Parky at the Pictures (DVD 20/12/12)

The moment the double edition of the Radio Times hits the recycling bin, however, the black-and-white bonanza will be over for another year. Yet there are still plenty of oldies available to rent or buy on DVD and Blu-ray and this overview of recent releases should provide a little inspiration for those still wondering what to do with that clutch of Christmas vouchers.

We start with four B-thrillers featuring Peter Lorre as John P. Marquand's Japanese troubleshooter, Mr Moto. A master of disguise, who seemed to work for a mysterious global crime-fighting organisation, the character first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1935 as a replacement for Chinese sleuth Charlie Chan following the death of his creator Earl Derr Biggers. However, Marquand also started a series of six novels and these provided the inspiration for the eight films produced by Twentieth Century-Fox between 1937-39. Yet, despite their popularity with audiences, Lorre detested the role and was delighted when it was cancelled following Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939), during the shooting of which he damaged his shoulder.

The driving force behind the series was Norman Foster, the ex-husband of actress Claudette Colbert (see below), who had decided to give up his on-screen career after his looks were affected by a severe beating. Despite not being the most sophisticated director, Foster filled the frame with bustling action and maintained a brisk pace that was perfectly suited to second features. Moreover, he quickly established Kentaro Moto as a master of disguise, whose judo skills could get him out of any scrape and whose willingness to play tough made him a match for any crook, spy or mastermind.

Launching the series, Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937) is a taut tale that sees Lorre accompany shipping magnate's son Thomas Beck on a mission to deliver a letter to Shanghai office manager Murray Kinnell alerting him to the activities of a smuggling ring. En route, Beck falls for the vivacious Virginia Field, who joins the Marco Polo in Honolulu, only to vanish shortly after Lorre has a bruising run-in with steward John Rogers, who has been rifling through Beck's cabin. On arriving in China, Beck discovers that Field is a performer at a nightclub run by Sig Ruman. But Lorre smells a rat and, when Beck and Field suddenly disappear, he poses as a smuggler, with Lotus Long as his glamorous companion, and starts snooping around backstage.

Second features were made on tight budgets and schedules and little time was wasted on niceties like plot logic and complex characterisation. But this adventure rattles along cogently, with Lorre mixing stereotypical inscrutability with a quick intelligence and even quicker fists, as he tosses tattooed villains overboard and allows potentially treacherous sidekicks to be bumped off to ensure he nabs the right culprit. The supporting turns are also splendid, with the ever-watchable Sig Ruman being matched by fellow scene-stealer J. Carroll Naish, who cameos as the owner of a trinket shop in the bazaar.

Released on Christmas Eve the same year, Thank You, Mr Moto is anything but a festive romp, as the body count rises steadily as various villains seek to steal the scrolls detailing the whereabouts of the tomb of Genghis Khan that is rumoured to contain a wealth of fabulous treasures. Lorre himself dispatches the first victim, as he recovers a purloined document from a caravan crossing the Gobi Desert. But the mayhem starts in earnest when he accepts a party invitation from Colonel Sig Ruman and kills him he overhears him trying to coerce Chinese prince Philip Ahn into parting with some priceless family heirlooms.

The incident is witnessed by American importer's daughter Eleanor Joyce and diplomat beau Thomas Beck offers to protect her when Lorre is seen leaving the premises of murdered antiquities dealer John Carradine. However, Lorre is more interested in Ruman and his wife Nedda Harrigan, who is having an affair with her husband's business partner, Sidney Blackmer. When he callously slays Ahn's mother (Pauline Frederick), Lorre redoubles his efforts to protect the scrolls and their secret.

Despite the intensity of American isolationism at the time, Fox ensured that the Moto stories were set in exotic locations and Bernard Herzbrun and Albert Hogsett's production design unfussily enhances the atmosphere, if not exactly the authenticity, of the action. Lorre again proves surprisingly ruthless in the defence of right, but his final act reveals Moto to be a man of honour and integrity. Sig Ruman again stands out among the supporting players, although stalwarts John Carradine and Sidney Blackmer (who would excel 31 years later in Roman Polanski's demonic chiller, Rosemary's Baby) more than hold their own.

Lorre's fifth outing, The Mysterious Mr Moto (1938), saw him enrolled in the International Police force and posing as a murderer in order to facilitate the daring escape of Frenchman Leon Ames from the notorious Devil's Island prison. Arriving in London, Lorre becomes Ames's houseboy in the hope of discovering the identity of his boss, the leader of the sinister League of Assassins that seems to have lined up pacifist Czechoslovak industrialist Henry Wilcoxon as their next target because he refuses to divulge the secret of a new type of steel.

When a friend is crushed by a lorry in the street, secretary Mary Maguire and associate Erik Rhodes beg Wilcoxon to let Lorre protect him and he reveals that several armaments companies are prepared to do anything to acquire his formula. A trip to Limehouse with sidekick Karen Sorrell and a failed attempt on his life (during which Lorre hears a violin rendition of the tune a barrel organ had been playing at the time of the lorry incident) confirms that Ames is involved in the conspiracy, along with the scheming Harold Huber. But it takes Lorre to disguise himself as an eccentric artist at a swish gallery opening for the ringleader to be exposed.

Fans of Only Fools and Horse will doubtless be amused by the falling chandelier method chosen to bump off Wilcoxon. But, owing nothing to the original Marquand stories, this is not one of the better series entries. Notwithstanding Maguire's crush on him, Wilcoxon makes for a dull hero and it is tempting to cheer on Ames and Huber as they plot their dastardly deeds. The surprise package, however, proves to be Erik Rhodes, who will be familiar to many from the word-mangling foreigners he essayed in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicles The Gay Divorcee (1934) and Top Hat (1935).

Concluding this quartet is the sixth offering, Mr Moto's Last Warning (1938), which is as notable as its predecessor for commenting on the arms race that was then taking place in a Europe drifting ever closer to conflict. In this instance, a cabal led by ventriloquist Ricardo Cortez is bent on sabotaging the French fleet and blaming the act on the British so that the allies become foes. Arriving in Port Said, Lorre poses as a shopkeeper to keep tabs on the bar where Cortez performs. He soon discovers that owner Virginia Field has no idea about her star turn's extracurricular activities and teams with double agent John Carradine to get information about Cortez and cohorts George Sanders, John Davidson and Leyland Hodgson, who are trying to coax the wife and daughter (Margaret Irving and Joan Carroll) of a leading French admiral into letting slip his embarkation plans.

