Tracy genuinely believes she’s smarter and better than anyone else, with unquestionable judgment and superior morals. The film is a gentle exercise in pricking her balloon, showing her she is as prone to mistakes, prejudice and, above all, getting giddy and silly in love, as anyone else. This is a fiercely practical woman, who sets high standards for those around her, suddenly finding herself falling in love with three men at once. It’s the exact flighty lack of commitment she spent years condemning her estranged father for.

This is all scintillatingly played by Hepburn, at her absolute best. The rat-a-tat dialogue (with its classic, Wildean comedy of errors and mis-identification) is under her complete control. She’s delightful when, under the influence, she flirts with Mike – Hepburn showing the world (clearly they missed it in Bringing Up Baby) that she could be as silly and vulnerable as the next girl. Hepburn knew people wanted to see her personae deconstructed, and for her character to learn that (in the words of another comedy) nobody’s perfect. It works a treat – and this remained one of her greatest (and funniest) performances.

It helps she had two of the greatest to riff off. Cary Grant is at his light-comedic best here, turning Dexter – a manipulative reformed alcoholic it would be easy to dislike – into the embodiment of sophistication, charm and playful wit, who we adore as much Tracy’s family does. James Stewart won an Oscar and matches Grant gag-for-gag in a comedic masterclass. He’s a master of hilarious comedic and physical reactions – and lovable enough to turn a chippy newspaperman into a sort of hilariously droll sage. His ‘drunk’ acting is also some of the funniest you’ll see on film (even Grant can be spotted cracking up just a little as Stewart hiccups his way through a scene).

Hepburn’s chemistry with both actors is sublime. Her romancing scenes – both the worst for wear for drink, but also empowered to say things they’ve clearly been burying all day – with Stewart are not hugely romantic, but also rather sexy (Cukor’s direction here is also exquisitely spot-on). It’s a masterclass in on-screen flirtation – and you can see why George gets as pissed off as he is. Hepburn and Grant meanwhile bicker and taunt each other with all the chemistry of a match and a fire.

Each scene has a bounce that teeters between heart-felt and farcical. The set-ups are frequently silly – but they work because they hinge on characters that feel immensely real. Every performer is spot on – credit also goes to a superb Ruth Hussey, one of the few grown-ups in this weekend of flirting, feuding children. Set in a sumptuously rich Philadelphian mansion, for all of Mike’s chippy criticism it’s a celebration of the smooth upper classes over hard-working, dull prigs like George. Its sole fault might be it’s too long (at just under 2 hours, a few scenes and set-ups outstay their welcome). But, as a classic Hollywood comedy, it’s pretty much the top of the class. Box-office poison no more.

Mrs Miniver (1942)

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon hold the homefront together in Mrs Miniver

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Greer Garson (Kay Miniver), Walter Pidgeon (Clem Miniver), Teresa Wright (Carol Beldon), Dame May Whitty (Lady Beldon), Reginald Owen (Foley), Henry Travers (Mr Ballard), Richard Ney (Vin Miniver), Henry Wilcoxon (Vicar), Christopher Severen (Toby Miniver), Brenda Forbes (Gladys), Clare Sanders (Judy Miniver), Helmut Dantine (German pilot)

Mrs Miniver was made when history was in flux: conceived at the height of the Blitz, shot and then parts re-shot either side of Pearl Harbor and released in 1942 after America had entered the war. A patriotic flag-waver, designed to build American sympathy for a Britain standing alone, it was a huge hit, won Best Picture and had a profound impact on Allied morale (Churchill called it more help to the War effort than a flotilla of battleships). It still carries an inspiring, cockle-warming charm and a hefty emotional punch, made even more affecting by the stoic determination (rather than hand-wringing emotion) every setback is met with.

In a small village just outside London, lives the Miniver family. Kay Miniver (Greer Garson) cares for her family in a large country house. She has three children with architect husband Clem (Walter Pidgeon). Their life is contented – and then war breaks out. Oldest son Vin (Richard Ney) joins the RAF – after falling in love with Carol (Teresa Wright), niece of the local grandee Lady Beldon (May Whitty). Clem joins the ships travelling to Dunkirk. Kay holds the domestic fort, protecting her family from air raids, facing down a German pilot and helping shepherd her small village through the trauma of air raids to something approaching a normal life.

