Bosley Crowther

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.