Kameradschaft (1931)

Pabst’s very earnest plea for brotherhood is also a gripping underground disaster epic

Director: GW Pabst

Cast: Alexander Granach (Kasper), Fritz Kampers (Wilderer), Daniel Mendaille (Jean Leclerc), Ernst Busch (Wittkopp), Elisabeth Wendt (Anna Wittkopp), Gustav Püttjer (Kaplan), Oskar Höcker (Mine foreman), Héléna Manson (Rose), Andrée Ducret (Françoise Leclerc), Alex Bernard (Grandfather Jacques), Pierre-Louis (Georges)

Pabst’s Kamerdschaft was his second sound film after Westfront 1918 and follows on from that film’s politics. Kamerdscaft is a heartfelt plea that, deep down, we are all comrades, who should be working together not tearing at each other. It’s based on a real 1906 mine disaster in Courrières where a coal dust explosion left thousands of French miners trapped underground, relying on teams of French and German (from Westphalia) miners to save them. Pabst shifts this to 1919 and the location to the French-German border (so new, it even runs through the mine itself with both sides literally walled off from each other). It’s straight after the war, and never have tensions been higher.

Pabst argues though that this lethal squabbling between nations distracts us from the ties that bind us. He opens with two children – one French, one German – arguing over a game of marbles both claim to have won, demanding the other hands over all the marbles. They even literally draw a border in the dirt to make their point. Pabst’s symbolism here is not exactly subtle, but it makes the point swiftly and clearly. Whenever we encounter the border officers, they are rules-bound and small-minded. A French border guard almost fires on a truck of German miners offering their help. Bosses from both sides put obstructions in the way of the effort to free the miners. The film closes with military forces from both sides solemnly re-building the underground border wall knocked down during the rescue.

It’s carried over into tensions between both communities. The French are generally encouraged to look down on the Germans. Life on the French side seems more secure and comfortable – with rows of workers houses, bars and plentiful jobs – with the Germans frequently crossing over to try and find work and relaxation in the French side. A trio of jolly Germans nearly get into a bar fight when a French girl declines to dance with one of them: a loud atmosphere in the bar disappearing, as Pabst’s camera pans past a row of faces suddenly turned confrontation and hostile.

This tension is increased by the language barrier. Kameradschaft was a French-German co-production and the actors used their native language. This allowed for a strong cast, with Alexander Granach particularly notable as the jolly Kasper. It’s fascinating to watch Kameradschaft with only one language translated, plunging you into trying to follow the stumbling French of the Germans and vice versa. Misunderstandings frequently arise. That bar near-fight is started when Fritz Kamper’s German miner assumes Héléna Manson’s Rose doesn’t want to dance with him because he’s German, when actually she says its only because she’s tired.

Misunderstandings continue throughout the film. The German’s underground struggle to make themselves understood, using a range of physical gestures and pigeon-French; the French stumble through basic German. While subtleties are missed, it’s striking how Pabst demonstrates in the big things, meaning is always clear: emotions and actions convey a universal meaning we all understand. In the aftermath, a French miner makes an impassioned speech about brotherhood: his German counterpoint responds with a heartfelt speech that he didn’t understand a word but he agrees they are all brothers.

“A miner is a miner” says Ernst Busch’s Wittkopp who insists on the rescue mission. (Busch was a veteran of Brecht and an impassioned Socialist). You can see why they feel this when you see the conditions below ground. Claustrophobic, dark, sooty and terrifyingly confined, the mines quickly become intimidating traps as support beams buckle and crumble. It’s even more impressive when you realise these extraordinarily convincing sets were indeed sets, build in a studio by Ernő Metzner and Karl Vollbrecht. It’s honestly hard to believe that the crew didn’t go underground when you watch, giving the film a strong steak of realism.

It’s a realism mixed with a moody expressionism in the lighting. When the explosion comes, the fire rolls through the smoke and steam filled rooms and then seems to continue, consuming everything in its path. Pabst uses a tracking camera to keep us just ahead of these advancing flames. He stages brilliantly the collapse of the mine, showing miners trapped or crushed as roofs cave in and rocks tumble down. Kameradschaft is just as strong in showing the panic above ground, as the families of those trapped race through the streets to gather at the mine’s locked gates, howling to be allowed in and help with the rescue of their nearest and dearest.

As in Westfront 1918, Pabst employs the same sound-proof casing to his camera to give it as much flexibility as possible while still capturing sound. Kameradshaft is full of the audio hustle and bustle of a town in torment, and he’s equally effective with sound below ground. Not only the collapse of the mine, but the sounds that come with being trapped: heavy breathing of rescuers in their breathing equipment, metallic tapping on pipes to attract attention, desperate scurrying of trapped miners to find a ringing phone in a ruined engine room. All of this is executed to perfection.

Pabst’s finest sound use comes when one trapped French worker succumbs to delusion under the pressure as a German rescuer approaches. As he sweats in panic, the tapping on pipes shifts to the rat-a-tat of machine guns. From his POV we see the approaching German in breathing transform from a miner into an infantryman. In a series of cuts, the French miner imagines himself in the trenches, launching himself in desperate self-defence against his would-be saviour. It’s a beautifully done moment that hammers home Pabst’s message that when nations turn natural friends into enemies, we are all left weaker.

Kameradschaft isn’t always subtle in saying this. You could frequently call it naïve. Pabst stresses the point with a zoom into the shaking hands of German and French rescuers meeting for the first time under-ground (holding the shot for longer than necessary). But it’s an earnest and decent message. But sadly, not one people were going to listen to. The film was, of course, banned in Nazi Germany almost immediately – and they would have approved of Pabst’s more cynical coda of the underground border being re-built (a scene cut from some prints, as being too glum). We may dream of brotherhood and peace, but sometimes it is just a dream. But Kameradschaft is a fine enough film to persuade us its worth dreaming.

The Shootist (1976)

Wayne’s final elegiac Western as a dying gunslinger tries to go out on his own terms

Director: Don Siegel

Cast: John Wayne (JB Brooks), Lauren Bacall (Bond Rogers), Ron Howard (Gillom Rogers), James Stewart (Dr Hostetier), Richard Boone (Sweeney), John Carradine (Beckum), Scatman Crothers (Moses), Richard Lenz (Dobkins), Harry Morgan (Marshall Thibido), Sheree North (Serepta), Hugh O’Brian (Pulford)

It’s 22^nd January 1901 and Queen Victoria has passed. Automobiles are starting to chug down roads, towns filled with electricity, telegraphs and trams, no longer look like the beat-up, dust-bowls the likes of Wyatt Earp policed. It’s a new age and the end of the Wild West. Which also means it’s the end of the gun-toting cowboys, like JB Brooks (John Wayne), who rode freely and grabbed their six-shooters faster than anyone else. Brooks rides into Carson City, his cancer terminal, his life lonely and full of enemies, wanting to live (and die) in his final week on his own terms.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to see more than a few parallels between Brooks and the man playing him, Hollywood legend John Wayne. Wayne himself was struggling with a cancer that claimed his life three years later and you could argue he too had outlived his time. The glory days of the Westerns were gone along with men like John Ford who built it. The Shootist draws huge piles of its elegiac emotion from this – with even more retrospectively added when it turned out to be the star’s swan song.

