rhoda-9's Reviews

The Stars Are Singing (1953)

3/10

14 October 2023

A horrible product of that horrible decade, this oppressively wholesome movie stars a seventeen-year-old playing a fifteen-year-old dressed as someone half her age and addressed as "little girl" (a decade earier, Linda Darnell, at sixteen, was making love on screen with Tyrone Power.) Rosemary Clooney, a Doris Day clone, sings her big hit, the slinky "Come on a My House," but is otherwise routine. Nothing to suggest the very dark side that led her to marry Jose Ferrer, especially as she is always wearing outfits that make her look like the leader of a girl-scout troop.

Two youngish actors playing Rosie's friends were, fortunately, never heard from again, particularly the one who acts as if he is on speed while acting in a children's TV show. He has THREE scenes with his dog which are supposed to be funny because he keeps commanding the dog, who does nothing. This is just as funny as when someone you know does it.

Then there is another guy who loves Rosie but tells her that she is not normal because she wants to be a singer rather than marry him and have lots of kids. At the end they are together, so good luck with that, Rosie.

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Footlight Frenzy (1984 TV Movie)

1/10

No, no, no, no, no

8 October 2023

The favourable reviews here (is it a cabal?) are mysterious indeed. If you really want to see this you can do so on the rarefilmm website, but don't waste your time. It is coarse, stupid, amateurish, and not at all funny. The writing is one cliche after another, and the actors seem to think it is extremely comic to shout, contort their faces, and windmill their arms about. If you want to see a funny show about a play that goes badly wrong, see Doubting Thomas, with Will Rogers. There is also, of course, Noises Off, but I don't think the movie is very good. With a good cast and direction, in the theatre, it is dangerously hilarious.

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Babbitt (1934)

7/10

Good in spite of itself

10 September 2023

Considerably changed from the novel, Babbitt diverges most from it in the personae of its two leads. George F. Babbitt is a normal semi-educated, average-looking philistine businessman, someone who would have accurately been represented by another of the cast, Alan Hale. Instead, he is portrayed by Guy Kibbee, who has Fat Fool written all over him. Sinclair Lewis wanted his readers to identify Babbitt as a member of their own families, perhaps even themselves, but no one would identify with Kibbee, a blustering, hapless figure of fun.

At the other extreme, George's wife, Myra, is the beautiful and obviously intelligent Aline MacMahon. The wife ought to be a frumpy dimwit who idolises George, who is indeed her superior. But this Myra, as she herself says, regards George as a little boy, protects him, and saves him, most dramatically (in a way that makes no sense at all) from destroying his reputation and losing their money.

However, having said that, the film is full of funny lines and tart observations on the childishness of men and the maturity of women, and there is plenty of social texture to enjoy, as well as the inimitable Hattie McDaniel, as the Babbitts' maid, who sees it as her duty to pep up their dinnertime with colourful bulletins from the other side of the tracks.

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The Bad Seed (1956)

2/10

They deserve to die--for that kind of acting

10 September 2023

Murderous little Patty McCormack and her mother, Nancy Kelly, both should have been whacked long before the end of this overlong movie, for acting that is, in the latter case, sloppy and hammy, and, in the former, grotesque.

Everything about Rhoda Penmark is wrong--she ought to be unobtrusive, quietly good, the last child anyone would suspect of wrongdoing. Yet Patty is such a little freak in her platinum-blonde pigtails, starched petticoats, swooping gestures, violent mood swings, and affected speech that she is obviously someone to keep a nervous eye on. When she got into roller skates and glided down the street, it was impossible for me not to imagine Carol Burnett in the part.

There is one message that everyone who made the movie seems to have overlooked. Everyone reassures Mrs. P. that psychopathy is not hereditary, that character is all down to environment, so she should not blame herself for having passed on bad genes. Well, heredity is indeed no one's fault, but if environment is responsible, who else is to blame but the parents? In that case, she has produced a serial killer, and she SHOULD feel guilty!

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Stage Struck (1936)

5/10

Should be stricken from the records

5 August 2022

I doubt if any of the principals were happy to include Stage Struck on their CVs--the songs are drab, and the screenplay seems to have been cut and pasted from those of several other very familiar movies, with its narcissistic, temperamental leading lady; cute, virtuous Midwestern newbie; nervous, devious producer; trampy chorus girls; dictatorial backer; and opening-night crisis when the understudy becomes a star.

