Word: epical
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...spiced by the presence of some well-known personalities in its recent bill-of-fare. Its latest offering, fully in keeping with that policy, is Patrick Hamilton's "Angel Street," the semi-psychological thriller which enjoyed a successful tour some four years ago and subsequently emerged as a Hollywood epic ("Gaslight") in 1944. If Francis Lederer's performance in the "name" role falls short of the standard set by Vincent Price in the original production, there is a compensating performance by a lesser-known member of the cast to preserve something of the essence of Hamilton's work...
Amber got kicked out of bed. After 38 days of exposure (at $10,000 a day), the multimillion-dollar boudoir epic looked like a bust to Darryl Zanuck, who decided to throw it all away and try again, later. Blonde little Peggy Cummins, British actress who had been chosen to play the lead, was apparently out of a job. But she got another. After all that buildup as a Restoration pillow-fighter she was suddenly transferred to Bob, Son of Battle-something wholesome about a sheep...
...only effective shots were the fearful pictures of the captured Italian underground leader about to die from German torture, and if the man's screams were the only stunning use of sound in the movie, "Open City" would burrow deep into the memory. If its epic simplicity were its only virtue, it would nonetheless rank as a fine motion picture...
...come through. Nor is it Ford's either, for the most part. It is primarily the Hollywood tradition of giving the customer the largest amount of fireworks in the longest possible picture (two hours and fifteen minutes, to be exact) that has conspired to ruin an otherwise excellent war epic...
Languishing behind barbed wire in Germany and Japan, many a Canadian had dreamed of an epic postwar party, and wondered if it would ever come true. Last week...