It’s strange to think Wayne wasn’t even first choice for the role (the producers were worried his health might not last), because he is so perfect for it that the line between Wayne and Brooks seems paper thin. Wayne still has the spark under the weakness of a sickly one who downs laudanum and relies on a cushion to sit comfortably. He’s a vulnerable man, raging quietly against the dying of the light. Lonely, devoid of friends whose entire life’s possessions are wrapped up in a saddle bag. But he’s also dangerous who can still be extraordinarily ruthless. He kills without hesitation when called on and resorts to violent threats (backed with a gun) when he needs to. But he needs to believe there is more to him than this.

Brooks is a man ‘scared of the dark’, quietly terrified about how he will be remembered. He sees himself as a ‘shootist’, a prowling man’s-man who shot when he needed to. What he doesn’t want to be seen as is a ruthless blood-soaked assassin dealing death left-right-and-centre. He humiliates a journalist (the weasily Richard Lenz) who wants a blood-and-guts killer’s story, sending him packing with a gun in his mouth. He turns away a funeral director (John Carradine, a lovely cameo) who offers a free funeral so he can sell tickets to see the dead killer. He’s desperate for some sort of positive legacy.

This overlaps with Wayne who, if he didn’t know this was his final film, surely knew it was probably his final Western. Siegel opens with a montage from Wayne films past (including Red River, Hondo and Rio Bravo) before crashing into a wide-screen, Fordian landscape that sees Wayne swiftly get the better of a would-be robber. Wayne’s performance is, whatever you think of him, undeniably heart-felt. His drawling pain-wracked face, full of fear and frustration, when told his fatal diagnosis by an old friend (an almost equally emotional cameo from that other drawling icon of the Western, James Stewart) is very moving.

You can see Brooks regrets when an old flame (Sheree North) arrives to suggest they marry – and the hurt when it becomes clear she only wants marriage so she can sell his story. The closest thing he has to a friend – Stewart’s doctor – he hasn’t seen for fifteen years (coincidentally the exact length of time since the two actors shot The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance). In fact it becomes clear the people in his life are enemies and rivals. From Richard Boone’s weasily rancher who blames Brooks for his brother’s death to Hugh O’Brian’s suave gambler who wants the chance to take down a legend. Even that’s better than Harry Morgan’s nervous Marshal, who bursts into relieved laughter when he hears cancer is going to take care of Brooks so he doesn’t have to.

In his final week, Brooks finds some sort of connection not based on fear, envy or greed with Lauren Bacall’s (yet another golden-voiced legend) Bond Rogers, a widow with a tearaway son Gillom (Ron Howard), whose initial suspicion of Brooks soften. Bacall is excellent, full of humanity and sharp no-nonsense sincerity that hides a warmth you feel she’s had to crush down over years of holding hearth-and-home together. Brooks and Mrs Rogers form a quiet friendship, based on mutual loneliness, both actors playing beautifully in a series of quiet, sombre but gentle scenes, with Bacall drawing even more humanity from Wayne.

Mrs Rogers’ son, Gillom, becomes the embodiment of Brooks battle for a legacy. Ron Howard makes Gillom a cocky, immature dreamer, exactly the sort of guy who’d lap up the sort of blood-and-guts stories Brooks is worried his life will be turned into. He’s wowed when Brooks – alerted by his pain-ridden body keeping him awake – takes down two would-be assassins. But his mother is terrified that he could lead the wrong sort of life. And, eventually, Brooks himself starts to worry that all he’s doing spending time with him is leading Gillom towards an end like his: lonely and dying in a guest house, surrounded by strangers. It becomes the thematic struggle of the film, which is handled (like the rest) with an unlaboured patience.

It’s all building of course to Brooks deciding to go down on his own terms, clutching a gun not a laudanum bottle. The Shootist ends with a blood-soaked shoot-out that we all suspect its heading to, expertly assembled by Siegel. Siegel’s direction throughout is faultlessly smooth, avoiding all temptation to layer on sentimentality but instead let the sad tiredness of Wayne carry the emotion without loading the deck. It’s a beautifully done, quiet, restrained and perfectly elegiac picture that makes for a perfect final role for John Wayne. A sad, touching film about a strong-willed man fighting a last battle he can’t win, it’s a compelling watch.

In Old Chicago (1937)

Entertaining melodrama leads into a very well-staged disaster epic that burns a city

Director: Henry King

Cast: Tyrone Power (Dion O’Leary), Alice Faye (Belle Fawcett), Don Ameche (Jack O’Leary), Alice Brady (Molly O’Leary), Phyllis Brooks (Ann Colby), Andy Devine (Pickle Bixby), Brian Donlevy (Gil Warren), Tom Brown (Bob O’Leary), Berton Churchill (Senator Colby), Sidney Blackmer (General Phil Sheridan)

San Francisco showed Hollywood the way: spice up a melodrama with a disaster-laden ending. The first took the San Francisco earthquake: In Old Chicago takes the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 which burnt down over three-square miles of the city, destroyed over 17,000 buildings and killed over 300 peoples. Despite a rather earnest message that research was scrupulously carried out with the Chicago Historical Society – other than the fire itself, the entire film is a great big fictionalised soapy melodrama, building towards a grandly staged recreation of the great conflagration itself.

The melodrama is built around the O’Leary family. In legend Mrs Catherine O’Leary, of the city’s large Irish community, was the fire’s unwitting cause after her cow knocked over a barn lamp. Here she is reimagined as Molly (Alice Brady), mother to a flock of sons. In the way of these melodramas one, Dion (Tyone Power), is a cheeky rogue with criminal links the other, Jack (Don Ameche), is a legal straight-shooter determined to clean this town up. Club owner Dion controls a stack of corrupt votes to get Jack elected Mayor – screwing over kingpin rival Gil Warren (Brian Donlevy) in the process – under the mistaken impression he can control his brother (dead wrong). Meantime, Dion bounces through a heated love-hate relationship with glamourous bar-singer Belle (Alice Faye), who knows a little too much about his corrupt dealings.

These elements are expertly melodramatically mixed together with very few narrative surprises to establish some recognisable faces for when the city-burning destruction kicks in, with its punishments and redemptions. King directs all this with a glitzy, big-budget flair while the shallow characters go through familiar motions. Truth be told, there isn’t much especially new about In Old Chicago, which follows the San Francisco model to a tee with soapy personal rivalries (skimming the surface of Chicago’s corruption) beefed up with (fairly forgettable) songs from Alice Faye. There’s even a literally soap-sud filled transition at the start to take us into a superbly re-constructed nineteenth century Chicago, in a film full of impressive production design. But yet, don’t get me wrong, it’s all done with such energy it’s consistently enjoyable.

The two brothers are, of course, studies in contrast (third brother, Tom Brown’s Bob is so decently dull he barely makes any impression). As the ‘bad’ brother, Tyrone Power enjoys himself as a lip-smacking cad obsessed with power. Smirking and full of self-satisfaction at his own cleverness (not as clever as he thinks), he’s a ruthless liar and manipulator who deceives everyone around him: his brothers, the woman he loves, his political allies and rivals. It’s one of Power’s most engaging performances, successfully making Dion the sort of bastard you love to hate without ever making him utterly deplorable. In fact, he feels like a big kid (and a mummy’s boy at that), literally leaning back in his chair and expecting praise for his cleverness.

