Word: film
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...Zanuck, who was willing to pour money into a social document of this sort, gambling on its box office appeal; with director John Ford, whose skill in recreating the stark reality of Steinbeck's situations and in preserving variety where repitition would have been easy, has made of the film more than the vehicle for a message; and with the actors--especially Jane Darwell, Ma Joad--whose performances are well-nigh jawless...
...Grapes of Wrath" tells the now-familiar story of the Joads who, driven from their Oklahoma farm by storm and by a ruthless landlord, join the mass migration to California in the illusion that there they will find security. It has been impossible to include in a two-hour film all their adventures, and some of the most powerful are omitted in favor of the more dramatic. But on the whole, the selection of incidents, and their unification by a continuous thread of ideas, if not of action, is masterfully done; and the result is a rare combination of great...
...obvious, and in the mediocrity of acting by Joel McCrea, Queenie Vassar (the grandmother), and Marjorie Rambeau (the mother). Ginger Rogers does well, and adds pictorial value, but trite situations, leading to a particularly obvious conclusion, constantly shine through the veneer and contribute to a dull and disappointing film...
...evening of May 9 last week, Adolf Hitler went to a cinema in Berlin, a sentimental musical film like The Student Prince. His No. 2 man, Field Marshal Hermann Goring, and Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels attended the premiere of Cavour, a play on which Benito Mussolini, onetime journalist, collaborated. Italy's dictator promised his royalty for the first evening, and half of all his subsequent royalties, to the German Red Cross. Field Marshal Goring arrived late, which made his presence, in resplendent white uniform, the more conspicuous...
...martial temper by stamping around with his crooked stick, singing We A' Go Hame the Same Way, The Wee Hoose 'mang the Heather. Last week, No. 35 of World War II, Sir Harry Lauder, 69, was back in the U. S. But not in person, on film. Said he: "A wee bit o' celluloid crosses the ocean just as fast and at ha' the price." On celluloid, Sir Harry in his first talking picture, a weak-kneed melodrama, played the trouping grandfather of a motherless baby. Grandfather spends most of his time and money keeping...