Hollywood was careful right up to the end of 1941 to avoid taking sides in the Second World War, as it had markets to protect among both the Axis and Allied nations. However, given the number of Brits and continental exiles working in the studios, it was inevitable that plots were tailored to show peace-loving countries being imperilled by nefarious forces and, even though Germany and Italy were never specifically named, the allegiance of the enemy operatives was always prtty apparent.

Indeed, the emphasis here is more on what would come to be known as `fifth columnists' and it says much for the Tinseltown view of the British that Lorre's aides are reformed bad girl Virginia Field and silly ass tourist Robert Coote. Sanders, Cortez and Carradine are on fine form, while Lorre survives a bomb blast and being tossed into the sea in a sack to win the day. However, the irony will not be lost on most viewers that the saviour of Anglo-French relations hailed from a country that would forge a Tripartite Pact with Hitler and Mussolini in September 1940.

As none of the remaining pictures under scrutiny this week are series entries, we shall assess them individually in alphabetical order:

ACTION IN ARABIA (1944).
American journalists George Sanders and Robert Anderson land in Damascus in the spring of 1941 and discover the city has become a nest of spies. Suspicious at seeing French diplomat André Leroux consorting with Arab leader HB Warner's daughter Lenore Aubert, Anderson follows them and is murdered in the camel market. Sanders seeks the assistance of American consul Robert Armstrong, who warns him not to cause trouble. But Sanders's nose for a story leads him to discover that Free French agent Virginia Bruce and her father Gene Lockhart are posing as gamblers in Nazi sympathiser Alan Napier's hotel in order to protect Warner from a plot being hatched by underling Jamiel Hasson and Napier to provoke a tribal uprising that will draw Allied troops away from the Suez Canal in time for an Axis attack.

Directed by Léonide Moguy from a script by Herbert Biberman and Philip MacDonald (who had collaborated with Norman Foster on a number of Mr Moto scenarios), this is a wonderfully convoluted thriller that typified so many Hollywood flagwavers in having a Yankee hero turn the tide in the favour of the plucky Brits and Frenchies who didn't quite have the wherewithal to win the day alone. The performances are admirable, with Sanders recapturing the suave resourcefulness he had demonstrated as The Saint and The Falcon, while Virginia Bruce provides the mettlesome glamour. Moguy incorporated footage shot by Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper for their aborted 1930s Lawrence of Arabia biopic. But this is most notable because of the contribution of Biberman, whose career would be ruined just three years later when he was named as one of the Hollywood Ten during the House UnAmerican Activities Committee's infamous Communist witch-hunt.

BORN TO KILL (1947).
Reluctant to become caught up in a police investigation after discovering the corpses of hotel owner Isabel Jewell and her lover, Claire Trevor flees Reno after securing her divorce and board a train back to San Francisco. Unaware that he killed Jewell in a fit of pique for using him to make her boyfriend jealous, Trevor becomes intrigued by fellow passenger Lawrence Tierney and is deeply frustrated that her engagement to the well-heeled Philip Terry prevents her from stopping his whirlwind romance with her wealthy foster sister, Audrey Long. Back in Reno, however, hotel owner Esther Howard has hired private eye Walter Slezak to investigate Jewell's murder and he tails Tierney's pal Elisha Cook, Jr. to his doorstep. Refusing to bow to blackmail, Tierney plans to kill Howard. But, with Trevor suddenly free atfer Terry ends their relationship, Tierney's seething jealousy cause him to confront her just as the cops arrive.

Having started out producing sound effects for Astaire-Rogers musicals and then making his name as the editor of such masterpieces as Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Robert Wise started directing in the mid-1940s (ironically, with some uncredited second unit work on Action in Arabia). Typically, he excelled behind the camera and this pitiless adaptation of James Gunn's novel Deadlier Than the Male ranks alongside The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Set-Up (1949) as the best of his early outings. Starkly photographed by Robert De Grasse to reinforce the naked lust and greed that the Breen Office somehow permitted after insisting upon a handful of cuts, this is a classic psychotic meets femme fatale scenario that brings the very best (or is that worst) out of Tierney and Trevor. Led by the twitchy Cook and weaselly Slezak, the supporting ensemble proves equally adept  But it's Wise's controlled edginess that makes this film noir so compelling and so much superior to later more acclaimed achievements like The Sound of Music (1965), for which he won his second Academy Award after sharing with Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961).

CHARADE (1963).
Returning to Paris after the skiing holiday that persuaded her to seek a divorce, Audrey Hepburn is greeted by Inspector Jacques Marin with the shocking news that her husband has been murdered. All that remains of his effects is a travel bag containing a letter addressed to her, passports in various names, a ticket to Venezuela and sundry other items. Having been unnerved by the behaviour of James Coburn, George Kennedy and Ned Glass at the funeral, Hepburn goes to the US Embassy and learns from CIA operative Walter Matthau that her spouse had stolen $250,000 in French Resistance gold while on a wartime OSS mission with Coburn, Glass, Kennedy and a fifth man who was killed in action.

Shortly after threatening Hepburn, Kennedy and Glass are murdered and she places her trust in charming stranger Cary Grant, who confides that he is the brother of the lost member of her husband's unit. However, she learns soon afterwards from Matthau that the dead man had no siblings and, when she suddenly realises the whereabouts of the loot and Coburn is murdered in her hotel, Hepburn isn't sure whether to trust a government agent or a man who now claims to be an opportunist thief.

It's hard to believe that Peter Stone and Marc Behm had so much trouble finding a taker for their screenplay, The Unsuspecting Wife, that Stone was reduced to reworking it as a novel. However, when this was serialised in Redbook, it prompted a bidding war and provided Cary Grant with his best 1960s role. Directed with such wit and assurance by musicals specialist Stanley Donen, this screwball thriller rivals anything produced during the same period by Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock. Despite the 25-year age difference that embarrassed Grant considerably, he sparks beautifully with Hepburn in a way that Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton singularly failed to achieve in Jonathan Demme's anaemic remake, The Truth About Charlie (2002).

