Word: film
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1950
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Richard Widmark is frightening as Ray Biddle, a hood who conjures up a race riot. As an individual or a type, Biddle would seem psychopathic; instead, his role in the film is a symbolic, gathering behind one grinning mask all the virulence of Beaver Canal. In the only role of individuality, Linda Darnell is a slattern trying to escape from her slum background, who betrays and then rescues the Negro doctor (Stephen Poitier) accused of murdering Biddle's brother...
After a race riot, in which colored gangs jump the gun and attack the whites on their own ground, an autopsy proves the doctor innocent. Biddle is unconvinced. This stalemate is the point, and the logical climax, of the film. As the action continues, with Biddle's vendetta against the doctor, the characters resolve into more familiar type-patterns: the man who hates Negroes because he himself was involved, the doctor who must treat the man he hates. But the ending is still inconclusive. The doctor has won his life, others have died, but nothing has been changed...
Only the final editing of the sound track and film strip remains to be done on the 15 minute short which depicts a student's struggle to start studying. No plans have been made yet for the time and place of the premiere of for the movies' future distribution...
Modeled after the short movies of Robert C. Benchley '12, the film stars. Theodore O. Cron '52, as the frustrated student and Daro Taylor '53 as one of his chief distractions. Ivy Films officials are considering holding a contest to find a title more suitable then the present...
...glimpses of Astaire tempt you, under no circumstances arrive in time for the co-feature,"the Young Lovers." For this film is so awful that even "Let's Dance" is good in comparison...