It's very hard, however, to believe that this one ever got any raves--and, indeed, Jeanne Madden in real life made two more pictures, then dropped from sight. With her pinched voice, crinkly-faced wholesome looks, and complete lack of sex appeal, she's another Janet Gaynor--of whom one was more than enough. Joan Blondell, usually a reason to cheer up, mugs and clowns to a degree that would be over the top in a revue sketch--she's supposed to be a Park Avenue socialite but makes the role into that of a common, vulgar girl pretending to be one.

Dick Powell, tricked out with an imitation Don Ameche look, seems to be pretending to be somewhere else.

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The Web (1947)

5/10

Only mystery is why people think it's good

3 July 2022

Warning: Spoilers

I have never understood why anyone gave Edmond O'Brien the leading role in numerous movies, and why anyone would want to watch them. I saw this because I like Ella Raines (charming, adorable smile, a kind of brunette Veronica Lake) and because Vincent Price can be interestingly creepy. But O'Brien's presence is no help to this extremely obvious, plodding film. He is, as always, clumsy, sheepish, and self-deprecating, with the world's most insincere smile. He confesses past failures with girls like someone begging for pity, not like someone being honest and amused at himself. He is, in words of one syllable, a big dumb lug.

There is, of course, no chemistry between him and Raines, but her character is already murky because of her association with Price. She is his secretary, but is she or is she not his lover? The script clearly wants to avoid any impression that she is a Bad Girl, but she talks about having gone with Price to Paris, and she spends so much time in his house she practically lives there. Then there is the wheezy-voiced, loutish William Bendix, whose purpose on earth seems to be to make Edmond O'Brien look attractive.

Worst of all is the script--an obvious frame-up is immediately questioned by both O'Brien and the police. The former tries, with an extremely inept trick, to get the goods on Price, who isn't fooled for a minute. But it's all right because the cops are secretly still on the case, and have tricks of their own--including a doctor's report that is totally ridiculous and unbelievable but that shakes Price to his core. The whole thing has an air of nobody having tried very hard.

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The Uninvited (1944)

8/10

Even if you hate ghost stories...

17 February 2022

I have no patience with ghost stories because there are no such things as ghosts, so how can I believe in them, much less be frightened by them? I enjoy only films which make a joke of the whole idea, such as The Ghost Goes West (wonderful) and The Canterville Ghost (okay--the lovely Oscar Wilde story was junked up with topical irrelevancies and the hopeless Robert Young).

But I make one, and only one, exception for a serious ghost story, and that is The Uninvited. The setting is beautiful, the actors are all extremely effective (the creepy turn of the rarely seen Cornelia Otis Skinner as a domineering lesbian is a knockout), but, most of all, the story is powered by an idea that is in itself forceful and presented with delicacy and taste. One can regard the ghosts (whose influence is shown but who do not themselves appear) as an extended poetic conceit.

The theme of a fight for truth and justice that transcends death is such a powerful one that even a ghost-hater can go along with it. Or one could see the theme as the struggle of two women for the soul of a child--so powerful that it makes no difference that they are both dead. Though Gail Russell is an adult, she conveys the fear and bewilderment of a child who doesn't understand the mad and mysterious behaviour of the adults in charge of her. And one can also see this as an imaginative expression of the way that any adult can be controlled by people who are dead, in the sense of, consciously or not, copying or reacting against their parents. In this sense, all of us are in thrall to ghosts.

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Cross-Country Romance (1940)

5/10

Dim retread of "Love on a Bet"

31 January 2022

"Love on a Bet" was a cute movie about Gene Raymond and Wendy Barrie falling in love during a cross-country chase. The public must have liked it too, because the studio decided to make it again--the same theme and the same leads. But they didn't bother this time to get an amusing script. How's this for a variation--at the beginning of "Love on a Bet," Gene Raymond has to appear in public in his underwear; at the beginning of this movie, Wendy Barrie does. And how's this for exposition--Barrie tells Raymond when they meet, "I'm an heiress. I have loads of money. I'm running away from a marriage that my mother arranged for me." Yes, there's a bit of "It Happened One Night" thrown in too.

Not only is the script uninspired and lame, the direction limps as well, holding a shot too long or starting one too early. Hedda Hopper is unpleasant and boring as Barrie's mother, and Barrie and Raymond have no chemistry--there is no justification, in the script or their acting, for either one to suddenly fall in love with the other.

