Category: Small town drama

Peyton Place (1957)

Small-town America is the home of hypocrisy in this ridiculously silly soap opera that spawned…a long-running TV soap opera

Director: Mark Robson

Cast: Lana Turner (Constance MacKenzie), Diane Varsi (Allison MacKenzie), Hope Lange (Selana Cross), Lee Philips (Michael Rossi), Arthur Kennedy (Lucas Cross), Lloyd Nolan (Dr Matthew Swain), Russ Tamblyn (Norman Page), Terry Moore (Betty Anderson), David Nelson (Ted Carter), Betty Field (Nellie Cross), Mildred Dunnock (Elsie Thornton), Leon Ames (Leslie Harrington)

Small-town America: what mysteries lie behind those white picket fences? If the small New England town of Peyton Place is a guide, all sorts of terrible things. Why is Constance MacKenzie (Lana Turner) so afraid of sex and romance? Could her fear that the slightest kiss could turn her would-be-writer teenage daughter Allison (Diane Varsi) into a slut, be rooted in her own mysterious past? Why does Allison’s friend Selena (Hope Lange) fear her drunken and lecherous step-father Lucas (Arthur Kennedy) so much? Why is Mommas-boy Norman (Russ Tamblyn) so shy?

If that all sounds like the set-up for a great-big TV soap… well that’s because it essentially is. Peyton Place was a huge box-office success in 1957, but you can argue it found its natural home when it later mutated into a long-running TV soap. It’s one long onslaught of high-flung, ridiculously OTT events, all filtered through the sort of dialogue punctured by swelling music to hammer home the feelings. Peyton Place is completely disposable – but also strangely enjoyable, rollicking along like all the best soaps do, so full of events that you don’t have time to stop and realise how silly it is.

Adapted from a doorstop popular novel, screenwriter John Michael Hayes faced quite a task. The original was crammed with sex, foul language and everything from murder to teenage pregnancy, illegal abortions, rape and incest. That’s not exactly the sort of stuff the Hays Code dreamed of. Peyton Place: The Movie is almost a triumph in how much of this stuff it manages to cover, all in a very cunning, under-the-radar way. Sure, the rough edges are shaved off (and, of course, not the hint of a cuss word makes it to the screen) but it still manages to tick a lot of those boxes.

It’s all to hammer home the hypocrisy of small-town America. Curtain-twitching busybodies watch every moment, leaping for their phones at the merest hint of scandal: from kisses out of school to teenage kids skinny dipping (bet they can’t believe their luck when an actual murder happens). Peyton Place follows in Picnic’s footsteps (to which it is vastly superior, equally shallow but much less pleased with itself and far more entertaining) in exposing the hypocrisy of 50s America, where everybody goes to church and no-one practices the good-will and love it preaches (and yes, I know the film is set in the 1940s, but no one told the costume or production designers).

Peyton Place was littered with acting nominations (in a year where 12 Angry Men got none, for Chrissakes!). It’s a little hard to understand why, considering every part fits neatly into a trope. Lana Turner is the nominal lead as the frigid clothes-store owner who hides a secret shame (all about that long-lost husband) that gets in the way of her flirtation with the newly arrived schoolmaster (played with smug dullness by Lee Philips). But that’s only because she’s the most famous actor in it. Her performance sets a sort of template for mothers that would be repeated countless times.

The real leads (both Oscar nominated for Supporting Actress) are Diane Varsi and Hope Lange as the two teenagers at the heart of Peyton Place’s ocean of hormones (although, it being a 50s film, a smooch at a booze-free party is the furthest anyone goes). Varsi narrates most of the film as a precocious would-be writer, with several grandstanding scenes wailing at her mother for being so unfair. It’s a broad but engaging performance and she manages to make Allison not quite as wet as she could be. She also gets a shy romance with nervous Norman Page (a gentle Russ Tamblyn, also nominated): Norman is clearly closeted, struggling with his sexuality in a small town (“I don’t know how to kiss a girl” he says) but the film does its best to overlook this.

More engaging is Hope Lange, who gets the juiciest material to play. The film is surprisingly daring in staging her rape by her boorish step-father (a slightly too ripe Oscar nominated Arthur Kennedy, although still the most memorable male performance). Robson’s camera pans up from her being pinned down, to her raised hands and then finally cuts outside. Lange plays the trauma of this – including an unwanted pregnancy, removed by the Doctor in an abortion the film bends over backwards to make an accident-induced miscarriage – with a great deal of vulnerability and empathy, her shame and desperation rather moving.

It makes her the target for gossip. Peyton Place smugly ticks off small-town America for its gossipy meanness – while still peddling a message that, if we just followed the warmth of the best of small-town values, the world would be a better place – ending with Lloyd Nolan’s doctor delivering a pompous ticking-off to the town (from the witness box during a murder case no-less). Peyton Place at heart is a fairly conservative film, that ends with most people discovering their inner-goodness (apart from a few irredeemable harridans), and all wickedness resolved.

It’s directed with workmanlike professionalism by Mark Robson, but it didn’t need inspiration. It’s odd to consider this had nine Oscar nominations, since it feels like the sort of disposable mini-series Netflix throws together every week. Its main claim to fame might be that its quaint small-town smugness, masking a bucketload of scandal, served as the main inspiration for Twin Peaks (though dialled up to a whole other level of weird). It’s overlong, overblown and very silly, but because it doesn’t take itself seriously (unlike heavy-duty message film that year Sayonara, a silly soap that thought it was Pulitzer material) it’s actually ridiculously entertaining, in a totally trashy way.

Picnic (1955)

William Holden stirs up a small-town – and Kim Novak – in Picnic

Director: Joshua Logan

Cast: William Holden (Hal Carter), Kim Novak (Madge Owens), Rosalind Russell (Rosemary Sydney), Betty Field (Flo Owens), Susan Strasberg (Millie Owens), Cliff Robertson (Alan Benson), Arthur O’Connell (Howard Bevans), Verna Felton (Helen Potts), Reta Shaw (Irma Kronkite)

In a small Kansas town in the early 1950s, everything is sweet as apple pie. But under the surface, tensions bubble – and it only takes a stranger changing the status quo to make them explode. In William Inge’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning play – bought to the screen by original Broadway director Joshua Logan – that stranger is Hal Carter (William Holden), failed sportsman, actor and college drop-out, drifting into town looking for a new start from old friend Alan (Cliff Robertson). But Hal, an amiable screw-up, quickly puts himself in the middle of a love triangle between Alan and his girlfriend Madge (Kim Novak), the local beauty tired of being judged only by her looks.

All this eventually explodes into a series of furious confrontations where the true colours of various participants are revealed. In the 1950s Picnic looked like a criticism of the cosy conservatism of small-town America. But today, it actually feels more than a little nostalgic for the lost innocence of those times. Sure, some people in the town are less than sympathetic, or their lives have been crushed by the expectations of others. But generally, with its pastel colour palette and its generally fundamentally well meaning characters, it now feels a rather reassuring watch.