Opposite him, Don Ameche is saddled with the impossibly noble Jack, a crusading lawyer (who wouldn’t think of charging low-earning clients) and who wants to become Mayor to change the town for the better. His straitlaced decency is constantly thrown off by his brother’s dastardly lack of principle (their relationship eventually culminates in an entertainingly well-staged, no holds-barred fisticuff scuffle). Ameche does a good job of investing depth in this on-paper rather dull character.

The film presents an entertainingly straight-forward picture of machine politics, with votes controlled by bosses, various voters encouraged to register (and vote) multiple times and bosses controlling vast teams of followers. Brian Donlevy brings a very fine sense of arrogant domination to would-be boss Gill Warren (the sort of guy who casually mentions a rival’s bar looks rather flammable during a shake-down). It’s all very much presented as bad apples spoiling the whole barrel (rather than the whole system being a bucket of corrupt snakes), but fun nevertheless.

The romance comes between Dion and Belle, played with a decent mix of rascally bad-girl and misunderstood decency be Alice Faye. Faye (taking over the role at short notice from the late Jean Harlow) gets a few decent songs but the meat of the role is her love-struck switching between adoring and loathing Dion, who (with his flirtation with Senator’s daughter Ann Colby, played by Phyllis Brooks) barely deserves her. Some of Dion’s initial courting – consisting of sneaking into her carriage, pinning her down and kissing her – hardly feels comfortable now, but it supports a neat running joke of Belle’s maid running for help only to return to find the two locked in a passionate embrace.

But all of this is just build-up for the main event: an impressively staged reconstruction of the Great Fire. Shot with a mix of real sets and models – you can see where the money was spent on (briefly) the most expensive film ever made. It throws at us buildings aflame, crashing to the ground, huge crowds of extras charging past the camera in tracking shots, a panicked army of bulls fleeing (and crushing those unlucky enough to get in the way). This sequence is genuinely grippingly put-together and impressively epic, utilising some very effective aerial model shots of the city to establish the scale of the fire and the devastation. It balances culminating its plot threads at the same time as embracing the disaster excitement.

This end sequence makes the slightly patchy, familiar soap beforehand retrospectively work even better. It certainly helped deliver a box office bonanza for the film – just as Alice Brady’s closing speech about the unbeatable spirit of Chicago probably helped her to an Oscar (it’s a part Brady clearly enjoys, cementing a stereotype of the domineering Irish mother). After San Francisco, In Old Chicago proved entertaining disaster epics could thrill audiences with destruction for years to come.

F1 (2025)

Brilliantly shot racing is the centre piece of this straight-forward, massive advert for the sport

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Brad Pitt (Sonny Hayes), Damson Idris (Joshua Pearce), Kerry Condon (Kate McKenna), Javier Bardem (Rubén Cervantes), Tobias Menzies (Peter Banning), Kim Bodnia (Kaspar Smolinski), Sarah Niles (Bernadette Pearce), Will Merrick (Hugh Nickleby), Joseph Balderrama (Rico Fazio), Callie Cooke (Jodie), Shea Whigham (Chip Hart)

No one exactly says it, but “I feel the need for speed!” hangs over the whole of F1. Set in a fictional F1 team – although every other team, driver and team manager we see is real, with F1 superstar Lewis Hamilton serving as both producer and ‘final boss’ for the film’s conclusion – it’s by-the-numbers plot is the glue holding together a host of excitingly cut scenes of cars zooming round straights and bends.

It’s half-way through the season and struggling APXGP don’t have a point, and if they don’t win one of the remaining nine races the corporate suits will sell the team. Owner Rubén (Javier Bardem) tries a Hail Mary: signing up ex-F1 prodigy turned racing gun-for-hire Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) to pull it out of the bag. But can Sonny’s old-school ways mesh with his hi-tech team, led by technical director Kate (Kerry Condon) and ambitious, social-media friendly team-mate Joshua Pearce (Damon Idris)?

F1’s alternative title is F1: The Movie and it’s basically a massive advert for the sport. (In fact, not just F1 since it drips with product placement in almost every frame.) With the glamourous face of Brad Pitt front-and-centre, this is all about dragging more eyeballs onto the sport, presented here as an impossibly balls-to-the-wall, high-octane, Fast and Furious style, non-stop adrenaline rush with every race awash with excitement, unpredictability and thrills. (No first-to-last lap processions here!) Of the nine Grand Prixes we see, not a one goes by without a pulsating crash, gloriously skilled over-takes or final lap miracles. This F1 putting its best suit on and asking you out on a date.

After his success with Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski was a logical choice to bring the same excitement to cars as he did to planes. The camera gets down and low with the drivers, either sitting with the car as it zooms on the track or zeroing in on the drivers’ faces as the scenery whips by. It’s tightly edited, often cut perfectly to the beat of various classic rock songs, the film sounding like a Top Gear Greatest Hits compilation CD. This is some of the best edited and assembled footage of racing you’ll see (not surprising since they had F1’s full co-operation) and is the clear highlight.

F1 pitches for the widest possible audience by making sure even the biggest rube watching can follow the action with almost every second of race footage accompanied by commentary explaining exactly what’s happening and why. Sky commentators Martin Brundle and David Croft probably have more dialogue than most of the actors, feeding us Spark Notes F1 lore, probably irritating the petrol-heads but a godsend to newbies. Interestingly, they don’t talk about how much the film slightly mis-represents the rules. For starters, any driver who carried out as many ‘accidental’ minor collisions as Sonny does in an early race (to provoke the safety car’s emergence and make it easier for his team to score a point) would probably find himself on a one-way ticket to a ban. Never mind the APXGP car being crap at qualifying but unbelievably good in races. I guess, due to the drivers who the film is selling as gods of the gearstick – which is also why a F1 rules official (played by Mike Leigh regular Martin Savage) is portrayed as humourless bureaucrat for enforcing the sports own labyrinthine red tape.

Anyone expecting an F1 season to play out like F1 is in for a disappointment. But then, this is about dragging you in to see if you get sucked in by the moments when the sport does live up to this. Everything else is completely subservient to selling the experience, hence the paint-by-numbers script. There is scarcely a single narrative beat in the film you can’t predict from the set-up, and every character is only lifted from being a lifeless caricature through the charisma of the actors. It’s quite old school really: part of suppressing the truth of F1 (the engineering is key) in favour of the romantic (the drivers are the magic sauce that brings the win).

F1 has a fawning, romantic regard for the sort of old-school, manly no-nonsense of Brad Pitt, the film largely being about establishing everyone would perform better if they took more than a few leaves out of his book. For starters, Damson Idris’ JP would really become a winner if he focused on the driving not social media and started training like Pitt does (running the track, catching tennis balls and flicking playing cards) rather than putting trust in a high-tech gym. Pitt’s Sonny is never wrong in the film with mistakes only happen when his advice is ignored. He’s shown to have the dedication and in-bred knowledge to zero on the key data about the cars (F1 heavily endorses science in the cars, even as it subtly disparages science in the gym) to hone its performance. His samurai-life view, of moving from race to race (from Daytona to F1 and on) only dreaming of speed and the pure joy of driving is relentless praised.

