LIGHT ON THE MOVIES
Hamilton, James S.
Light on the Movies A Royal Scandal—Taking Catherine the Great for the heroine, and using her not as Mother Russia but as the red-hot mamma most people have heard about, you can think up a comedy...
...by the way, an historical figure) was dumb enough to take his brief elevation to grandeur seriously, and to plan reforms for the peasantry, which wasn't playing the game and became tiresome to the Empress...
...Mature...
...Family...
...It covers one of Catherine's temporary condescensions to a handsome young officer, whose attractions are symbolized in a fine white uniform in which he was extremely fetching...
...Objective Burma — An American paratroop mission r.gainst the Japs, with remarkably good factual detail and no romantics...
...The only trouble—did no one connected with it ever hear that old maxim about brevity and wit...
...Family...
...Louis—Gay and hearty memories of not so long ago, excellent in songs and sentiment and remarkable in little Margaret O'Brien...
...Full of humor, good nature, and contemporary color, but overlong...
...Mature...
...Errol Flynn submerges himself in a uniformly good cast in one of Hollywood's best war films...
...Meet Me in St...
...The Affairs of Susan—Glittering and improbable adventures, marital and nearly so, of Joan Fontaine and four men...
...The Ministry of Fear—A spy mystery growing out of a young Englishman's casual purchase of a cake at a fair...
...Gorgeous and incongruous...
...Family...
...Mature...
...But meanwhile Catherine recaptured a bit of her preceding youth and at the same time managed, as she put it, to keep the throne clean...
...Tonight and Every Night—London blitzes brought to a musical comedy level, with Rita Hayworth and a swell new dancer named Mark Platt...
...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...
...Ray Milland and some good creeps...
...Family...
...Light on the Movies A Royal Scandal—Taking Catherine the Great for the heroine, and using her not as Mother Russia but as the red-hot mamma most people have heard about, you can think up a comedy plot quicker than you can say Will Hays...
...Fairly frisky...
...Music For Millions—With Margaret O'Brien mothering her 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...
...Then you have to think Will Hays, and that calls for ingenuities that take more time...
...Family...
...The Princess and the Pirate—Bob Hope mixes up with pirates in a rollicking costume farce...
...Hangover Square—Gas-lit melodrama with Laird Cregar as a Jekyl-Hyde composer with a murder compulsion...
...The Belle of the Yukon — Gypsy Rose Lee in a lady-like mood and Dinah Shore with songs in a take-off on Westerns...
...The House of Fear—One of the better Sherlock Holmes episodes, the one about the orange pips...
...Mature) * * * 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...
...Family...
...Unusually effective musical score...
...Family...
...The excellent character studies lift it above a mere murder story...
...Family...
...Family...
...The Suspect — Charles Laughton, kills off a pestiferous wife and almost gets away with it...
...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...
...This young officer (not...
...Family...
...The Tallulah flair for comedy in the grand manner gets full scope, and Charles Coburn makes the role of a grafting, indispensable Chancellor as rich as plum pudding...
...Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, and Anne Revere (a new and refreshing movie mother...
...Family...
...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...
...Mature...
...But with Tallulah Bankhead to be Catherine, and Lubitsch supervising with his special aptitude for creating an air of sophisticated knowingness around substance that on paper might look as innocent as Sweetheart soap, it is worth while to take time to be ingenious: the result can be as slick and amusing as A Royal Scandal...
...The Picture of Dorian Gray—Arty transcription of what was transcribable to the screen in Oscar Wilde's novel about esthetes...
...Mature...
...Family...
...Hotel Berlin—Hasty melodrama of panicky Nazis dodging bombs and retribution...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 18