Like many films that pushed the envelope at the time, it also looks rather tame today. The film is strong on demonstrating the impact of the sexuality of a topless Holden on the women of the town – nearly all of whom go weak at the knees. But generally, the film’s sexual content now looks remarkably safe and gentle. A sense of powerful longing for something missing from their own lives does comes across strongly – Russell’s Mrs Sidney, worse for wear from drink, ends up feebly trying to pull up Holden’s trousers to look at his legs while dancing. But the sexual outbursts largely restrict themselves to that and a few passionate clinches.

Logan’s film throws in a few big visuals (such as the closing helicopter shot as a bus drives out of town) and clearly enjoys its location shooting, but remains stage-bound. Several scenes translate across exactly to backyard locations, the same sets in all but name that appeared on stage. It also struggles to fill the cinemascope screen, for all that James Wong Howe’s photography has a certain Autumnal beauty to it (you won’t see any vibrant greens, reds or yellows). In addition, many of the actors go for somewhere between naturalism and a mannered Broadway show-boating.

Perhaps the main issue is that film dwarves this slight and intimate story. Moments of intimacy that on stage you feel carry impact – heartfelt declarations and tortured confessions – don’t carry nearly so much on screen. In fact, the story ends up feeling rather slight and even predictable: the drifter has depths, but the town unfairly turns against him, the old-maid schoolteacher is deeply frustrated, the local beauty juggles depression, the good natured son of the local bigwig is a self-entitled bully. None of this really feels revelatory and, on screen, easily drifts by with little impact.

Logan’s stagy style also has a mixed impact on the acting with some going for a cinematic underplaying, and others inspired by a theatrical grandness to embrace the big moments. Leading the way in that camp is Rosalind Russell who gives a strong performance as the frustrated schoolteacher, but frequently allows herself to go a little too far in moments of emotional outburst. It’s particularly noticeable as she’s paired with Arthur O’Connell (reprising his Broadway role, and getting an Oscar nomination) who underplays with a quiet wit and honesty.

One of the film’s principle problems are with the two leads. William Holden gives a fine performance – fun-loving and kind but also cutting a rather sad and tragic figure behind the bonhomie – but is blatantly too old for the role. Hal is probably meant to be in his 20s – Holden was 37 and, with his craggy face, actually looks older. While it does add a level of Hal being increasingly irresponsible for his age, the part really means a charismatic youngster dripping sex appeal (think James Dean – Paul Newman was turned down for the part). Opposite him the inexperienced Kim Novak does, at times, give her line readings a striking genuineness but at others comes across as slightly wooden.

A stagy and slightly old-fashioned watch today, Picnic was nominated for several Oscars, but increasingly looks rather like a celebration rather than a gentle criticism of the small-town values it depicts.

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd are making the best of small-time life in The Last Picture Show

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Cast: Timothy Bottoms (Sonny Crawford), Jeff Bridges (Duane Jackson), Cybill Shepherd (Jacy Farrow), Ben Johnson (Sam the Lion), Cloris Leachman (Ruth Popper), Ellen Burstyn (Lois Farrow), Eileen Brennan (Genevieve), Clu Gulager (Abilene), Sam Bottoms (Billy), Randy Quaid (Lester Marlow), Gary Brockette (Bobby Sheen)

“Anarene, Texas, 1951. Nothing much has changed…” So went the tagline for Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show. Change, or rather the lack of it, is the heartbeat of this film. It’s small time (fictional) Texas town isn’t a million miles from the Wild West dustbowls. You feel nothing has really changed for decades, the same faces in the town have just got older. But the tagline suggests that, in many ways, the 1950s were not that different from the progressive 1970s. Sex and scandal lie under the surface of the town, with the inhabitants having little to distract them from boredom other than seducing each other. Unlike the sort of traditional films shown in the picture show – Father of the Bride or Red River – this town is just drifting, a change in America both round the corner but also feeling like something that would slide off the town like water from a duck’s back.

The film largely follows three high schoolers are preparing for graduation. Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are on the town’s useless high school football team (a uselessness no-one will let them forget). Duane is dating Jacy (Cybil Shepherd), a woman just discovering the power of her looks – and Sonny longs for her himself. Instead, Sonny starts an affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the overlooked, lonely housewife of his football coach. Romantic entanglements abound, but life drifts on with the younger generation thinking sometimes of the future, but really repeating the mistakes of the older generation – people like Jacy’s cynical mother Lois (Ellen Burstyn) and the owner of the town’s pool-hall, cinema and diner, the fading conscience of the town Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson).

Bogdanovich’s film was a sensation when it was released, a key part of the New Wave films in Hollywood. It has lasted, in the way other films from the period haven’t, because it has a subtly simple but compelling story, shot as a perfect fusion of French New Wave styles with John Ford and Orson Welles inspired classicism. Bogdanovich’s film buffery is obvious from every frame – not just from the film posters announcing what is being shown at the picture palace, but also from its loving use of French-style realism and lack of glamour, set and framed in the Fordian style, often stressing isolation, intercut with homages to Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and Touch of Evil.

And in it we have a series of young people who seem to have no idea either where they, or the world is heading. Timothy Bottoms acts with such effortless naturalism, it’s easy to forget he is even acting at all. It’s a perfectly judged performance of a very normal young man, low on aspiration and inspiration, selfish in the way the young are but full of passion and regret. Jeff Bridges is similarly brilliant, playing a not-particularly smart (or particularly successful) school sports star in a performance completely free of any condescension or camera winking, but played with a charming honesty. These are supremely normal young men. Generally decent, well-meaning and naïve, not knowing what it is they want or need from life. They would fit as neatly into 1971, with their dreams, as they do in 1951. Especially as Duane packs off to head to Korea (no real difference from Vietnam).

And a lot of these dreams revolve around sex – and often sex with Jacy. Cybil Shepherd was a sensation on the film’s release, seen as the ultimate late-teen temptress and sexpot. But in fact, Jacy is (in her way) as much of an innocent as the others. She’s a woman only just discovering her own passions and longings. Who doesn’t want to become the jaded figure her mother has become – but working out the easiest way to get what she wants (be that a better boyfriend, better chances or even just some attention) is through using her physical attributes. Her sexual experimentation is, in a way, liberating – and just another attempt to find an answer to her own aimlessness. Sure – encouraged by her mother – she doesn’t invest anything emotionally in these entanglements. But is it really all that different from Sonny’s own using of Ruth Popper?

Ruth Popper is emblematic of the sadder older generation in the town. You can imagine they must have had hopes and dreams – or were once as breezily uncaring – as the younger generation. But they’ve found out, just as they will, that things don’t change. That you can blink and find yourself twenty years down the line, unhappy and lonely in a place you can’t seem to escape.

Cloris Leachman is outstanding as Ruth (she won an Oscar), the only person in the all the film’s couplings that we see expressing tenderness and vulnerability (in a film full of sexual encounters, the most intimate thing we see is her combing Sonny’s hair). She dares to slowly open herself up emotionally to believing in Sonny – to seeing their affair as more than just the booty call it starts as, but as something with a future. From the tearful fragility of her first scenes – her buttoned up matronly appearance, making her look far older than she is – she blossoms into a warmer, excited, person. It makes her inevitable betrayal by Sonny all the more heart-wrenching – along with her self-loathing fury that closes the film.