Saying that, F1 does rather charmingly fly the flag of the importance of teamwork (just so we really get it, Pitt pointedly states several times it’s a team sport, where a second saved by a pit stop team is as vital as a second gained by the driver). F1 goes into detail of how important pit stop teams, racing strategy and technical design of the car are to success. Again, it feels like a pointed rebuttal of an argument non-fans of the sport might make, that it’s just men driving fast in a circle for about two hours.

Fundamentally though, F1 offers very old-fashioned entertainment, with very expected cliches. Kerry Condon’s technical director may speak briefly about the hurdles she’s had to climb over to become the sport’s sole female in her role – but her primary role is as really as coach and love interest to Pitt. Anyone who needs more than five seconds to work out that Tobias Menzies’ smirking corporate suit probably isn’t the ally he claims to be needs to see more movies. Sonny and JP’s relationship follows familiar rail tracks of rivals-turned-friends and the film even has the motor sport equivalent act four “you’re off the case” moment beloved of movies. But, if I’m honest, Pitt doesn’t have the charm and vulnerability that Cruise does (Sonny is so cool and collected, he’s never as relatable or loveable as he needs to be), and the film lacks a strong emotional centre to invest in. It’s entertaining enough of course, but it never finds a real, durable, re-watchability for anything other than the fast-moving cars at its heart.

The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

Charming Christmas enjoyment in this rather odd angel comedy that wins you over

Director: Henry Koster

Cast: Cary Grant (Dudley), Loretta Young (Julia Brougham), David Niven (Bishop Henry Brougham), Monty Woolley (Professor Wutheridge), James Gleason (Sylvester), Gladys Cooper (Mrs Agnes Hamilton), Elsa Lanchester (Matilda), Sara Haden (Mildred Cassaway), Karolyn Grimes (Debby Brougham)

Newly appointed Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) is forgetting who he is. Now spending all his time with the hoi-polloi (led by Gladys Cooper’s grande dame Mrs Hamilton) trying to secure funding for a new cathedral he’s rather lost sight of things at home with his devoted wife Julia (Loretta Young). Enter, seemingly in answer to his prayers, angel Dudley (Cary Grant). Taking up a role as Henry’s new assistant – with only Henry knowing the Heavenly background of his guest – Dudley sets about helping those around Henry rediscover their spiritual joy in life.

The Bishop’s Wife is a gentle, unassuming film, all taking place in the week before Christmas. It’s heart-warming, seasonal stuff, competently directed by Henry Koster, who efficiently juggles gentle character conflicts with a reassuring moral message. There are some rather charmingly done magical special effects sprinkled across the film: Dudley uses his angelic powers to instantly sort reference cards, fly decorations onto a chair, dictate to a self-operating typewriter and guide a snowball through the air with all the dexterity of Oliver Stone’s magic bullet. As a gentle piece of seasonal viewing, it gives you everything you could want.

Such is its easy charm and seasonal sweetness, it almost doesn’t matter that it’s quite an odd film. It’s no real surprise Dudley isn’t on Earth to help Henry secure mega-bucks he to build a grand cathedral (especially since principle doner Mrs Hamilton is more interested in making it a tribute to her late-husband rather God) but to help Henry work out his real focus should be the ordinary joes of his community and his marriage. That he should make sure he prioritises a humble choir at small local church St Sylvester’s and keep in touch with the parishioners he used to dedicate his time to. And, above all, that he should find time in his bustling calendar to keep the love in his marriage.

But the methods used by Dudley – away from angelic magic over inanimate objects and his ability to know everyone’s names before they even open their mouths and cross roads in bustling traffic without fear – are a little odd. Aside from shoring up a few people’s spiritual strength, he essentially begins a campaign of seduction, giving Julia the sort of loving attention Henry hasn’t given her in ages. It’s a slightly bizarre holy campaign – the angel who uses the temptations of the flesh to save a marriage – but it’s done with such innocence a viewer almost forgets the odd idea.

It also just about makes a virtue of casting of Cary Grant as Dudley. In a part that feels tailor-made for Bing Crosby, surely Cary Grant is no-one’s idea of an angel (a slightly abashed, heart-of-gold, demon perhaps). Grant, to be honest, slightly struggles with the role – at times the complete decency of Dudley leaves him rather stiff and the Grant twinkle gets one of its most subdued outings in cinematic history. However, Grant’s naughty charm does make us accept a little bit more that Dudley might just feel a little more than he’s saying with his attraction to Julia (even if, the rules of films, tell us there is zero chance of an angel being a seducer).

It still manages to get the goat of Niven’s Bishop, who increasingly resents this overly efficient new presence in his life more focused on charming his wife than getting on with what he presumes he’s there for – securing funds for the Cathedral. Niven (originally cast as the Angel – but his raffish charm would have been as unnatural a fit as Grant’s), does rather well as a decent man crushed under expectations and duty who has forgotten the things that really matter. Niven has a very neat line in quietly exasperated fury, so buttoned-up and English (despite being American!) he can’t give vent to his real feelings but hides it under genteel passive aggression. He also sells a neat joke that he is constantly rendered literally incapable of saying out loud that Dudley is an angel.

Loretta Young, between these two, has the least interesting part, trickly written. It goes without saying that a feel-good product of 1940s Hollywood is not going to have the wife of a Bishop actually, genuinely considering straying from her husband (just as, I suppose, it can only go so far in suggesting Grant’s Dudley is sorely tempted to leave his wings behind). Young’s role leans a little too much into the patient housewife, just eager for her husband to embrace day-to-day joys at home and not lose himself so much in work, but she manages to make it work.

These three lead a cast made up of experienced pros who know exactly how to pitch a fairly gentle comedy like this. Monty Woolley is great fun as a slightly over-the-hill professor, who needs to be befuddled by a never-emptying glass to stop him wondering why he doesn’t remember Dudley from the lectures he claims to have attended all those years ago. James Gleason offers cheeky, down-to-earth humour and sensibility as a friendly taxi-driver, while Gladys Cooper once again proves she can give austere grande dames more depth than anyone else in the business.

It all makes for a gentle, rather sweet and charming film despite that fact that almost nothing in it really make sense. In fact, it frequently falters as soon as you consider any of the plot at all or any of the actions and motivations of its characters. But then, this is basically a sort of Christmas Carol where the Angel arrives to re-focus the (not particularly imperilled) soul of one man, with wit, charm and warmth – and if it feels odd that also involves inspiring envy and jealousy (deadly sins right?!) in a Bishop, I suppose we should go with it. After all, it’s Christmas.