Mrs Miniver is all about that stoic, British stiff-upper-lip attitude, of doing your duty uncomplainingly and quietly. As they said “Britain Can Take It”, and the film is a celebration of the nobility of perseverance. It’s designed to inspire and it does: it’s melodrama played with a low-key reserve, which is genuine and heart-felt. There is a reason Goebbels (and he would know) called this a “refined powerful propagandistic [tool]” – it makes you completely emphasise and relate to its characters. We share their moments of joy just as much as the profound tragedy of their losses.

And there is a lot of loss in Mrs Miniver – way more than you might expect, with the film’s final act throwing at least two painful gut punches you don’t expect. Tragedy touches all of us and war carries away the innocent and undeserving with as much eagerness as it does the militaristic. There seems to be no reason or justice to it – but instead the difficult acceptance of fate and the necessity of being part of a struggle larger than ourselves.

In a powerful speech that concludes the film, the vicar stands in the bombed-out ruins of his local church. It mirrors a scene near the beginning, as he regretfully but with quiet reserve announces the outbreak of war. Now he gives a rousing speech that this is war of all the people, against the tyranny that threatens us, where the dead our mourned but not forgotten. It’s a powerful speech (brilliantly delivered by Henry Wilcoxon), of the painful necessity of duty at the time of war that still stirs (it was distributed nationally by Roosevelt’s insistence).

The stoic, good-natured, supportive community, who protect each other and desperately try to maintain hope and nobility when death could strike at any time, contrasts firmly with the only German we see. A wounded pilot who gains entrance to Kay’s home at gunpoint. Kay calmly disarms him, feeds him and tends to his wounds (after all he is the same age as Vin) – he responds with a vicious speech of violent hate, bragging at the deaths the Luftwaffe have inflicted on Europe. It’s the only time her reserve really breaks, as she slaps him – and even for a moment seems to consider dispatching him. Her delayed shock is clear later when she casually smokes one of Clem’s cigarettes – a mixture of restrained shock, relief, horror and confusion across her face. It’s the closest direct danger comes – and the closest she comes to openly expressing rage and anger at the hand the world has dealt her.

The film revolves around Greer Garson’s (Oscar-winning) performance. Though it’s easy to see Kay as a sort of saint, that’s underestimating the huge burden Garson had: she effectively embodies an entire Homefront of scared people doing their duty. It’s a performance of stiff-upper-lipped warmth, her desperation, fear and protective nature clear in every beat. You can see it in her mix of distracted fear and pride when Vin announces he has joined the RAF, and the front of “everything will be alright” she puts on for the children during an air raid that tears her house apart.

Of course, that disaster is met with a “I always wanted to redo that dining room” fortitude by her husband, Clem. Pidgeon and Garson forged a partnership that would run through several movies here, and spark off each other wonderfully. Pidgeon gives a solid grounding to Garson, while she helps find warmth and humanity in an otherwise distant actor (Pidgeon lacks Peck’s – who he resembles in many ways – ability to convey warmth under reserved dignity). Pidgeon’s stirring sense of duty excels, not least during the Dunkirk sequence.

That sequence is very well executed, a small series of boats gradually growing in size until they fill the Thames. When duty calls, people respond with gusto and pride. Alongside this, normal life continues as much as possible: not even the war will stop the flower show. This remains a heart-warming centre piece – pinched for an episode of Downton Abbey – as Lady Beldon overrules the sycophantic judges and gives the prize to the deserving winner, local station manager Mr Ballard (Henry Travers, sweet but receiving a generous Oscar nomination).

The acting is pretty much spot on. Teresa Wright (Oscar winning) is endearingly genuine and vibrant as Vin’s wife to be (and Lady Beldon’s niece) Carol. May Whitty, channelling those grande-old-dames-with-hearts-of-gold, gets every beat right, from comedy to tragedy, Wilcoxon is marvellous. It’s all so heartfelt and earnest you can overlook the fact most of the (largely American and Canadian) cast go for cod-Brit accents or cliched working class vowels – just as you do the fact that neither the towns or countryside in the film looks particularly British (an opening sequence in London looks plain wrong in every sense).