CLEOPATRA (1934).
With Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) vying for the throne of Egypt in 48 BC with her brother Ptolemy, she is kidnapped by Pothinos (Leonard Mudie), who informs Julius Caesar (Warren William) that she has fled the country. However, she is delivered in a rolled-up carpet by her loyal servant Apollodorus (Irving Pichel) and the Roman is so bewitched that he promises to divorce his wife Calpurnia (Gertrude Michael) and marry her. Back in Rome, however, Cassius (Ian Maclaren), Casca (Edwin Maxwell) and Brutus (Arthur Hohl) are concerned that Caesar plans to make himself emperor and they murder him in the Capitol when he ignores the warning of a soothsayer (Harry Beresford) to beware the Ides of March.

As Cleopatra returns to Egypt, Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) and Octavian (Ian Keith) are named co-rulers of Rome. However, when Antony falls under Cleopatra's spell, King Herod (Joseph Schildkraut) seeks to drive a wedge between them. But, though the lovers remain loyal in the face of intrigue, they are rocked by the news brought by Enobarbus (C. Aubrey Smith) that Octavian has declared war on Antony and he kills himself in the belief that Cleopatra had made a treaty with his enemy. In fact, she had been pleading with Octavian to spare his life and, when she finds him dying, she allows herself to be bitten by a poisonous asp to be reunited with him in death.

Borrowing heavily from Shakespeare, screenwriters Bartlett Cormack, Vincent Lawrence and Waldemar Young concocted a tragic romance for Cecil B. DeMille to transform in his customary manner into an epic. The Deco sets designed by Hans Dreier are astonishing, as are Travis Banton's costumes and Victor Milner's shimmering Oscar-winning cinematography. But this is never anything other than a DeMille extravaganza, even though sequences like the tryst on the river barge are no more impressive than similar ones in the Italian superspectacles of the early 1910s that had first fired the young DeMille's imagination.

The acting is also often rather stiff, which is hardly surprising as the dialogue is as florid as Rudolph George Kopp's score. But Colbert rises above both the health problems that dogged her throughout the shoot and her ophidiophobia to suggest the exoticism and sophistication that seduced two of the most powerful men in the ancient world. Sadly, the tightening of the 1930 Production Code in the year of release condemned DeMille to 15 years of mediocrity, as he wasn't able to attempt anything equally risqué until Samson and Delilah in 1949.

DO NOT DISTURB (1965).
When husband Rod Taylor moves to London to pursue his career in the wool trade, Doris Day insists on settling in a country house leased by Hermione Baddeley. Convinced that Taylor is having a fling with assistant Maura McGiveney, Day and Baddeley conspire to make him jealous by inventing a phantom lover. But, when a trip to Paris to see an antique table with dealer Sergio Fantoni culminates in them being locked in his office overnight, Taylor demands a divorce. Desperate to win back his affections, Day discovers he is due to attend a convention to which the delegates traditionally bring their mistresses. Posing as a party girl, Day spies on Taylor and McGiveney and accidentally winds up in boss Leon Askin's bed. But all ends with the expected reunion in time for Day and Taylor's anniversary.

Based on a stage farce by William Fairchild, the first of Day's two pairings with Taylor (the other would be in The Glass Bottom Boat, 1966) is not usually regarded as one of her better vehicles. The guest presence of Raquel Welch and Britt Ekland certainly shows how times were a-changing. But, under Ralph Levy's brisk direction, Day demonstrates her usual impeccable comic timing and even manages to play a nocturnal chase through a hotel with slyly prudish dignity. The Australian Taylor falls short of Rock Hudson's high co-starring standards, but he keeps par with James Garner while fuming about the ever-demure Day's infeasible infidelity. And, happily, both Day (who turned 90 in April) and Taylor (who will be 83 on 11 January) are both still with us.

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975).
Los Angeles, 1941, and shamus Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is trying to explain his predicament to Lieutenant Nulty (John Ireland). He had been hired by Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran), who had just ended a seven-year stretch and was keen to reunite with old flame Velma Valento. However, no sooner was Marlowe on the case than he was asked by Lindsay Marriott (John O'Leary) to fence a jade necklace for an unnamed client. The switch goes wrong, Marriott is killed and Marlowe becomes a suspect. Freed by Nulty, Marlowe learns that Velma is dead. However, encounters with ex-bar owner Jessie Halstead Florian (Sylvia Miles), bordello madam Frances Amthor (Kate Murtagh) and hoodlum Laird Brunette (Anthony Zerbe) convince Marlowe that Judge Baxter Wilson Grayle (Jim Thompson)'s wife Helen Grayle (Charlotte Rampling) knows more than she is letting on about both the stolen necklace and the missing woman.

Radically altering the Raymond Chandler novel that had been filmed as Murder, My Sweet by Edward Dmytryk in 1944, producers Elliott Kastner and Jerry Bick were clearly keen to repeat the success that Robert Altman had enjoyed in reworking The Long Goodbye (1973). Yet, despite the excellence of Dean Tavoularis's production design and John A. Alonzo's moody cinematography, David Zelag Goodman's screenplay knocks the stuffing out of Chandler's hard-boiled classic and not even Mitchum at his laconic best can salvage the situation. Nonetheless, compensation comes in the form of cameos by Harry Dean Stanton as a bent cop and Sylvester Stallone as Murtagh's sadistic stooge. Director Dick Richards's use of period movie tropes like off-screen narration and low-fi visual effects to suggest flashbacks and wooziness is also effective. But, while this holds the attention, its principal virtue is its superiority to Michael Winner's version of The Big Sleep (1978), which saw Mitchum become the first actor in screen history to play Philip Marlowe twice.

