Focus: A Film Review (1950-1951)

257 The remainder of the cast, mostly amateur, are very good and the camera work outstandingly good. The danger with such a film is that one’s enthusiasm at what has been achieved within narrow limits causes one to overlook faults, of which there are several; an unnecessarily slow pace, a lack of real humour, which would not have destroyed the drama. But the merits are many and the general effect so pleasing that it is worth while taking trouble to see this unusual film, a. proof that we can take our cameras into the open air with as much confidence as the Continentals — when we have the right people in charge of the cameras. V. AS YOUNG AS YOU FEEL Starring: Monty Woolley, Thelma Ritter, David Wayne, Jean Peters. Producer: Lamar Trotti. Director: Harmon Jones. Distributors: 20th Century-Fox. Certificate ; U . Running time ; 77 minutes. It is obvious that America is worried about the incidence of divorce. This enjoyable film contains what is for Hollywood some propaganda about the permanence of matrimony of a fairly subtle type and manages also to say a word for the individualist. Nevertheless it is most enjoyable and very capably acted. Honours go to Monty Woolley and Thelma Ritter, but the general level is very high. The plot is slight but full of good comedy and no little friendly satire aimed at American big business. Overorganisation is something, apparently, that the American citizen has difficulty in restraining, and when Grandfather Hodges (Monty Woolley) finds himself declared redundant by some obscure corporation that has grown unmindful of the Gettysburg declaration, things begin to happen. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the film is the light thrown on ordinary American family life and character. It is here that Thelma Ritter comes into her own in her unique way. There could be few happier entertainments to take the family to when depression has fallen upon it. J. C. NO HIGHWAY Starring: James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich, Glynis Johns, Jack Hawkins, with Janette Scott and Ronald Squires. Director: Henry Koster. A Twentieth CenturyFox Film (British). Certificate ; U . Category ; C. Running time ; 99 minutes. In a week that includes a Hitchcock thriller it is an outstanding film that can be ranked more entertaining and suspenseful. Yet without any of the tricks of editing which enable even second-rate films to assume an importance they do not merit, No Highway emerges on the score of script, acting and direction as one of the most gripping films we have seen for a long time. The peak of tension is reached when, in a transatlantic plane, Theodore Honey, the botfin, discovers that it is one of those which his researches tell him will disintegrate after 1400 hours flying time. The plane has done nearly 1400 hours. He warns the Captain to turn back. The Captain refuses. He tells a famous film-actress, a passenger and the favourite star of his dead wife that there is one spot in the plane which might prove less vulnerable when the crash comes. He warns the air-hostess, who has been kind to him, where to sit to take advantage of the thousand to one chance of escape. They think him a lunatic, or do they ? Certainly I have not had such an “edge of the seat” fifteen minutes in any film since Twelve Days to Noon. And it is all quite credible. That is the beauty of the film. You feel it could have happened. That is, with the exception of the end of the story which is a sentimental concession to romance, though not unpleasant of its kind. James Stewart puts all he knows of the tricks of shyness, gaucherie, helplesness and general air of guileless fool into his study of the scientist, Honey. It is a complete characterisation and probably the best thing Stewart has done for a long time. Marlene Dietrich comes to life in an extraordinary way as the film actress, and one has the impression she is being almost autobiographical when she speaks of