And you can’t fail be stirred by its celebration of quiet determination and unshowy self-sacrifice. You can certainly argue that it’s not a work of art, like other films nominated that year for Best Picture. But, none of them would have (or continue to have) the emotional impact this has. Sure, it feeds off an American nostalgia for English-country-village life – but it does so with a noble cause. Well-acted, very well directed, it still inspires and continues to provoke pride today.

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet are superb in probably the greatest Austen adaptation on film, Sense and Sensibility

Director: Ang Lee

Cast: Emma Thompson (Elinor Dashwood), Kate Winslet (Marianne Dashwood), Alan Rickman (Colonel Brandon), Hugh Grant (Edward Ferrars), Greg Wise (John Willoughby), Gemma Jones (Mrs Dashwood), Harriet Walter (Fanny Dashwood), James Fleet (John Dashwood), Robert Hardy (Sir John Middleton), Elizabeth Spriggs (Mrs Jennings), Imogen Stubbs (Lucy Steele), Hugh Laurie (Mr Palmer), Imelda Staunton (Mrs Palmer), Emilie Francoise (Margaret Dashwood), Tom Wilkinson (Mr Dashwood)

The world of Austen adaptations stands on two pillars – and both of them date from 1995. One is the BBC Pride and Prejudice, the other this luminous adaptation of Austen’s first novel, written by and starring Emma Thompson. It’s hard to pull together a review when a film pretty much plays its hand perfectly: and that’s exactly what Sense and Sensibility does. The film is a complete delight, in which Thompson takes surprisingly large liberties with many of the details of the novel, but brings to the screen a version that never once loses the spirit and heart of Austen’s work. It’s an immensely impressive achievement, and one of the finest literary adaptations ever made.

After the death of Mr Dashwood (Tom Wilkinson), the Dashwood estate passes into the hands of his son John (James Fleet) and John’s ambitious wife Fanny (Harriet Walter), leaving his second wife (Gemma Jones) and their daughters sensible Elinor (Emma Thompson), passionate Marianne (Kate Winslet) and giddy schoolgirl Margaret (Emilie Francoise) suddenly homeless. However, this does bring Fanny’s gentle and kind brother Edward Ferrars (Hugh Grant) into Elinor’s life, and an unspoken romance builds between the pair. There is passion in the air for Marianne at their new home, when she is rescued from a fall in the rain by the dashing Willoughby (Greg Wise). But are there secrets in the pasts of both men that could threaten the sisters’ happiness? And how did Willoughby’s life intersect with the reserved Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman)?

Thompson’s superbly written script is a faultless adaptation that makes not a single poor choice, and expands and enriches several characters (in particular the three men) to great effect. Thompson not only brings much of the humour and wit in Austen to the fore – the film is frequently very funny – she also understands here truth and tenderness. Which is why the film is so beloved: it’s a film overflowing with empathy and heart for its characters which builds the emotional investment as skilfully as it does the comedy. It culminates in a proposal scene which I don’t think has ever not placed a lump in my throat.

To list all the excellent adaptation ideas would take forever so I’ll use one example. The film wisely expands much of the early character interactions, in particular deepening and exploring the early meeting between Elinor and Edward. A section that takes up barely one of the book’s (very short) chapters here fills the first 20 minutes of the film. It’s vital as it superbly establishes the natural warmth and intimacy between these two, and their perfectly complementing personalities.

It also allows Grant – in one of his most romantically winning performances – to display some deeply endearing light comedy, as well as establishing Edward as a thoughtful, sympathetic and decent man, who forms bonds quickly with all the family (especially young Margaret) through his genuineness. It also keeps us rooting for a relationship – and for a character – who the film often has to leave off screen for vast stretches, and leaves us in no doubt that his (later revealed) engagement to Lucy Steele (a woman he does not love, and who is interested in him solely for his position) comes from the same motives of decency, duty and the desire to do the right thing.

