Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...motion picture which deals with a personality at all out of the ordinary comes along, some sociology-happy critic inevitably calls it a case study. Such has been the fate of The Strange One-- and nothing could be more inaccurate. Although its central character is clearly a sadist, this film is not a piece of pseudo-science; it is just a motion picture, and a very good...
...easy to understand the relief it would give a reviewer to be able to pin some sort of label on the film. The director, Jack Garfein, and the scriptwriter, Calder Willingham--who reworked his own 1947 novel and his 1953 Broadway play, both called End As a Man-- appear infuriatingly unwilling to commit themselves about what they are doing. All that can be said with complete confidence is that, in a style which captures much of the spontaneity of a really first-rate documentary, they present a story which centers on the career of one Jocko De Paris, a cadet...
Garfein and Willingham present only the bare facts of the story and refuse to construct any sort of frame of reference which would help in interpreting it. While a pure thriller in many ways, the film cries out for interpretation. This necessity, however, does not in any way detract from the quality of the picture, but in fact adds an extra dimension to its interest. If I may still be permitted to voice a bit of sociological jargon of my own, the story of De Paris seems at bottom to represent the conflict between a very tightly organized society...
...dainty Southern belles, and dashing Southern gentlemen swearing love to Northern girls, the movie pursues a great epic-theme: the heroic South certainly got a rotten deal after the Civil War. In an attempt to insure that "carpetbagger" will leave a bitter taste in every moviegoer's mouth, the film details the labor pains of the nation's birth...
...acting is poor, but not wretched; the film is choppy, lacing together snapshots, almost, of war on the front, life at home, carpetbagger atrocities, and Lincoln--brave, good Lincoln in death; but it achieves some continuity, and is the best epic I have seen; which doesn't say much for movie epics in general--or for Birth of a Nation...