Bosley Crowther

As flimsy as a gossip-columnist's word, especially when it is documenting the weird behavior of the socially elite. And with pretty and lady-like Grace Kelly flouncing lightly through its tomboyish Hepburn role, it misses the snap and the crackle that its un-musical predecessor had.

The whole thing is in the category of cheap cinematic horror-stuff.

In short, there is energy and intensity but little clarity and emotion in this film. It is like a great, green iceberg: mammoth and imposing but very cold.

Mr. Stewart does a first-class job, playing the whole thing from a wheel chair and making points with his expressions and eyes. His handling of a lens-hound's paraphernalia in scanning the action across the way is very important to the color and fascination of the film.

Those who have blissful recollections of David O. Selznick's A Star Is Born as probably the most affecting movie ever made about Hollywood may get themselves set for a new experience that should put the former one in the shade when they see Warner Brothers' and George Cukor's remake of the seventeen-year-old film.

An amazingly poignant picture, rich in humor, heart and subtle ironies.

There is one thing about this picture that is clever and joyous, at least. That is a cartooned pink panther that runs through the main titles at the start making mischief with the lettering, insistently getting in the way. He is so blithe and bumptious, so sweet and entirely lovable, that he's awfully hard to follow. It's questionable whether the picture does.

If the film doesn't quite come off, it is not for lack of effort. Mr. Wayne is in there swinging all the way, as a reactionary old cattle baron coping with encroaching homesteaders, discontented Indians, a marriageable daughter and a rebellious wife.

Like the stage show, this Technicolored shindig, which laughingly pretends to be a biography of the famous swimmer, Annette Kellerman, is a luxuriance of razzle-dazzle that includes Hippodrome acts, water ballets, bathing suit shows, diving performances, low comedy, anachronisms and clichés. It also includes an abundance of Miss Williams and Victor Mature, but it does not include the felicities of a reasonably fascinating script.

Solid and sensible drama plainly had to give way to outright emotional bulldozing and a paving of easy clichés.

Isobel Lennart's screenplay adds a few mild embellishments and George Roy Hill has directed in a nice, clear, uncomplicated way.

Whoever engineered the sequence of the pumpkin transformation in this film—the magical change to coach and horses—deserves an approving hand. And the scene in which Cinderella blows soap bubbles—opalescent globes full of fragile reflections and rainbow colors—is one of the cleverest animations yet seen. To the fellows who dreamed up these fancies we are heartily grateful, indeed. They have sprinkled into Cinderella—along with sugar and wit—some vagrant art.

It is firmly directed by John Sturges (of Bad Day at Black Rock fame), and it is ruggedly acted by all and sundry—of which there is quit[e] a heap.

It is obvious that Alfred Hitchcock, Ben Hecht and Ingrid Bergman form a team of motion-picture makers that should be publicly and heavily endowed. With Cary Grant as an additional asset, it is one of the most absorbing pictures of the year.

Mr. Newman is excellent, at the top of his sometime erratic form, in the role of this warped and alienated loner whose destiny it is to lose. George Kennedy is powerfully obsessive as the top-dog who handles things his way as effectively and finally as destructively as does the warden or the guards.

Mr. McCarey's direction is unpropitiously and unaccountably slow. Could it be, too, that a brand of make-believe that was tolerable eighteen years ago, before color and CinemaScope and other intrusions, is just a little discomforting now?

Mervyn LeRoy, who produced and directed, has lost a great deal of the bite of the play. He has done it in a style of presentation that is ostentatious and often insincere.

It may be a rather lofty tribute to Fred Harvey's girls, but it's a show.

It is not a particularly witty or clever script that John Michael Hayes has put together from a novel by Jack Trevor Story, nor does Mr. Hitchcock's direction make it spin. The pace is leisurely, almost sluggish, and the humor frequently is strained. But it does possess mild and mellow merriment all along the way.

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.

Sprawling across a mammoth canvas, crammed with the real-life acts and thrills, as well as the vast backstage minutiae, that make the circus the glamorous thing it is and glittering in marvelous Technicolor--truly marvelous color, we repeat--this huge motion picture of the big-top is the dandiest ever put upon the screen.

With The Lady Eve, which arrived yesterday at the Paramount, Mr. Sturges is indisputably established as one of the top one or two writers and directors of comedy working in Hollywood today. A more charming or distinguished gem of nonsense has not occurred since It Happened One Night.

Here is but another repetition of the standard tale of the vampire bugaboo who likes to sink his oversized dentures into the necks of pretty girls.There is nothing new or imaginative about it.

Certainly it is the finest film yet made about the present war, and a most exalting tribute to the British, who have taken it gallantly.

As a brash little night-club singer who is supposed to act like a swell, Miss Day is most plainly the victim of the writers' unutterable ennui. Furthermore, Michael Curtiz's direction of her and the rest of the cast is as slapdash and void of distinction as it can professionally be. Not only has he let the young lady spread noisiness all over the place, but he has wasted the few minor talents that he had in a most provoking way.

