Word: flashbacks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...failure of this movie is largely the fault of bad direction. George Stevens has completely overdone the flashback mechanism, and his use of popular songs, to recall the associations through which the story unfolds, is too facile and backend to be excused...
Grappling with history, this Alexander Korda production of an R. C. Sherriff-Walter Reisch screen play moves like the flow of molasses. Possibly because the narrative is a series of flashback recollections of Lady Hamilton, reclining in prison during her alcoholic dotage, its ponderous plodding can be attributed to the senility of the narrator. All Lady Hamilton offers in her two-hour tale is an extravagant picture of court finery, a romantic rehash of the exploits of the British fleet under Nelson, a fuzzy sketch of Nelson himself, a dazzling portrait of her own staggering beauty. There is no more...
Mostly one long flashback, the picture begins with Cagney bawling out a noisy party in the next yard, whereupon a turtlenecked Yale man of the Bum McClung era, with a Y as wide as his chest, rears above the garden wall and shouts: "I'd like to give him a taste of the good old flying wedge!" Whereupon a street band blares into The Band Played On, which plumps Cagney into such a mood of reminiscence that it is a full hour until he returns to test, and best, the good old flying wedge...
...taken a wrong turn and arrived there by mistake--which isn't far from the truth. The tunes, featuring "K-K-K-Katie" and the great grandmother of "God Bless America" make B.M.I.'s current cacophony sound like the music of the spheres. And a kaleidoscopic flashback on World War 1 backs up Professor Elliott by showing that Harvard Square really is a very disagreeable place compared to a battlefield. Jack Oakie, though, provides some of the best mugging since he annexed a paunch and gave up Joe College roles; and he slips a couple of resounding swats past...