Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1949)

105 r%MONG the films previewed recently, the four mentioned here indicate a variety of both subject matter and quality in the current output, ranging from the unusual in the foreign product to run-of-the-mill from the Hollywood film factories. A kind of quiet desperation seems apparent as original material becomes more and more scarce. — D.C. MADAME X A Letter To Three Wives: Proof that friend husband's minor irritations with his spouse are not all ill founded is offered in an intriguing entertainment by Twentieth CenturyFox. Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote and directed the screenplay based on a Cosmopolitan magazine novel. The serio-comic treatment of married life, employing the device of the never seen but omnipresent central character (in this case a woman and the narrator), couldn't be improved upon. Addie Ross, the unseen, relates with wry humor the detailed reasons why three of her "dearest friends" have cause to worry when they get her note that she has left town with one of their husbands, without naming him. The ladies in question (Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern) are embarking on an outing with the town's underprivileged children when the note is delivered, so cannot investigate Addie's doings. But each spends the day examining her conscience and wondering if it is her mate who has up and left her. Not until the last ten minutes of the film is it revealed which of the three husbands is involved. Filmed against the familiar backgrounds of suburban life, the picture COUNTRY CLUB settings, from A Letter to Three Wives, are available to all. offers amateur movie makers many suggestions for their own home town dramas. They, too, might also choose a magazine story and shoot it in their own neighborhood. MILL END My Dream Is Yours: The hucksters are at it again in this frothy Warner Brothers concoction about talent scouts, advertising geniuses and the luscious young gal waiting impatiently for fame and fortune. There is no questioning the Isinging talents of Doris Lee, but the similarity between this and all other films of the same ilk cannot be missed. Here the young damsel is a war widow with a small son, perhaps the only angle that distinguishes it from its predecessors. A slick and highly polished product of the conveyor belt system of production, the picture merits little or no attention. We mention it only because you may be interested in the tricky effects employed in a dream sequence featuring young son Freddy. You may wish to incorporate something of this sort in your filming of Junior's Easter. CONTROVERSIAL The Chips Are Down: Whether or not you have concerned yourself with the storm raging around Jean Paul Sartre's post-war philosophy of Existentialism, you will be impressed by his realistic approach to movie making, as exemplified in this Lopert Films release. A simplification of M. Sartre's concept of the world we live in, this first Existentialist movie unquestionably serves its own intellectual ends. Of immediate interest to us, however, is its value purely as a motion picture. Director Jean Dellanoy employs the semi-documentary style to tell the story of a man and woman (Marcel Pagliero and Micheline Presle) from opposite social poles, murdered at the same moment for approximately Lopert Films LOW CAMERA angle and foreground figure add menace to The Chips are Down. similar reasons, who meet on the other side and fall in love. Given the opportunity to resume their lives, they must prove their love within twenty four hours or again face death. As events crowd inexorably toward the climax, Sartre dramatizes his thesis as epitomized in these two crossed lives, employing extraordinary cross cutting to build suspense. Full advantage is taken of natural settings, lowering the budget and increasing realism. Supernatural sequences are incredibly simple, without benefit of trick photography or muted sound effects. The Chips Are Down is another excellent example of motion picture realism in which our European cousins continue to surpass us, a technique amateurs can study to the greatest advantage. SOUVENIR The Fan: Its Broadway success last season led Twentieth Century-Fox to bring Lady Windermere's Fan to the screen under an abbreviated title and in a strangely altered form. Opening in present day London, Oscar Wilde's dated epigrammatic farce of fifty odd years ago is related in a series of flashbacks, which, while adequate, seem pointless. We bring this up merely to remind you of the great store of material in the short stories and classics of bygone years, material eminently suitable for either individual or club production. You cannot emulate Hollywood in such lush productions as the above, but there are numerous simpler tales with small casts which you might investigate for filming purposes.