Motion Picture Reviews (1943)

MOTION PICTURE REVIEWS Seven When a boys’ club in a poor district is about to close because of lack of funds, the advisor, Johnny Blake (Robert Paige) agrees to sing in connection with a girls’ radio show touring the Army camps and to use the money to help them out. His agent misappropriates the funds, and in order to save the boys’ organization a soldier, former member of the club, asks permission from his superior to put on a big benefit with Army, Navy, Marine and Air Corps talent. Johnny sings several songs, including “Hi, Buddy.” The benefit copies “This Is The Army” with amusing male “chorus girls,” tap dancing and service songs, and the radio programs include popular swing arrangements. Adolescents 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Yes Yes ♦% HI YA, CHUM O O Harry, Al and Jimmy Ritz, Jane Frazee, Robert Paige, June Clyde, Edmund MacDonald, Lou Lubin, Brooks Benedict, Richards Davies, Ray Miller, Paul Hurst. Original story by Edmund L. Hartmann. Direction by Harold Young. Universal Pictures. As cooks in a restaurant in a boom town, The Ritz Brothers provide slapstick absurdities and typical gags interwoven with musical acts. The fantastic plot involves a light romance and a gangster menace. Adolescents. 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Harmless and fairly Fair entertaining HIGH EXPLOSIVE O O Chester Morris, Jean Parker, Barry Sullivan, Rand Brooks, Barbara Lynn, Ralph Sanford, Dick Purcell, Vince Barnett. Direction by Frank McDonald. Producers: William H. Pine and William Thomas. Paramount. The hazardous occupation of driving trucks loaded with nitroglycerine furnishes a natural background for heroic action or for sensational melodrama. Buzz Mitchell leaves midget auto racing after he has been barred from the tracks, to return to driving trucks. His interest in the girl at the office prompts him to take her younger brother under his wing when he insists on driving. Buzz, knowing the hazards, hesitates to let the boy drive alone, but taunted that he is selfish about it, he sends him off on a trip which ends in tragedy. Buzz then takes a plane load of nitro to an oil well fire and when fog prevents him from landing he drives straight into the heart of the blaze and is, of course, an heroic sacrifice to duty. The fact that the director is primarily interested in the action limits his ability to make the characters other than patterns instead of individuals. Suspense is maintained, but on the whole the story seems rather syn thetic and morbid in contrast to the heroic events headlined today. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 No value. Matter of No taste ❖ HIT PARADE OF 1943 O O John Carroll, Susan Hayward, Gail Patrick, Eve Arden, Melville Cooper, Walter Catlett, Mary Treen, Tim Kennedy, Astrid Allwyn, Tim Ryan; Count Basie, Freddy Martin, Ray McKinley and their orchestras. Direction by Albert S. Rogell. Republic. The music of three popular dance bands, handsome sets, novelty dances and sophisticated comedy combine to make this film typical of its class and probably pleasing to the audiences for which it was designed. The plot is unoriginal and the ethics of the leading characters are a bit on the shady side. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Fair; some objection Too sophisticated able dialogue ❖ THE HUMAN COMEDY <> O Mickey Rooney, Frank Morgan, James Craig, Marsha Hunt, Fay Bainter, Van Johnson, Donna Reed, Jack Jenkins, Ann Avars, John Craven, Mary Nash, Henry O'Neill, Katherine Alexander, Dorothy Morris, Alan Baxter, Darryl Hickman, Barry Nelson, Rita Quigley, Clem Bevans, Adeline DeWalt Reynolds, Connie Gilchrist. Book by William Saroyan. Screen play by Howard Estabrook. Musical direction by Herbert Stothart. Producer and director: Clarence Brown. M-G-M. Perhaps never has a film come so close to the heart beat of American life as Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy.” It is imbued with Saroyan’s philosophy of the innate goodness of humanity when once the sophistication and cruel competition of a mechanistic age have been scraped away. Thus it is largely seen through the eyes of children and of people who have lived in simple surroundings and have never lost the concept of the essential values of life. It is a pattern woven together of episodes about many individuals in a small town called Ithaca, California, and it chiefly has to do with the Macauleys, whose three sons bear the classical names of Ulysses, Homer and Marcus. Homer, a high school boy, goes into a telegraph office to add to the meager family income, grows mature in his contact with sorrow and the frailties of mankind. The small boy, Ulysses, is a homely, lovable, wholly enchanting child with the world unfolding before him; it is a part only Saroyan could have written and only the responsive small Jack Jenkins could have played. The serious phase of the film and that which gives it the greatest depth centers in the oldest son, Marcus, who is in the Army and whose quiet expression of his