This movie should have been titled "Let Well Enough Alone."

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Se io fossi onesto (1942)

7/10

A merry mix-up

17 December 2021

The young and very handsome Vittorio De Sica stars in this comedy of a good-for-nothing who, sentenced to prison for a short term, hires a respectable but poor young man (De Sica) to take his place. The substitute serves the term, gets out--and unexpectedly has to continue the impersonation, while the guilty scapegrace has to assume his identity. The comedy is mild and gentle rather than the quick, knockabout farce of an American film, but, if not hilarious, the movie is very pleasant, and one really feels for the poor young man, forced to dig himself in deeper and deeper.

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The Voice in the Night (1941)

4/10

Ludicrous and insulting

2 October 2021

A more unrealistic movie about Nazi Germany could not be imagined. Set in 1939, after six years of Hitler, when Austria and the Sudetenland had been invaded, it posits that the German people had no idea that Hitler wanted war. Apart from one brief reference to "a Jewish tailor" who had some sort of trouble and a quick flash on one anti-semitic sign, one would never guess that German Jews had been treated in any way out of the ordinary. The naivete is personified in the beautiful, swan-like Diana Wynyard, who becomes director of Nazi pageants--she looks out at Nuremberg stadium filled with swastika flags and says, "I must say, it looks rather good."

Diana thinks her husband, Clive Brook, is a traitor for starting a short-wave station on which he broadcasts such shocking charges as that the Nazis tell lies and preach hatred. He is finally trapped by Raymond Huntley, not the most terrifying Nazi since in British films he is always the prissy civil servant or the ineffectual bank manager.

The point of this movie is as bewildering as it is bizarre. The British, in the middle of a war, are being told not to blame the Germans because they didn't know Hitler was a bad egg? If some German sympathisers were behind this film, they couldn't have done very much damage, since it is very, very dull. There can't have been too many viewers who stayed through the whole thing to be propagandized.

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Shadow of the Law (1930)

5/10

Odd and feeble film

2 September 2021

Warning: Spoilers

William Powell is the only character of substance in this movie, but, charming as he is, he can't compensate for its lack of characters and plot. After having what must be the worst defense counsel in the world, Powell is convicted of murder when he actually killed a man in self-defense. There is a witness who would exculpate Powell, but it seems he is never called, or, if called, not believed--because he is black? The woman he was helping disappears, and never turns up to support the man who saved her life--for no reason that we are ever told. Later on she is found, and Powell, who has escaped from prison, tries in vain to get her to tell her story. However, he does manage to convince a friendly policeman, who promises that he will visit the woman and beat the truth out of her. End of movie.

Nutty or what?

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Skylark (1941)

6/10

Very dated and not very funny

10 August 2021

This is one of those movies where a childless, jobless wife has an enormous, beautiful house, a cook, a butler, more exquisite clothes than she can count, and we're supposed to feel sorry for her. Because she is married to Ray Milland, who, after five years, gives her a huge, passionate kiss when he comes home. Yeah, that's suffering, all right.

Claudette Colbert's problem is that Ray spends too much time and thought on his job--you know, the one that provides the house, cook, butler, etc. So she flips and takes off with the pleasant but sexless Brian Aherne. Wouldn't be my move.

True, Ray is something of a bully. He literally strong-arms Claudette into coming with him, and harshly orders her in a way that a servant wouldn't take these days. So, to satisfy the women in the audience, he has to be made to grovel. And to keep Claudette from a complete triumph that would make her look domineering, she has to be made ridiculous.

It's all part of the movie's desperation to pretend marriage is romantic and amusing. Can I explain something? It isn't.

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Rumba (1935)

5/10

Won't stir anyone's blood

2 August 2021

George Raft may have cut quite a swath through the women of Hollywood, but I'm afraid that, for me, his image will never recover the look of him in a girl's blouse. Yes, it's modeled on flamenco costumes, but with little ruffles covering him from neck to waist, George looks as if he has put his head through a little girl's petticoat.

The rest of Rumba is similarly anaphrodisiac. Carole Lombard, playing a bored socialite, looks half asleep, even in moments of fear and passion, and the dances, supposed to be Latin American sensual-sensational, are very mild stuff. In the final number, the chorus girls and boys seem to be getting it on far more than the two principals, who do a standard Astaire-Rogers dance, and needless to say it is mediocre.