All the adults are drifting through the same disappointing life. Ellen Burstyn (also nominated) is wonderful as Jacy’s mother, who continually defies expectations. This mother is unfazed by her daughter sleeping with her lover, suggests that she might as well experiment sexually so she can find out it’s not all that and carries a revelation of deep loss and personal tragedy that only comes to light late in the film but is there in the character from the start. Other adults seem equally aware of their pointlessness: the coach is a repressed homosexual, the English teacher seems resigned to teaching Keats to bored students, Jacy’ father is a blow-hard nobody, Sonny’s father is a stranger to him. Only Eileen Brennan (excellent) motherly waitress still seems to have some hope.

Sonny’s surrogate father – and the heart of the film – is local businessman Sam the Lion. Johnson is superb, gifted a surprisingly small number of scenes but which establish both his moral force and his position as a link to a halcyon days past in America that might not really exist. Bogdanovich gives Johnson a knock-out speech (surely what won him the Oscar) – an Everett-Sloane-in-Kane inspired remembrance of a relationship from long ago, where the world seemed full of hope and opportunity, that perhaps get closest to defining the film’s sad reflection on how little those two things actually seem to exist in the present.

But it’s also about the temptation of memory. Bogdanovich’s masterpiece (it was all downhill in his career from here), The Last Picture Show knows only too well how quickly we realise life is a confusing, compromised mess. And the film, for all its old-school Hollywood style, is all about the past being just as a confusing, empty, sex-filled place of loss as the present is. Things have always been like this – and they probably always will. Welcome to Anarene. Nothing has changed.

Thelma and Louise (1991)

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis hit the road in Thelma and Louise

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Susan Sarandon (Louise Sawyer), Geena Davis (Thelma Dickinson), Harvey Keitel (Detective Hal Slocumb), Michael Madsen (Jimmy Lennox), Christopher McDonald (Darryl Dickinson), Stephen Tobolowsky (Max), Brad Pitt (JD), Timothy Carhart (Harlan Puckett)

Two people on the run, dodging the police and doing what they can to survive. It’s a well Hollywood has gone back to time and time again. But in most cases the people were either two men, or maybe a man and a woman (romantically involved naturally). It was unheard of to make that most masculine of genres, the outlaw road movie, into one led by women. But that’s what we get here, in a movie that has become iconic in more ways than one, Thelma and Louise.

Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) is a tough, independent-minded waitress. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) is a shy housewife, whose husband Darryl (Christopher McDonald) is a jerk. With Darryl away for the weekend, Thelma and Louise head off for a weekend away together, to let their hair down and feel a bit of freedom. Unfortunately, disaster happens when Thelma flirts with a sleazy guy in a Texas bar (Harlan Puckett), who tries to rape her in the car park. Louise saves her – but guns the guy down. The two women now find themselves on the run from the law, terrified that no one will believe their side of the story. But as the women find themselves on the road, the experience changes them, with Thelma flourishing in an environment where she can make her own choices and Louise becoming more able to open herself up emotionally. But can they stay ahead of the law?

With a terrific (Oscar-winning) script from first-time writer Callie Khouri, Thelma and Louise offers a dynamic and daring twist on the Hollywood road movie. By placing women at the centre of a story like this, a fascinating new light is shed not only on the law, but also on the culture of the American South. It also gives what would otherwise be familiar situations, a fascinating new light as two underestimated people are forced to prove time-and-time again how ahead of the game they are.

Ridley Scott directs the film with a beautiful, confident flourish. The John Fordian iconography of the West is a gift for a painterly director like Scott, and this film hums with the sort of eye for American iconography that only the outsider can really bring. The film brilliantly captures the dusty wildness of the West as well as the neon-lit grubbiness of working class American bars. It looks beautiful, but also vividly, sometimes terrifyingly real. Scott then, with a great deal of empathy, builds a very humane story around this, with two characters it’s nearly impossible not to root for.

He’s helped immensely by two stunning performances from the women in the lead roles. Susan Sarandon’s is perfect for the brash and gutsy Louise, not least because she’s an actor brilliantly able to suggest a great emotional depth and rawness below the surface. Louise is a women juggling deeper traumas – past experiences (its implied a historic rape) that leave her in no doubt that the justice system will not be interested in hearing about a woman’s suffering. It’s the hard to puncture toughness that softens over the course of the film, as Louise becomes more willing to explore her emotions and allow her vulnerability to show.

Particularly so as the lead between the two is slowly taken over by Geena Davis’ Thelma. This is certainly Davis’ finest work, her Thelma starting as a beaten down housewife, just trying to let her hair down in a bar, into a scared victim, a horny teenager lusting over Brad Pitt’s hunky JD then finally into a road warrior who discovers unimagined determination and resources inside herself, toting guns and robbing stores. It’s the sort of once-in-a-lifetime part Davis seizes upon. She’s sensational and totally believable at every turn.

Placing these two women at the centre of a story like this puts the feminine perspective front-of-centre – and it’s alarming to think how little some things have changed. Can we imagine today that there wouldn’t be policemen and lawyers willing to blame Thelma – or claim she asked for it – for her near rape in a bar? Or that there wouldn’t be a fair crack of the whip in the system for Louise for gunning down an unarmed rapist? On top of that, the majority of the police tracking the two women (with the exception of Harvey Keitel’s decent cop – Keitel is very good in this) find it hard to take “these girls” seriously, finding it hard to imagine them being anything other than a joke.

Mind you the attitudes of men are laid bare at every turn. Thelma’s husband Darryl (a very good performance of selfish patheticness by Christopher McDonald) is a waste of skin, a man who can’t imagine a world where Thelma could be his equal. Timothy Carhart is all charm until Thelma denies him the sex he believes he was due for in exchange for a night if flirting and drunks, and promptly turns extremely nasty. The cops – gun totting with itchy trigger-finger – just seem to be waiting for an excuse to throw the ladies down. Even JD (a star marking early performance by a deeply attractive and charismatic Brad Pitt), who seems so charming – and proves the sort of generous and skilled lover Thelma has never experienced in her life – has no qualms about robbing the ladies of their life savings, leaving them hung out-to-dry.

Many men at the time complained (pathetically) about the presentation of men in this film (as if men haven’t had any films where they were sympathetically placed front and centre), but I think it’s a pretty clear judgement that women are not held to the same standards. Khouri’s script shows time and time again the casual sexism (and sexualisation) the women encounter – to the extent that when they finally confront (and pull guns) on the sexist, aggressive truck driver who has been following them for most of the film, you cheer along with them when they shoot out first his tyres, then his oil tanker. We’ve even had a warm-up with Thelma turning a tough intimidating cop into quivering jelly by taking control of the situation.

But that’s what this film is about – the unexpected taking control. Because this isn’t just a feminist statement because it puts women into a male genre. It does so by showing how few choices these women have in their lives before they take into the road and how liberating it is to be able to make their own choices. Because these characters have had all their choices made by men, from Thelma’s smothering marriage to Louise’s undefined past as a victim. And their futures are as much out of the control, likely to find themselves on death row for shooting a rapist. On top of all that, men continue to see them both as sex objects.