If that’s an example of one of Thompson’s most successful changes in her adaptation, she also unerringly identifies the things it’s most important to keep. Just like the novel, the film places the warmth of the sisters’ relationship at its heart. Helped by the natural chemistry and ease between Thompson and Winslet, the film carefully contrasts the personalities of these two sisters (one sensible and reserved, the other spontaneous and passionate) but takes no sides and also shows the sisters themselves are united by their love for each other. The film frequently features scenes of confidence and intimacy between the two, and continually brings us back to each other as the key relationship in their lives. It also shows how both need to meet in the middle ground: Elinor needs some of Marianne’s sensibility, just as Marianne needs to take on some of Elinor’s sense.

Although sense would not have necessarily helped Marianne uncover the dangerous selfishness of Willoughby. Perhaps the only wrong call in the BBC Pride and Prejudice (like most adaptations of that novel), is that it makes the rogueish Wickham insufficiently handsome and too blatantly smarmy from the start, tipping the audience the wink that this man can’t be trusted. Not so here, with Greg Wise giving Willoughby so much charm, regency handsomeness, dash and warmth that you would not imagine for a moment he could be anything but what he seems. He makes a clear contrast with Marianne’s other suitor, the older, more distant Brandon – superbly played by Alan Rickman – whose qualities of kindness and decency are hidden behind his coolness and lack of flash (Rickman is, again, wonderful here as a man hoping against hope for a second chance at love).

But then the film is filled with perfectly cast actors. Thompson is a brilliant and natural fit for Elinor (even if she is too old for the part, something she acknowledged herself) giving her acres of emotional torment under an exterior she must keep calm and controlled for the sake of her family. Winslet became a star for her enchantingly free-spirited performance, grounded by a warmth and desire for the best for others that keeps the character from ever becoming irritating or overbearing.

Among the rest, there isn’t a bum note. Walter is hilarious as the washpish Fanny, Hardy full of bonhomie as Sir John. Elizabeth Spriggs is perfect as a gossipy old maid who is a pillar of strength when her friends are ill-treated. Hugh Laurie is hilarious in a gift of a part as the dry, cynical Mr Palmer whose nearly every line is laugh-out-loud funny, but who also proves his nobility in a crisis. Staunton is equally good as his flighty, mismatched wife. Imogen Stubbs brings out the simpering manipulative scheming of Lucy Steele perfectly.

The whole is bought together expertly by wonderfully paced and constructed directing by Ang Lee, whom it’s surprisingly easy to over-look. Lee was a considered an odd choice for the film – he barely spoke English at the time and was a stranger to Austen. But the film is an inspired match for him, tapping into his sensitivity, the warm eye he brings to families and their dramas, and also the observer’s wit he brings to social comedy and dynamics. Lee also brings an outsider’s eye to England – it’s a film that looks wonderful, but not simply romantic, with Lee not afraid of a stormy sky or a muddy street. Interiors are shot with a candlelit beauty, and there is a sense throughout of all this taking place in a real world. Patrick Doyle’s perfectly judged score also works wonders to help create the mood.

Sense and Sensibility is a masterful film and a, perfect adaptation of Austen. It’s hard to imagine that it will be bettered for some time. Indeed, like the BBC Pride and Prejudice, it feels like it has made all other adaptations of the book redundant. With a brilliant adaptation, superb acting, sensitive and insightful direction and a true understanding of the spirit and heart of Austen, this is one of the greatest adaptations ever made.

The Assistant (2020)

Julia Garner is a silent witness to monstrous goings-on in a Hollywood studio in The Assistant

Director: Kitty Green

Cast: Julia Garner (Jane), Matthew Macfadyen (Wilcock), Makenzie Leigh (Ruby), Kristine Froseth (Sienna), Alexander Chaplin (Max), Juliana Canfield (Sasha), Dagmara Domińczyk (Ellen), Bregje Heinen (Tatiana), Jon Orsini (Assistant), Noah Robbins (Assistant)

Jane (Julia Garner) is a low-level assistant in a Hollywood production company, run by an unseen movie mogul (but there’s no doubt that it’s Miramax and Harvey Weinstein). First in and last out every night, Jane is silent, downtrodden and treated as little more than a piece of furniture by the rest of the staff. Following her over one working day, from scrubbing semen stains out of her boss’ sofa and ending with her leaving the office as he takes advantage of another aspiring actress, The Assistant doesn’t have a plot as such. Instead it’s an experience film – a glimpse into an industry where abuse of your position is so common-place that it permeates every inch of a company, that is set-up to completely service the greed of its president.

