Motion Picture Reviews (1943)

MOTION PICTURE REVIEWS Five and he uses his skill to trap them. The story is cohesive, and while at times the director plays up the dramatic situations for more than they are worth, acting is good, and the film offers a study in human relations which raises it above the average program picture. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Yes Mature ❖ DIXIE O O Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Marjorie Reynolds, Billy De Wolfe, Lynne Overmann, Raymond Walburn, Eddie Foy, Jr., Grant Mitchell, Louis Da Pron. Screen play by Karl Tunberg and Darrell Ware, from a story by William Rankin. Costumes and settings by Raoul Pene du Bois. Music by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen. Direction by A. Edward Sutherland. Produced by Richard Blumenthal. Paramount. Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are teamed again in a pleasantly entertaining musical show. “Dixie,” though lacking the vitality of some of the other Crosby-Lamour productions, appeals to the eye as well as to the ear with charming Technicolor photographs of period costumes. The story is based on events in the life of Dan Emmet, the Southern minstrel singer who composed “Dixie”, and while it offers no memorable scenes, it is sufficiently interesting. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Yes Little interest ❖ THE FALCON IN DANGER O O Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Elaine Shepard, Amelita Ward, Cliff Clark, Ed Gargan, Clarence Kolb, Felix Dasch. Screen play by Fred Niblo, Jr., and Craig Rice, based on the character created by Michael Arlen. Direction by William Clemens. R.K.O.Radio. After an intriguing first scene this mystery descends to routine plotting which is occasionally confused, and there is little to distinguish it from the general run of pictures of its type in either acting, direction or photography. The popular sleuth follows the clues to a murder and the theft of a large sum of money, by turns assisted and impeded by two women and two stupid police officers. The solution is as good as any, since no sympathy has been worked up for any of the participants. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Fair Little intereset ♦ FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS O O Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Katina Paxinou, Akim Tamiroff. Arturo de Cordova, Joseph Calleia, Vladimir Scholoff, Mikhail Rasumny, Fortunio Bonanova, Adia Kuznetzoff, Duncan Renaldo, Alexander Grenach, Victor Varconi, Leo Bulgakov, Leonid Sneguff, Lila Yarson. From the celebrated novel by Ernest Hemingway. Produced and directed by Sam Wood. Musical score by Victor Young. Paramount. Hemingway’s novel made you feel that you were living through the three days in the mountains with the Spanish Loyalists in their guerilla warfare, and the film has that same power to make you forget everything else for the time. It is a long picture, but you actually live it. Hemingway’s writing loses nothing when all the bad language is removed; it is powerful stuff and doesn’t need that extra punch. Perhaps it is the skilful use of close-ups, of which there are a great many, that makes you feel you are a part of all that is happening. The acting is remarkably fine. Probably the greatest love stories are those in which emotion is not complicated by all the exigencies of social life. Here in the most primitive surroundings, with only a few days in which to compress all the happiness of a lifetime, love gains in intensity and depth. Ingrid Bergman is a very beautiful Maria and no one could express the loveliness of character better than she does. Gary Cooper certainly has taken the part of Robert Jordan as well as it could be taken. Katina Paxinou is unforgettable as Pilar; she is a great actress with a light shining through her ugliness of make-up. Akim Tamiroff is the rascally Pablo to the core. Many of the other parts are excellent. The background of the high mountains with its cliffs and crags and trees against the azure Spanish (California) sky is very beautiful, and photography is extremely artistic; the figures are often set against dark backgrounds with firelight to bring out their faces. The music running through it all has a deep tonal quality like wind through the pines. The story follows closely the events in the book. Robert Jordan, an American who has joined forces with the Spanish loyalists in the revolution, is sent to blow up a bridge over which the Fascists will advance at just a particular moment. He spends three days preparing for this in the hideout of a handful of guerilla fighters. Pilar and Pablo head the band, and with them is a young girl, Maria, who has been rescued when they blew up a Fascist train. She has lived through horrible experiences and wants nothing to do with men until she meets “Roberto.” They are much the same type, very simple in their reactions to life. In the few days they fall very deeply in love. The film is charged with such deep emotion that any ending but tragedy would have seemed an anticlimax. Mercifully, some of the scenes are not so realistic as they were in the book, and the film has retained the beauty of the novel without its excessive horrors. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Yes, for the older No group; absorbing and artistically fine