How could you not be moved by this? It’s why the films iconic ending carries such impact. These are women discovering they have the power to make their own choices and their own mistakes. It has an undeniable power to it. It’s a power that runs through the entire film, perfectly shepherded by Scott’s astute and sharp direction, with Davis and Sarandon superb. It will still give you shocking insights today into what life is like for women in a world still dominated by men.

More recently its writer and stars pointed out that the film actually ended up changing very little for women in Hollywood. There was no new wave of daringly different female-led movies, with “women’s drama” still mostly restricted afterwards to family drama and romances. There are still few exciting opportunities for female filmmakers. (And it’s a sign of the times back then that the very idea of a woman directing this feminist film was never even raised as a possibility.) Perhaps that’s why Thelma and Louise remains such an icon, because it’s still such a one-off. Either way, it’s a film that hasn’t aged a day since it was released.

The Last Hurrah (1958)

Spencer Tracy runs for office in John Ford’s toothless satire The Last Hurrah

Director: John Ford

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Major Frank Skeffington), Jeffrey Hunter (Adam Caulfield), Dianne Foster (Maeve Caulfield), Pat O’Brien (John Gorman), Basil Rathbone (Norman Cass), Donald Crisp (Cardinal Martin Burke), James Gleason (“Cuke” Gillen), Edward Brophy (“Ditto” Boland), John Carradine (Amos Force), Willis Bouchey (Roger Sugrue), Ricardo Cortez (Sam Weinberg), Wallace Ford (Charles J Hennessey), Basil Ruysdael (Bishop Gardner)

Mayor Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) is running for a fifth term of a “New England city”. Skeffington’s roots lie in the town sprawling Irish population, and has successfully played the game of machine politics all his life. He’s alienated the members of the towns traditional elite – who can trace their ancestors all the way back to the Mayflower – but he’s loved by the regular people of the city. But is Skeffington going to find himself out of touch with a political world starting to embrace populism and the power of television?

John Ford’s adaptation of a hit novel by Edwin O’Connor, is one of his rare “present day” pictures. But it’s a bit of a busted flush. What should have been an exploration of a tipping point in American politics, totally fails to successfully land any of the points it could make. It’s a film that doesn’t understand the Kennedy-esque world America was moments away from embracing, and looks with such ridiculously excessive sentimentality at old-school politics it manages to tell us nothing about the corruption and dirty deals of this sort of machine politics. Effectively it’s a film that takes two long hours to tell us almost nothing at all.

The film adores two things – and it’s not a surprise in a Ford film – the past and the Irish. Anything from yesteryear is covered in a halo, with the parade of old-school Hollywood character actors from the Ford rep company taking it in turns to denounce and condemn anything and anyone less than 40 years old. Every young person in the film is either a feckless idiot – Skeffington and Cass’ sons are a playboy and an embarrassing moron – or, like Jeffrey Hunter’s Adam Caulfield (Skeffington’s nephew covering the election for the local paper) is there merely to provide doe-eyed adoration.

As for the Irish, the film loves the grace and charm of this old immigrant community. Skeffington’s Irish political machine is sanitised beyond belief. In the real world these sort of organisations operated on a system of back room deals, intimidation and careful arrangements to deliver set quotas of votes on polling day. Sure many of these politicians also delivered a number of social reforms – as Skeffington does – but any suggestion that any of Skeffington’s dealings could ever be described as dirty are roundly dismissed. Here it’s all about what Skeffington could do for other people, and no mention of the endemic corruption in many politicians like this. Instead Skeffington is presented with nothing but rose-tinted sentimentalism, a respectful widower, a kind man, whose actions are often more about other people than politics.

Former Boston mayor James Michael Curley – who Skeffington was clearly based on – was imprisoned for corruption. No chance of that happening to Skeffington who only uses intimidation and back-street savvy to fight the causes of orphans and widows (literally) and takes nothing at all from the public purse (although he still lives in a lovely big home). By contrast his elite opponents are the sort of scowling, greedy, penny-counters you might find in a Frank Capra film, shameless bankers and newspaper types who care nothing for truth and justice and only their own selfish needs.

Perhaps that’s why Skeffington’s opponent McCluskey (an early Kennedy substitute with his perfect family life, war record and lack of actual accomplishments) is portrayed as such an empty suit, a mindless, grinning yes-man who has nothing to say and no goals to meet. Ford’s contempt for him – and for the new word of television – drips off the screen. The TV shot we see McCluskey shooting is a farcical mess, poorly shot, edited and delivered with stilted artificiality by McCluskey and his tongue-tied wife. Not only is it not particularly funny, the presentation of this just shows how out of touch Ford was with modern America. Two years after this, Kennedy would win an election largely off the back of his ability to present a dynamic image on TV. Skeffington even crumbles in the election due to his traditional, press-the-flesh campaign not competing effectively with TV slots. How can that look even remotely convincing when Ford shows his rival has no mastery of the new media at all? That in fact he’s worse at making TV than Skeffington proves to be?

What exactly was Ford going for? By failing to criticise anything at all about the old-school politics and pouring loathing on the new politics, he ends up saying very little at all. Skeffington is a twinkly angel, but we never understand why so many in the church and the city oppose him – other than the fact I guess that he is Irish. Donald Crisp’s cardinal promises at one point near the end to reveal why he always opposed Skeffington – only to be hushed. If anything bad ever happened, Ford ain’t telling us making this one of the most dishonest of his tributes to Old America.

None of this is to criticise much of the acting, which is great. Spencer Tracy dominates the film with his accustomed skill and charisma, his Skeffington both a twinkly charmer and a practised flesh-presser who manages to subtly pitch and adjust his character depending on his audience and whose physicality helps to assert his dominance in every scene. Pat O’Brien does fine work as his fixer and Basil Rathbone is suitably sinister as a his principle financial opponent. Ford also puts together some memorable shots – especially a long walk Skeffington takes past a victory parade – and scenes, but the film is an empty mess. And, with its extended final twenty minute coda, goes on way too long.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger confront racism In the Heat of the Night

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Sidney Poitier (Virgil Tibbs), Rod Steiger (Chief Bill Gillespie), Warren Oates (Sam Wood), Lee Grant (Mrs Colbert), Larry Gates (Endicott), James Patterson (Purdy), William Schallert (Mayor Schubert), Beah Richards (Mama Caleba), Peter Whitney (Courtney)

A slim, tight thriller with a social message, In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture in 1967, beating out Bonnie and Cyde and The Graduate (both films with a revolutionary impact on films making) as well as another Sidney Poitier starrer, the even-more message heavy Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. An unflashy, cleanly made, efficient film, In the Heat of the Night is in some ways a surprising winner – but the shocking depiction of racism in the Deep South at the time still hits home today.

In Sparta, Mississippi a wealthy industrialist from Chicago is found murdered in the street. Who committed the crime? Well surely it’s the well-dressed black man with a wallet full of money waiting to get out of town at the train station. The man is hauled in – only for him to reveal he is an expert homicide detective from Philadelphia named Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier). Tibbs is sucked in to assist local police chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) to investigate the crime, partly on the order of his boss, partly due to his disgust at the police department’s racism and incompetence, and partly at the pleading of the victim’s widow (Lee Grant) who recognises him as the best officer for the case. But will Tibbs’ expertise crack the case in a town where the idea of a black man in a suit, asking questions and taking no shit, is a still a surefire recipe for a lynching?

