Bosley Crowther

All I can tell you is it is quite a trip. Fortunately, all of the voyaging is done in the northern hemisphere.

If you're for warm and gentle whimsey, for a charmingly fanciful farce and for a little touch of pathos anent the fateful evanescence of man's dreams, then the movie version of "Harvey" is definitely for you.

A most intriguing film.

The fury and hate that John Osborne was able to pack into a flow of violent words in his stage play, Look Back in Anger, are not only matched but also documented in the film that the original stage director, Tony Richardson, has made from that vicious play.

Mr. Sturges as author and director, is thoroughly up to his stinging style in this film. Situations spark, dialogue crackles and his camera works like a playful Peeping Tom. And from all of the actors he gets performances that make them look like inspired comedians.

What Mr. Hawks and his script-writers have done to Mr. Hemingway's tale is to shape it out of all recognition into a pattern of worldly intrigue.

[Caron] helps "Lili" to be a lovely and beguiling little film, touched with the magic of romance and the shimmer of masquerade.

In this big Technicolored Western Mr. Ford has superbly achieved a vast and composite illustration of all the legends of the frontier cavalryman.

Roger Edens, the talented producer, and Stanley Donen, the director, have turned the whole thing into a lovely phantasm made up of romance, tourism and chic.

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

A most delightfully acted and gracefully entertaining film, fashioned much in the manner of a stage drawing-room comedy, that seems to be about something much more serious and challenging than it actually is.

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

A humorous, suspenseful, disturbing and rousing pastime.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A courageous and timely drama which touches frankly upon a phase of American life that is most serious and pertinent today. And in it Mr. Tracy and Miss Hepburn perform with a taut solemnity that is in decided contrast to their previous collaborative roles.

It is a grandly engrossing and exciting melodrama of wartime espionage, done with stunning documentary touches in a tight, tense, heroic story line.

It packs a melodramatic wallop that will rattle a lot of chattering teeth.

Not to be speechless about it, David O. Selznick has a rare film in Spellbound.

As always in Mr. Disney's pictures, the quality of the humor is bright and sly, with touches of gentle satire laced in with jovial fun.

This is not the novel Lolita, but it is a provocative sort of film.

Marty makes a warm and winning film, full of the sort of candid comment on plain, drab people that seldom reaches the screen.

The characters here are all misfits—people who have not quite been able to adjust their own inadequacies and terrors to the hard realities of life. And it is in the revelation of these people to a more or less brilliant extent that the fascination and satisfaction of this picture lie.

The whole thing is played expertly by everyone in the large cast, and a lively jazz score and bright color make it seem much more casual than it is.

Colonel Blimp is as unmistakably a British product as Yorkshire pudding and, like the latter, it has a delectable savor all its own.

Mr. Huston has filmed a straight crime story about as cleverly and graphically as it could be filmed.

Except for a couple of places, there is no hilarity in The Lavender Hill Mob. But its humors are so ingenious and persistent that it is one big chuckle from beginning to end.

It is all reminiscent of some of those gay, galvanic larks that Gregory LaCava and Leo McCarey used to make ten or more years ago. And a higher recommendation we can't give to a light summer show.

Mr. Kazan catches the poetry of immigrants arriving in America. With some masterfully authentic staging and a fitly hard-focus camera, he gives us as fine an understanding of that drama as the screen has ever had.

Mr. Lemmon is little short of brilliant — vigorous, incisive and deft.

Farce of this sort very seldom comes off with complete effect, but this time it does, and we promise that there's fun on the Road to Zanzibar.

Production of this picture in England endowed it with a rich, distinctive air. It is a grand picture, told in what Sir Walter himself called his "big bow-wow style."

Ronald Neame, who has directed the picture, and John Michael Hayes, who has written the script, present us with a cozy, compact drama that follows a comfortable, sentimental line.

The film, while it packs all the satire of our modern tribal matrimonial rite that was richly contained in the original, also possesses all the warmth and poignancy and understanding that makes the Streeter treatise much beloved.