Kitty Green’s film is very good at getting across the grinding, depressing, overbearing misery of entry level jobs. Jane slaves for hours at thankless, menial tasks. Coats are thrown at her, cups dunked down in front of her to clean, she is never addressed by name and barely has eye contact with another member of staff. Her contact with her boss is enraged phone calls after non-existent errors (for which she has to write grovelling email apologies) or tiny moments of praise communicated by third parties. Jane is still clinging to the dream of one day becoming a producer herself – but her day-to-day life is a never-ending stream of insults, misery and exploitation.

The film is also very good at showing how someone like Weinstein got away with it for so long. It’s because everyone knows – so much so that it’s become normalised, a part of everyday life, something that no longer seems outrageous or disgusting but just a part of how the business operates. People joke about not sitting on his sofa. Everyone knows what “private screening” is code for. People book late night flights so their boss can have time for his evening exploitation of young actresses. His erectile dysfunction medicine is delivered to the office. Headshots of actresses are printed off and piled on his desk, like a hardcopy of Tinder. The HR department goes out of its way to cover up his crimes.

Jane’s encounter with Matthew MacFadyen’s slimey HR manager is the film’s highlight. Concerned about a naïve young waitress who has clearly been plucked out of a country diner for the bosses perverse entertainment, Jane tries to raise her concerns with HR. She is promptly told complaints will destroy her career, be seen as her own envy – and that she doesn’t need to worry as she is not “his type”. MacFadyen oozes corrupt indifference.

It’s the film’s highlight, as it’s the closest it gets to a giving Jane a character arc. It’s the only time we see her pushing against her working environment – and then making a conscious decision to do nothing about it. While the film’s idea to cover a single day in Jane’s career, after she has spent weeks at the company, is successful in getting across the grinding monotony and everyday sexism and culture of abuse, it does mean the film effectively makes its point in the first fifteen minutes and then repeats it endlessly for the next 70. It also means that, while Julia Garner is very good her character largely hits the same note of downtrodden concealed pain and anger continually.

A more interesting film – if more conventional – could have charted several weeks, allowing us to see how the optimism and excitement Jane seemed to start with in her career was beaten out of her by her appalling abusive workplace. It would still have allowed us to grasp all the monstrous normality of the boss’ abuse, but we could have had a richer exploration of the impact on her.

As it is, The Assistant instead gives a brilliant sense of how horrible an industry can be when the greedy, destructive, vileness of its head permeates every inch of it. But that’s kind of all it says or tells us. It gives us a wonderful sense of what this workplace might be like – but its lack of event, plot or character dynamics means it doesn’t always make for rewarding drama.

Vita and Virginia (2018)

Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki struggle to bring a love story to life in Vita and Virginia

Director: Chanya Button

Cast: Gemma Arterton (Vita Sackville-West), Elizabeth Debicki (Virginia Woolf), Isabella Rossellini (Lady Sackville), Rupert Penry-Jones (Harold Nicholson), Peter Ferdinando (Leonard Woolf), Gethin Anthony (Clive Bell), Emerald Fennell (Vanessa Bell), Adam Gillen (Duncan Grant), Karla Crome (Dorothy Wellesley)

The love affair between Bloomsbury group writers Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) inspired a successful epistolatory play by Eileen Atkins. It’s got all the elements you need for a love story: sadly none of those make their way into this limp, lethargic, languid film which drains any trace of passion from its material.

Where did it all go so wrong? The film expands the plays concept (two actors performing the various letters between the two lovers) into a series of conversations and throws in as characters the other members of the Bloomsbury circle. Sadly, what it fails to do is convey a sense of joi d’vive to any of this. The Bloomsbury crowd not only come across as pompous bores, but they never even really seem to be enjoying themselves. They certainly find it hard to get passionately worked up about any of these marvellous artistic ideas we keep being told they are having. The only thing we really see them talk about is sex, probably because it’s easier to put that on screen than writing.

