Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tale has the aggravating quality of a dream, but there is no denying its hallucinatory vividness. It is like seeing a film spliced together from five different movies and provided with a narration from a sixth, for Desmond has the confident conviction of the reality of his fantasies possessed only by the very mad. Through it all runs a wild vein of comedy mixed with bits of loony wisdom; e.g., "All birds that don't sing make me hungry: all birds that do make...
...Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Film clips of the brutal battle of Stalingrad, which changed the course of war on the eastern front...
...this film will have, for the host of avid movie experts, the same kind of historic interest that the picaresque novel contains for the smaller group of people who still read novels. One cannot fully appreciate the modern motion picture without having some idea of the laff riots of yesteryear, when faces served principally as background for pies, and pants could be counted on to be torn off in the middle of Main Street...
...best parts of the film, however, do not come under the sight gag category. Then, as now, parody was one of the movies' strongest sources of comedy, whether it was Will Rogers playing Robin Hood, or Ben Turpin as the latin lover. The best visual humor, only fleetingly dealt with here, was really the "dictionary of facial expressions" which could turn answering the telephone into a momentous occasion...
Besides the frequent tedium, there was a major sin of omission by not including any Chaplin in this movie. Despite the fact that he is well-known and represented elsewhere, it leaves a gaping hole, and deprives the film of what would probably have been its greatest sections. In lieu of him, the narration elevates Laurel and Hardy, who appear much too often, to the position of chief gods of silent comedy, a claim which cannot be taken seriously by anyone who has seen this movie...