Bosley Crowther

Miss Leigh shapes the role of the girl with such superb comprehension, progresses from the innocent, fragile dancer to an empty, bedizened street-walker with such surety of characterization and creates a person of such appealing naturalness that the picture gains considerable substance as a result.

This is a mischievous, sly, good-humored presentation of a crusty old samurai caught between two groups of plain incompetents, with a playful satiric point.

One of the brightest, most delightful satiric comedies since It Happened One Night.

A headlong and dynamic drama about a back-country champion of the poor who permits his political ambitions to pull him down a perilously crooked road.

Mr. Kramer has brilliantly directed a strong and responsive cast, headed by Gregory Peck as the submarine commander and Ava Gardner as the worldly woman who craves his love. Miss Gardner is remarkably revealing of the pathos of a wasted life. Fred Astaire is also amazing as the cynical scientist, conveying in his self-effacing manner a piercing sense of the irony of his trade.

The picture achieves its distinction through the smart way in which it has been made and through the quality of its representation of two passion-torn characters.

Say this, in sum, for "Breathless": it is certainly no cliché, in any area or sense of the word. It is more a chunk of raw drama, graphically and artfully torn with appropriately ragged edges out of the tough underbelly of modern metropolitan life.

Mr. Stevens has done a superb job of putting upon the screen the basic drama and shivering authenticity of the Frances Goodrich-Albert Hackett play, which in turn caught the magnitude of drama in the real-life diary of a Jewish girl.

In this very lean and sensible screen transcription of Fred Gipson's children's book, adapted by himself and William Tunberg, a warm, appealing little rustic tale unfolds in lovely color photography. Sentimental, yes, but also sturdy as a hickory stick.

One of the most lively and up-to-date comedy-romances of the year.

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.