The one, unexpected plus here is the Mexican actress Margo. Lovely, sensual, and sensitive, she is so much more womanly that Carole Lombard that only enforced patriotism would keep George fixated on the icy Carole.

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Die andere Seite (1931)

8/10

Just wonderful

29 July 2021

Journey's End (the play on which this movie is based) never fails--people come to scoff at the portrayal of life in a WWI trench, and stay to cry. The movie is even more gripping--the fresh-faced young chap from England coming out to join Stanhope, his old chum and his sister's fiance, and being shocked at what he sees and smells. Stanhope reeks of the whisky he knocks back to keep him going after three years without a break. He expects to die, and he accepts that his death will be futile.

Our intimacy with the trench-bound men is created by dozens of little scenes that show us their jokes, their affection for one another in the midst of despair and the countless humiliations of trying, however pessimistically, to stay alive. The great Conrad Veidt is more than 10 years too old to play Hauptmann Stanhope but who cares--he conveys all the bitterness and sorrow of the role without ever being affected or melodramatic.

It is strange indeed seeing--and hearing--Germans playing Tommies, shouting Schnell! And Donnerwetter! But the effect, of course, is to heighten the Kameradschaft (as the title of a famous silent film had it) between them and us. And it can be no stranger than it was for the Germans, watching an American play one of them the year before in All Quiet on the Western Front, to which this film could be a reciprocal gesture. But that's not the only disjunction--at one point, the cook, distraught at the absence of his terrier, calls him: "Kitti! Kitti!"

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The Washington Masquerade (1932)

7/10

Muddled but interesting

23 June 2021

Though the older brother, Lionel was always the lesser of the Barrymores. John got all the sex appeal, and Lionel was always (at least in films) the dear old curmudgeon who wouldn't hurt a flea, the doting grandpa, the feisty but cute old man. In other words, as Sheridan Whiteside said, "Excuse me while I vomit." However, in this movie, Lionel actually acts rather than overacts for once (though he still can't keep his hands away from his lapels). True, the script gives him too many speeches, and there is too much hoke in them (God, Washington at Valley Forge). But there is a real performance here as the angry old man and the old fool who should have known better--a wholehearted one.

Lionel falls into the web of Karen Morley, a money-mad vamp in a transparent sequinned negligee who carries a torch for her absent boyfriend, Nils Asther (not VERY convincing as a wild Romeo), who turns up again. For her he throws away the Senate seat from which he was going to spearhead a drive to nationalize the energy industries--a radical policy even today (sadly).

It's hard to believe that such a fire-breathing populist as Lionel would fall so hard for a superficial, deceitful woman, and it's disappointing that he succumbs to her rather than to the machinations of politics and big business. But what is unusual about the movie is that the latter are shown in such detail, and with such contempt for the average American. This was a time of tremendous upheaval and uncertainty in America, and if the movie falls victim to that, it does give us a sense of the national malaise.

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Call It a Day (1937)

7/10

See it if you like English genteel charm, skip if you don't

13 June 2021

This is the first time in all the years I have been following imdb that I have seen a movie rating that I thought was too low. Call It a Day is the kind of movie that, depending on your taste, can be seen as charming or annoying. It's a gentle, pleasant little picture meant for those who like this sort of thing.

All the players here are attractive and, yes, charming--handsome, sturdy Ian Hunter, who deserved better than all those roles as a soon-to-be-discarded fiance; gracious Frieda Inescourt; adorable, bumbling Roland Young. Only the exquisite 21-year-old Olivia de Havilland gives a poor performance, way over the top as the love-crazed girl, one that a better director got her to tone down in the same role in It's Love I'm After later the same year.

The relentlessly nice, genteel atmosphere may seem phony to some--but this was a genteel time. Still, there is a wonderful performance from Alice Brady, as Inescourt's chattering, racy friend, and de Havilland throws herself at a married man with a shameless intensity not likely to be found in American movies of that date. The dialogue more often pleases by its familiarity than its cleverness, but it does please. There are more ways to be charming than to be Noel Coward.

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Cry Danger (1951)

6/10

Don't get your hopes up

7 June 2021

Goodness knows what some of the other reviewers have been smoking, but I can sincerely and soberly say that this film is no better than adequate--which, as George S. Kaufman said, was another word for inadequate. The casting is third rate--stodgy William Conrad instead of Sydney Greenstreet as the fat crime boss; annoying Richard Erdman instead of Mickey Rooney or Eddie Albert as the chipper, boyish pal; Rhonda Fleming instead of just about anybody. Miss F's only qualification for the screen was her hair, and as this is a film noir we're left with the bland, gracious personality of a commercial for washing machines.