Weapons (2025)

Creepy and unsettling horror with a fascinating puzzle-box structure

Director: Zach Cregger

Cast: Julia Garner (Justine Gandy), Josh Brolin (Archer Graff), Alden Ehrenreich (Paul Morgan), Austin Abrams (James), Cary Christopher (Alex Lilly), Toby Huss (Captain Ed Locke), Benedict Wong (Marcus Miller), Amy Madigan (Gladys), Sara Paxton (Erica), Justin Long (Gary), June Diane Raphael (Donna Morgan)

At exactly 2:17am, seventeen young children from the same third-grade class all wake up and run from their houses, their arms trailing behind them like aeroplane wings. The disappearance shatters the local community. Fingers of blame point quickly, most of them at their teacher Justine (Julia Garner). It feels like some bizarre conspiracy, but are there darker forces at play? That mystery will rope in obsessed father Archer (Josh Brolin), troubled cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), drug-addict and thief James (Austin Abrams), decent school principle Marcus (Benedict Wong) and the only child from Justine’s class who didn’t disappear, young Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher).

Cregger’s creepy horror movie tells its story from all these character’s perspectives, each section opening like a book’s chapter with their name on the screen. Events re-play from different angles and perspectives and our understanding of events (and their horror!) grows as each person sheds more light on the overall picture. There is a deeply unsettling sense of dread and menace hanging over Weapons, built from the start by an unsettling child narrator who promises us that we are set to see things so unbelievable and ghastly, the authorities covered the whole thing up.

Weapons is influenced by some of the best ensemble dramas – Cregger specifically name-checked Anderson’s Magnolia as an influence – and I also felt it follows very much in the footsteps of Kubrick’s The Shining. It embraces the deeply unsettling dread and horror of quiet menace and the tension of disturbing background events. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t miss out on shattering blood and guts and body horror inspired by Cronenberg and The Thing: when the gore comes in Weapons it’s visceral, gut-wrenching and impossibly bloody.

It taps into everyday fears and horrors then takes them to the nth degree. What parent hasn’t feared the inexplicable disappearance of a child? And when disasters like that happen, people often lash out the suspicious. Poor Justine – a fine performance of outer abrasiveness hiding gentleness and vulnerability by Julia Garner – sticks out like a sore-thumb in this small community. An outsider with a prickly personality and a destructive streak a mile long, a little too fond of vodka (which she buys by the bucketload) and extra-marital sex with married men (which cost her a job at her previous school).

Her stumbling attempts to sympathise with the parents is made worse by the fact she has no clues to offer them. Not helpful (and you can’t help but sympathise with Justine here, as this is a true nightmare set-up) when everyone else is convinced she must know something. Further modern fears are tapped into when Justine faces a campaign of silent intimidation in her home by a faceless persecutor and her car is painted with the word ‘Witch’ (a brilliant little touch making her car instantly recognisable in all the other perspectives that follow).

The loudest voice of this fractured community becomes Archer, played with gruff guilt and fury by James Brolin, pestering the police with his Justine-centred theories and bulldozing other parents for evidence. It’s a dark irony of course that Archer’s paranoid investigations – focused on triangulating a shared route from the direction the children are seen running in doorbell cameras – turns out to be much closer to the truth than the official investigation (but then the police don’t realise they are in a horror movie here, whereas Archer surely starts to think he might be). Similar to Justine, Archer surprises us with his concealed decency and emotional vulnerability, another success in Cregger’s film where greater character depths are constantly revealed.

It works both ways as the more we see of Alden Ehrenreich’s police officer Paul, the less we like him. At first he seems a slightly luckless soul with a gentle heart, but he emerges more and more as a selfish bully who doesn’t think about twice about hurting people around him then worries endlessly about the consequences. Similarly, Austin Abrahm’s drug-addict burglar stumbles far closer to the truth than anyone else – but his interest in it is connected solely to his desire for $50k reward (and it’s hard not to start to think Paul is fairly interested in that as well).

The storyline of these characters unspools in Cregger’s short story structure very effectively, the camera frequently trailing behind each character in a series of tracking shots (this means we often only see the facial reactions when the scene repeats from a different perspective). Cregger’s shies away from jump scares (not that he doesn’t use these quite effectively at several points) in favour of simple shots and draining out sounds to let quiet background moments create dread. Perhaps most chilling of all sees a character sleeping in a car being slowly approached by a mysterious woman, a scene of such sustained but simple tension it will have you twitching in your seat.

To reveal anything of what the secret cause of this horror is would be spoil things considerably – Weapons works best the less you know about it. But it’s not a spoiler to say there are dark forces at play – Weapons clues you in fairly quickly that a creepy house, with newspaper coated windows, is likely to be the centre of what nightmares may come. A big part of this is a performance of crazy off-the-wall freakishness by Amy Madigan, a gift of a role she rips into with gusto, an eccentric presence dripping with unsettling menace, both vicious and then eerily calm. Madigan bites into the role like Hopkins did Lecter, doing terrible things with a calm smile, making threats with calculated menace. Genuinely terrifying, truly memorable.

Weapons opens up a pot of terrifying, unsettling nightmare fuel. From the unnervingly unreal way the children run (arms trailing behind them) to background events that carry real terror. But there are moments of black comedy in here as well: the final sequence is both blood-soaked horror and also darkly hilarious (Cregger using distanced perspective shots to expert effect) and a housebound fight plays like a horror-slapstick. The main success of Weapons is it’s creeping sense of menace, the unsettling thought of horrific dark powers just on the edges of reality, that lack any sense of morality or decency. That what we can’t imagine is even more terrifying than what we can.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

An engaging film explores the difficult choices faced by a generation of women

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Ellen Burstyn (Alice Hyatt), Kris Kristofferson (David), Alfred Lutter (Thomas Hyatt), Diane Ladd (Flo), Vic Taybeck (Mel), Valerie Curtin (Vera), Jodie Foster (Audrey), Harvey Keitel (Ben), Lane Bradbury (Rita), Billy Green Bush (Donald Hyatt), Lelia Goldoni (Bea)

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore takes a traditional ‘woman’s picture’, and firmly updates it to the concerns of the 1970s. It’s a successful mix of hope, romance and compromise, that manages to capture a sense of what a difficult and unusual time for a generation of women who grew up told being a wife-and-mother was the be-all-and-end-all only to find themselves in an era of possibilities with more options in life.

Alice (Ellen Burstyn), a wife-and-mother in a comfortable but largely romance-free marriage, is suddenly widowed. She realises she has a chance of becoming what she wanted to be when she was a kid: a singer. She and twelve-year-old son Thomas (Alfred Lutter) leave town, hoping to find this dream in Monterey, where she grew up. Their road trip is interrupted as Alice searches for singing jobs to pay their way, eventually stalling in Tucson where she works as diner waitress and finds the possibility of romance with softly-spoken divorced rancher David (Kris Kristofferson).

What’s striking about Alice is that you might expect it to be a story of feminist independence: a woman, striking out on her own, seizing her dreams. But it’s actually a more realistic – you might almost say quietly sad – film, where dreams are notoriously hard to achieve. Alice attracted ire at the time as she didn’t fit the bill of a feminist role model. For starters, at times she remains just as keen on finding a man as she does making it as a singer. Her talent is good but not stand-out – even she claims her voice is weak with an odd wobble. And she makes a host of dubious personal decisions out of a desire to be liked or to accommodate herself to others.