To put it quickly and crisply, it is charming, exciting and sad.

A humorous, suspenseful, disturbing and rousing pastime.

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.

Is Mr. Polanski endeavoring to tell us anything about life or crime or perversion in this complex and terminally morbid joke?If he is, I sure don't get it — except maybe that people are sick, that even good humor isn't funny and that social sterility is.

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

It is not very often that the sequel to a successful film turns out to be even half as successful or rewarding as the original picture was. But we've got to hand it to Metro: its sequel to "Father of the Bride" is so close that we'll willingly concede it to the humor and charm of that former film.

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.

A crisply stylized fairyland, where the colors are rich, the sounds are luscious and magic sparkles spurt charmingly from wands.

Sensitive music by Mr. Pintoff and some wonderfully wry dialogue, subtly laced with motivations, top off this animated jewel.

At all events, the picture takes on a dull tone as it goes and finally ends in a fizzle which is forecast almost from the start.

Miss Hepburn gives a mischievous performance as the girl who really wants to be chased, and Mr. Tracy is charmingly acerbic when confronted with her cool or coy wiles.

For the most part, this scatter-brained fiction, in which Mr. Lewis is teamed with his popular partner, Dean Martin, is a cut-to-size Martin-Lewis farce, wherein the two playmates lightly fancy that they are a golf contestant and his caddy, respectively.

Fantasia is simply terrific—as terrific as anything that has ever happened on a screen.

A beautifully trenchant satire upon "social significance" in pictures, a stinging slap at those fellows who howl for realism on the screen and a deftly sardonic apologia for Hollywood make-believe.

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.

It is hard to remember a picture in which the sheer pictorial punch was greater than it is in this three-hour exhibition of kings and warriors in medieval Spain.

If it weren't so confused in its story-telling, it would be one of the major postwar films from Japan. As it stands, it is a strangely fascinating and affecting film, up to a point—that being the point where it consigns its aged hero to the great beyond.

Detective Story is a hard-grained entertainment, not revealing but bruisingly real.

Even in mammoth VistaVision, the old Hitchcock thriller-stuff has punch.

Essentially a film of mordant feeling in which violence is always just below the surface of pokerfaced bluffing and fake Old-World Spanish courtesy.

IF the threat of Frank Sinatra as a film director is judged by his first try on "None But the Brave," it is clear that there need be no apprehension among the members of the Screen Directors Guild.

A full-bodied Oklahoma! has been brought forth in this film to match in vitality, eloquence and melody any musical this reviewer has ever seen.

Prepare yourselves rather for a lengthy and restless stretch on tenterhooks.

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.

The filmed Hamlet of Laurence Olivier gives absolute proof that these classics are magnificently suited to the screen.

Oftentimes, animal pictures make the unhappy mistake of attributing almost human rationalization to simple four-footed beasts. An outstanding virtue of this picture is that it does nothing of the sort. It treats the dog as an animal whose loyalty is all the more wondrous and appealing because it is simple and free of human wile.

The absolutely tremendous and unforgettable display of physically powerful acting that Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke put on in William Gibson's stage play The Miracle Worker is repeated by them in the film made from it by the same producer, Fred Coe, and the same director, Arthur Penn.

The Disney people naturally have made it as elaborate as it was made by Verne. And they have likewise developed all the other intriguing potentials of the yarn with a joyful exaggeration that is expected in science-fiction films.

The drama, for all its invention, is creaky and a bit passé. (Apparently there has still been no contact with other planets in 800,000 A. D.) And the mood, while delicately wistful, is not so flippant or droll as it might be in a fiction as fanciful and flighty as this one naturally is.

Unfortunately, trick photography is not sufficient to maintain a whole film, and this one reveals quite plainly that you don't see much when you see an "Invisible Man."

In these times, with James Bonds cutting capers and pallid spies coming in out of the cold, Mr. Hitchcock will have to give us something a good bit brighter to keep us amused.

What is annoying about this picture is that the set-up for pulling off the plot is just too slick and artificial, too patly and elaborately contrived.

Neither comedy nor tragedy altogether, it is a brilliant weaving of comic and tragic strands, eloquent, tearful and beguiling with supreme virtuosity.

A cozy, good-humored and unbelievable little tale.

Jules Dassin's steel-springed direction keeps the whole thing approriately taut.

A fantastic film...There is no question that Mr. Disney has got here a brilliant, fluid style for presenting musical pictures and that his enthusiasm expressed throughout is great. But he has't quite brought them into order. His film is flashy and exciting - and no more.

The most genial, the most endearing, the most completely precious cartoon feature film ever to emerge from the magical brushes of Walt Disney's wonder-working artists!...A film you will never forget.

Well, the extent of the film's disconcertion and delight for a viewer will depend upon how prone one may be to a juvenile quandary and to the nimble performing of a pleasant cast.

Using his naturalistic camera as though it were an outsized microscope set up to observe the odd behavior of three people completely isolated for 24 hours aboard a weekend pleasure boat, Mr. Polanski evolves a cryptic drama that has wry humor, a thread of suspense, a dash of ugly and corruscating evil — and also a measure of tedium because of the purposeful monotony of its pace.