Nominally In the Heat of the Night is a murder mystery, but you’ll be hard pushed to remember much about the case after you finish the film. The eventual killer emerges from left field and the steps of the investigation are often unclear. While the film is trim, it does mean the tension around the killer’s identity never really builds up and we never get a real sense of the personality of the suspects (apart from the uniform racism).

Where its real strength is, is in the mis-matched “buddy” movie structure of two men forced to work together, the difference being that both casual and violent racism underpins every interaction Tibbs has in the town. Poitier was seen as a calm and graceful figure, but In the Heat of the Night finally gave him the chance to mix dignity with resentment and anger that had never been seen in a black character on screen before. The film works due to Poitier’s inherent toughness, his lack of compromise and anger at injustice. Poitier was never more hard-edged, defiant and determined to get what he deserves. Unlike Poitier’s other racial buddy movie The Defiant Ones, you can’t imagine Tibbs jumping off the train to freedom to try and save Tony Curtis.

Tibbs isn’t just the smartest, toughest policeman on the screen – he demands to be treated like it. The film’s most famous scene – and shocking at the time – is during Tibbs’ questioning of genteel racist Endicott in his orchid greenhouse. Endicott – whose home resembles nothing more than a plantation, loaded with black workers – is well spoken but inherently racist, and slaps Tibbs when his questions go on too long – only to immediately receive a backhand from Tibbs in return. Endicott is as shocked as audiences were – the idea of a black man striking back was on unheard of.

It’s terrifying and sickening to realise however that the American South at the time was genuinely like this. The slap is a proud moment – but it marks Tibbs for retribution. There is a genuine danger Tibbs will get lynched in this film (twice he narrowly escapes murder at the hands of a gang of furious rednecks). In real life, Poitier was very hesitant to film in the South, and for the brief location shooting in Tennessee slept with a gun under his pillow. The film is littered with casually dropped racial slurs, the politest of which is “boy”. It leads to the famous line from Tibbs that back home “they call me Mister Tibbs” – but you forget that it follows from Gillespie asking him what an n-word copper is called in Philadelphia. And even after that Gillespie only calls him Virgil, as if still not quite able to compute the idea of a black man who can be a “mister”.

The relationship between Tibbs and Gillespie is the heart of the film. And the film is brave to not have this turn into “they were opponents but then they became the best of friends”. Instead there is a sort of grudging respect that grows, even though Tibbs clearly thinks Gillespie is an impulsive racist and Gillespie thinks Tibbs is a stiff-backed but brilliant n-word. Rod Steiger won the Oscar for Best Actor, and he does some fine work as the complex Gillespie. Keeping his explosive energy in check (despite the inevitable outbursts), Steiger sketches out a character who is smart enough to know he isn’t smart enough, who can respect Tibbs’ professionalism and understand on some level that racism is beyond all sense but still drop racial words with an instinctive ease.

Steiger’s Gillespie is a tough-talking, stereotypical cop but he’s also got a sad little hinterland – a late dinner at his home with Tibbs has him confess that Tibbs is his only guest for years – and while he arrests no fewer than three innocent people for the crime, there is no doubting his dedication to justice. Steiger doesn’t apologise for Gillespie’s appalling attitudes, but also does enough to suggest that his racism is learned rather than innate. While never completely sympathetic, especially today, the film lays hints of hope that a racist cop from the South could work side-by-side with a black officer – and that was considerable progress at the time.

But it’s Poitier’s movie, and while in many ways he has the simpler part (and Poitier generously ceded his admiration for Steiger’s skill and craft pushing him to a level he felt he not reached before), Tibbs is the centre of the film. Jewison skilfully shoots Poitier as always the outsider, from his looks and Sherlock Holmes style skills, to the way the camera focuses on his hands touching things – from dead bodies to door knobs – to the visible discomfort of the white men watching him. Tibbs may be arrogant but he’s right and Poitier’s refusal to compromise or offer any concessions is a striking thing – Tibbs is who he is and he won’t change a thing to be accepted by the white man. At the end, he may respect the steps Gillespie has taken – but I doubt he’d consider the man a friend and certainly not a professional equal.

In the Heat of the Night is still shocking for the openly displayed racism and menace of violence that black people faced in the Deep South in sixties America. Jewison’s film is efficiently assembled and tightly edited – not a single minute is wasted in one of the shortest Best Picture winners ever – and while its mystery is little to write home about, its portrait of racism in America is still shocking and stirring and its two lead performances are things to linger in the memory.

The Birds (1963)

Tippi Hedron has a bad day at the birdcage in The Birds

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Tippi Hedron (Melanie Daniels), Rod Taylor (Mitch Brenner), Jessica Tandy (Lydia Brenner), Suzanne Pleshette (Annie Hayworth), Veronica Cartwright (Cathy Brenner), Charles McGraw (Sebastian Sholes), Lonny Chapman (Deke Carter), Joe Mantell (Cynical Businessman)

Alfred Hitchcock is often seen as the master of technique, the doyen of suspense, the master of the shock twist. Perhaps it was his love of this sort of material that led him to this radical reworking of Daphne du Maurier’s short story The Birds. After all Hitch had already directed the greatest ever du Maurier adaptation (Rebecca), so working with du Maurier was hardly new and turning this English suspense story into a sort of post-apocalyptic, tension-filled plot-boiler was right up his street. The Birds is a master-class in the director’s craft, and a curiously empty experience with barely a human heart in sight.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedron), a slightly spoiled heiress, arrives in a small coastal town in California in order to play a practical trick on lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). Deciding to stay the night, she quickly realises that she has chosen the wrong weekend to get away as, while sparks grow between her and Rod, they also grow between humanity and the birds, as our feathered friends (enemies?) begin a series of escalating attacks on the population of the town that eventually lead to multiple deaths and destruction.

Hitchcock’s film is as masterclass in the slow-burn, deliberately the slowest film the director perhaps ever made. Hitchcock prided himself on his films in suspense being the awaiting of an event to happen. The bomb you know will go off on the bus. The plane circling Cary Grant that seems ripe to attack. The Birds takes this to the nth degree. The film’s very title all but tells you that the birds are going to attack, so Hitchcock takes it nice and slow, letting scenes play out with a breezy lack of pace, almost like a low-rent romantic comedy. But somehow this long unwinding of not a lot happening works well, because every scene somehow becomes a corkscrew as tension as every single bird in shot becomes suspicious.

This atmosphere is increased by the wide open locations and remote locale the film is set in, with these all-American small town sites seeming to stretch on forever around the characters only serving to stress their isolation and vulnerability in the middle of all this deadly nature. Hitchcock also carefully stripped out all musical score from the film, instead providing a sound track of natural noise complemented by slightly exaggerated bird noise (created by use of a Trautonium, supervised by master composer Bernard Herrmann). The often makes the film eerily and unsettlingly quiet, with the soundtrack only punctured by the frequently (perhaps deliberately) mundane dialogue. Suddenly with this brilliant combination game, the entire film becomes a tense waiting game for the unleashing of avian attacks, every frame a tense waiting for the bang you all know is coming. It’s Hitchcock using every aspect of his reputation, and the film’s promise of violence, to create an overwhelming effect that is deeply unsettling no matter how many times you see the movie.