Mr. Disney's earnest people have done a remarkable job of collecting some extraordinary footage and his editors have assembled it well for excitement and fascination, more than for education.

Perhaps it is slightly labored. Perhaps it does have the air of an initially brilliant inspiration that has not worked out as easily as it seemed it should. Still and all, Mr. Rose's nimble writing and Alexander Mackendrick's directing skill have managed to assure The Ladykillers of a distinct and fetching comic quality.

It is an evil tale, plotted with an eye to its torturing effects. And Mr. Wyler has directed the film along those lines. With infinite care, he has created the dark, humid atmosphere of the rubber country. At a slow, inexorable pace, he has accumulated the details.

A dandy entertainment which has some shrewd and realistic things to say.

For a popular entertainment, Anchors Aweigh is hard to beat. The proof is that it pleases both the pro and con Sinatra-ites.

A remarkably apt and dramatic visualization of a social idea—the idea of men of different races brought together to face misfortune in a bond of brotherhood — is achieved by Producer Stanley Kramer in his new film, The Defiant Ones.

A rip-snorting Western, as brashly entertaining as they come.

Shadows is an unfinished picture in every sense of the word. Yet it is fitfully dynamic, endowed with a raw but vibrant strength, conveying an illusion of being a record of real people, and it is incontestably sincere.

It has no more plot than a horse race, no more order than a pinball machine, and it bounces around on several levels of consciousness, dreams and memories as it details a man's rather casual psychoanalysis of himself. But it sets up a labyrinthine ego for the daring and thoughtful to explore, and it harbors some elegant treasures of wit and satire along the way.

A better film about war beneath the ocean and about guys in the "silent service" has not been made.

A sense of outdoor living and a tingle of open-air adventure are the breath of life in this film.

It's as tinny and tawny and terrific as any hot-cha musical film you'll ever see.

Mr. Goldwyn has turned out a very nice comedy, indeed.

Of Adam's Rib we might say, in short, that it isn't solid food but it certainly is meaty and juicy and comically nourishing.

A frankly fanciful farce, a rondo of refined ribaldries and an altogether delightful picture with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne chasing each other around most charmingly in it.

On the point of the fundamental issue in the Nazi war guilt trials that were held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II, Stanley Kramer, the producer-director, has pinned a powerful, persuasive film. The major weakness, perhaps, of the whole thing is that it is inevitably compressive and sometimes glib. The strength and wonder of it is that it manages to say so much that still needs to be said.

[Bond] also has a much better sense of humor than he has shown in his previous films. And this is the secret ingredient that makes Thunderball the best of the lot.

A lampoon of all pictures having to do with exotic romance, played by a couple of wise guys who can make a gag do everything but lay eggs.

It has a simple, straight cinematic form, unifying a little tangle of experience within a modest frame. It may strike one as slight and disappointing alongside the intellectual magnitude of such as his film "The Seventh Seal." But it suggests a new mood of its author—introspective, troubled, cold.

Hombre seems constantly meaning to have something vital to say, maybe about racial antagonisms, that it can't quite sputter out because it has so much to do. But in the doing of it, all the people are fine in their roles and the whole is tremendously engrossing without being important. Hombre is tough.

Once this build-up is accomplished—once the sinister plot is launched and the young woman suddenly realizes that she has been duped and is in grave peril—the shock and suspense of the situation hit the audience with almost the same force, I'd imagine, as they evidently hit her. And from here on, the tension is terrific and the melodramatic action is wild as the blind woman uses all her courage and ingenuity to foil her assailants and save her life.

A dynamic crime-and-punishment drama, brilliantly and broadly realized.

One of the tautest and most stimulating Westerns of the year.

A blizzard of fractious sport and clowning, a whirlwind of gags and travesty, a snowdrift of suffocating nonsense.

