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The icon-establishing performances Marilyn Monroe gave in Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) are ones for the ages, touchstone works that endure because of the undeniable comic energy and desperation that sparked them from within even as the ravenous public became ever more enraptured by the surface of Monroe’s seductive image of beauty and glamour. Several generations now probably know her only from these films, or perhaps 1955’s The Seven-Year Itch, a more famous probably for the skirt-swirling pose it generated than anything in the movie itself, one of director Wilder’s sourest pictures, or her final completed film, The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston, written by Arthur Miller and costarring Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift.

But in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) she delivers a powerful dramatic performance as Nell, a psychologically devastated, delusional, perhaps psychotic young woman apparently on...

In a novel effort to stress that film noir wasn’t a film movement specifically an output solely produced for American audiences, Kino Lorber releases a five disc set of obscure noir examples released in the UK. Spanning a near ten year period from 1943 to 1952, the titles displayed here do seem to chart a progression in tone, at least resulting in parallels with American counterparts. Though a couple of the selections here aren’t very noteworthy, either as artifacts of British noir or items worthy of reappraisal, it does contain items of considerable interest, including rare titles from forgotten or underrated auteurs like Ronald Neame, Roy Ward Baker, and Ralph Thomas.

They Met in the Dark

The earliest title in this collection is a 1943 title from Karel Lamac, They Met in the Dark, a pseudo-comedy noir that barely meets the criteria. Based on a novel by Anthony Gilbert (whose novel...

The October Man

Written by Eric Ambler

Directed by Roy Ward Baker

U.K., 1947

Jim Ackland (John Mills) is riding the bus with his niece one dark and stormy night. The vehicle is filled to the brim with passengers, some fast asleep, others enjoying time with their loved ones. Fate sees that Jim’s life is turned upside down however, as a mechanical failure sends the bus off track, crashing into a wall. The last thing Jim recalls before blacking out is the harrowing horn of an oncoming train. Months later, Jim is finally relieved from his hospital stay, although warned by the doctor that his recovery from the fracture in his skull will require time, and that he may even experience difficult episodes of relapse. Confident that things are on the mend, Jim rents a hotel room as his new living quarters and finds employment at a nearby chemical lab.

Film director whose quirky career covered sci-fi, westerns, drama and Hammer horror

Roy Ward Baker, who has died aged 93, progressed from teaboy to director of sturdy British dramas to weird Hammer horrors, via Hollywood. It was a rather quirky career for a very straightforward man. Baker – who directed Marilyn Monroe in Don't Bother to Knock and made the camp Mexican western The Singer Not the Song, the lesbian The Vampire Lovers and the transsexual Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde – insisted on calling himself "a simple-minded English lad". Perhaps the film closest to his personality was A Night to Remember (1958), which many would argue is the best of the cinematic versions of the story of the sinking of the Titanic.

Roy Horace Baker (he frequently replaced his middle name with Ward, his mother's maiden name) was born in London into a middle-class family. As a boy, he was sent to study...

No. 57: Joan Greenwood 1921-87

Born in London, daughter of the painter Sydney Earnshaw Greenwood, she was trained at Rada and became one of the most enchanting stage, screen and TV actresses of her time. There were the quizzical eyes, the neat face with its provocative nose and the slight, firm body which looked good in off-the-shoulder dresses in such period movies as the elegant Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), the dire The Bad Lord Byron (1949) and Tony Richardson's Oscar-winning Tom Jones (1963). Above all, there was that voice - husky, seductive, felinely purring.

Leslie Howard gave Greenwood her first significant film role in The Gentle Sex (1943), his Second World War, morale-boosting tribute to the gutsy Ats girls. Her first major performance, however, was in The October Man (1947), produced and written by Eric Ambler, where she protects amnesiac John Mills when he's framed for murder.

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