Hitchcock also gives a slow build to the bird violence. Events escalate quickly, from the unsettling gathering of the birds in several places (most notably along telephone lines and outside a school playground) to subtle messages about chicken’s refusing food, to first Melanie and the other characters colliding with or being bitten by birds. It all builds to a grim reveal of a local farmer who has been attacked over-night, with Rod’s mother stumbling across the mutilated old man, Hitchcock’s camera delightedly cross cutting onto the man’s pecked out eyes. It’s the most grotesque shot of the film – and coming before we’ve seen our first mass bird attack, leaves us in no doubt as to the danger of these animals.

And when those bird effects come they have a real unsettling violence to them. In a blur of both real birds and super-imposed images (I will admit that the special effects of this film do now look a little dated, with the mixture of real, model and photo trickery birds rather jarring) the birds fly with an almost unimaginable aggression at the human beings. Flocks descend, pecking, biting and clawing, leaving human bodies maimed, blinded and bloodied. Crowds of school children are attacked while fleeing their school. A gas attendant is brutally set upon leading to a firey conflagration. Passers-by and those unable to get refuge are beaten to the ground under a flood of winged assailants.

The film changes tack in its final sequence into a tense series of sieges as Melanie, Rod and his family hole up in Rod’s house by the lake, barricading doors and windows as the birds peck relentlessly at doors and windows, slowly forcing their way in. Rooms that fall to the birds become whirlpools of deadly flying creatures, a tornado of wings and pecks that few can stand against. Hitchcock’s camera cuts rapidly from the flood of birds, to ever increasing pecks at hands and arms, to hands thrown up to protect eyes – a brilliant call back to the eye horror shown earlier in the film that immediately inspires. The birds attack in unpredictable waves, their attacks dying down at moments as the sit calmly and placidly only to expectantly burst back into violence.

It’s just a shame that Hitchcock’s film is so enamoured with its undeniable technique that it neglects to feature any heart or soul at all. The characters are a stock collection of forgettable tropes, most played by forgettable actors, or mute ciphers. The film almost deliberately throws together a truly trivial collection of stories and character motivations to pepper the centre (perhaps this bland self-interest is what pisses the birds off so much) of the film, that frankly are not that interesting. Rod Taylor is a solid but uninspiring performer, Jessica Tandy is saddled with a truly pathetically weak role. So many of the other characters such little impact that they barely warrant names. Rarely in Hitchcock films have the human characters felt so much like devices, square pegs in square holes, totally subservient to the Master’s whims. Put frankly, for all the tension of when the birds will turn, you’ll care very little for any of their victims.

A lot of focus on the film has been on Tippi Hedron, in particular her accusations of ill-treatment (routed in frustrated sexual obsession) from Hitchcock. These stories – and Hitchcock’s subsequent description of her as little more than an attractive prop (a feeling he tended to have for lots of actors) – have drawn attention away from the fact that she is actually very effective in The Birds, and that her brightness and intelligence makes her the only person who feels real in the whole film. It makes it all the more sad that the final sequence renders her into a mute, shell-shocked victim – but Hedron’s promise (never fulfilled due to Hitchcock’s sabotage of her career) is clear here.

Hitchcock’s film finally ends on a truly nihilistic, Armageddon tinged ending that speaks volumes for the post-apocalyptic nuclear anxiety prevalent in the West in the 1960s. The birds rest, triumphant, over the chilling silence of the world as what remains of our heroes beat a retreat. It’s a chilling flourish in a film that is a stylist’s triumph but lacks any real heart. It’s a film that haunts the memory but it doesn’t win the heart. If Hitchcock really did hate actors and most people, this film makes a good case for arguing that’s a pretty honest insight.

The Children's Hour (1961)

Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine are victims of scurrilous rumours in The Children’s Hour

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Shirley MacLaine (Martha Dobie), Audrey Hepburn (Karen Wright), James Garner (Dr Joe Cardin), Miriam Hopkins (Lily Mortar), Fay Bainter (Mrs Amelia Tilford), Karen Balkin (Mary Tilford), Veronica Cartwright (Rosalie Wells), Mimi Gibson (Evelyn), William Mims (Mr Burton)

The Children’s Hour was William Wyler’s second stab at directing an adaptation of Lilian Hellman’s play of the same name: a story about two young teachers at a private girls’ school, and the destruction wreaked on their lives when a malicious pupil spreads rumours the two are in a secret lesbian relationship. His first attempt from 1936, These Three, kept as many of the themes as possible but carefully deleted every single reference to homosexuality in the script. This second film version restores this core theme in a carefully structured, well directed, respectful film adaptation that, with its careful analysis of the danger of rumours and snap judgements, still feels relevant today.

Martha Dobie (Shirley MacLaine) and Karen Wright (Audrey Hepburn) run a private girls’ school. Karen is engaged to Dr Joe Cardin (James Garner), and this prolonged engagement is part of the arsenal used by a bitter, bullying student Mary (Karen Balkin) when she decides to start spreading innuendo about a scandalous relationship between the teachers, painting Martha as consumed by sexual envy. Mary’s story is believed whole-heartedly by her grandmother, doyen of the social scene and Joe’s aunt, Amelia Tilford (Fay Bainter). Thoughtless words from Martha’s aunt Lily Mortar (Miriam Hopkins) make things worse. In no time, the school is ruined, the children all gone and Martha and Karen face a desperate battle to prove that there is nothing to this but gossip.

Wyler’s film is a strange mixture at times, in part a commentary on prejudice, and also a scorching condemnation of jumping to judgements. The film plays out all this with calmness and a general careful avoidance of histrionics and lecturing. The removal of the children from the school is brutal and cowardly – with none of the parents having the guts to say why they are doing what they are doing until finally confronted by Karen. Amelia Tilford goes about her campaign of moral righteousness with a holier-than-thou superiority while constantly stressing that she takes no pleasure in this. In the latter half of the film, the abandoned school seems to be constantly surrounded by smirking men.

The film carefully outlines that this sort of moral judgement is inherently wrong, and it brings out some true moral judgement on many of the people involved. It draws out a brilliant Crucible-like indignation at the rigidity and hypocrisy of how those who are judged to be different are treated. The film’s finest sequence is at the centre of the film, where Martha and Karen make a (failed) attempt to nip the scandal in the bud by confronting Mary at her grandmother’s house. The scene zings with a burning sense of injustice, as Mary’s lies are believed, doubled down on and then confirmed by a blackmailed fellow student, all while the audience knows that everything that is being spun is florid, innuendo-filled rubbish.

Mary is a bitter, twisted, angry little girl whose face seems permanently screwed into a furious frown. She also has the sharpness and ruthlessness of the natural bully, successfully blackmailing a sensitive, kleptomaniac student to endorse all her lies at every turn. Wyler carefully demonstrates that she has a natural manipulator’s deviance and that half-facts and muttered comments carry more conviction and force than carefully stated arguments ever would.

