Hollywood Spectator (1938)

Page Thirty April 16, 1938 the telling, but you should see it! It is gripping, dra¬ matic. The story centers our interest in the contest between two of the dozen dogs which compete, makes us pull for John Loder’s entry to win. When his dog was declared the winner by two seconds, the pre¬ view audience greeted the announcement with a great burst of applause. The dog sequences, of course, are pure motion picture, there being no dialogue to mud¬ dle them up. But they by no means are the whole picture. The story, by the manner in which it is told, will hold your complete attention throughout. Directed with Understanding . . . AN HOUR or so after I had seen the picture, somei* one asked me what I thought of the direction. I told him I had not thought of it at all, and that, per¬ haps, is the greatest tribute I could pay it. There was nothing in the picture to suggest direction, the story seemingly telling itself, and that means a thoroughly competent job. Robert Stevenson, the director, has other commendable achievements to his credit and certainly has what it takes to turn out winners. To the Victor as a production is not a big, expensive one, but it is most impressive. Shot in Scotland, it brings us welcome relief from our over-worked backgrounds. Gaumont-British, in its effort to get a foothold with American exhibitors, seems to be taking the wise course of sending us pictures with human appeal and not trying to compete with us in the matter of pro¬ duction costs. I can recommend this one to all classes and all ages of picture patrons. In John Loder and Margaret Lockwood it has young people who register strongly in a delightful romance woven un¬ obtrusively through the drama of life in the hills of Scotland. COULD BE A LOT BETTER . . . © NURSE FROM BROOKLYN; Universal; associate producer, Edmund Grainger; director, Steve Fisher; screenplay, Roy Chanslor; photography, Milton Krasner; music director, Philip Cahn; film editor, Paul Landres. The Players: Sally Eilers, Paul Kelly, Larry Blake, Maurice Murphy, Morgan Conway, David Oliver, Lucile Gleason. YJHILL have to heave hard to sustain its half of a rr double bill if the other half has any weight at all. It is not as bad as most class B productions, but I do not see why any class B production need be bad; nor can I see any relationship between the number of dollars put into a picture and the amount of sense it contains. For the sum Universal spent on Nurse From Brooklyn, and with the same cast and director, it could have made a picture entertaining enough to satisfy any audience. Instead, it gives us a drab, sor¬ did recital of a murder free from mystery, an extra¬ ordinarily inept handling of the case by the police department, a leading women who initiates nothing, a leading man who has to struggle manfully with his lines to make them mean anything, with “comedy re¬ lief’’ which add to the gloom — and for the money spent to make that sort of picture, a nice little bit of engrossing entertainment could have been turned out. Producer Grainger, of course, will plead that the same Stitt CLARENCE BROWN'S Best Wishes to The Spectator on its Twelfth Birthday