Word: scriptful
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...picture's rumpled sets, James Wong Howe's shadowy photography, the lower-middle-class characterizations, are all well-keyed to a note of squalid realism. The script gives the hoodlum some depth as well as menace; he is stupid, confused, worried sick, and for all his bitterness and bullying, wants eagerly to be liked. The acting is first-rate, not only by Garfield, but by Shelley Winters, deglamorized as the simple, forlorn pickup whose home he invades, by Wallace Ford as her father, grimly swallowing his self-respect, and Selena Royle as the distraught mother...
...House on Telegraph Hill (20th Century-Fox) suggests that a woman who survived the horrors of Belsen could be unhinged by a pair of scheming San Franciscans. Though the script struggles manfully to prove the point, it winds up as just another pretentious Hollywood excursion into psychology...
Last fall Shanghai's Kun Lun studios put one of their top director-writers, Sun Yu, to work on a script about the persistent peasant. Early this year, The Life of Wu Hsun unfolded on movie screens across the land. The film was a smasheroo. Newspapers and magazines turned handsprings to praise it. Communist writers acclaimed Wu as a "great new revolutionary hero." Author-Director Sun was sitting pretty-or thought...
...French film with English dialogue dubbed in, "Fabiola" stars Michele Morgan, Michel Simon, and Henri Vidal. Mlle. Morgan has a terrible part and does little to improve on it. She walks sultrily through most of the script and only rarely rises even to the level of hamming...
Mercifully, the script omits the standard love interest. As if only for the record, it briefly establishes Ladd's romantic prowess in a token dalliance with Stewart's blonde mistress (well played by Jan Sterling). The real leading lady is a nun (Phyllis Calvert) who needs his protection as the only witness to the murder. Inspector Ladd, who usually measures his fellow man with cynical suspicion, soon finds himself softening under the example of her unselfish sense of duty. At this late date, moviegoers should not be surprised to learn that Nun Calvert wears lipstick and coaches baseball...