Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...picture's frantic and continued pitch is actually the only factor that at times edges Beauty beyond the point of excellence into the realm of excess. Josette Day's performance as Beauty scores the danger larking in an overdose of horror. The plot demands that the heroinc ignore self-opening doors, living statuary and arms that project through the wall to hold candelabra. Furthermore, she must recognize the pure soul of the Beast shining through a hair-matted body and lighting a vaguely feline and totally grotesque face (superb make-up, this). Well, the actress does not live...
...interest on the mystic proceedings. Nevertheless, he grips, and almost strangles each viewer's attention. Nor does he just exploit weird effects. Cocteau's directional touches such as camera angles and positions, lighting and movement of the actors are things that would vastly improve even the most chewed-over plot...
...finally decided on Hollywood's Joan Caulfield ("She has some kind of half-woman, half-gamin, half-childlike quality that is perfect") and Broadway's Barry Nelson "He's the handsome, rugged American male"). Like most family comedies, Husband is long on character, short on plot, and played for laughs. It does buck a few popular trends: unlike most TV husbands, Nelson has a modicum of intelligence and, unlike most TV wives, Joan is some distance ahead of the usual lovable idiot...
While the shock of his left feint is taking hold, Johnson suddenly sends his plot around right end. The capitalist turns out to have a heart after all (though it does not begin to beat until he sees a woman who reminds him of his wife attempt suicide with strychnine rather than face a Russian interrogation), and the Russians are vigorously presented as heels. Johnson's political gambit is fairly daring to have been executed in Hollywood, 1953; and it may serve, if the picture is a box-office success, to remind moviemakers that there is still...
Forbidden (Universal-International) is not to be confused with Dangerous Mission just because it has almost exactly the same plot. This one is set not in Glacier Park but in "the seething city of Macao" on China's southeast coast; and instead of Technicolor it provides a scarlet situation. The witness (Joanne Dru) is not only on the lam; she is also the "house guest" of an eminent gambler of those parts (Lyle Bettger) who for pure viciousness makes Vincent Price look like a corn-silk addict. The private eye in the caper is Tony Curtis, who not only...