Motion Picture Herald (Nov-Dec 1946)

The Man I Love Warner Bros. — Melodrama with Songs The torch song from which this oddly constructed melodrama takes its title is one of six memorable melodies in kind which not only establish the theme of the picture but provide the high spots in an otherwise mixed offering. The other five songs are "Liza," "Why Was I Born," "Bill," "Body and Soul" and "If I Could Be With You." Ida Lupino, the top name in the cast, sings most of them, in a manner not unreminiscent of the late Helen Morgan. The picture's at its best in these musical stretches, which punctuate an otherwise unconvincing story containing material which limits it to adult audiences. Catherine Turney's screenplay, from a novel by Maritta Wolff, adapted by Jo Pagano and Miss Turney, opens with a jam session in a New York night club which serves to introduce Miss Lupino as a singer in love with a piano player whom she knows only via an old recording of his, and homesick for her sisters and a brother, who live in Long Beach, California. She goes forthwith to Long Beach, arriving Christmas Eve, and finds her sisters and brother in various predicaments from which she spends the rest of the picture in rescuing them. This enftiils taking employment in a night club operated by a sleek individual given to having his way with the opposite sex, and in the course of events— which include an assortment of minor infamies — she meets the piano player, a very moody and unexplained individual serving in the Merchant Marine, engaging in an impromptu relationship with him which, as the picture ends, promises to become permanent when he returns from, the sea again. The story is really a four-stringed affair, with the strings only loosely related, and fails to generate the impact it might have gained through elimination of a couple of the strings. Arnold Albert produced the picture, and Raoul Walsh directed it, manifestly with adult audiences in mind. Previewed at studio. Reviewer's Rating: Average. — Thalia Bell. Release date. January 11, 1947. Running time, 97 min. PCA No. 11014. Adult audience classification. Patsy Brown Ida Lupino Nicky Toresco Robert Alda Andrea King, Bruce Bennett, Martha Vickers, Don McGuire, Tony Romano, Alan Hale, Dolores Moran, John Ridgely, Warren Douglas, Craig Stevens, WilHam Edmunds, James Dobbs Murder in Reverse Four Continents — Unusual Melodrama Full entertainment potentialities are extracted from a novel plot-twist in Britain's "Murder in Reverse," a taut melodrama that has a man sentenced to jail for a murder which, despite outward appearances, he never committed. In the picture's favor, in its development it avoids resorting to the easy artifices and cliches that often find their way into a mystery-thriller. Also, as it goes on to its suspenseful climax, some intriguing character studies emerge. The story has circumstantial evidence pointing to William Hartnell, a simple dock worker, as the murderer of a man with whom his wife had run away. After a long term in prison, Hartnell picks up the search for the alleged victim, a tortuous trail that leads him to many strange haunts and deserted retreats. Once his quarry is found, Hartnell commits the crime for which he had already paid. It is an odd puzzle that is propounded for the legal minds in the end — can a "dead" man be murdered, and can a criminal be punished for a crime he already has legally paid for? It is a different type of film that sustains interest throughout and despite an inner-turbulence of theme, has restrained performances throughout. Also blended into the story is a pleasingromantic angle involving Dinah Sheridan and Jimmy Hanley. In reviewing the film from London in Motion Picture Herald of November 24, 1945, Peter Burnup said, "Never rising to the heights (save in a breath-taking suspense-packed finale) , avoidingnevertheless the doldrums of mediocrity, here is a comfortable sort of murder-melodrama which should rate esteem in neighborhood houses." Montgomery Tully directed; Louis H. Jackson produced. Seen at a New York projection room. Reviewer's Rating : Good. — Mandel Herbstman. Release date, January, 1947. Running time, 80 min. Adult audience classification. Tom Masterick William Hartnell Peter Rogers Jimmy Hanley Doris Masterick Chili Bouchier John Slater, Brefni O'Rourke, Dinah Sheridan, Fetula Clark, Kynaston Reeves, John Salew, Edward Rigby, Ben Williams, Ethel Coleridge, Marie O'Neill, Wylie Watson Great Expectations Cineguild: G.F.D.