John Ford's sanctification of a Mexican whisky priest, from the Graham Greene novel, The Power and the Glory. It is Ford's highest-striving movie, which for him will have to mean his most experimentally Expressionistic. (It is also, as he stubbornly maintained in the face of public and critical rejection, his …
A priest (Fonda) in Latin America is pursued by a ruthless police lieutenant carrying out the dictates of an oppressive, anti-clerical government. There's another fugitive as well, an American killer on the run, and the paths of the two hunted men cross with fateful consequences. Directed By John Fordand Emilio …
No one could accuse Robert Montgomery of having no definite idea how to direct a movie in this, his first time at the helm. As ideas go, though, this experiment in subjective camerawork (the entire movie is seen through the eyes of private detective Philip Marlowe, who comes off seeming …
A severely deluded mental patient with whiskers to spare (Edmund Gwenn) escapes from an old people’s home and proceeds to convince the world that he’s none other than Kris Kringle — never mind his "latent maniacal tendencies" and penchant for wielding a cane. First off, if this really is Santa …
Chaplin as a Gallic seducer and murderer of rich women. The abandonment of the Tramp character and the addition of mordancy and morbidity to his comic moods seem to be brave and invigorating steps, although there is no advancement in film technique, no decrease in sentimentality, and a heavy increase …
Carol Reed's celebrated stab at film tragedy is way wide of the mark: a mere flesh wound. James Mason plays a dying Irish revolutionary fleeing from a police dragnet with all the agility of an oak plank, as rigor mortis begins to set in long before his time is up. …
Perhaps the best private-eye movie made in the Forties, when competition was stiffest. The idiomatic narration and dialogue are no doubt funnier now, in unintended ways, than they once were, but Robert Mitchum's narcotized delivery preserves some of the poetry, too. More immune to time's passage is the visual poetry, …
Hollywood's Freudian fad of the Forties invades the Western. Interesting but inevitably dated, and a bit outside Raoul Walsh's range as a director. Niven Busch, author of the mythologically charged Western novels Duel in the Sun and The Furies, wrote the screenplay; and his own production company oversaw the project: …
Postwar film noir from the country that gave us the term. (Originally released in the U.S. as Jenny Lamour.) The final plot twist reveals nothing so much as the essential trashiness of the project, yet the atmosphere of damp nocturnal streets and seedy backstage show business and European sexual frankness …
Atmospheric crime drama, from a Dorothy Hughes novel, set in the multicultural Southwest and discreetly sensitive to the social status of Mexicans and Indians. Remarkable single-take opening shot, into and around a bus depot. Robert Montgomery is somewhat less persuasive as the hardcase hero than as the director of the …
Little Johnny is taken to his grandmother’s plantation where he meets Uncle Remus and is guided by his stories about Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and Brer Bear (which are shown in animation). Johnny finds friendship with a local girl, Ginny Favers, but is bullied by her cruel brothers. When he …