Burstyn captures this in her outstanding, Oscar-winning, performance. Alice is caught at that cross-roads of not being ready to let go of the traditionalist outlook she absorbed growing up, while dreaming of standing on her own two feet. It’s a problem you can imagine many women in 70s America, a country fumbling towards gender equality, struggled with. We grow incredibly fond of her as she strives for independence, while also sometimes wanting to shake out of her timid reliance on affection from others.

ADLHAM is a film about complexities and defies easy answers. Her marriage seems like one of mutual convenience. Then it surprises us: Alice’s tearfully silent realisation that they she and her husband have nothing to really talk about is met not with incomprehension but with a tenderly affectionate hug from her husband. Alice has an undeniable deep grief at his death – but she’s also quick to feel emotions, and you could argue her quickness to move on suggests she mourns the loss of an anchor in her life.

Her relationship with her son is an a mix of motherly care and a desire to be his friend. Alfred Lutter is very good as this slightly spoilt pre-teen who can switch from sulking playful laughter. ADLHAM shows plenty of fun and games between these two, like a water-fight in a motel. But it also makes clear Alice’s inability to control Tommy and her tendency to let take the lead. She rarely (if ever) corrects his bad behaviour or language, allows him to play music at top volume whenever he wants (to the intense irritation of others) and you feel her discomfort with being an authority figure (only once does she put her foot down, and is consumed with tearful guilt almost immediately after).

Similarly, her need to be close to a man leads to a parade of dubious choices. She is unable to pick up on signals that a seemingly charming man she meets at a bar (Harvey Keitel) is a married man with a hair-trigger temper. The gentler David might seem like a better prospect, but there is enough in Kris Kristofferson’s manner to suggest he has only so much patience for Tommy and that he might also be as flat and dull a man as Alice’s first husband was. ADLHAM could be suggesting some people are trapped into making similar mistakes over-and-over again.

Burstyn is the heart-and-soul of this look at the difficult balance between hope and reality. Alice is deeply emotional, her heart perilously close to her sleeve. Tears come incredibly easily, in juddering waves that shake her whole body. Burstyn makes her both defiant – “I don’t sing out my ass” she tells one leering bar-owner – but also vulnerable and needy. She’s can be playful and comic – she performs skits for David, throws herself into banter with Tommy and loves putting on voices – and then touchy and judgemental. It’s a performance that mixes rawness with insight and delusion, where Alice can go from cold-eyed realism at her singing to convincing herself all her problems will be solved the second she arrives in Monterey.

Scorsese, directing with subtle, classical grace, makes this goal feel like a chimera. In fact, the constant postponing of the journey suggests it will never happen. Scorsese opens the film with a 50’s style prologue (deliberately shot on a soundstage and filmed like a mix of The Wizard of Oz and Powell and Pressburger) showing the young Alice at Monterey that hardly makes it feel like a golden future. In fact, it looks more like a step backward when Scorsese cuts from it to a wide-angled, rock-n-roll sound-tracked panning shot over Socorro in a whip-sharp transition.

There is a slight unease in ADLHAM that nothing is quite fixed, which Scorsese accentuates with the film’s subtle hand-held camera-work (every shot has some slight shaky movement in it). It’s balanced with some lovely old Hollywood touches (at one point Alice lights a cigarette for David in her mouth and passes it to him, a classic Hays Code metaphor for sex), genuine comedy and human connection. Lots of that comes from the Tucson dinner, either from Valerie Curtin’s hilarious inept waiter (introduced passing the same three meals between three people with increasing panic) and Diane Ladd’s (Oscar-nominated) turn as blousy but caring Flo, with whom Alice forms a surprising bond that surprises her. (It perhaps echoes the film’s complex message, that life-long waitress Flo, flirting for tips, seems more independent than Alice).

Alice is an interesting, refreshing look at how difficult this moment of time could be for people caught between two ways of thinking. It has a superb performance by Burstyn (who provided much of the drive behind making the film, including hiring Scorsese) leading a very strong cast (including a strikingly mature, relaxed performance from Jodie Foster as a precocious pre-teen tearaway). It’s ending breaks into something more reassuring and traditional, but it’s also soaking in hints that it is far from a full-stop: the possibility that Alice has entered into a new chapter in her life that might be more similar than she thinks to her old one.

Winchester ’73 (1950)

Psychological darkness underpins this dark and exciting Western from Mann and Stewart

Director: Anthony Mann

Cast: James Stewart (Lin McAdam), Shelley Winters (Lola Manners), Dan Duryea (‘Waco’ Johnny Dean), Stephen McNally (‘Dutch’ Henry Brown), Millard Mitchell (Frankie ‘High Spade’ Wilson), Charles Drake (Steve Miller), John McIntire (Joe Lamont), Will Geer (Wyatt Earp), Jay C Flippen (Sergeant Wilkes), Rock Hudson (Young Bull), Tony Curtis (Private)

“The Gun That Won the West” was the proud boast of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of its rifle ((it can fire several shots before reloading unlike normal rifles). As Winchester 73 puts it, such guns built the West and any Indian would give his soul for one. In Anthony Mann’s complex psychological western, it’s also an instrument of death defining a whole era. Winchester 73 follows the path of one ‘perfect’ repeating rifle, won in a shooting competition by Lin McAdam (James Stewart) but stolen from him and passed from hand-to-hand, seeming to curse everyone who touches it to death.

McAdam has his own mission, searching for the man who killed his father, ruthless criminal ‘Dutch’ Henry Brown (Stephen McNally). These two compete for the rifle, in a Tombstone shooting content refereed by legendary Wyatt Earp (Will Geer) whose orders to keep the peace in this town stop the two of them turning guns on each other from the off. Defeated, Dutch steals the rifle (after getting the jump on McAdam), but he doesn’t keep it long as it moves from owner-to-owner. Meanwhile, McAdam purses Dutch, with faithful friend High Space (Millard Mitchell) in tow, encountering war bands, cavalry troops and Lola Manners (Shelley Winters), a luckless woman tied to a string of undeserving men.

Winchester 73 unspools across 90 lean, pacey minutes and gives you all the action you could desire, directed with taut, masterful tension by Mann. It opens with a cracking Hawkesian shooting contest, with the equally matched McAdam and Dutch moving from shooting bullseyes, to dimes out of the sky to through the hoops of tossed rings. Among what follows is a tense face-off between cavalry and Indians, a burning house siege of Dutch’s ruthless ally ‘Waco’ Johnny Dean (Dan Duryea), a high noon shoot-out and a final, deadly, rifle shooting wilderness cat-and-mouse shoot-out between McAdam and Dutch. It’s all pulled together superbly, mixing little touches of humour with genuine excitement.

However, what makes Winchester 73 really stand out is the psychological depth it finds. Audiences were sceptical of James Stewart – George Bailey himself – as a hard-bitten sharp-shooter out for revenge. But Stewart – deeply affected by his war service – wanted a change and Mann knew there was darkness bubbling just under the surface. McAdam is frequently surly, moody and struggles to express warmth and kindness. He can only confess his fondness for High Spade while glancing down at the rifle he’s cleaning and the most romantic gesture he can give Lola is a gun when they are caught up in a cavalry siege, wordlessly suggesting she save the final bullet for herself. McAdam is driven and obsessively focused, stopping for nothing and no-one on his manhunt, a manhunt High Spade worries he is starting to enjoy too much.