Sadistic, anti-Nazi slaughter mission. Entertaining as a blowtorch.

The whole thing is colorful, gay — and Henry Mancini's music is as sassy and frivolous as the film.

As a straight melodrama of juvenile violence this is a vivid and hair-raising film.

A dazzling, eye-filling, nerve-tingling display of a wide variety of individual and mass reactions to awesome challenges and, in some of its sharpest personal details, a fine reflection of experience that rips the heart.

Although it is questionable whether this picture has the simple, universal appeal of an old Chaplin film, for instance, or whether its meanings are as sharp as some may think, it is certainly a lively entertainment and should be a subject of discussion for months to come.

A well-done, moving biographical film.

Quite simply, "Road to Bali" is a whoopingly hilarious film, full of pure crazy situations and deliciously discourteous gags, all played with evident relish and split-second timing by the team.

Indeed, in its simple comprehension of the faith and affection of youth it is likely more tender and affecting than even the story of Lassie was. And it certainly is more exciting in its vivid, dramatic display.

If you're not too squeamish at the sight of slaughter and blood and can keep your mind fixed on the notion that there was something heroic and strong about British colonial expansion in the 19th century, you may find a great deal of excitement in this robustly Kiplingesque film.

The feeble attempts that Mr. Aldrich has made to suggest the irony of two once idolized and wealthy females living in such depravity and the pathos of their deep-seated envy having brought them to this, wash out very quickly under the flood of sheer grotesquerie. There is nothing particularly moving or significant about these two.

Mr. Huston's direction is dynamic, inventive and colorful. Mr. Gable is ironically vital. Miss Ritter, James Barton and Estelle Winwood are amusing in very minor roles, and Alex North has provided some good theme music. But the picture just doesn't come off.

Making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature's most innocent creatures and one of man's most melodious friends, Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles on the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.

This is something more than just a brilliant and adult translation of a stimulating play, something more than a captivating compound of ironic humor and pity. This is a lasting memorial to the devotion of artists working under fire, a permanent proof for posterity that it takes more than bombs to squelch the English wit.

This lively, amusing picture is not to be taken seriously as realistic fiction or even art, any more than the works of Mr. Fleming are to be taken as long-hair literature. It is strictly a tinseled action-thriller, spiked with a mystery of a sort. And, if you are clever, you will see it as a spoof of science-fiction and sex.

The Man I Love is both silly and depressing, not to mention dull.

It is Mr. Ford's wonderful style in picturing a frontier fable that has the classic mould. His unsurpassed talent for bringing upon the motion-picture screen the nature and the drama of the great West is in itself an art.

A wholly amusing and engaging piece of work within the defined limitations of the aforementioned Disney style. The Disney inventions are as skillful and clever as they have ever been.

There is one mark of distinction: Mr. Stone has shot much of this film along the beautiful California seacoast in the vicinity of Monterey. That makes it easy to look at. Indeed, it makes it thrilling, at times.

This is a fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed.

Remarkable...[a] most uncommon film, which projects a disagreeable subject with power and cogency.

Under Robert Rossen's strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler's eventual emancipation is positive and alive. It crackles with credible passions. It comes briskly and brusquely to sharp points.

This is the third time Melville's story has been put upon the screen. There is no need for another, because it cannot be done better, more beautifully or excitingly again.

Practically every moment spent with Bing and Bob is good for consecutive chuckles and frequent belly-deep guffaws.

The action is swift and the mystery fetching in this handsomely made color film. But eventually it seems a bit too obvious, imitative, old-fashioned and, worst of all, stale.

The whole thing achieves a tingling speed and irresistible tension under John Frankenheimer's direction, which deftly lifts some of the tricks of pictorial and musical emphasis from the old Nazi "Blitzkrieg" films.

The script is neither satire nor good, fresh, fanciful corn. It is a batch of old-fashioned nonsense put together without distinct charm.

Vivid, motley, ornamental and just-a-bit questionable in spots.

If you are not too particular about the images of Carroll and Tenniel, if you are high on Disney whimsey and if you'll take a somewhat slow, uneven pace, you should find this picture entertaining.

The fact that this film is constructed to endorse the exercise of murderers, to emphasize killer bravado and generate glee in frantic manifestations of death is, to my mind, a sharp indictment of it as so-called entertainment in this day.

The boys themselves are exuberant and uninhibited in their own genial way. They just become awfully redundant and—dare I say it?—dull.

A good, lively script has been written by Halsted Welles, and sharp, business-like direction has been contributed by Delmer Daves.What's more, the whole thing is neatly acted.

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.

Hunt Stromberg and his associates have managed to turn out a film which catches the spirit and humor of Miss Austen's novel down to the last impudent flounce of a petticoat, the last contented sigh of a conquering coquette.

Both the script and the performance of this picture have a striking integrity in putting forth the salient details and the surface aspects of the life of van Gogh.