Motion Picture Reviews (1942)

Four MOTION PICTURE REVIEWS BALL OF FIRE O O Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Oscar Homolka, Henry Travers, A. Z Sakall, Tully Marshall, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Haydn, Aubrey Mather, Allen Jenkins, Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea, Ralph Peters, Kathleen Howard, Mary Field, Charles Lane, Gene Krupa and his Orchestra. Screen play by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Original story by Thomas Monroe and Billy Wilder. Photography by Gregg Toland. Musical director, Alfred Newman. Producer, Samuel Goldwyn. R.K.O. Prince Charming and the Seven Dwarfs are suggested by the cast of this unusual comedy, in which a group of erudite gentlemen are engaged in the completion of a new encyclopedia. Their regimented absorption in the work is interrupted when they reach the letter “S.” Wishing to include an article on slang, they discover in a chance meeting with a garbage collector that they know nothing of modern lingo. One professor brings into the household a strip-tease dancer, Sugarptiss O'Shea, who finds it expedient to hide from the police. They are enchanted by her presence, disturbed by her sex appeal. The dialogue and situations are the most subtly sophisticated and really suggestive ones yet put on the screen. The college professors are remarkably clever: Haydn, Sakall, Homolka, and Travers especially, and Allen Jenkins is a riot as the garbage collector. Gary Cooper gives another of his dependable, delightful performances, and Barbara Stanwyck is alluring in the role of Sugarpuss. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 1 2 No. No ❖ BEDTIME STORY O O Fredric March, Loretta Young, Robert Benchley, Allyn Joslyn, Eve Arden, Helen Westley, Joyce Compton, Tim Ryan, Olaf Hytten, Dorothy Adams, Clarence Kolb, Andy Toombes. Screen play by Richard Flourney. Story by Horace Jackson and Grant Garrett. Produced by B P. Schulberg. Direction by Alexander Hall. Columbia. The fault of “Bedtime Story” is its lack of plot originality. We have had so many domestic comedies recently which deal with the problems of husbands and wives, both of whom are engaged in careers, that we could wish the subject could be settled once for all or else discarded. Miss Young plays the beautiful actress wife of a playwright. She announces her retirement to a farm in Connecticut only to discover that her husband has sold the farm to finance his new play in which he expects her to star. The action then is concerned with his attempts to arouse her interest in the play and to prevent her from divorcing him. When these efforts have failed and she has married another man, he manages to disrupt the mar riage through a legal technicality and to win her back. However, she has the last word, for she closes the successful run of the play to “await an act of God.” The popular cast and smooth direction may please audiences who are not surfeited with this type of domestic farce and who are willing to believe that a happy solution for marital infelicity can be reached after a trip to Reno and an intervening marriage. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 1 2 No No THE CORSICAN BROTHERS O O Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ruth Warrick, Akim Tamiroff, J. Carrol Naish, H. B. Warner, John Emery, Henry Wilcoxon, Walter Kingsford, Pedor De Cordova, Veda Ann Borg, William Farnum, Sarah Padden, Manart Kipper. Adapted from the story by Alexandre Dumas. Direction by Gregory Ratoff. Edward Small Production. United Artists. Perhaps a picture patterned from Alexandre Dumas’ swashbuckling melodrama could not have been released at any better time, for its romantic adventure seems far removed from world events today, yet the theme is still the too familiar one of aggression pitted against justice and freedom. The plot follows the story of two Corsican brothers who are saved in infancy from the predatory Colonna who had wiped out their family and taken over their estate. The two babes are Siamese twins whom surgery has severed. For their own safety they are sent to different families for rearing and do not meet until grown, but between them is a curious, inexplicable emotional bond, which in the weaker is psychic with physical reactions. And here again the sub-plot carries on the theme of right triumphant, for these ties must finally be broken to prove that honor and decency must survive in a better world. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. makes Mario and Luciert subtly different, a beautiful performance. Akim Tamiroff is excellent in the role of Colonna, and Ruth Warrick is the lovely heroine whom both brothers love. The cast is entirely competent. The elaborate French Empire interiors are very beautiful, and the action is stirring with a skillful and thrilling duel as the dramatic highlight. It is a good though uninspired presentation of the famous novel by one of the world’s greatest writers of romantic fiction. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is an able successor to the type of role his father created on the screen, in spite of the fact that he somehow lacks the contagious enthusiasm which the elder Fairbanks conveyed to his audiences. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Good Exciting