Focus: A Film Review (1952-1953)

81 bout. The finale, however, is the weakest part of the story. It is also ' a blemish on the picture that a violent love-making scene mars the sympathetic treatment of the theme of frustrated middle-age. One cannot recommend the film for this and it is not a film for young people unless they were balanced enough to find this particular scene repulsive. But I shall remember a long time Lola Delaney. A. THE STAR Starring: Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, with Natalie Wood, Warner Anderson, Minor Watson, June Travis. Producer: Bert E. Friedlob. Director: Stuart Heisler. Distributors: 20th Century-Fox. Certificate-. A. Category: B. Running time : 91 minutes. The ageing actress, temperamental and egotistic, baggy and ^aggy, has long been an obvious subject for the stage and screen. And Bette Davis, having exposed the artificiality of the stage, is now naturally called upon to turn the same attention to the cinema. But The Star has none of the blistering astringency of All About Eve. To vary the metaphor, it speaks a language more comprehensible to the patrons of general releases, the language of cliche. There is more oil than vinegar in this dressing down. And there is a glib ending. The star, who at last realises that she is finished, returns to “the privilege and glory of being a woman”. And what does that mean exactly? It means that she appropriates her daughter (then “doing her six months” with the other parent) and marries another man. Miss Davis makes the most of her material and has some good moments, while Sterling Hayden almost steals the film with a quality of acting difficult to define but sometimes called “sincerity”. THE LONG MEMORY Starring: John Mills, Elizabeth Sellars. Producer: Hugh Stewart. Director: Robert Hamer. Certificate: A. Category -. B. Running time: 100 minutes approximately . The chief interest of this film is that it drives home the lesson that revenge is simply not worth while. Here we have a man who has spent twelve years in prison for a crime he did not commit, two witnesses having perjured themselves at his trial. Those twelve years he has spent nursing thoughts of vengeance : he comes out, tracks down the two people who have ruined him, gets them at his mercy — and then just can’t be bothered. There is, alas, no indication of forgiveness on his part — the film is entirely unconcerned with religion — but it at least shows that revenge is very far from being its own reward. I thought John Mills miscast as the would-be self-avenger. T. C. F. APRIL IN PARIS Starring: Doris Day, Ray Bolger. Producer: William Jacobs. Director: David Butler. A Warner Bros. Picture, in Technicolor. Certificate: A. Category: B. Running time : 90 minutes approximately . This musical is not to be ranked very high. Doris Day, who is well partnered by Ray Bolger, dances and sings charmingly, though the songs are not particularly interesting. While crossing the Atlantic on a luxury liner the two protagonists apparently spend their time dodging in and out of each other’s cabins till one could scream with boredom. The honours undoubtedly go to Claude Dauphin as a seemingly amorous but really entirely domestic Frenchman. T. C. F. Q