Love Me or Leave Me (1955)

Doris Day and James Cagney star in this unusual musical drama loosely based on the career of 1920s songstress Ruth Etting. 

The singer’s success is based on the patronage of Martin Snyder, who simultaneously nurtures and hinders her. Unfortunately, Cagney seems ridiculous in most of his scenes. It’s unclear how you’re meant to feel about him, but he comes across as so ludicrous that he’s neither the scary gangster initially hinted at, nor the likeably vulnerable character a more charitable viewer might perceive. Cameron Mitchell is weedy and unimpressive as the pianist/arranger Johnny Alderman – a bland character whose appeal to Etting is never explored. Doris Day is much better, and her singing is at least enjoyable. 

It’s a “proper” musical in the sense that the songs are performed by a singer within the storyline rather than merely bolted on. But with such thin characterisation and an usually unsatisfying ending, you do wonder if any of the actors come out of this very well.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Unusual Hitchcock thriller. 

A retired jewel thief (Cary Grant) living on the French Riviera has to track down a new “cat” burglar whose crimes are being wrongly attributed to him. Grace Kelly plays the young woman he romances along the way. 

It’s not as exciting as Hitchcock’s best films, despite the rooftop drama at the climax. There’s jarringly odd lighting, too, with super-bright studio shots and less-bright location shots often clashing when edited together in the same scenes. It seems unfair to criticise these technical limitations, but the juxtaposition is striking enough to jolt you out of the narrative again and again. 

Grant and Kelly have a certain easy charm, but for some reason the whole thing seems a little lacking.

The Virgin Queen (1955)

Bette Davis stars as Queen Elizabeth I of England, juggling royal duties and protocols with her own hopes and passions. 

The film focuses on her relationship with Sir Walter Raleigh (a wooden Richard Todd). Joan Collins plays one of the queen’s ladies in waiting, who Raleigh falls in love with against Elizabeth’s wishes. 

It’s a highly enjoyable romp, if you don’t mind the wobbly sets and the ridiculousness of the Welsh and Irish accents. Bette Davis speaks in a fascinatingly odd manner. For example, she says “my girl” as “me gell”. The Hollywood sunshine doesn’t represent the English weather very convincingly, either. 

Bette Davis has a huge and commanding presence that puts Cate Blanchett’s version of Elizabeth to shame. (By the way, you wonder how much Miranda Richardson was influenced by Davis when she played the same queen in Blackadder 2.) It has to be said that Clive Owen’s Raleigh was far better (and even that was muddled). 

Another curious thing about this film is how quickly everything happens. The scenes rattle along. The dialogue whizzes past. Even the edits between scenes happen at an accelerated speed. Sometimes (a sword fight, a chase on horseback), the film itself even seems to have been slightly speeded up. It’s as if they were in a mad rush to get it over with.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

James Dean is iconic as the troubled teen who finds himself feeling like an outcast in suburban Los Angeles. At high school, he struggles with bullies but makes a friend in the unstable young Plato (Sal Mineo) and the rather shallow but equally troubled Judy (Natalie Wood). 

It’s a classic, obviously, but it’s not entirely successful. Dean’s presence is undeniable. But the scenes with his conservative parents – who of course don’t understand him or his generation – seem overwrought. There’s an oddly ponderous and stilted quality to the film in places, but then there are exciting scenes such as the daredevil leap-out-of-the-car-before-the-cliff-edge competition (which ends badly). Natalie Wood's character is also poorly developed and her problems aren’t really explored. 

The melodrama of macho fighting (of which there’s plenty) has a certain racy thrill, but the film seems genuinely muddled about what it’s trying to say and who it’s saying it to. If it was made for teenagers, you wonder whether that audience felt cheated by the ending and its affirmation of family values.

The End of the Affair (1955)

Adaptation of Graham Greene’s classic 1951 novel. During World War II, writer Maurice Bendrix (Van Johnson) goes to the party of London civil servant Henry Miles (Peter Cushing) and soon after begins an affair with his wife Sarah (Deborah Kerr). But when Bendrix is injured in a bombing, Sarah mysteriously removes herself from his life. 

This clever melodrama toys with becoming a noirish, Hitchcockian thriller – there’s an endearingly silly detective played by John Mills – but is really a film about religious faith and morality. 

A few things stand out as odd:

• The couple seem to go from meeting to being obsessively in love in no time at all, and yet there’s no real chemistry between them. What do they have in common? It’s as if a scene or two is missing, as their apparent attraction is never explained.
• When Bendrix first sees Sarah, she’s kissing another man. Who is he and why is this additional affair not explored further? Was it simply there to indicate that she was unhappily married?
• If Bendrix is American, why is he writing a book about the English civil service?

It was remade in 1999, with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore in the lead roles.