Phone Call From a Stranger - 1952 ***

Actually quite a well structured and formulated plot. A man who survives a plane crash decides to call the relatives of the three friends he made on the fateful flight. Each story is interesting and concise. Bette Davis is great as the paralysed widow towards the end, although the star of the show is really Shelley Winters, as the balsy, doomed aspiring actress.

(NOIR) Loan Shark 1952 **

A rather weak noir with George Raft fronting as an ex-con who is infiltrated into a group of vicious loan sharks in order to put a stop to the attacks and threats made to the people who can't pay up. He of course falls in love with a beautiful woman and has to decide whether his morals are more important than his romantic life. Wouldn't watch again.

(NOIR) Angel Face - 1952 *

I was so disappointed with this noir which has been on my list of must sees for a long time. Jean Simmons was awful, and the plot was even worse. I felt no empathy for any of the characters, and Robert Mitchum acted like he was doped up. I didn't enjoy this, and I fear it may have put me off film noirs for a while.

(NOIR) Sudden Fear - 1952 ****

Excellently shot. A film noir through and through. Joan Crawford plays a gullible playwright named Myra who falls in love with sleazy actor Lester whom she originally rejected as the main star of her newest play.
Although believing they are meant to be together, Lester has other plans, hoping to murder her and take her money, with a little help from his old girlfriend Irene, played suitably sourly by Gloria Grahame.
In most ways this is the perfect noir, but although Joan Crawford was very good in her part, I can't help feeling by now that the roles she was choosing at this point should be for younger starlets.

The Bad and The Beautiful - 1952 **

This movie in my opinion was seriously let down by Kirk Douglas. And I'm trying really hard to like watching Lana Turner but she just comes across as rather too arrogant for her own good in most films I have seen her in. She's stunning, but thatdoesn't mean she can actually act. Same as Greta Garbo.

The story revolves around an actress, a screen writer and a director who have all fallen out with Kirk Douglas for individual reasons relating to each of their careers. They are approached by a movie producer who begs them all to reconsider helping Douglas out, and then we are shown a series of flashbacks as to how the situation has got this far. I did think it was probably quite a faithful example of the movie business of the 1950s, but it still didn't grip me in the way I had been so sure it would.

Maybe it will be another film like 'The Thin Man' which I watched and hated the first time, andthen watched and adored the seconds, but I doubt it.