HARRY BLACK AND THE TIGER (1958).
With a man-eating tiger loose in the jungle, the Indian government hires ace hunter Stewart Granger to track it down with his faithful aide, IS Johar. However, he soon discovers that his new neighbour is Anthony Steel, who manages the large plantation where he lives with wife Barbara Rush and their son Martin Stephens. A flashback shows how Steel's cowardice during an escape attempt from a German POW camp resulted in Granger having his leg amputated and his ineptitude in stalking the tiger leads to the hunter being hospitalised after being mauled. While recovering, Granger thinks back to falling in love with Rush in Scotland after the war and, when Rush stops him sliding into alcoholic despair, they realise they still have feelings for each other. These intensify when Granger rescues Stephens after he falls from his horse in the tiger's territory. But, even though Granger kills the beast, Rush cannot bring herself to leave Steel when he secures a major promotion and the family leaves for London.

Adapted from a book by David Walker, this Hugo Fregonese adventure is handsomely photographed in CinemaScope in authentic Indian locations by John Wilcox. But Sydney Boehm's screenplay owes more to Herman Melville than Jim Corbett. Consequently, greater emphasis is placed on the heavy-handed symbolism than the big-game action, which Fregonese stages with little exigency or tension. He also allows the flashbacks to meander and fails to prevent Granger from going through the motions as the gloweringly macho hero with issues. The ageing star's lack of rapport with the inert Rush further undermines an Anglo-American picture that must have felt old-fashioned in 1958 and has not worn well in the interim.

THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1935).
Distraught at being able to pay for the treatment to save his wife and infant son when they are hit by a speeding chariot, blacksmith Marcus (Preston Foster) becomes a gladiator and adopts Flavius (David Holt), the seven year-old son of one of his victims in the arena. Forced to retire through injury, Marcus becomes a slave trader and finds himself in Jerusalem after a Greek soothsayer predicts he will be helped by the greatest man in Judea. He takes this to be Pontius Pilate (Basil Rathbone), who recruits him to steal horses and treasure from the rebellious Ammonites. But Marcus realises the man in question is Jesus Christ when he heals Flavius after he is thrown from his horse.

Yet Marcus does nothing to stop Pilate from having Christ crucified and, indeed, he tries to forget him on returning to Pompei to run the arena where he once fought. Time passes and Flavius grows into a fine man (John Wood), who devotes himself to freeing the Christians sentenced to die for their faith. Pilate visits and tells Marcus how much he regrets executing Jesus and, when the volcano Vesuvius erupts, his own remorse prompts him to abandon his possessions and help those trapped in the rubble. Grateful to servant Burbix (Alan Hale) for rescuing Flavius (who had been sentenced to the arena on being caught freeing some slaves), Marcus sacrifices himself to ensure they board a departing ship and he is welcomed into Paradise by Christ.

Taking its title and little else from the novel by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, this was the latest in a long line of screen recreations of antiquity's most celebrated catastrophe. The 1913 version by Mario Caserini and Eleuterio Rodolfi had helped inspire DW Griffith to make feature films. But, in reuniting with their King Kong effects guru Willis O'Brien, producer Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack essentially buried the ancient epic until it was revived to showcase widescreen technology in the early 1950s. There was nothing wrong with the depiction of the mayhem caused by Vesuvius. But the misfortunes of Marcus are allowed to sprawl in a manner reminiscent of those afflicting Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, which had been filmed in the same year by Richard Boleslawski.

Preston Foster lacks the charisma to make Marcus a more dynamic hero and he is easily upstaged by the excellent Rathbone (as cinema's most complex Pilate) and Louis Calhern as treacherous prefect Allus Martius. A romantic subplot involving Wood and Dorothy Wilson, as freed slave Clodia, similarly struggles to engross. But the ambition of the project is laudable and it is amusing to note how little regard screenwriter Ruth Rose paid to actual history, as some 45 years separate the Crucifixion and the destruction of Pompeii in AD 79.

THE LEOPARD MAN (1943).
Determined to boost chanteuse client Jean Brooks, press agent Dennis O'Keefe persuades her to take to the stage of a New Mexico nightclub with a black leopard. However, the sound of rival artiste Margo's castanets alarms the creature and it disappears into the night. A hunt is ordered by police chief Ben Bard when the cat kills young Margaret Landry as she returns home with some cornmeal for her family. But, having consulted with museum expert James Bell, O'Keefe begins to suspect that a demented human is on the loose when blue-blood Tuulikki Paananen is murdered inside a locked cemetery and Bell persuades the beast's Native American owner, Abner Biberman, to turn himself in, as he may well have committed the crime during one of his drunken episodes.

Meanwhile, Margo has learned from fortune teller Isabel Jewell that she will meet a rich man. Ignoring a warning about the death card dealt during her reading, Margo ventures into the darkened street after she loses the $100 bill she had received from a customer. When she becomes the leopard's third victim, Biberman is released. Shortly afterwards, however, he learns that his creature had perished long before the last killing and he teams with O'Keefe and Brooks to lure the murderer into the open during a religious procession.

Adapted from Cornell Woolrich's hard-boiled novel Black Alibi, the third collaboration between producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur is every bit as chillingly effective as Cat People (1942) and I Walked With a Zombie (1943). In conjunction with production designers Albert D'Agostino and Walter Keller and cinematographer Robert De Grasse, Tourneur makes masterly use of the unseen to transform an RKO soundstage into a scene of terror and dread. The death of Margaret Landy on her own doorstep as mother Kate Drain Lawson struggles to open the rusted latch is particularly disconcerting, especially when blood starts to seep under the door. Margo's demise in the shadows is equally well staged, as is the denouement, which seems to borrow liberally from Roland Price and Harry Revier's little-seen B movie, Lash of the Penitentes (1936).

The performances are more proficient than inspired, but this remains compelling viewing and it's a shame it proved to be Lewton's last teaming with Tourneur. If only the makers of today's torture porn and increasingly tiresome `found footage' horrors would learn its lessons.

MACAO (1952).
Arriving by steamer in the Portuguese colony of Macao, cynical ex-serviceman Robert Mitchum, travelling salesman William Bendix and torch singer Jane Russell attract the attention of crooked cop Thomas Gomez, who is in the pocket of casino owner Brad Dexter. Convinced that Mitchum is a cop investigating his smuggling operation, Dexter tries to have him deported for vagrancy and then seeks to bribe him to leave of his own accord. However, Mitchum is smitten with Russell, whose sultry presence has persuaded Dexter's girlfriend, Gloria Grahame, that she intends making a play for her man when he hires her to sing at the Quick Reward.