^—lhe Very Dickens There'll be many who will hail this as Britain's most memorable contribution in her most memorable motion picture year to date. Looked upon merely as a matter of technical craftsmanship, it is a superb achievement. The Cineguild triumvirate — Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ronald Neame, David Lean — assayed (as many feared) the impossible when they set out to condense into two hours' traffic on the screen the fabulous plethora of incident and personage which Charles Dickens packed into his novel a hundred years since. Yet here are all the well-loved characters, as their own creator would say, as large as life and twice as natural. The convict Magwitch, old Miss Havisham gazing still with her dead eyes at the cobwebbed wedding cake, lawyer Jaggers, blacksmith Gargery, Herbert Pocket, old Uncle Pumblechook, the young sweethearts, Pip and Estella, all come to life in the cunning, skillful, warp and woof of the picture's pattern. Aptest comment on the endeavor is, indeed, that Prince of Tale-tellers Charles Dickens himself might have written the script. But that's a matter of technical consideration. SHOWMEN'S REVIEWS SHORT SUBJECTS ADVANCE SYNOPSES COMPANY CHART THE RELEASE CHART This department deals with new product from the point of view of the exhibitor who is to purvey it to his own public. What matters to the showman is that here's an exhibit with all the essential ingredients; atmosphere, taste, humor, sentiment which might cloy but never comes within a hundred miles of so doing, suspense, thrills. And the whole mounted with finery, so that the frills and furbelows of the nineteenth century's earliest years, the robust raffishness of Dickens' London, the harshness, the grim cruelty, all the petty foibles of the day are displayed with impeccable skill to the vast delight of the beholder and the considerable profit of the theatre operator. It's a peach of a picture, which cries aloud for early American exhibition. There's an immense cast, all of whose members are difficult to fault. But maybe special honors go to Alex Guinness (Herbert Pocket), Francis L. Sullivan (attorney Jaggers), Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham), and — of course — John Mills and Valerie Hobson as the film sweethearts. Though, in that regard, praise goes to the players of those two parts when young, namely, two childish performers, Anthony Wager and Jean Simmons. Hollywood might well do worse than take a peep at these two young persons. Britain's producers plan a whole procession of Dickens' subjects. If succeeding examples come up to the standard of this one they will have set a new high in picture making. Seen at the Gaumont theatre, London, preparatory to the premiere there. Reviewer's Rating : Excellent. — Peter Burnup. Release date, not set. Running time, 118 min. British adult audience classification. Pip (grown-up) John Mills Estella (grown-up).. Valerie Hobson Joe Gargery Bernard Miles Jaggers Francis L. Sullivan Magwitch Finlay Currie Miss Havisham Martita Hunt Pip (as a boy) Anthony Wager Estella (as a girl) Jean Simmons Herbert Pocket Alex Guinness Wemmick Ivor Barnard Mrs. Joe Gargery ..Freda Jackson Torin Thatcher, Eileen Erskine, Hay Petrie, George Hayes, Richard George, Everley Gregg, John Burch, Grace Denbigh-Russell, O. B. Clarence, John Forrest Humoresque Warner Bros.— \94b Version The 1946 version of the Fannie Hurst story of the same name differs in manner of treatment and final effect from the Vera Gordon version of yesteryear which made box office history and won that lady a high place in the memory of the multitude. The names of Joan Crawford and John Garfield atop the present cast appear to promise plump opening grosses for the new version, whereas_ exploitation based on reference to the earlier film could engender disappointment. Whether the picture will stand up after the first crowds have seen it depends on whether the public's had enough, or thereabouts, of films in which none of the principal characters beget sympathy. As brought to the screen by producer Jerry Wald and directed by Jean Negulesco from a script by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold, Miss Hurst's chronicle of the rise of a tenement boy MOTION PICTURE HERALD, DECEMBER 28, 1946 3385