A cheerful and inspiring film about the coming to manhood of a youngster.

The nearest this watered-down rewrite gets to the solid soil is the dirt on the farm sets constructed on a studio soundstage. And the nearest it comes to realizing any of the diary's observation and wit is in a few farcified re-creations of some of its milder episodes.

A most intriguing film.

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.

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

Indeed, the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer's point of view, is the sentimentality of it—its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra's nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities. And Mr. Capra's "turkey dinners" philosophy, while emotionally gratifying, doesn't fill the hungry paunch.

For those with a taste for rough stuff "Dead Reckoning" is almost certain to satisfy.

It is seldom that there comes a motion picture which can be wholly and enthusiastically endorsed not only as superlative entertainment but as food for quiet and humanizing thought.

Apparently the Disney wonder-workers are just a lot of conventional hacks when it comes to telling a story with actors instead of cartoons.

This simple story line is developed with considerable imagination, wit and emotional insight into a thoroughly en-joyable and exhilarating romantic experience.

The story is so imitative—and is repeated so dutifully—that it's hard to feel any more towards it than a mildly nostalgic regard.

One of the more remarkable things about Notorious is that it hasn't seemed to age; if anything, it grows more timely. [26 Oct 1980, p.17]

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.

An uncommonly good little picture.

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

The whole thing becomes a routine and mechanical cat-and-rat chase, with the outcome completely apparent, despite a few bright and clever twists.

Only intermittently compelling as an entertainment, notwithstanding the freshness and urgency of its subject.

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.

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

To Each His Own spins dangerously on the brink of bathos but it seldom spills over into that treacherous chasm for more than a fleeting scene or two, thanks to a screen play which artfully dodges complete morbidity.

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

It is nostalgic, warm with sentiment and full of fight in every foot. It is hard to commend any actor above the rest. Each plays his part well.

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

Mildred Pierce lacks the driving force of stimulating drama, and its denouement hardly comes as a surprise, but it is cut from a pattern that has been hugely successful in the past and it probably will be this time too.

The performers are quite naturally restricted by the limitations of the script—and by the purely pedestrian direction that Irving Rapper has given them.

It's an empty and careless little fable, intended to be a mystery farce, about the wholly incredible mix-up of a debutante in a murder plot.

Peter Godfrey, the director, has a good deal to learn about the art of telling a boudoir joke in the parlor and getting away with it.

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

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

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.

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

The whole thing... makes little or no intelligible sense.

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.

Objective, Burma, directed exceedingly well by Raoul Walsh from a first-class script by Ranald MacDougall and Lester Cole, is a stirring tribute to the sterling fighting men who helped to reopen Burma after the initial Japanese onslaught in the Pacific.

This new gloomlodger, though not as nerve-paralyzing as the performers might lead you to expect, has enough suspense and atmospheric terror to make it one of the better of its genre.

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.

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.

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.

As the recreated picture of one of our coldest blows in this war and as a drama of personal heroism, it is nigh the best yet made in Hollywood.

Writers, director and producer have all of them obviously conspired to give the two stars a rapturous workout and let reason fall where it may. As a consequence, we see here a picture in which the clichés of ideal romance have been piled up so richly and warmly that a point of suffocation is almost reached.

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."

Such folks as delight in murder stories for their academic elegance alone should find this one steadily diverting, despite its monotonous pace and length...But the very toughness of the picture is also the weakness of its core, and the academic nature of its plotting limits its general appeal.

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

In addition to Mr. Crosby and Mr. Fitzgerald, Frank McHugh, Miss Stevens, Jean Heather and Stanley Clements—especially the latter as a genial tough — give thoroughly good performances. They enrich this already top-notch film with a vigorous glow of good spirit. Going My Way is a tonic delight.

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.

That old master of screen melodrama, Alfred Hitchcock, and Writer John Steinbeck have combined their distinctive talents in a tremendously provocative film—indeed, a surprisingly unique one—titled Lifeboat.

The chief fault, in our estimation, with the Warners' "Destination Tokyo" is that there is just too doggone much of it and is all too conventionally crammed in.

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.

With George Gershwin's music and plenty of elbow room, for its twin stars, Girl Crazy is a funny, fast and completely infectious entertainment.

Often as unintentionally funny as it is chilling.

To be sure, the production is elegant. Settings and costumes are superfine and, photographed in technicolor, they all mawe a lavish display. But that richness of décor and music is precisely what gets in the way of the tale.

Its sense resides firmly in its facing one of civilization's most tragic ironies, its power derives from the sureness with which it tells a mordant tale and its beauty lies in its disclosures of human courage and dignity.

Through a brilliantly Technicolored array of maps and diagrams, Mr. Disney and his artists have animated de Seversky's ideas with a clarity which could never be achieved simply through the spoken word...On purely cinematic terms "Victory Through Airpower" is an extraordinary accomplishment, marking it as it were a new milestone in the screen's recently accelerated march toward maturity.