Aware that Mitchum is on the run for accidentally killing a man in New York, Bendix persuades him to show Dexter a diamond in the hope he will purchase the necklace to which it belongs. However, Dexter recognises the gem as part of a consignment he had recently shipped to Hong Kong and has heavy Philip Ahn abduct Mitchum. But Grahame sets him free and, when Bendix reveals he is an NYPD detective on being knifed in the back, Mitchum agrees to lure Dexter to the waiting police launch in the harbour.

Given its problematic production, it's perhaps surprising that this thriller is so winningly entertaining. Returning to features after a nine-year hiatus, Josef von Sternberg struggled to connect with a screenplay that had passed through seven pairs of hands before RKO chief  Howard Hughes asked Robert Mitchum to write bridging scenes to bring a vague logic to the storyline. Gloria Grahame's husband, Nicholas Ray, was hired to shoot fresh footage and the picture was finally released two years after it was completed.

Continuing the obsession with Russell that had first manifested itself during the making of The Outlaw (1943), Hughes fussed over every aspect of her costumes. However, it's her congruity with Mitchum that drives this noirish melodrama. Dexter makes a hissable villain, Grahame is typically feisty as his neurotic paramour and Bendix is splendidly unassuming as the undercover cop. But sparks fly during the wonderfully world-weary exchanges between Mitchum and Russell and it's disappointing that they would only be reunited once more on John Farrow's His Kind of Woman (1951).

THE MAN ON THE EIFFEL TOWER (1949).
When American in Paris Robert Hutton jokes to wife Patricia Roc and mistress Jean Wallace that he wishes his aunt would die so he could inherit her fortune, he receives a mysterious note offering to commit the crime for a fee. The sender is Franchot Tone, an exiled Czech who kills the aunt and her maid and frames short-sighted knife grinder Burgess Meredith by smashing his glasses during an aborted burglary into which he had been goaded by demanding wife Belita. Certain that Meredith is not the culprit, police inspector Charles Laughton allows him to escape from prison. However, when an anonymous letter appears in the press questioning Laughton's methods, he has the handwriting analysed and traces a coffee stain on the paper to a café frequented by Tone.

Laughton learns from professor Wilfrid Hyde-White that Tone is a former medical student who suffers from delusions and depressions, but he is impressed by his confidence on accepting an invitation to lunch at the Eiffel Tower. He is not surprised, therefore, when Tone kills Hutton after duping him into retrieving the murder weapon from his aunt's house. But Laughton conceals the news that Meredith has attempted suicide so that he can confront Tone, who has been attempting to blackmail Roc and Wallace, and a chase up the Eiffel Tower ensues.

Based on Georges Simenon's A Battle of Nerves, this was the first Hollywood attempt to bring Inspector Jules Maigret to the screen after five French efforts dating from Jean Renoir's La Nuit du carrefour (1933). Taking over the directing duties at the behest of Charles Laughton, Meredith tells his tale with a deliberation that prevents the plot from gaining much momentum. However, he is not helped by Franchot Tone's smug villainy and Laughton's miscasting as the quirkily cerebral sleuth. The notion of involving him in chase sequences will jar with those familiar with the peerless Simenon novels, who would be advised to check out Jean Gabin's more nuanced performances in Maigret tend un piège (1958), Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre (1959) and Maigret voit rouge (1963), as well as the Rupert Davies and Michael Gambon TV series. That said, it's good to have this available on DVD, if only for its lovely views of a still comparatively traffic-free Paris.

MONTANA BELLE (1952).
Emmett and Grat Dalton (Ray Teal and Rory Mallinson) are far from impressed when brother Bon (Scott Brady) brings fugitive Belle Starr (Jane Russell) to their Oklahoma hideout. Thus, they exclude her from a raid on the Bird Cage saloon in the nearby town of Guthrie. What they don't know, however, is that owner Tom Bradfield (George Brent) has set them a trap with Marshall Ripple (Gene Roth) and Matt Towner (John Litel) of the Bankers Protective Association, who has duped drifter Pete Bivins (Andy Devine) into telling the Daltons that the safe is full of cash.

Stung at being excluded from the robbery, Belle forms her own gang with Ringo (Jack Lambert) and Mac (Forrest Tucker) and uses her ill-gotten gains to disguise herself as Montana widow Lucy Winters. Bradfield is immediately smitten with the glamorous blonde and offers her a partnership. But Bob recognises Mac working as a dealer and winds up behind bars when he tries to wreak his revenge. However, Belle spring him and agrees to join him in stealing $1 million from the Guthrie bank. But she has second thoughts after Bradfield proposes marriage and is on her way to Mexico when Mac and Ringo force her to ride with the Daltons.

As crime could never be seen to pay, even after true love had prevailed, Belle is inevitably led away to do her time after Bradfield promises to wait for her. But few viewers would care at the end of this exhausting, plot-heavy Western, which not even veteran director Allan Dwan or a couple of song spots from the gutsy Jane Russell could enliven. On loan at Republic, while waiting for RKO boss Howard Hughes to find her a suitable vehicle, Russell threw herself into the role of the notorious outlaw. But Hughes was so convinced that the picture would ruin her chances of stardom that he bought it for $600,000 and suppressed it for four years. As Poverty Row oaters go, this is wholly serviceable and Russell fares every bit as well as rival Belles Isabel Jewell in Badman's Territory (1946), Elsa Martinelli in The Belle Starr Story (1968), Elizabeth Montgomery in the TV-movie Belle Starr and Pamela Reed in The Long Riders (both 1980).

PARK ROW (1952).
New York, 1886, and reporter Gene Evans is sacked by owner Mary Welch when he complains about The Star newspaper's campaign to frame an innocent man. Colleagues Herbert Heyes, Bela Kovacs and Dee Pollock loses their jobs in supporting him, but soon find themselves working for The Globe when Evans forms a partnership with printer Forrest Taylor. The first edition goes out on butcher's paper, but the front page story about a Brooklyn Bridge jump by bar owner Tina Pine's husband George O'Hanlon captures the public imagination and Welch quickly realises she has a serious rival to contend with, especially when Heyes launches a public subscription to purchase a base for the Statue of Liberty that has recently been given to the United States by France.

