THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S
**½

BLITHE SPIRIT
****

THE BODY SNATCHER
***
USA
A university professor's shady liaison continues to provide him with corpses to experiment on even after the graveyard is closed off.
   The final of Lewton's classic RKO horrors is an elegantly presented teaming of two of the genre's legends, though it drags whenever they aren't on-screen.
dir: Robert Wise
cast: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Bela Lugosi, Russell Wade, Edith Atwater, Rita Corday, Sharyn Moffett

BRIEF ENCOUNTER
****½

DILLINGER
**½
USA
A very cheap (and, in its day, very profitable) noirish take on the story of one-time Public Enemy No. 1, John Dillinger. The best thing about Max Nosseck's direction is his taste in stock footage. He lifts some stunning images from other, presumably better films.
dir: Max Nosseck
cast: Lawrence Tierney, Edmund Lowe, Anne Jeffreys, Eduardo Ciannelli, Marc Lawrence, Elisha Cook Jr.

LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS
****½
France
Shot during the war and presented in two parts, this is 'poetic realism' (often more aptly renamed 'romantic pessimism') on an epic scale. Against the backdrop of the 1840s Parisian theatrical world, free-spirited Arletty rejects advances from a gallery of contrasting men. Routinely dubbed the French "Gone with the Wind" and voted the greatest French film of all time, the picture comes with a daunting reputation it doesn't necessarily live up to. Its evocation of a bygone era is particularly celebrated but most of the shots (far more elegantly lensed in the second part) are restricted purely to serving the plot and have little time to do any evoking. All the same, the narrative has a tragic sweep, the dialogue is pretty and literate, and the performances are revelatory. As the heroine, Arletty exudes a seductive worldliness that allows you to readily overlook the fact that she is 47 years old and playing much much younger, while as her true love, Jean-Louis Barrault projects the kind of 'l'amour fou' that only exists in über-romantic fiction and still makes his emotions seem grounded and sincerely his own.
dir: Marcel Carné
wr: Jacques Prévert
ph: Marc Fossard, Roger Hubert
m: Joseph Kosma
ad: Léon Barsacq, R. Cabutti, Alexander Trauner
cast: Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur, Marcel Herrand, Pierre Renoir, Maria Casarés, Louis Salou, Jeanne Marken, Etienne Decroux, Fabien Loris, Gaston Modot

I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!
***½

ISLE OF THE DEAD
***½
USA
A general is quarantined due to a plague on a Greek island in 1912.
   Dull and confusing for the most part, but the sole suspense sequence towards the end holds up remarkably well and is so unexpectedly chilling as to make the dreary preceding hour seem worthwhile.
dir: Mark Robson
cast: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Helen Thimig, Marc Cramer, Katherine Emery, Alan Napier, Jason Robards

THE LOST WEEKEND
***

MILDRED PIERCE
***

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
**½

SCARLET STREET
***½

THE SOUTHERNER
**½

SPELLBOUND
***½

THEY WERE EXPENDABLE
***
USA
John Ford and Robert Montgomery's sensitive tribute to an American boat squadron stationed in the Philippines in WWII has some sweet scenes of wartime camaraderie and emotional farewells. But the battle scenes drag on and become repetitive, as does the entire film. Well before the final 135th minute, you grow impatient for the characters to move beyond their wide-eyed wholesomeness already and hurry up and assume their preordained status of modest heroism.
dir: John Ford, Robert Montgomery
cast: Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jack Holt, Ward Bond, Marshall Thompson, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Arthur Walsh, Donald Curtis

THE THREE CABALLEROS
***½

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN
***½

A WALK IN THE SUN
***½

THE WAY TO THE STARS
*****