Word: screenplay
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...Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer; United Artists). Throw together a couple of unknown film writers, an original screenplay never tested in bookstalls, on television or on the stage, a budget of less than $1,000,000 to cover the cost of old-fashioned black-and-white photography and monophonic sound, and what bubbles up? For Producer-Director Stanley Kramer, at 44 one of the most skillful chefs in the business, the result of putting such ingredients together is savory cinema, free of froth and sharply seasoned...
...William Douglas Home's screenplay, adapted from his own stage version, tinkles with a profusion of grace notes that, in skillful hands, can often substitute for a full score. The pace, thanks to Vincente Minnelli's direction, is Pall Mall. Comedienne Kendall cocks an eyebrow clear up into her hairline, twists her mouth into something resembling a berserk rubber band, fixes her rival with a saccharine smile that fairly oozes gore. Actor Harrison, whether falling asleep on his feet during the national anthem or grunting amorously to a sofa pillow, still reigns as king of his wacky parlor...
...Captain from Koepenick (Real-Film; D.C.A.) is a dandy German joke that manages to be only intermittently funny. Now undergoing its third version as a movie, the film is derived from a 1931 play by Carl (The Blue Angel) Zuckmayer, who co-authored the present screenplay. It is the story of a lonely, jobless German shoemaker whose drab world turns into a fairyland of wealth, popularity and authority as soon as he dons the dashing and highly illegal uniform of an army captain...
...Parisienne (Lopert; United Artists) fires off BB again, in far and away the most delightful of the seven Bardot reports that have popped in the U.S. in the past two years. Scriptwriters Annette Wademant and Jean Aurel have turned out an original screenplay with a plot that is no more distinctive than a stick, but they have given it a frothy, spicy, sugar-candy coating...
...acting in all the major roles is wonderfully full and natural, and for that and for all the picture's graces of execution, credit is due to Director Daniel (Come Back, Little Sheba) Mann. But the leading virtue of this film derives from James Poe's screenplay, and ultimately from Lonnie Coleman's play, from which it was adapted. That virtue is maturity of feeling - the rare ability to take people as they are and life as it comes...