Having failed to headhunt Kovacs (who is working on a new linotype device), Welch attempts to sabotage the Liberty Fund by claiming that The Globe is doing nothing to prevent crooks from misappropriating donations. But, when this tactic also fails, she gives sidekick Hal K Dawson permission to block supplies, smash newstands and intimidate staff. When Pollock's legs are badly damaged by a runaway wagon, however, Welch tries to convince Evans that she didn't intend things to get so badly out of control. But his willingness to forgive vanishes when Heyes is killed while writing an article exposing The Star's involvement in the embezzlement of the Liberty Fund and the entire Globe workforce rallies round to print the scoop. Realising she is beaten, Welch closes her paper and throws in her lot with Evans.

Having started out as a 12 year-old copy boy on the New York Journal, Samuel Fuller was the ideal director for this trenchant press drama. In order to achieve his vision, however, he had to quit Twentieth Century-Fox and invest his own savings in the project after studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck insisted on changing the title Park Row to In Old New York and recasting its story as a musical for Dan Dailey and Mitzi Gaynor. Fuller was fully justified in taking his stance, as his picture was a critical and moderate commercial success. Moreover, it was also stylistically ambitious as he filmed in long takes that enhanced the realism of the exchanges, while also allowing Jack Russell's camera to roam Theobold Holsopple's evocative sets. However, this proved to be the only one Mary Welch would make, as she died aged 36 in 1958. She sometimes struggles to convey the necessary ruthless streak, but Evans coaxes her through their scenes while also demonstrating the dynamism that was required of newsmen at a time when Hollywood was in cahoots with the American media to ensure its stars and movies were always presented in the best possible light. How things have changed in the intervening six decades.

RAILROADED! (1947).
New York beautician Jane Randolph allows her shop to be used as a front for boyfriend John Ireland's bookmaking racket. However, when a cop is killed during a staged robbery, workmate Peggy Converse refuses to go along with the plot to frame laundry van driver Ed Kelly for the crime. However, incriminating evidence and an identification by Ireland's wounded cohort Keefe Brasselle leaves cops Hugh Beaumont and Clancy Cooper with no option but to charge Kelly, even though his sister Sheila Ryan is convinced of his innocence and Beaumont falls in love with her on first sight.

Determined to help Kelly, Ryan ignores Beaumont's warning to let him handle the case and gets into a brawl with Randolph that so impresses Ireland that he invites her to the club he manages for effete gambler Roy Gordon. However, Randolph gets jealous and, when Beaumont informs her that Ireland has had Converse murdered to stop her blabbing to the police, she tells him that Ireland and Ryan are plotting to bribe a wino into taking the rap so that Kelly can go free. Ireland kills Randolph and plans a raid on the Club Bombay so he can start afresh. But Beaumont is waiting for him and forgives the wounded Ryan for letting her heart rule her head.

Coming between Desperate and T-Men (both 1947), this tightly plotted film noir proved that Anthony Mann was ready to make the step up from programmers. Allowing Guy Roe's camera to prowl around Perry Smith's seedy and often shadowy interiors, Mann used the setting to reflect the psychological state of the characters. Moreover, he also risked the ire of the Production Code Administration by making the villainous Ireland, Randolph and Gordon far more interesting than the clean-cut Beaumont. The readiness that Ryan displays to break the law to right a wrong is equally bold for the time. But what sets this apart is Mann's insistence on letting his imagery generate and sustain atmosphere and suspense and his mastery of monochrome composition provides positive proof why no film should ever be colorised in a misguided bid to increase its appeal to modern audiences.

SON OF THE NAVY (1940).
Late back to his ship, Chief Petty Officer James Dunn teams up with young Martin Spellman to hitch a lift, unaware that he has run away from an orphanage. They are picked up by Jean Parker, whose father (William Royle) is a naval captain. So, when Dunn leaps out of the car and saddles her with Spellman, Parker browbeats Royle into making Dunn face up to his parental responsibilities when the fleet docks in San Francisco. Naturally, Dunn denies he is Spellman's father, and, while Parker agrees to care for him, she keeps having to remind him that she is engaged to businessman Craig Reynolds and the chances of her and Dunn ever becoming his parents are pretty much non-existent.

Anyone familiar with the Hollywood romcom formula will know from that outset that Parker is deluding herself if she thinks that she and Dunn are going to end up anywhere but inside a church with their newly adopted son at their side. But this Monogram makes the most of its twists and turns, as Parker falls out with Reynolds, Dunn's interfering landlady (Sarah Padden) reports him to the police, and Dunn and Parker wind up in chokey after crashing a car while trying to find the absconded kid in time for his surprise Christmas party. Director William Nigh (whose 126-film career including a handful of entries in the Mr Wong crime series) sets a brisk pace and is well served by Parker and Dunn, who will be respectively familiar to many as Beth in George Cukor's 1933 adaptation of Little Women and the singing waiter (a role that won him an Oscar) in Elia Kazan's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). And, if this can't quite compete with those pictures, it provides an intriguing insight into American humour while the rest of the world was at war.

THE SPANISH MAIN (1945).
Absconding after being imprisoned in Cartagena by Spanish viceroy Walter Slezak, 18th-century Dutch seaman Paul Henreid becomes a notorious pirate known as `The Barracuda' and abducts Slezak's bride-to-be, Maureen O'Hara, who agrees to marry her captor in order to spare another vessel from attack. However, the arrangement infuriates female buccaneer Binnie Barnes and her confederates, John Emery and Barton MacLane, and duels are fought and kidnaps attempted before O'Hara is delivered to Slezak. He cuts a deal with Emery to capture Henreid, but O'Hara disguises herself as a maid to spring his crew from jail and Barnes is killed in the ensuing skirmish. But the pirates still manage to escape, with Henreid posing as a priest preparing to marry O'Hara and the vanquished Slezak so that his soldiers grant them safe passage to the open sea.

