Bosley Crowther

As in most Westerns, the dramatic penetration is not deep, and the plot complications are many and hard to follow in Japanese. Kurosawa is here showing more virtuosity than strength. Yojimbo is a long way (in the wrong direction) from his brilliant Rashomon.

What it comes to is simply that the dazzle of Mr. Godard's cinematic style is not matched by the hackneyed idea of a robot society that is expounded in the script.

Mr. Kubrick has made it look terrific. The execution scene is one of the most craftily directed and emotionally lacerating that we have ever seen. But there are two troubling flaws in this picture, one in the realm of technique and the other in the realm of significance, which determine its larger, lasting worth.

This is not to say that the action is not vivid, exciting and tense, or that Kurosawa's camera is any less graphic than it usually is. This is simply to say that The Hidden Fortress is essentially a superficial film and that Kurosawa, for all his talent, is as prone to pot-boiling as anyone else.

This one is so thoroughly mystifying that we wonder whether Mr. Bergman himself knew what he was trying to say.

Mr. Hitchcock again is tossing a crazy murder story in the air and trying to con us into thinking that it will stand up without support.

Mr. Clayton and Miss Kerr have neglected to interpret the tale and character with sufficient incisiveness and candor to give us a first-rate horror or psychological film. But they've given us one that still has interest and sends some formidable chills down the spine.

This modernized remake of Miss Hurst's frankly lachrymose tale is much the same as its soggy predecessor. It is the most shameless tear-jerker in a couple of years.

Another French film that fairly glitters with photographic and cinematic "style," yet fails to do more than skim the surface of a cryptic dramatic theme.

What they give us in Goldfinger is an excess of science-fiction fun, a mess of mechanical melodrama, and a minimum of bedroom farce...It is good fun, all right, fast and furious, racing hither and yon about the world as Double-Oh Seven pursues the intrigues of a mysterious financier named Goldfinger.

It is a spotty, uneven drama in which the entire opening phase representing the basic-training program in a gladiatorial school is lively, exciting and expressive, no matter how true to history it is, and the middle phase is pretentious and tedious, because it is concerned with the dull strife of politics.

The trouble with this romantic picture—among other minor things, including Mr. Stack's absurd performance and another even more so by Miss Malone—is that nothing really happens, the complications within the characters are never clear and the sloppy, self-pitying fellow at the center of the whole thing is a bore.

There are a few moments when Richard Attenborough as the chief engineer of the whole project demonstrates some impressive strength and poise. But for much longer than is artful or essential, The Great Escape grinds out its tormenting story without a peek beneath the surface of any man, without a real sense of human involvement. It's a strictly mechanical adventure with make-believe men.

The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself.

It is a crowded and colorful picture, but it is choppy, episodic and vague.

The style is still sharp and realistic, the dialogue still crackles with verbal sparks and the action is still crisp and muscular, not to mention slightly wanton in spots. But the pattern and purpose of it is beyond our pedestrian ken.

You may not get much satisfaction from the tortured human drama in this film, but you should get an eyeful graphic exercise.

The Cat People is a labored and obvious attempt to induce shock. And Miss Simone's cuddly little tabby would barely frighten a mouse under a chair.

Facing it squarely, "My Uncle" is perceptibly contrived when it lingers too long and gets too deeply into the dullness of things mechanical. After you've pushed one button and one modernistic face, you've pushed them all.

Mr. Kazan keeps the courtship bouncing between the emotional and the ludicrous. The nonchalance of the pursuer is its most entertaining grace.

This one should be cold-cuts for old-timers who remember Boris Karloff as the get of Frankenstein, but it may tittilate the blissful youngsters.

It is comforting, of course, to have it made plain that our planetary neighbors are much wiser and more peaceful than are we, but this makes for a tepid entertainment in what is anamolously labeled the science-fiction field.

There's a lot to be said for it as a fast-moving, urbane entertainment in the comedy-mystery vein.

They Live by Night has the failing of waxing sentimental over crime, but it manages to generate interest with its crisp dramatic movement and clear-cut types.

Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein in his latest cartoon package-picture, Melody Time. And again, as in Make Mine Music! he has come up with a gaudy grab-bag show in which a couple of items are delightful and the rest are just adequate fillers-in.

It is smoothly directed by George Cukor and slyly, amusingly played by the whole cast, especially by its due of easy, adroit, experienced stars.

Not the best he has done in this line. It is a coyly romantic story, done with animals. The sentimentality is mighty, and the use of the CinemaScope size does not make for any less awareness of the thickness of the goo.

If some one could just have decided who should carry the ball, instead of letting it pass from one to the other, The Westerner might have been a bang-up, dandy film. And that, we are sorry to say, it isn't. The trouble, as indicated, is that the picture has no core.