And he’s right to worry. In hand-to-hand combat, Stewart lets wildness and savagery cross his face, his teeth gritted, eyes wild. Scuffling for the rifle with Dutch, there is a mania in his eyes that tells us he is capable of killing with his own hands, a look that returns when he later savagely beats the cocky Waco (it’s even more shocking, as Waco’s ruthless skill is well established, before McAdam whoops him like an errant child). Stewart plays a man deeply scarred by the loss of his father, his emotional hinterland laid waste by a burning need for revenge to fill his soul.

This is the West Winchester 73 sees, one of anger, self-obsession and lies. Seemingly charming trader Joe Lamont (John McIntire, very good) is a shameless card sharp who cheats everyone left-right-and-centre. Waco is perfectly happy to sacrifice his own gang so that he can escape the law – just as he’s perfectly happy to use women and children as human shields and provoke a hapless Steve Miller (Charles Drake), Lola’s luckless lover, into out-matched violence. Steve is hard to sympathise for, having left Lola in the lurch without a second thought when they are caught in the open by a war band (he rides off shouting ‘I’ll get help’ and only returns after finding it by complete fluke).

In this West, a gun is the ultimate symbol. Mann opens every section of the film with a close-up shot of the gun itself, this most prized of possessions, each time in the hands of a new owner. Earp keeps his town strictly gun-free, and both McAdam and Dutch instinctively reach for their holster-less waists when they first meet. (Will Geer does a fine line in avuncular authority as Earp, treated with affectionate patience which becomes quiet fear when he smilingly reveals who he is). The cursed rifle, like Sauron’s ring, seems to tempt everyone and then betray anyone who touches it. Of all its owners, only Dutch and McAdam seem to understand how to use it: and of course, McAdam is the only man with the determination to truly master it.

There isn’t much room for women in all this. Much like the rifle, Lola herself is passed from man-to-man. Played with a gutsy determination by Shelley Winters, she’s first seen thrown out of Tombstone on suspicion of being a shameless floozy, before passing from the useless Steve (who Winters wonderfully balances both affection and a feeling of contempt for) to the psychopathic Waco (few people did grinning black hats better than Dan Duryea). It’s been argued that Lola fills all the traditional female Western roles in one go – hooker, faithful wife, independent women, damsel-in-distress, redemptive girlfriend – and there’s a lot to be said for that. So masculine and violent is this world, women constantly need to re-shape and re-form themselves for new situations.

Fascinating ideas around violence, obsession and sexuality underpin a frontier world where, it’s made clear repeatedly, life is cheap make Winchester 73 really stand out. Led by a bravura performance by James Stewart (who negotiated the first ever ‘points deal’ for this film and made a fortune), with striking early appearances from Rock Hudson (awkwardly as a native chief) and Tony Curtis (as a possibly too pretty cavalry private), it’s both exciting and thought-provoking in its dark Western under-currents

Wicked: For Good (2025)

Part 2 doesn’t match Part 1 for entertainment or depth, but has enough moments to work

Director: Jon M. Chu

Cast: Cynthia Erivo (Elphaba Thropp), Ariana Grande-Butera (Glinda Upland), Jonathan Bailey (Fiyero Tigelaar), Michelle Yeoh (Madame Morrible), Jeff Goldblum (The Wizard of Oz), Ethan Slater (Boq Woodsman), Marissa Bode (Nessarose Thropp), Bowen Yang (Pfannee), Bronwyn James (ShenShen), Colman Domingo (Cowardly Lion)

Act Two comes to the screen in Wicked: For Good, putting the finishing touches to a five-hour journey through a single stage musical. While there are literally hundreds of millions of reasons for splitting the film in two, you can’t doubt the passion and love for the source material from everyone involved. However, Wicked: For Good, while shorter than the first film, feels longer: more padded but also more aimless, exposing more of the flaws of the musical less apparent when Act Two breezes past in about an hour. It’s still an entertaining watch, but it lacks the explosive, glorious impact of the first film.

Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) has been firmly branded public enemy number one as the Wicked Witch of the West. Meanwhile, her old friend Glinda (Ariana Grande-Butera) is the universally beloved face of the regime, showmanship and trickery hiding her complete lack of magic. Elphaba is fighting a losing battle for hearts and minds, failint at her attempts to expose the Wizard’s (Jeff Goldblum) lies and to protect the animals of Oz from persecution. Attempts at good deeds constantly go wrong and the arrival of a young girl from Kansas brings chaos. Will Elphaba and Glinda heal their relationship and will Oz be saved?

Wicked: For Good suffers for covering the weaker second act. Most of the best songs were in the first film. The first act also has more interplay between the two leads (whose relationship is the heart of the story) and had a clearer coming-of-age arc with Elphaba’s eyes being opened to the nature of Oz. Wicked: For Good tries to tackle an awful lot (Good and Evil! Animal rights! The Wizard’s oppression and guilt! Propaganda and manipulation! Backstory for every character in The Wizard of Oz! Elphaba and Glinda’s relationships with Fiyero!) But it often ends up under-cooking, hand-waving and fudging many of them. It chops and changes its focus so often, that developments seem sudden or under-explained.

This is where the extended run-time doesn’t help. The logic leaps that can be done in a few minutes of dialogue between songs in an hour of stage-time, make less sense when stretched over two hours plus. One of Elphaba’s main motivations is protecting the animal’s rights, with these creatures literally losing their voice. Despite opening with her trying to free slave-worker animals from building the Yellow Brick Road, eventually this plot-line feels lost in the shuffle. The motivations and mechanisms of the persecution are unclear, and then confusingly bunched in with racist laws against Munchkins. Similarly, Jeff Goldblum’s Wizard switches from a sociopathic arch-manipulator, into a drink-dependent man coated in guilt, without this journey being amply explained.

Wicked: For Good also awkwardly shoe-horns in events from The Wizard of Oz (there is a lot of Dorothy and her companions on the margins) and comes up with not-always-well-developed reasons why Elphaba and Glinda do the things-they-do as required by Wizard of Oz, without contradicting the more complex, interesting characters they are here. Again, these are flaws revealed by the extended run-time which gives more depth to the leads, but little of its added hour to giving more depth and context to the plot and themes the film is trying to handle, making them feel under-powered.

That’s not to say there are not plenty of positives. Wicked: For Good really understands its core strength is the relationship between its leads, and the chemistry between Erivo and Grande is still dynamite. It’s made very clear they are taking opposite approaches in interpreting ‘what’s best for Oz’ (for Elphaba it’s ending the lies, for Glinda it’s keeping people happy – very on brand for both). Their scenes are the film’s emotional heart, whether laughing or crying together, or even (in one laugh-out-loud moment) literally fighting. Just as in the first film, Wicked: For Good demonstrates the different perception an outsider and an insider brings to a situation and how this informs their loyalties and actions.

Erivo’s wonderfully draws on deep loneliness and growing frustration at her inability to change things, capturing the sense of someone certain she’s in the wrong, but who utterly lacks the ability to persuade (be that animals to stay and fight, or Ozians to take another look at the Wizard). Her deep need for friendship (and romance with Jonathan Bailey’s effortlessly charismatic Fiyero – rather short-changed by screen time here) is clear, even if her transition to embracing elements of ‘the villain’ seems rather forced. Her singing remains breathtakingly good with ‘No Good Deed’ an extraordinary show-stopper.