Bored with playing urbane ladies men, Paul Henreid left Warners for RKO to get this pet project made. Directed by Frank Borzage from a script redrafted by Herman Mankiewicz, it lacked the pizzazz of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler. Yet it proved hugely popular with audiences seeking respite from the shocking aftermath of the Second World War. George Barnes's lush Technicolor cinematography earned him an Oscar nomination, although Hanns Eisler's rousing score was strangely overlooked. But, while O'Hara was suitably feisty, Henreid was too stilted to convince as a dashing man of action and, notwithstanding the vigorous pantomime villainy of Slezak, Emery and MacLane, this is always more engaging than exciting. Nevertheless, it prompted a spate of pirate pictures, with O'Hara and Slezak notably reuniting alongside Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in Richard Wallace's Sinbad the Sailor (1947) and Slezak playing yet another tyrannical imperialist opposite Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli's take on the Cole Porter musical, The Pirate (1948).

THIS LAND IS MINE (1943).
Much to the dismay of mother Una O'Connor, meek schoolteacher Charles Laughton holds on to a copy of the Resistance newspaper Liberty that is delivered shortly after the Nazis take control of his small French town. Mayor Thurston Hall is happy to collaborate with Major Walter Slezak when he orders principal Philip Merivale to destroy all the school's copies of Plato and Aristotle. But plucky teacher Maureen O'Hara vows to oppose the Occupation and cheers on the RAF planes bombing the town.

Laughton is hopelessly in love with O'Hara, but she is engaged to railway superintendent George Sanders. However, she ends the relationship when he criticises a bomb attack on a German procession, as her brother Kent Smith had been the perpetrator. Shortly after Slezak arrests Merivale and nine other hostages in reprisal, Laughton is also detained for possessing a copy of Liberty. But, as his release coincides with Smith being shot by the Germans, O'Hara accuses him of treachery and it is only when Laughton is charged with killing the remorsefully suicidal Sanders and makes an impassioned courtroom speech about freedom that O'Hara recognises his patriotism and courage.

Heavily criticised for abandoning La Patrie, Jean Renoir was desperate to make a film to demonstrate his loyalty to the cause. Thus, following Swamp Water (1941), he reunited with screenwriter Dudley Nichols to produce this earnest tale of ordinary heroism. Yet, while it went some way to showing American audiences the trials of oppression, it received mostly scathing reviews in Europe. Production designer Eugène Lourié was castigated for creating a schematically quaint setting, while Renoir was denounced for being out of touch with the realities of living under the jackboot. Yet Stephen Dunn won an Oscar for his sound recording, while Laughton, O'Hara, Sanders and Slezak (who stepped in when Erich Von Stroheim rejected the role) delivered solid performances. Like many Hollywood flagwavers produced in support of America's wartime allies, this heartfelt drama meant well. But it's difficult to overlook its unintentionally patronising tone and the clumsiness of its propaganda..

TRAPEZE (1956).
Since the accident that left him with a limp, aerialist Burt Lancaster has worked as a hard-drinking tent rigger for Thomas Gomez's circus. However, ambitious trapeze artist Tony Curtis catches up with him in Paris and begs him to train him for the dangerous triple somersault routine. Lancaster wants nothing to do with the brash newcomer, but confides in trick pony rider Katy Jurado that he has talent and reluctantly agrees to mentor him and accept scheming acrobat Gina Lollobrigida as part of the act.

Her presence increases the tension between the two men and it is only when famed American entrepreneur Minor Watson offers them a contract with his New York circus if they pull off the triple that their minds are finally focused. However, Gomez is determined not to lose his stars and replaces Lancaster with Jean-Pierre Kérien and he accuses Lollobrigida of using her wiles to seduce Curtis. But Jurado assures Lancaster that Lollobrigida really loves him and, so, when the time comes for Curtis to perform the triple, Lancaster bluffs his way on to the catcher's swing.

Adapted from the Max Catto novel The Killing Frost, Carol Reed's big top saga sought to cash-in, if a little belatedly, on the Oscar success of Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Audiences were more impressed than the critics, who felt that Reed had sold out to Hollywood. But, while the story may be short on surprises, Reed and production designer Rino Mondellini made evocative use of the Cirque d'Hiver, while Robert Krasker's camera captured the athleticism, beauty and danger of the aerial action. As a former acrobat, Lancaster gives an entirely authentic performance. But Lollobrigida and Curtis prove equally adept in the sequences that didn't require doubles, with the latter impressing enough to be reteamed with Lancaster in Alexander Mackendrick's scathing assault on the PR business, Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Malcolm Arnold's score is also memorable and keep an eye out for Sid James, as a snake charmer.

THE TRIAL (1962).
Banker Josef K (Anthony Perkins) is awoken in his apartment in an unnamed place by a couple of policemen, who inform him that he is under open arrest for an unspecified crime. Landlady Mrs Grubach (Madeleine Robinson) and neighbour Miss Burstner (Jeanne Moreau) discuss his plight with knowing disdain and he finds himself in further trouble on arriving at his office, where he is accused of exploiting his younger cousin, Irmie (Naydra Shore). That night, he is dragged from the opera house by Inspector A (Arnoldo Foà) and taken to a courtroom, where he singularly fails to understand either the charges being levelled against him or the proceedings being conducted by the chief clerk (Fernand Ledoux) or the examining magistrate (Max Buchsbaum).

Josef's Uncle Max (Max Haufler) suggests he consults advocate Albert Hastler (Orson Welles), but encounters with a businessman named Bloch (Akim Tamiroff), courtroom guard's wife Hilda (Elsa Martinelli) and Hastler's voracious mistress Leni (Romy Schneider) leave Josef more confused than ever. As a last resort, he goes to see court artist Titorelli (William Chappell), whose advice on how to negotiate his forthcoming trial so bewilder Josef that the seeks sanctuary in a church, where he learns from a priest (Michel Lonsdale) that he has been sentenced to death. He is taken to a quarry and given a knife. But his sense of triumph at refusing to commit suicide is short-lived, as his executioners bombard him with dynamite.

