Movie review - "They Were Sisters" (1945) **

Ab odd-one-out amongst Gainsborough melodrama because it seems so modern (Madonna of the Seven Moons was set in the 1930s but it felt 19th century). It also lacks star power (despite the presence of James Mason in excellent villainous form), interesting costumes and production design, and excitement. It's not very good.

There are three sisters: whimp Dulcie Grey who marries caddish James Mason and becomes a boozer; dull Phyllis Calvert who married even duller Peter Murray Smith (possibly the wettest leading man in British film history - surely the armed services hadn't enlisted all the vaguely virile-seeming leading man); slutty Anne Crawford who marries a dull husband (Barrie Livesy) but wants to cheat with Hugh Sinclair.

Calvert is ideal in her bland part but Grey and Crawford don't have the charisma and familiarity of Margaret Lockwood, Pat Roc and Jean Kent (part of the fun of these films was being reunited with the same actors). Some of the acting from the kids is dreadful - same for the acting of the adults. I can't recall a blander collecting of male stars than Smith, Livesy, Sinclair and even the young kids - Mason is the only one with balls. None of the girls have that much spirit either.

It's dull, without any sense of energy or pace - it goes for almost two hours. It was popular, though, with the female audience no doubt enjoying differing female characters (dull, slut, victim). There is some good melodrama, such as Mason offering Calvert his kids if she supports him in court; Grey going bonkers with booze and oppression - but not enough of it.

It is sociologically fascinating, like most of these sort of films: Calvert talking at the end about all the people like this, the fact that Crawford is allowed to cheat on her husband and run off to South Africa with her lover, leaving her daughter behind with her sister and not be punished (she is said to miss her daughter in a letter at the very end but we've never gotten the sense she likes her). But you'd be much better off watching The Man in Grey or The Wicked Lady instead.

Movie review - "Operation Amsterdam" (1959) **

A terrific idea based on a true story - two Dutch exiles and a British officer go to Amsterdam just prior to the fall of Holland and try to retrieve some diamonds, but are worried about a traitor. But it misses. Most notably there isn't really that much of a sense of impending doom, tension or excitement - it's awfully easy for them to drive around in a car while the shooting's going on (they see people talking in a cafe), the relationship between the men and a girl who helps them (Eva Bartok) feels perfunctory, the shoot-outs are bland. They worry about there being a traitor or fifth columnist... but there is none. Even some stuff which should have been gold about the fate of Jews in Holland comes across flat - one or two plead to go back to England but our heroes just sort of say "sorry no can do" and that's that.

Peter Finch is the star but just as big a role goes to Tony Britton as the British officer. Finch and Bartok have a quasi romance but it isn't much chop (it's hardly a love story because she'snly just mourning her Jewish fiancee... who she doesn't even know is dead). A real shame - you want a top director to remake it. Finch is a believable Hollander (at least to my untrained eyes) - I believed him both as a diamond expert and someone capable of strangling a Nazi to death.

Radio review - Lux - "Green Dolphin Street" (1949) **

Kiwis will find this story especially interesting as it's an MGM take on life in their country during colonial days - "New Zealand, where English laws won't reach you". There's two fugitives, a murderer on the run (Van Heflin) who goes into timber, then years later a drunken English navy officer (Peter Lawford) who worries about being busted for desertion. They wind up working together, drunken bum drunkenly writers to the wrong sister (Lana Turner) who comes out to see him who the other guy secretly loves and forces drunken bum to marry despite fact that drunken bum actually loves the woman's sister (Donna Reed) who becomes a nun.

Utter codswallop done which doesn't feel vaguely New Zealand-ish, but fascinating - there are talks of Maoris not liking the British, Heflin is down with the Maoris, Lawford and Turner own "the most fancy house in Dunedin". Heflin and Turner are solid - Lawford's weak voice and poor performance are indicative of why he never became a big star.

Radio review - Suspense - "The Kandi Tooth" (1948) **

Sequel to The Maltese Falcon with Sam Spade again coming across Gutman and Joel Cairo in search of an ancient jewel, in this case a jewel from Kandi (Sri Lanka). There's also a new femme fetale. It feels a lot like a rehash (I mean, did they have to be searching after an artefact from the old world?) but it is enjoyable in a way and I enjoyed the fact the jewel was shoved into someone's teeth. Howard Duff plays Spade, as he did on radio - there's an overlong introduction from Robert Montgomery, who recently played Philip Marlow, who talks to Spade about detectives. (This is a 60 minute installment).

Movie review - "Yield to the Night" (1956) ***

Diana Dors wasn't the greatest actor in the world but is very effective as a woman on death row for killing her lover's lover. She was married and working as a perfume saleslady when she fell for Michael Craig (very good too), who pined over a no-good woman. When she drove him to suicide, Dors decided to get paid back. Dors is married so it's kind of like she gets revenge on the other other woman.

Fascinating on many levels: Dors is the hero but has an adoring husband willing to take her back who she consistently treats like dirt; she clearly killed the woman deliberately (it was a crime of passion but thought-out passion); she threw herself at another man despite being married; she isn't very nice to her mother. Yet you do feel for her - at the end it's clear she doesn't want to die and hates having to go.

J. Lee Thompson's direction is excellent, full of tight pacing and gritty faces, and there are some strong performances from the others. Much of the action is repetitive - another visit from mum, another from the reporter, the prison guards being nice, another visit to the doctor and reverend - but it still grips as it heads towards the execution and the ending packs a wallop.

Movie review - "Village of the Damned" (1960) ***

So very highly regarded by fans I found it a little disappointing - not the story, which is superb, more the treatment, which is occasionally silly: the over acting kids (the main one is funny rather than scary), hammy villagers, lack handing, telepathic-induced accidents causing a laugh. George Sanders isn't bad as the intellectual who is one of the victims of Midwich, initially delighted to discover his wife is pregnant then slowly coming to realise that the kids are evil. I think it means more to people who saw it on TV when they were young.

Some touches I always remembered and loved from the book are missing: the little old lady who becomes pregnant and is later convinced she can tell the kids apart, at the end when the kids are excited about Sanders coming around before he blows them up (I think they did this to make our hero more sympathetic). It's a shame because there are a lot of these sort of touches at the beginning - ones on the impact on the whole community (e.g. virgins and married women whose husbands are away falling pregnant) - but they are increasingly discarded as the movie goes on in favour of the kids being creepy.

Barbara Shelley is good playing one of her I-see-to-be-classy-but-in-actual-fact-I'm-a-seething-mass-of-neuroses roles (only here the neuroses are about being a mother rather than wanting to have sex with some evil man/vampire). Michael Gwynn plays the part of a skinny middle aged man with a good speaking voice - there was always someone like that in a British film around this time.

Radio review - Lux - "Bride by Mistake" (1945) **

Laraine Day and John Hodiak were very much the B team of romantic comedy but they are amiable enough in this remake of The Richest Girl in the World from Norman Krasna.It's been updated for the war so Hodiak is now a soldier and is seems to make less sense that no one knows what the richest girl in the world looks like. Also Day's actions are basically repetitive and sadistic - continually pushing him towards her secretary to prove her love for him.