Word: celluloid
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...student who murders because he thinks he is above the laws of man, follows the novel more religiously than its companion piece. Only minor characters and actions are omitted as the French production, a morbid thriller from the first scene, is forced to compress pages of introspection into mere celluloid suggestion. The fiery-eyed Roskalnikov is forced to break down and confess his act under the shrewd handling of detective Porphyr, excellently portrayed by Harry Baur, and his prostitute-turned-saint follows him to Siberia. Pierre Blanchar, who plays Roskalnikov, may be a little too hammy in his actions...
...sets for burlesque intermission comedy. Now, after stealing uniforms from the Army and Navy, they are poaching on the domain of Dorothy Lamour. A foursome composed of this comedy team and a colorless love team are shipwrecked on a Lamour island, where the whole squad wastes an hour of celluloid trapping the usual hard-boiled spy ring. Costello canters around in a ridiculous costume, dodging palm trees, spears, and a herd of dusky sarongsterettes who think it's Sadie Hawkin's day. He ends up out of breath, prying adoring arms off his bulging neck, and, as always, a Quixotic...
...Even the celluloid film is wrong. The silky panchromatic light which properly drenches a grade-A romance softens the strongest images of courage or death into a comfortable fiction...
...routines. She can so tilt her chin that, in any posture, she suggests that she is looking up from a pillow. Clark Gable has had better parts before. But in his closing speech on Bataan, he develops real heat and resonance that suggest a rather moving transition from the celluloid fictions which, for years, he has made likable, into facts which, for the duration, will be his obscure, more serious business...
...Husbands Necessary? (Paramount) may serve to record on celluloid a pattern of U.S. social behavior once considered cute: the late, unlamented antics of the country-club set. But as an attempt at scatterbrained domestic frivolity, it falls flat on its farce...