Word: film
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...Bucharest the German Legation entertained Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu and other prominent Rumanians with a newsreel of the conquest of Norway, a sequel to the Nazis' film of the blasting of Poland plugged so diligently around the neutral circuit this winter. Two days earlier the Government had nipped what it said was a plot to seize all the country's airfields, had rounded up 60 foreign "tourists"-British as well as German-in the Ploesti oil-field region. King Carol held another secret confab with Yugoslavia's regent, Prince Paul...
...almost out of existence with luke-warm plot-material and sensational pap. In contrast, the French-made movie, "Marseillaise," has happily succeeded in making the truth palatable without jazzing it up or cheapening it. The result is a feast alike for the uncritical moviegoer and the historical purist. The film makes no pretense at being complete or prophetic, but confines itself to a few brief months during 1789, the so-called "honeymoon of the Revolution," focussing interest on the adventures of a Marseilles citizen army. Without an excessive amount of flag-waving, it waxes enthusiastic over the fraternal movement...
Besides Tyrone's thirty college guests the theatre was filled at the preview with a normal Saturday night crowd, who, until the name of the film was flashed on the screen after a little explanation, were absolutely unsuspicious of the "snap" preview trick. One of these Ossining burghers was overheard summing up the situation very neatly. Muttered he, "If I'd of known it wasn't Swiss Family Robinson I would of stayed home...
Forty Little Mothers, the Cantor offering, was once Le Mioche (The Kid), a charming French film comedy, though the producers of Le Mioche might not recognize their baby. For once Comedian Cantor is unusually restrained. As a worried bachelor professor who furtively fathers an abandoned boy baby in a girls' seminary, Cantor limits his histrionics to planting wet smacks on the patient infant, singing one lachrymose ditty, Little Curly Hair. Once tears trickle down his nose. But smart Showman Cantor lets cute Baby Quintanilla, and scads of leggy little schoolgirls, among whom are Bonita Granville and Diane Lewis...
...company little exercise that might have been carved out of the space, gaunt stories of Stephen Crane, or the vast welter of Frank Norris's novels. It has Crane's economy and concentrated power, combined with Norris's careful documentation of detail. It is this detail that makes the film a masterpiece--the whirring belts of farm machinery, dogs hanging around the stable, the dusty curtains and faded wallpaper of the ranch house, and the faces and mannerisms of the characters. Each of the minor parts has received superb treatment, each one is true to a certain American type. Betty...