The failure of the film is increased by the sadly misjudged performances by the two actors at its heart. It’s already a struggle to get any sense of chemistry between these two – I can’t put my finger on why this is, but there isn’t the undefinable ‘spark’ between them. Perhaps it’s partly because they both choose such wildly diverse acting styles, that their scenes never quite click together.

Debicki goes for a stately fragility, mixed with an emo waviness and seems to be playing every scene as if she subconsciously stating “my character committed suicide you know”. Arterton seems to try and compensate for Debicki’s overstated lip wobbling, by going for a jolly hockey-sticks brashness. Neither performance compliments the other and the effect is feeling like two very good actresses feeling constrained in different ways by the material.

It’s not helped by the flatness of much of the filming. I’ve seen Chanya Button’s work elsewhere (notably on television with some great work on WW2 drama World on Fire), but here she seems uncertain how to bring visual interest to this story. Too many scenes are shot with a murky lack of visual interest. Moments of letter reading are presented as the actors addressing the camera. Stylistic flourishes – such as Virginia’s visions of swiftly growing vines at moments of emotion – seem to come out of nowhere and jar with much of the rest of the traditionalism of the rest of the filming.

So instead, two fascinating intellectuals end up coming across as slightly self-absorbed bores in a relationship that never catches fire. Most of the rest of the cast fail to make an impact: Rupert Penry-Jones gets closest as Vita’s husband who oscillates between embracing their open marriage and demanding a wife who will fulfil a more traditional role. But for the rest, it’s hard to get any sense of their personalities with some performances – especially Adam Gillen – tipping too far into gurning comedy.

The general lifelessness of the film is made somehow even worse by the bizarrely left-field score. It’s a strikingly anachronistic slow-paced drum-and-base inspired sound that wouldn’t seem out of place in the late hours of a nightclub. Here it not only feels horrendously out of place – not least because it’s the only anachronistic touch either in the film-making of the performances, which are otherwise scrupulously correct – but it’s incessant throbbing beat actually helps make the film even slower, as if you were watching it in a slightly intoxicated haze.

Vita and Virginia should really have crackled with the vibrancy of the real-life characters and the passion of their love for each other and their shared ideas. Instead it’s a tedious bore that never sparks into life.

Shanghai Express (1932)

Marlene Dietrich is on a train full of mystery and danger in Shanghai Express

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Cast: Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Lily/Madeline), Clive Brook (Captain Donald Harvey), Anna May Wong (Hui Fei), Warner Orland (Henry Chang), Lawrence Grant (Reverend Carmichael), Eugene Pallette (Sam Salt), Gustav von Seyffertitz (Eric Baum), Louise Closser Hale (Mrs Haggerty), Emile Chautard (Major Leonard)

The fourth collaboration between von Sternberg and Dietrich, completed when they were in the middle of – was it an affair, an infatuation or something half-way between obsession and resentment? Who knows. Either way, Shanghai Express is one of the their finest collaborations, a triumph of von Sternberg’s mastery of style and Dietrich’s charisma and appeal, brilliantly shot with some iconic images. The biggest hit of 1932, it’s also a loopy part-thriller, part-romance but with a sort of eerie dream-like logic and that mixes peril and jaunt. It’s a fascinating picture.

Its 1931 and China is in the middle of a civil war. Boarding a train bound for – you guessed it – Shanghai, is a veritable smorgasbord of ex-pats and mysterious travellers. First among them – and reviled by all but one of the other passengers – is infamous “coaster” ‘Shanghai Lily’ (Marlene Dietrich), a woman who (as she says) needed to go through more than one man to get that nickname. The only person in first class who can stand her is Chinese “coaster” Hui Fri (Anna May Wong). The man who has the most cause to resent her though is army physician Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook). The two of them were deeply in love, but misunderstandings came between them and he’s nursed a grudge ever since. The rest of the train carry their own petty prejudices – but all these are put in perspective when the train is hijacked by rebel leader General Chang (Warner Orland), who holds Donald hostage to get the release of his right-hand man from the Chinese. What will Shanghai Lili aka Madeline do to save the life of the love of her life?