Powell, doing his dependable noir number, is about the only reason to see this flick, with its plodding pace and stale, warmed-over wisecracks. There is no excitement, tension, terror, sex--none of those good dirty thrills one expects from a foray among criminals and bad girls. If you start watching and decide to stay in the hope it will get better--it won't, so cut your losses.

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They Won't Believe Me (1947)

2/10

Who would?

26 April 2021

Louis B. Mayer said he was puzzled at Robert Young's being a movie star--"He has no sex appeal!" Too right. Young is more believable as a kindergarten teacher (the kind with no extracurricular interest in little kids) than as a two-timing gigolo husband. When he calls his mistress "baby," you feel that the word is poison in his mouth. Susan Hayward is as pretty and tough as ever, and very appealing, but if the moviemakers thought that Double Indemnity would strike twice they were sadly mistaken.

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No Time for Sergeants (1958)

2/10

Really don't bother

30 November 2020

This extremely dated comedy has but one joke--a draftee who is really, really dumb--and it clearly believes we love hearing it again and again. It asks us to believe not only that someone is this dumb but that everyone he meets is so astounded by him that he reduces them to gibbering or aquiescence. Also, it is very slow.

It seems incredible that this movie was made and was successful AFTER the gold standard of service comedy was aired--Sergeant Bilko, of course. The gags in Bilko are a million times funnier and the pace a million times quicker. This picture just plods along, as predictable as it is banal. Bosley Crowther, in his review when the picture came out, said that the scene in the latrine had the biggest laugh in the movie. I waited patiently through this scene, but it was over before I had even smiled.

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First Lady (1937)

5/10

Disappointing, lifeless movie of Kaufman play

14 November 2020

It must have sounded like a cute idea--a cabal of Washington wives turns out to be the real power brokers who decide the Presidential nominee. But in practice it is very tame and dull. One keeps waiting for the zingers but in fact the wisecracks are mild and, for the most part, not very funny. Louise Fazenda, as the leader of 5 million obviously Republican clubwomen, is less a caricature of a dim, prissy, provincial battleaxe than simply a depressing reproduction of the real thing. And though the film ridicules her to the audience, she is never embarrassed, much less humiliated, to the other characters.

This tameness pervades the movie, which never even mentions the two main parties, and which reduces the horse-trading and viciousness of arriving at a candidate to one stuffy after-dinner chat, as unbelievable as it is boring. Walter Connolly, whom no one would take seriously, is miscast as the awful candidate--the part needed someone with a resonant voice and an authoritative, if pompous, manner. It's nice to see Verree Teasdale (Mrs. Adolphe Menjou) in a part of some size, but she is called upon only to be exasperated or icily condescending, and is not very funny in either mood.

Kay Francis, the movie's greatest clothes horse and a sparkling comic actress, is the only reason to see this, but she, too, has to fight the sluggish dialogue to keep her character merry and afloat.

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We Were Dancing (1942)

5/10

We are bored

2 October 2020

Well, it's half a sophisticated pair. There's divine, debonair Melvyn Douglas...and arch, coy, 40-year-old Norma Shearer as not only a romantic maiden but Princess Victoria Anastasia, if you please. The title would seem to suggest a European origin, but Norma is as American as waffles and half as tasty.

The script is likewise pretentious and phony: "Humility is the saving grace of the bourgeoisie." I've never noticed it. Then there are all those supporting actresses screeching and fluttering to make you think they are high society types.

Dismal.

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Make Me a Star (1932)

7/10

A Twenties story that looks odd in the Thirties

15 September 2020

A remake of the silent Merton of the Movies, this picture also shows a naive hayseed who thinks his correspondence course in acting means he is sure to succeed in Hollywood. It was a story of a bumptious hero with more confidence than sense, perfect for the era of the big talker and the super-salesman, figures whom the audience enjoyed seeing taken down but with whose energy and vigor they sympathized.

