--- Y KANT GoRAN RiTE? ---
[1956]

ANASTASIA
**
½

APARAJITO
****
½
India
The middle chapter in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, aptly and evocatively titled 'The Unvanquished', is the most elegant. Now-teenaged Apu becomes man of the house prematurely and is torn between tradition and opportunity. His conundrum is subtly reflective of the greater, abruptly evolving society as well as of every new generation's struggle to balance matters of ancestry and ambition.
wr/dir: Satyajit Ray
ph: Subrata Mitra
m: Ravi Shankar
cast: Karuna Bannerjee, Smaran Ghosal, Kanu Bannerjee, Pinaki Sengupta, Santi Gupta, Ramani Sengupta, Ranibala

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
***

BABY DOLL
***
½
USA
A bankrupt middle-aged businessman eagerly anticipates the consummation of his marriage on his wife's 20th birthday, while she is pursued by his business rival.

   This famously condemned Tennessee Williams adaptation is really quite stagy and drawn-out, though it does boast elegantly stark cinematography and production design and isn't entirely uninvolving as such.
dir: Elia Kazan
wr:
Tennesse Williams
ph: Boris Kaufman
pd:
Richard Sylbert, Paul Sylbert
cast:
Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Lonny Chapman, Rip Torn

BUS STOP
****
½

FORBIDDEN PLANET
***

GERVAISE
***½
France
René Clément goes to great lengths to preserve the period detail in this adaptation of an Emile Zola soap opera of (what else?) working-class degradation. As an evocation of mid-19th-century Parisian slums it's impressive and always atmospheric. But it suffers from the awkward pacing that typically haunts slavish literary adaptations where faithfulness to the plot is prized above the development of human-like characters.
dir: René Clément
wr: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
ph: Robert Juillard
cast: Maria Schell, François Perier, Suzy Delair, Armand Mestral, Jacques Harden, Mathilde Casadesus, Jacques Hilling

GIANT
***
½

THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT
***
USA
Playboy’s second favourite blonde bombshell of the 50s plays a gangster’s glamourous but screechy moll who is to be made into a pop star even though all she wants out of life is to stay home and cook for her man. Famously at one point, Mansfield ends up clutching two jugs of milk directly in front of her humongous breasts. At times she appears to be actively lampooning Marilyn Monroe, but her voice changes from scene to scene so it’s difficult to tell which parts are intentional.
   The director is Frank Tashlin – several gags remind you of his Looney Tunes background. You wish there were a few more that did.
   The picture is also one of those rock’n’roll movies that tend to serve as a time capsule of the period, only slightly more sophisticated than most (since there’s no surfing and the teenagers are restricted to bit parts). In any case it features energetic performances from a gallery of pop culture icons of the likes of Little Richard and Eddie Cochran.
dir: Frank Tashlin
cast: Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O’Brien, Henry Jones, Julie London, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Juanita Moore, The Platters, Gene Vincent, The Hi Hat Club, Eddie Fontaine

HIGH SOCIETY
*
½
USA
A vulgar, redundant remake of "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with ugly colour, grating performances and wholly uninspired staging.
dir: Charles Walters
cast:
Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Blackmer, Margalo Gillmore, Louis Calhern, Lydia Reed, John Lund

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
***
½

THE KILLING
****

THE KING AND I
***

A MAN ESCAPED
***½
France
Certainly it contains more thought and humanity than the traditional prison movie - or at least it contains Mozart's Mass in C Minor (the tune of choice to accompany the emptying of slop buckets) rather than a boom-boom Hollywood orchestra. Also, crucial deaths and events are staged off-screen so that they may linger in your mind more pointedly. But precisely to what extent the minutia of Gestapo prison life (and escape) evoke God's absence or presence in one's soul may ultimately depend on the individual viewer.
wr/dir: Robert Bresson
ph: L.H. Burel
cast: François Letterier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod, Jacques Ertaud, Jean Paul Delhumeau, Roger Treherne

THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
***
½

THE SEARCHERS
*****

THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW
***
USA
Douglas Sirk earned a reputation posthumously for making studio pictures in the Eisenhower era that subtly subverted
notions of the American dream. But even his supporters seem to have neglected this particular entertaining but unsubtle melodrama of his, which seeks to subvert those very notions mentioned above rather openly and explicitly. In this case trouble brews beneath a flawless suburban veneer in the form of a toy factory executive's mid-life crisis, as he begins to semi-neglect his über-neglectful family when he catches up with an old flame. His teenage son and daughter are among the most brattish and ungrateful of all the brattish and ungrateful offspring in Sirk's oeuvre and here, they're given a more prominent role than usual. There's also a heavily symbolic toy robot involved (which isn't quite as potent as the TV set in the previous year's "All That Heaven Allows"). The picture aims to be the "American Beauty" of its time but it also wants to be a tearjerker. Fred MacMurray stumbles badly every time he has to recite a monologue, which happens often. The great Barbara Stanwyck however lends some maturity to the proceedings.
dir: Douglas Sirk
cast:
Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Patricia Crowley, William Reynolds, Gigi Perreau, Judy Nugent, Jane Darwell

WRITTEN ON THE WIND
**
½
USA
A florid, overheated soap opera, which has its fans, who often appreciate it as comedy.
dir: Douglas Sirk
cast:
Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Robert Keith, Grant Williams

 

YET TO SEE:

BIGGER THAN LIFE;
BURMESE HARP, THE;
EARLY SPRING;
FRIENDLY PERSUASION;
STREET OF SHAME;
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS

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