In spite of its almost interminable and physically exhausting length—it takes two hours and fifty minutes to cover less than four days in a group of people's lives—and in spite of some basic detruncations of the novel's two leading characters, it vibrates throughout with vitality and is topped off with a climax that's a whiz.

Universal will have to try again.

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.

The Warners here have a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap. For once more, as in recent Bogart pictures, they have turned the incisive trick of draping a tender love story within the folds of a tight topical theme. They have used Mr. Bogart's personality, so well established in other brilliant films, to inject a cold point of tough resistance to evil forces afoot in Europe today. And they have so combined sentiment, humor and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue that the result is a highly entertaining and even inspiring film.

You've got to hand it to Alfred Hitchcock: when he sows the fearful seeds of mistrust in one of his motion pictures he can raise more goose pimples to the square inch of a customer's flesh than any other director of thrillers in Hollywood.

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.

Random Harvest is a strangely empty film. Its characters are creatures of fortune, not partisans in determining their own fates. Miss Garson and Mr. Colman are charming; they act perfectly. But they never seem real. And a sense of psychiatric levels is not conveyed in either the script or direction.

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.

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.

For all its emotional hair-splitting, it fails to resolve its problems as truthfully as it pretends. In fact, a little more truth would have made the film a good deal shorter.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing is a tremendously exciting melodrama. Its motors never miss a beat.

A bountiful comedy-romance.

Mark Sandrich, director and producer, has taken the inevitable melange of plot and production numbers and so deftly pulled them together that one hardly knows where the story ends and a song begins—a neat trick if you can do it.

In his search for perfection Mr. Disney has come perilously close to tossing away his whole world of cartoon fantasy. Meanwhile, of course, Bambi is going to please a great many people, for all our churlish exceptions.

All in all, The Magnificent Ambersons is an exceptionally well-made film, dealing with a subject scarcely worth the attention which has been lavished upon it.

As warm and delightful a musical picture as has hit the screen in years, a corking good entertainment and as affectionate, if not as accurate, a film biography as has ever—yes, ever—been made.

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.

Tortilla Flatt is really a little idyll which turns its back on a workaday world. But it is filled with solid humor and compassion—and that is pleasant, even for folks who have to work.

To put it mildly, Mr. Hitchcock and his writers have really let themselves go. Melodramatic action is their forte, but they scoff at speed limits this trip.

On its own modest level, "Kid Glove Killer" is a first-rate job all round.

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.

In a spirit of levity, contused by frequent doses of shock, Mr. Lubitsch has set his actors to performing a spy-thriller of fantastic design amid the ruins and frightful oppressions of Nazi-in-vaded Warsaw. To say it is callous and macabre is understating the case.

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.

A deliciously wicked character portrait and a helter-skelter satire.

It's as warming as a Manhattan cocktail and as juicy as a porterhouse steak.

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

Dismiss factual inaccuracies liberally sprinkled throughout the film's more than two-hour length and you have an adventure tale of frontier days which for sheer scope, if not dramatic impact, it would be hard to equal.

The wolf man is left without a paw to stand on; without any build-up either by the scriptwriter or director, he is sent onstage, where he, looks a lot less terrifying and not nearly as funny as Mr. Disney's big, bad wolf.

One must remark that the ending is not up to Mr. Hitchcock's usual style, and the general atmosphere of the picture is far less genuine than he previously has wrought. But still he has managed to bring through a tense and exciting tale, a psychological thriller which is packed with lively suspense and a picture that entertains you from beginning to—well, almost the end.

William Powell and Myrna Loy may not have invented star chemistry but they perfected it.

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.

Darryl Zanuck, John Ford and their associates at Twentieth Century-Fox have fashioned a motion picture of great poetic charm and dignity, a picture rich in visual fabrication and in the vigor of its imagery, and one which may truly be regarded as an outstanding film of the year.

It's the slickest exercise in cerebration that has hit the screen in many months, and it is also one of the most compelling nervous-laughter provokers yet.

Mostly, "Honky Tonk" is a crowd-catching midway exhibit in which Miss Turner gives a competent, if limited, performance and Mr. Gable again shows off his muscles.

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

In spite of some disconcerting lapses and strange ambiguities in the creation of the principal character, Citizen Kane is far and away the most surprising and cinematically exciting motion picture to be seen here in many a moon. As a matter of fact, it comes close to being the most sensational film ever made in Hollywood.

However you look at it, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" is rollicking entertainment.

As melodrama, sheer and simple, the story behind Anna Holm's murder trial is often superbly effective, but when it attempts to become a study of emotional anguish it merely betrays the essential hokum of which the film is constructed.

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.

With an excellent script by Mr. Riskin—overwritten in many spots, it is true—Mr. Capra has produced a film which is eloquent with affection for gentle people, for the plain, unimpressive little people who want reassurance and faith.