Word: adds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...other part of the film is comparable to this one. Many of the fragmented episodes are effective, but many others have little to add to the general effect. The disconnection itself has its purpose, and gives an all-inclusive quality to the film; yet it is also distracting and contributes to the film's great weakness: its general diffuseness, its inability to command sustained attention. For Pather Panchali, remarkable as it may be, is something of a chore to sit through. The viewer receives the impression that he is watching a document, an amazing document to be sure...
...bearing of a "matinee idol," and appears much younger than his wife, admirably portrayed by Lois Holmes. Art Smith, as Morton Kiil, presents a striking portrait of her shrewd and disreputable father. Gene Frankel's direction is adept and certain touches are superb. Yet with the children, who add more distraction than depth, his direction is spotty and they generally dash onstage with a gust, then settle into the shadows to await their lines...
...time for a change is in the field of foreign aid. With the original postwar objective of setting Europe back on its feet handsomely achieved, the bulk of U.S. aid already goes to underdeveloped nations; in the future even more of it will have to do so. And, add U.S. officials grimly, it had better not find its way back to European pockets quite so often as has been the case in the past. (An example that still gravels Washington: in recent years the West German government has underwritten some $2 billion worth of West German sales to underdeveloped countries...
...Add to all this three more major characters (Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Martha Hyer), three other office romances, a script loaded with schoolgirl sophistication and half-aphorisms ("Old is when you know all the answers." "No, old is when you don't even bother to ask the question"), and an understandably bored performance by an old Hollywood pro, Director Jean Negulesco. The result is just about the dullest retelling of the old cautionary tale since Bertha, the Sewing-Machine Girl...
...rules ("the management shall in no case be responsible for the loss of property or for the inmate himself"), the handless clock on which a watchman hourly paints in the hands, and, above all, the jailers' constant and somehow insane concern for the prisoner's welfare-all add up to a caricature of prisons everywhere. The fussy, pedantic, sentimental jailers are so many congealed crocodile tears; what a naughty boy the prisoner really is, they appear to be saying, not eating his splendid meals, and depressing them (who try to do their best for him) with his gloomy...