Despite having debuted with Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles once averred that this was the picture that gave him the most satisfaction. Opening with pin-screen animations by Alexandre Alexeieff, this adaptation of Franz Kafka's chilling 1925 study of suspicion and paranoia in a totalitarian state is notable for the way in which Welles rearranged the chapters ordered by Kafka's literary executor Max Brod and altered the manner of Josef's demise. Moreover, thanks to Jean Mandaroux's stark production design and Edmond Richard's forbidding photography, he manages to achieve the look and feel of a nightmarish milieu even though the peripatetic, cash-strapped shoot took him from Zagreb and Dubrovnik in Yugoslavia to Rome, Milan and Naples, and the Gare d'Orsay in Paris. In typical Welles fashion, he supervised the editing while working on his screen version of Don Quixote and cut a six-minute sequence featuring Perkins and Katina Paxinou's computer boffin on the eve of the Paris premiere.

Having so brilliantly played a killer who committed crimes by proxy in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Anthony Perkins allows a hint of guilt to inflect his performance, as he switches with utter conviction between bemusement, rage, sycophancy, smugness and terror. Yet, this is very much a Welles film, with his own glorified cameo parodying the many similar roles he took around the world to film his personal projects. Indeed, this could be seen as an allegory on Welles's frustrated efforts to find backers for his pictures. But, even though it was released in the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the one thing it isn't is a nuclear war parable and the closing shot of the mushroom cloud is one of the film's few miscalculations.

YELLOW SKY (1948).
Two years after the Civil War ends, a band of outlaws led by Gregory Peck robs the bank in Rameyville and hides out in a ghost town in the Arizona saltlands known as Yellow Sky to avoid the chasing cavalry. On exploring the place with Richard Widmark, Robert Arthur, John Russell, Charles Kemper and Harry Morgan, Peck is stopped at gunpoint by Anne Baxter, who is mining for gold in the district with her grandfather, James Barton. He invites Peck to stay, only to be shot in the leg during a feud between Peck and Widmark about the leadership of the gang and the fate of Barton's haul.

However, when the old man refuses to betray their whereabouts to an Apache scouting party, Peck agrees to split the gold equally. Widmark has no intention of sharing, however, and Peck, Baxter and Barton find themselves under siege. But the desperadoes soon begin to fall out and Russell is wounded and Arthur killed in trying to stop Widmark from fleeing with the entire stash. Morgan and Kemper throw in their lot with Peck and survive the climactic shootout to return the loot to the Rameyville bank and ride off into the sunset with Baxter and Barton.

Adapted by director William A. Wellman and co-scenarist Lamar Trotti from an unpublished WR Burnett novel that was loosely based on Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest, this is one of the most intelligent Westerns produced in Hollywood between the end of the Second World War and the emergence of the `psychological' Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher dramas that transformed the genre in the early 1950s. The opening sequence contrasting the clean-cut cavalry unit with the rag-tag brigands is wonderfully photographed by Joseph MacDonald to show the specks of humanity struggling between the vast expanse of sky and the parched wilderness. But the dilapidated town designed by Lyle Wheeler and Albert Hogsett is just as visually striking, while the more intimate scenes involving Barton and the granddaughter raised by the Apaches, Baxter and Peck and Peck and Widmark are equally compelling. Wellman is justifiably known for his powerful indictment of lynch law, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), but this is every bit as good.

YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (1937).
Reminded by Warden John Wray that a fourth conviction will mean a lifetime stretch, Henry Fonda leaves prison and marries long-suffering fiancée Sylvia Sidney. While on their honeymoon, they see a frog couple on a lily pond and Fonda tells Sidney that a widowed frog always dies in mourning. She says they make a special pair, but any hopes of starting afresh are dashed when they are asked to leave their hotel room because of Fonda's criminal past and, soon afterwards, he is fired from his truck-driving job after a house-hunting trip makes him late.

Sidney appeals to public defender Barton MacLane for help, but the situation seems hopeless when six people are asphyxiated during an armoured car robbery carried out by Fonda's old gang and his hat is found at the scene of the crime. Despite the assurance of priest William Gargan that justice will be done, Fonda asks Sidney to smuggle a gun into the prison and she is lucky that Gargan intercepts it. However, when Fonda is sentenced to death for murder, he develops a new cunning and slashes his wrists in the hope of finding the pistol that is rumoured to be hidden in the sick bay.

Unaware that he has been pardoned, Fonda takes doctor Jerome Cowan hostage and makes it as far as the main gate. Gargan urges the warden not to let him out in case he kills somebody and tries to calm Fonda down. But he pays with his own life and Fonda rendezvous with Sidney, who had been about to kill herself at the appointed time of his execution. The fugitives try to survive as best they can and Sidney has a baby, which she asks MacLane and her sister Jean Dixon to protect. However, the lovers perish in their efforts to cross the border into Canada and Fonda dies hearing Gargan telling him that he is finally free.

The opening shot of the Hall of Justice leaves viewers in no doubt where Fritz Lang's sympathies lie in this hard-hitting treatise on judgement and redemption. In only his second American picture after fleeing the Third Reich, Lang conspires with production designer Alexander Toluboff and cinematographer Leon Shamroy to create an Expressionist variation on the social realist style that had characterised so many Warner Bros sagas during the Depression. In truth, Gene Towne and C. Graham Baker's screenplay (which derived from novelist Theodore Dreiser's suggestion that independent producer Walter Wanger did a Bonnie and Clyde story) is strewn with melodramatic touches, such as the hotel manager and his wife (Charles Sale and Margaret Hamilton) being obsessed with `true crime' magazines and the trucking boss planning a card game while giving Fonda the sack.

But, as in Fury (1936), Lang unflinchingly demonstrates that all is not milk and honey in the Land of the Free and there is a stinging authenticity about the way in which hypocrites and petty thieves blame their own crimes on Fonda and Sidney after they hit the road. Editor Daniel Mandell's montages and Hugo Friedhofer's score further heighten the drama, especially after Fonda has been driven to killing by the cruel world. But it shouldn't be forgotten that he is a three-time offender and that not even the harshest times or the most appalling ill-luck can totally excuse his actions. Subsequent variations on the doomed fugitive lovers scenario have romanticised this aspect. But Lang's observations at the end of the Weimar Republic taught him the dangers of condoning ostensibly justifiable desperate measures.