LIGHT ON THE MOVIES
Hamilton, James S.
Light on the Movies James S. Hamilton Without Love—There wasn't quite enough story power to keep this gay and airy craft at top flight all the way, but though it loses altitude toward the end. it...
...The Ministry of Fear—A spy mystery growing out of a young Englishman's casual purchase of a cake at a fair...
...Mature...
...Family...
...Hangover Square—Gas-lit melodrama with Laird Cregar as a Jekyl-Hyde composer with a murder compulsion...
...Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo—Capt...
...Mature) * * * The Affairs of Susan—Four men constitute these affairs, all frolicsome and innocent, which carry pretty Susan from homespun girlhood through Broadway stardom to queening it among a very elegant set of sophisticates...
...Family...
...Errol Flynn submerges himself in a uniformly good cast in one of Hollywood's best war films...
...Hotel Berlin—Hasty melodrama of panicky Nazis dodging bombs and retribution...
...The excellent character studies lift it above a mere murder story...
...Meet Me in St...
...Full of humor, good nature, and contemporary color, but overlong...
...Lawson's part in the Doolittle bombing reported with almost documentary faithfulness, with his home life to add a realistic domestic contrast...
...Louis—Gay and hearty memories of not so long ago, excellent in songs and sentiment and remarkable in little Margaret O'Brien...
...Murder My Sweet—Dick Powell forsakes musical comedy to be a fresh kind of detective in a Raymond Chandler mystery formerly called Farewell My Lovely...
...it never crashes...
...Family...
...Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn never teamed up so likably before, and the Hepburn style has mellowed into a touching graciousness that is . often downright lovely...
...The House of Fear—One of the better Sherlock Holmes episodes, the one about the orange pips...
...Mature...
...Then she tries going intellectual, mainly by means of horn-rim glasses and severe garments (which only drives the current youth to drink) and ends up jilting the 4th suitor in favor of her first and only husband...
...Family...
...Family...
...They've done it now with Lana Turner and the WACs...
...The Suspect — Charles Laughton kills off a pestiferous wife and almost gets away with it...
...She messes up her marriage to a theatrical producer by being too frank and honest for his peculiar world, then messes up her engagement to a breezy Westerner by being just the opposite...
...Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and Anne Revere (a new and refreshing movie mother...
...Family...
...Objective Burma — An American paratroop mission against the Japs, with remarkably good factual detail and no romantics...
...Music For Millions—With Margaret O'Brien mothering hor big sister for heart interest, Jimmy Durante and Hugh Herbert for laughs, and Jose Iturbi and a fine orchestra for excellent music, this is an all-round good show...
...That's practically all the plot there is, ringing in the old jealousy business for a final routine complication...
...Family...
...Family) * * * Keep Your Powder Dry—They used to make movies about some stubborn youngster (like Cagney) getting into some service arm, kicking against the discipline, and ending up full of esprit de corps and patriotism...
...Family...
...Family...
...But gosh, she is pretty...
...Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, and some heart-winning Chinese are especially good...
...Family) * * * A Handy Guide To The Best Current Films A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—A fine and sensitive dramatization of a generous section of the popular novel, with outstanding acting all around and superb direction...
...Tonight and Every Night—London blitzes brought to a musical comedy level, with Rita Hayworth and a swell new dancer named Mark Piatt...
...It's a very pleasant affair, with occasional quick flights into T. S. Eliot and Mathew Arnold to tickle the literate...
...Family...
...Colonel Blimp—Handsome and'entertaining coverage of the changes made by the years from the Boer War to the present in an English soldier-sportsman...
...Mature...
...Gorgeous and incongruous...
...Unusually effective musical score...
...National Velvet—A warm and enjoyable story of an English family and how an enchanting little girl's dream of winning the big steeplechase came true without hurting her common sense...
...With two such glamor-buddies as Laraine Day and Susan Peters, she spats her way through basic training, reaching her dramatic height in an impetuous bit of face-slapping...
...Mature...
...After all, when a husband and wife, all pre-nuptial agreements to the contrary, have obviously fallen in love, you can't go on indefinitely keeping them from finding it out, especially when the lady is not a bit dumb about that sort of thing...
...Wit and sentiment mix up happily in all their encounters, and for louder laughs Keenan Wynne and Lucille Ball play a second-string couple on a frankly earthier plane...
...Family...
...None But the Lonely Heart—Sincere and poignant insight into the lives of the London poor, with a superlative cast headed by Ethel Barrymore and Cary Grant (Mature...
...The Princess and the Pirate—Bob Hope mixes up with pirates in a rollicking costume farce...
...Ray Milland and some good creeps...
...Frothy and expensive, it's a 4-ringed circus for Joan Fontaine, but it would take a combination of trapeze artist, acrobat, and tight-rope walker, with a dash of clown, to fill such a bill, and Joan Fontaine hasn't yet learned the art of high comedy even on the solid ground...
...Agnes Moorehead brings a touch of dignity and commonsense into the proceedings, but -mostly it's too silly to arouse anything but a sickening feeling that, if this is typical, maybe women had better stick to the home fires and night clubs during a war...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 17