However, the film might just belong to Ariana Grande. If Wicked was Elphaba’s coming-of-age, this is Glinda’s. Grande brilliantly shows how fragile the bubble of happiness Glinda has built is. Glinda’s realisation that from an early age (an excellent childhood flashback scene helps here) she hid her feelings with an immaculate smile is very well explored – as is her realisation that she is universally beloved, but has no real friends. Grande finds a desperation, fragility and sense of pain that only just peak out – feelings covered well in the best of the film’s two new songs ‘The Girl in the Bubble’, with Chu using reflections to stress Glinda’s realisation of the lies she has told herself.

Of the many themes the film tries to cover in a broad sweep, this one comes out best while others fall by the wayside. Propaganda and dictatorship in Oz sort of sits there as a presence without getting real focus. The oppression of the animals (and imagery of them working in whips and chains) makes a big emotional swing the film isn’t willing to commit to. The other new song, ‘No Place Like Home’, is an unforgettable ballad that awkwardly stages Elphaba begging animal users of an Underground Railroad to stay and hope for the best (imagine telling that to real-life Railroad users). There are darker elements I liked (Marissa Boda’s Nessarose and Ethan Slater’s Boq explore jealousy, possessiveness and rage in a surprisingly daring way, told with an effective economy I wish Chu could have found more often).

When Wicked: For Good works, it works. The impressive visual design from the first film is still in place. Chu directs with energy and vibrancy and gets real emotion from the moments between the leads. But I miss the large choreographed numbers here (perhaps expected from a darker Act Two) and its plot is often unfocused, forced and manages to use double the time to barely extend (or make more interesting) the level of thematic exploration the original musical does. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first one and becomes a little too trapped by fitting into Wizard of Oz but it’s still an entertaining ride.

Westfront 1918 (1930)

Wonderfully filmed, but grim and slightly too allegorical war film, sitting in All Quiet’s shadow

Director: GW Pabst

Cast: Fritz Kampers (The Bavarian), Gustav Diessl (Karl), Hans-Joachim Moebis (The Student), Claus Clausen (The Lieutenant), Jackie Monnier (Yvette), Hanna Hoessrich (Karl’s wife), Else Helle (Karl’s mother), Carl Ballhaus (Butcher)

If there is one thing you definitely understand when watching Westfront 1918, it’s the impact of the First World War on ordinary Germans. Westfront 1918 is low on plot and is close to an experience film, following four regular soldiers ground down by the military campaign on the trenches, with horrific psychological and physical injuries which will leave most of them dead (or as good as). Our soldiers are Karl (Gustav Diessl), a husband who discovers his wife has found comfort at home in the arms of the local butcher, the young Student (Hans-Joachim Moebis) in love with Yvette (Jackie Monnier), a rotund Bavarian joker (Fritz Kampers) and the tightly-strung Lieutenant (Claus Clausen) under huge pressure.

The inescapable comparison Westfront 1918 lives with is to All Quiet on the Western Front (shot almost at the same-time). Unfortunately, the novel Westfront 1918 is based on is not as strong as Erich Remarque’s and the film goes for such an allegorical universality in its characters (most of whom don’t get names) that it doesn’t carry the same powerful emotional impact. All Quiet also shows its characters going from hope to disillusionment: what Pabst is going for, with unrelenting grimness, is to show disillusioned men stuck in a pointless slaughter, fighting a distant and faceless enemy.

All they is chaotic uncertainty and the suddenness of death. The story is topped and tailed with different types of incompetence and inadequacy. Our heroes, on a brief leave near the front, are forced to hit the basement after their occupied village is shelled by their own artillery (this fuck-up will be repeated again and again, to the exasperation of the Lieutenant as his men duck in the trenches from their own shells). The film climaxes in an over-crowded, shelled-out church acting as field hospital, with over-worked doctors and inadequate medical supplies struggling to save lives. Stressing how much this is a hell on earth, the camera pans past a shattered Christ statue in the rubble. This dance with death isn’t just pointless, it’s ineptly led.

The combat sequences are shot with a strikingly observant camera, soaking up the detail, the soundtrack (and the ground) constantly peppered with exploding shells. Pabst stages our arrival at the trenches in a striking tracking shot, stressing their narrowness and inhospitality and the flimsy protection they provide. The final battle that closes the film – a French tank advance against hopelessly outmatched Germans – includes brilliant stationary shots that hold a fixed view of the battlefield. In front of us march (and run) troops – but also, when troops are hit, their bodies slump and remain there in shot, sprayed with mud when shells explode. Slowly the frame fills with the detritus of war. It’s an extremely well-done capturing of the grimness of war.

Pabst’s film stresses the unfairness and dismissal of the ordinary soldier by the officers. Senior officers are based miles from the front, fighting a very different war: pushing troops around a map and enjoying fine rations, served by batmen. When the Student struggles into their presence with a message after a harrowing journey, they barely register his presence: he’s left slumped on the floor and only fed when the batman sneaks him some food. Everyone is not equal and the soldiers there is no point volunteering for things (the student has only taken on his hazardous mission in the hope he can steal away afterwards to see Yvette).

The homefront is equally troubled, crowds queuing for low rations and those left behind struggling with the loneliness and shame (as millions die a few miles away). Pabst’s film also treats those on the homefront as victims. When Karl’s wife is found in an adulterous twist with a butcher, Westfront 1918 gives as much sympathy to her loneliness and depression as much as it does Karl’s rage. In fact, if anything, Karl’s fury towards a woman he hasn’t seen in 18 months finding some comfort is held up as his character flaw, something he will spend time deeply regretting later. What does a passing moment like this matter when you could be killed at any time? Pabst’s argues we should stick together as Komarades, not turn on each other.

The film’s main weakness is the characters largely act as ciphers and universally representative figures. Westfront 1918 never quite manages to make them people we really care for in themselves, even as they fall. Which isn’t to say the tough moments don’t land: one character’s fate, drowned in a pool of mud, only his hand sticking limply out after death, is especially tough. The impact of death land (literally so in one shot which drains out the light to leave one character’s face literally looking like a skull) but, unlike All Quiet, we never quite feel like we fully know and understand these men.

This is perhaps why Pabst’s film is now most strongly remembered for its technical innovations. His first sound film, Pabst didn’t want his camera to be restricted into a stationary position so that a sound boom could pick up the sounds. He and cameraman Fritz Arno invented a sound-proof casing for the camera to allow them to move. In doing this, Pabst re-introduced much mobility to sound film-making.

Westfront 1918 is a film full of admirable film-making virtues and a strong streak of humanity. It doesn’t carry quite the same emotional impact as All Quiet – and it will always be remembered as that’s companion piece – but it has moments of haunting, virtuoso film-making. It’s view of war as a pointless grindstone inevitably led to it being banned by the Nazis. But it’s also sad to reflect that Pabst spent the next war (reluctantly) filming propaganda films for Joseph Goebbels. As Westfront 1918 tells us, life is cruel.