Clocking in at a slim and efficient 82 minutes, Shanghai Express still manages to have a languid, patient pace to it, taking its time to establish places, relationships and stakes. Part of that also comes from the film being set in a sort of imaginarium idea of China, born entirely out of von Sternberg’s brain. With his long-standing disinterest in realism, von Sternberg’s film is a sort of fever-dream image of China. So it’s kind of fitting the film plays out like a dream, right down to its own pace. At times it rushes swiftly on, at others the stakes hardly seem to matter as the characters move freely around while in supposed captivity and barely consider their lives at risk. At the end of the film, the train arrives (despite the violence en route, the fact its late gets the most comment) and the characters simply get on with their lives.

Perhaps its all part of von Sternberg’s deconstruction of these Europeans and Yanks, whose only engagement with this foreign country is that it should be made as much like the West as possible. Most of the characters on board – with the exception of the women – are selfish, pompous, lecherous, prejudiced, greedy or some combination of all of the above. While they wear an air of respectability, it doesn’t take long to shake them from it. And their judgement of others is swift and irreversible. Even Donald, our nominal hero, fits this bill – he frequently rushes to judgement and pig-headedly sticks there, regardless of logic and experience.

In among this, it’s the women who emerge as the only characters who demonstrate pluck, loyalty, empathy and decency. Anna May Wong’s looked-down-on courtesan goes through a torrid time – demeaned on the train then assaulted by the lecherous Chang not once but twice (the second time an off-screen rape that none of the Western characters ever feel the need to comment on). Despite this, she’s one of the few who acts to defend someone other than herself, and her actions are (eventually) what brings liberation for the passengers (again not that they, or anyone else from the West, thanks her for it). It’s a neatly reserved performance from Wong (perhaps the best in the film), her eyes conveying an only thinly concealed contempt for those around her.

The closest thing she has to a confidante is of course Shanghai Lily herself. This is the perfect role for Marlene Dietrich, a woman who is both imperious and fragile, proud but willing to debase herself to save the man she loves, cold and knowing but also strangely naïve and romantic. As with much of her best work, what she does so brilliantly here is to bring together a host of contradictions that really shouldn’t make sense (except perhaps as some sort of sexual fantasy of von Sternberg’s?) and make it the most charismatic and arresting part of the film. Dietrich is not the most accomplished of actors – but she is an accomplished presence and undeniably charismatic.

Lily proves that she may be a hard-nosed player of the game, but that she’s more than capable of loyalty and faith to those she loves. She has no hesitation when asked to put herself in the way of danger for them. It’s a shame Dietrich doesn’t have a more charismatic scene partner than the rather bland Clive Brook (who ends up looking very forced as a romantic lead – you end up wondering what on earth this woman sees in him). But Dietrich’s movie-star magnetism holds much of the plot of the film together and provides much of its emotion.

She’s also of course beautifully filmed by von Sternberg – one late shot (with lighting pointing upwards in almost a spotlight triangle, creating a truly striking and erotic image of her smoking against a train door) has rightly become iconic, but the film is packed with them. Von Sternberg, working closely with photographer Lee Garmes (Oscar-winning) perfectly uses light and shadow to frame Dietrich with an alluring exoticism that compels the focus.

It’s all part of the film’s beauty and the skills behind its shooting. It starts with a series of flourishing tracking shots through busy train stations (something it returns to later on). Scenes that coat the film in smoke, with just backlighting, while soldiers and passengers move in front like a lantern show are extraordinary. The images make superb use of ultra-dark blacks to introduce frequently gorgeous images. With von Sternberg’s setting that only just touches realism in the faintest way possible, it makes for a wonderfully framed exotic fever dream – just as the film itself oscillates between action and languid romance in its pacing.

Shanghai Express is almost impossible to categorise. A romance with thrills in the middle, an action film where urgency is often off the table, a mystery that travels with an almost pre-ordained certainty towards its goal, it truly has a dream-like logic. And I guess if it’s all von Sternberg’s dream, it makes sense that it’s most striking scenes see Dietrich, perfectly lit, with smoke stroking itself around her. After all her charisma is at the film’s heart.