But Mary’s actions partly stem from Karen’s own forceful treatment of her – and Karen’s moral inflexibility and personal certainty is just one of the many character flaws that this lie brings closer and closer to the surface. Well played by Audrey Hepburn, using her occasional slight imperiousness to great effect, Karen’s lack of compromise, her domineering personality and her own moral superiority help to make her both an unsympathetic victim to many, and a person who manages to drive wedges (inadvertently) between herself and her two closest friends, Joe and Martha.

That wedge spins out from the fact that the more sensitive Martha (a sensitively delicate performance from Shirley Maclaine) does have romantic and sexual feelings for Karen, feelings that she has carefully suppressed (or perhaps not even understood) and confesses to late on in a wave of guilt and shame, mixed with an almost unspoken hope that Karen might respond to this confession with more than silence and a quiet assurance that it won’t change anything. Neither of which is what Martha wants (or needs) to hear.

MacLaine was critical of Wyler for removing from the film scenes that showed Martha’s love and affection for Karen in a romantic light. Perhaps Wyler was still slightly squeamish about the likelihood of America accepting a lesbian character presented honestly and sensitively. –But MacLaine has a point for, while the film does suggest it is reprehensible to make judgements about other people’s private lives, it falls well short of suggesting that a lesbian relationship is as normal and valid as a straight one, or that Martha’s feelings for Karen are the equal of Karen’s for Joe. Karen will let the idea slide, but she is hardly thrilled by it, meanwhile Martha is made the more passive and hysterical of the two women, and her feelings for Karen are a source of tragedy in the story. While it’s of its time, the film still shies away from the idea that a lesbian relationship could ever be without a tinge of scandal. Unlike, say, Dirk Bogarde’s gay barrister in Victim, there is always something “not quite right even if we shouldn’t judge” about homosexuality in the film.

It’s why the film is at its strongest when showcasing its outrage for the many selfish and self-appointed moral guardians who ruin lives with sanctimonious self-regard. Miriam Hopkins is eminently smackable as Martha’s appalling aunt, whose love of gossip pours fuel on the fire. Fay Bainter is very good (and Oscar nominated) as Amelia, whose reluctance and unease about her self-appointed role as the moral police, only partly tempers her rigidity and inflexibility. Words of support and encouragement from others are noticeable by their absence, and even the long-standing loyalty of Joe (a rather charming James Garner) is eventually tinged (forever for Karen) by a moment of doubt.

Rumours and innuendo are dangerous and cause real and lasting damage to people’s lives. It’s a fact the film enforces strongly – and it’s an idea that perhaps is even more relevant today at a time when social media sends moral judgements that ruin lives around the world even faster than Amelia Tilford’s phone can. A well-made film with moral force, that could have gone further, but still went further than many others dared at the time.

A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern and Jeanne Crain read over the eponymous Letter to Three Wives

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Cast: Jeanne Crain (Deborah Bishop), Linda Darnell (Lora Mae Hollingsway), Ann Sothern (Rita Phipps), Jeffrey Lynn (Brad Bishop), Paul Douglas (Porter Hollingsway), Kirk Douglas (George Phipps), Thelma Ritter (Sadie), Barbara Lawrence (Babe Finney), Connie Gilchrist (Ruby Finney), Florence Bates (Mrs Manleigh), Hobart Cavanaugh (Mr Manleigh), Celeste Holm (voice of Addie Ross)

It’s strange to think that, back in 1949, this slight story of three women one of whose husbands might have run off with another woman (the film’s narrator, the omnipresent Addie Ross, coolly voiced by Celeste Holm) was garlanded with multiple Oscars. It’s the sort of material you half expect would make an episode of Desperate Housewives– although of course today the whole thing would have been sorted out in a few minutes with mobile phones (A WhatsApp to Three Wives?). What makes it work so well is Mankiewicz’s dialogue, which lifts this slight melodrama of suburban couples into something that feels like it has more weight and intelligence than it really does.

Anyway, our wives are a mixed bag living in a commuter town “just outside the city”, all from middle-class or lower upper-class backgrounds. Seconds before taking some underprivileged children for a boat trip and picnic, insecure Deborah Bishop (Jeanne Crain), blowsy Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell) and ambitious Rita Phipps (Ann Sothern) receive a goodbye letter from their “friend” Addie Ross, who announces she has left town with one of their husbands. But which one? Is it Addie’s ex-boyfriend, privileged Brad Bishop (Jeffrey Lynn), her school-yard sweetheart, academic George (Kirk Douglas), or her admirer, businessman Porter Hollingsway (Paul Douglas)? As the poster says, “While they wondered, one of them wandered”!

If that sounds to you like a rather small-scale storm in a teacup – well you’d probably be right. To be honest, it’s pretty hard to care which of these husbands might have headed into the sunset with the arch Addie Ross, since most of the characters seem at first rather smug, self-centred or tiresome. It takes time to warm up to these guys, but eventually Mankiewicz’s sparkling dialogue starts to work some magic and you invest in a clichéd little story (based, bizarrely, on a glassy magazine short story).

At one point the film was entitled A Letter to Four Wives – until studio executives decided that was one too many (bad news for Anne Baxter who had been cast as the final wife). That speaks to the episodic nature of the film. It has a clear five act structure – the set up, an act establishing the backgrounds of each of the marriages, and a final act that reveals who went where and wrapping the plot up. It’s a simple structure, and today it’s hard to see what all the fuss was about.

Mankiewicz’s framing device for his flashbacks may be a bit contrived, but he puts it together with skill. Each flashback is cleverly introduced with an intriguing device where various mechanical items near the women slowly take on a voice of their own, echoing their inner dread back to them. It sounds a bit odd – and it is at first – but it sort of works as an unsettling reflection of the unease of the central characters.

Once we get into the flashbacks themselves they are a mixed bag. The weakest by far is the first, focusing on Jeannie Crain’s Deborah Bishop. Rather plodding and dated – and forced to also introduce all the characters – it’s a shapeless section of reflection in which Deborah comes across unengaging, sulky, insecure and tiresome. Mind you that’s as nothing compared to her husband Brad, played with utter forgettability by Jeffrey Lynn, who is nothing more than a self-important idiot. Frankly, you end up thinking Deborah might be better off without him. The sequence focuses on the possibility that Brad might think Deborah is a little beneath him – compared to his old love Addie – but basically serves as a teaser for the next two flashbacks and an intro to the more interesting couples we are going to spend time with.

Our second sequence offers several comic highlights as it follows Ann Southern and Kirk Douglas (both very good) as the Phipps, middle-class intellectuals. George is an academic, Rita a writer for radio soaps, and the flashback revolves around their dinner party for Rita’s bosses, two radio-and-advert obsessed moneybags who demand the meal is interrupted so they can listen to episodes of assorted radio shows (accompanied by a long discussion of their advertising slots). Plenty of comic mileage comes out of George’s irritation at their vulgarity, but also serves to demonstrate the tensions in the Phipps marriage – George believes his wife is wasting her talent, Rita thinks her husband isn’t taking her career seriously. But underneath that is a nice little commentary on the insecurity of men returning from the war to find their wives have made professional lives of their own – and in this case, even become the main breadwinner in the household.