It's a brutal and disagreeable story, probably a little far-fetched, and without Mr. Schulberg's warmest character—the wistful widow who bestowed her favors on busted pugs. But with all the arcana of the fight game that Mr. Yordan and Mr. Robson have put into it—along with their bruising, brutish fight scenes—it makes for a lively, stinging film.

Bob is the hub of the picture, and Director Sidney Lanfield has kept the confusion spinning around him. That is entirely gratifying, for, in these times, we can't have too much Hope.

The Snake Pit, while frankly quite disturbing, and not recommended for the weak, is a mature emotional drama on a rare and pregnant theme.

Gaiety, rhythm, humor and a good, wholesome dash of light romance have been artfully blended together in this bright Technicolored comedy.

Its amiable, infectious quality lies in the seriocomic way it re-creates the Eighteen Nineties culture of New York — horse-and-buggy courtships, dancing at beer gardens, Sunday afternoon street music and maybe an occasional brawl.

Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance, and her eyes in the final scene bespeak the moral significance and emotional fulfillment of this film.

Vincente Minnelli, in his direction, has got all the period charm out of ladies dressed in flowing creations, gentlemen in straw "boaters" and ice-cream pants, rooms lush with golden-oak wains-coating, ormolu decorations and red-plush chairs.

Here is a film that not only gives the charming Miss Andrews a chance to prove herself irresistible in a straight romantic comedy but also gets off some of the wildest brashest and funniest situations and cracks at the lunacy of warfare that have popped from the screen in quite some time.

A bountiful comedy-romance.

It works out to a fascinating picture, for one reason because of its superior illustrative performance and, for another, because of its striking mise en scène.

Forget the length of time it took to make it and all the tattle of troubles they had, including the behavior of two of its spotlighted stars. The memorable thing about this picture is that it is a surpassing entertainment, one of the great epic films of our day. By virtue of brilliant staging, Mr. Mankiewicz keeps this well-known tale moving with visual excitements that increase the dramatic flow and give extraordinary insights into the characters.

The Caine Mutiny, though somewhat garbled, is a vibrant film.

Thanks to a dandy performance by James Cagney in the role of the great silent-film star, Lon Chaney, there is drama and personality in Man of a Thousand Faces.

Indeed, if it weren't for Mr. Thomas and the warmth that wells up from him, we would not want to voice a speculation as to the residual qualities of the film—not even conceding the wry humor that frequently pops in the script, the verve of the other performers and the nostalgic lushness of the songs.

Call it a mystery melodrama...Call it a courtroom tragi-romance or a husband-wife problem play. Call it, indeed, a social satire and you won't be entirely wrong. For it's all of these things rolled together in one fitfully intriguing tale, smoothly told through a cultivated camera.

The charm of his picture lies in the casual kookiness of his characters, plus the random and childlike unreality of the lovely, fragile, dead-panned Miss Deneuve.

I don't want to give you the impression that The Thrill of It All is a great film. I just want to tell you it is loaded with good, clean American laughs.

They took that dog-earred story of the hard-hearted millionaire given a lesson in human relations by a kindly disposed vagabond and they dressed it up in such trimmings as to make it look almost fresh. And they found themselves fortunately supported by a charming performance from Victor Moore.

Room for One More makes for generally appealing movie fare. So long as this anecdotal look-in upon the experience of a husband and wife in bringing up two foster children, as well as three of their own, sticks simply to the humorous complications that arise in a house full of kids, plus appropriate livestock and paraphernalia, it has genuine gaiety and domestic charm.

The Ipcress File is as classy a spy film as you could ask to see.

The consequence in his denouement falls quite flat for us. But the acting is fair. Mr. Perkins and Miss Leigh perform with verve, and Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam do well enough in other roles.

The color is good and Bobby Darin warbles a song at the start that may be amusing to humans but would probably fill Felix with disgust. Anyhow, it's an entertaining picture.

It's a wonderfully crazy and colorful collection of "chase" comedy, so crowded with plot and people that it almost splits the seams of its huge Cinerama packing and its 3-hour-and-12-minute length.