Merton of the Thirties, however, is notable for his pathos and helplessness. At times he is so slow-witted that he seems to be not just dim but mentally ill, someone who should not be laughed at. He lived in an orphanage, then worked at a menial job for a sour old grocer and his wife and apparently has had nothing to do with girls (Erwin is 29). At one point, when Hollywood laughs at him and rejected him, we see him carefully picking through a bin full of cardboard lunch boxes to find something to eat. Impossible not to think of the men and women in real life (this was pre-Roosevelt) doing the same.

The movie is very nicely made, Joan Blondell turns in her usual appealing performance of the brash good sport, and there are plenty of funny lines and situations. But it is consistent with the rest of the movie (and extremely laudable) that the ending is full of pathos as well. It's a very interesting example of a story that does its best to be escapist comedy but that recognizes that real life and real people are more important than movie fantasies.

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Let Us Be Gay (1930)

5/10

Crummy housewife fantasy, with two good points

9 September 2020

Plenty of movies are designed to appeal to mindless housewives (and housemaids), but this sounds as if it was written by one. Norma Shearer discovers that her husband has been playing around, so she walks out. Three years pass, and drab, dull Norma is suddenly a glamorous society woman wearing couture gowns and doted on by society men. This transformation may be hard to believe, but it becomes utterly impossible when one watches her in action. When a man suggests a ride on his yacht or a visit to her bedroom after dark, she rolls out a laugh that sounds like a horse playing piano, pushes him away, tosses her head, and even says, "Now, don't spoil things." Surely any teenage girl, even back then, could do better. But it gets her ex-husband hot enough to beg her, "Give me a chance to make you love me again." Only in dreams.

The two good points: (1) the pre-divorce Norma, with no makeup, a hairdo that looks like a very old cat, and a limp outfit that she says is homemade and looks it. If Norma doesn't rate any praise for her acting, she gets full marks for bravery. (2) Marie Dressler. With a face like a bulldog and a coiffure and gowns of thirty years earlier, Marie stomps off with the movie like the great clown she is. The leer when she says proudly that she is being "subtle" is something to see.

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The Rich Are Always with Us (1932)

5/10

Dated, silly--but George Brent really appealing in a real-life romance

3 September 2020

I had always thought George Brent rather wooden and recessive--the reason so many tempestuous leading ladies loved acting opposite him (no chance of being outshone). But as Ruth Chatterton's would-be lover (they married after making the movie), he is very sweet, even exciting at times, and shows genuine enthusiasm when grappling with her in the back of a taxi.

Unfortunately, Ruth allows only hugs and a stolen kiss and then fights him off, in a manner more suited to a frightened teenager than to a middle-aged woman. (Though we are told that her character is 30, Ruth was actually ten years older; Brent was 28.) This happens even though she is divorced from a husband who left her for a petulant little drip half her age. Although Brent keeps proposing marriage, she thinks it's too soon, and lectures him in such arch dialogue as "You're not the least attractive of men, and I'm not the least susceptible of women." We are supposed to admire Ruth for being chaste and noble, but today she just seems ridiculous.

Wasted and demeaned in the movie is a young and very beautiful Bette Davis, who is in love with Brent, and follows him everywhere, annoying him with endless silly chatter. In real life as well Davis was keen on Brent but he wasn't interested. But only two years later his marriage to Chatterton had ended, her career was nearly over, and Bette had made Of Human Bondage, which made her a star. Talk about backing the wrong horse!

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Suzy (1936)

4/10

Awful, awful, awful

12 August 2020

What on earth did the people who concocted this horror (Dorothy Parker among them) think they were doing? Cary Grant and Jean Harlow, two of the most likable of all movie stars, do everything they can to make themselves, respectively, unpleasant or boring. Grant overdoes his usual endearingly boisterous persona so much that you want to tell him to calm down and shut up, and his character is a heel who is cruel to his wife. Harlow is sweet, earnest, sincere, taking good care of an old man while she hides her pain and endures sacrifice for the good of the country. Who wants that? Give us the brassy dame who chewed out men twice her size and slugged snooty debutantes.

The script is full of situations that are as tiresome as they are cliched, and the women of World War I wearing fashions that would not appear until 20 years later (the date of the movie) is ridiculous and condescending. Did the movie-makers think that patrons would walk out if they couldn't see Harlow's calves? Every aspect of the ending is as ludicrous as it is disgusting--we are asked to cheer as a woman is burnt alive and to feel uplifted when a speaker says that courage gives war its "purity."

I am giving the movie four points for the song, which is very nice, and which Cary Grant sings in a very cute way. But when you've seen that, abandon ship.

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