Our final flashback is probably the finest, around white-goods factory owner Porter Hollingsway (a bombastic Paul Douglas, with a touch of self-loathing) and his secretary turned wife Lora Mae (Linda Darnell, brassy self-confidence hiding vulnerability). Largely set in Lora Mae’s family home, a house on the wrong end of the tracks which hilariously has a train track running past its window (which at frequent occurrences leads to the whole house shaking, an action the family responds to with a casual familiarity). The drama here revolves around the couple’s feelings for each other – Porter can’t believe Lora Mae isn’t a gold digger, Lora Mae can’t believe her husband genuinely loves her for herself – but it’s told with a real sense of comic vibe laced with emotional truth. It’s the finest – and funniest – sequence and leads to a pay-off that really works.

A Letter to Three Wives maybe a little too soapy and frothy to be much more than an entertainment, but it is at least a very entertaining one. At all times this is due to Mankiewicz’s witty, sparkling and truthful dialogue that hums in every scene and gives all the actors some of the best opportunities of their career. Linda Darnell in particular is outstanding – warm, witty, fragile – but each wife has her moments, and Kirk Douglas is charm itself as George with Paul Douglas’ fragility under the surface eventually quite moving despite his bullying exterior. There is also fine support from Thelma Ritter among others. It’s a fine film, handsomely mounted and offers more than enough laugh-out-loud moments and moments of sweetness to make it really work.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Albert Finney and Julia Roberts battle for justice in the caperish Erin Brockovich

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), Albert Finney (Edward L Masry), Aaron Eckhart (George), Marg Helgenberger (Donna Jensen), Tracey Walter (Charles Embry), Peter Coyote (Kurt Potter), Cherry Jones (Pamela Duncan), Scarlett Pomers (Shanna Jensen), Conchata Ferrell (Brenda), Michael Harney (Pete Jensen)

When Steven Soderbergh was being celebrated as the Great White Hope of arty American movie making back in the late 80s, it would probably have amazed his fans if you’d told them that 10 years later he would be directing a Julia Roberts star vehicle. But that’s what he pulled off to great effect in Erin Brockovich.

Telling the true story of Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), the film follows her life from 1993 when she is struggling to make ends meet while bringing up three small children. After losing a court case – largely due to her brassy foul-mouthedness – she pressures her lawyer Ed Masry (Albert Finney) to give her a clerical job at his law firm. There she finds herself engaged with a simple real estate case involving PG&E, a major gas and electric company. Discovering the company has been polluting the water of the town of Hinkley in California – and left many residents with crippling health problems – Brockovich works to uncover the truth and to gets Masry to agree to build a legal case. She also finds her mouthy down-to-earthness allows her to connect with the people of Hinkley, and she soon becomes determined to get them justice.

The big thing that Erin Brockovich was about when it was released was Julia Roberts. In 2000, it was hard for heads not to be turned by seeing America’s Sweetheart wearing clothing so revealing and provocative it made her Pretty Woman character look reserved. And she swears! Frequently! The film was a triumph for Roberts, turning her from a romantic comedy queen into a serious actress. Roberts won every single Best Actress award going, up to and including the Oscar. And Roberts is very good indeed in the role. Few films have used her effervescence and warmth as a performer so well. You can’t help but side with Julia Roberts when she is firing on all cylinders, no matter what the situation – whether she is a brassy, chippy working mother, a Hollywood actress or a New York City prostitute, you find yourself on her side.

But, looking back at the film now, this role essentially plays to all of Robert’s strengths. While it looks on the surface like a radical departure for Roberts, the film is basically very much in her wheelhouse. In fact, the whole film is almost a writ-large version of that shop scene in Pretty Woman (still one of the best scenes of modern cinema) stretched over the course of a whole movie. Julia Roberts is treated badly by snobby people, she doesn’t let it get her down, and then she returns with a triumphant flourish that puts the snobs in their place.

That’s the whole game from Roberts: this is very much the type of performance she gave in Pretty Woman, Notting Hill and My Best Friend’s Wedding repackaged and given a novel appearance by being placed in a drama rather than a comedy. But all the little acting touches that would be familiar to you from those movies are there. There is nothing wrong with any of this, but the film in fact reinforces rather than refutes the idea that Julia Roberts (like Cary Grant) is largely a personality actor. She has a very skilful and impressive collection of acting touches, but they are pretty consistently the same across films. She performs with brilliant, luminous presence here – and commits fully to the part – but it’s more like the ultimate expression of the roles she played in the 1990s. It’s not a surprise looking back that she’s not had a hit like it since.

The rest of the film is an enjoyable mix of comedy and touches of tragic sadness. Soderbergh packages the film as a very safe entertainment, and its’ entertaining. The real Erin Brockovich claims the film is 98% accurate to what happened to her – which perhaps just makes you think that the clichés of film hew closer to real life than you might expect. Soderbergh doesn’t really have much to say here beyond big corporations and snobbery being bad and to never judge books by their cover. But it doesn’t really matter as the whole thing is presented with a confident, brassy buzz as if it is channelling Brockovich straight into celluloid.

It works all the time because you care about Erin, and you enjoy her company. It touches on some issues around sexism in the work place – although Erin is looked down as much for her working class roots as her sex – but there are elements there showing she is clearly judged by her appearance, and even the big firm lawyer brought in help fund the case can’t resist saying when he sees her “I see what you mean about a secret weapon”. Not that Erin herself isn’t ashamed to use her assets – when Ed asks how she can get people to allow her access to such confidential papers, she deadpans “they’re called boobs, Ed”.

That gives you an idea of the general comedic tone of the movie. It’s matched with a fairly predictable domestic plot-line. I suspect Soderbergh was probably making a bit of a point by turning Aaron Eckhart’s (very good in a nothing role) gentle biker, next-door neighbour, childcare provider and boyfriend into the sort of pleading “Honey please come home for dinner” non-entity that the woman often plays in films like this while her husband crusades. The film does manage to mine a bit of quiet sexual agenda from its otherwise fairly bubbly surface. It also draws attention to the way the film basically sets up Erin’s primary romantic relationship being not with a boyfriend, but with herself as she discovers the sort of person she has the potential to be.

There’s that Pretty Woman parallel again. The film is basically a dreamy re-invention saga, presented with a cool flourish. Roberts is excellent in a role that has become a calling card. She’s also got quite the double act with Albert Finney, who is brilliant as the put-upon, slightly haggard, slightly twinkly Masry who finds his own passion for justice reignited. Finney tends to get overlooked in this film, but he is superb and gives the best pure performance in the film. Soderbergh directs with a professional glossiness, and supplies plenty of heart-tugging victims (Helgenberger is very good as the main victim we see) mixed with punch-in-the-air, she’s proving herself better than them moments from Julia Roberts. It’s a very fun film, and genuinely entertaining. But like Roberts’ performance, it’s presenting old tricks in a new way, not reinventing the show.