Word: heyst
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...front was an attackers' nightmare, composed of bridgeheads within bridgeheads, like a magician's nest of boxes (see map). At first the Germans had held on a line from Heyst, along the Leopold Canal, thence eastward to the suburbs of Antwerp. While one force of Canadians cleared the outskirts of the city, another struck across the Canal east of Aardenburg. The enemy was dug in, in trenches cut into the sides of the dikes, and had to be routed by intense artillery, mortar and small-arms fire, and finally flamethrowers...
...Victory (first made in 1919), Paramount had the vitals of a really scary thriller. The dreadful days on the little island of Samburan when creepy Mr. Jones and his two frightening assistants were looking for some swag can curl the hair of the most composed reader. Axel Heyst, mustachioed philosopher who lives in seclusion on the island with his Chinese servant, has heroic proportions. The howling storm which engulfs the last stages of the drama is great theatre. Alma, the helpless, buffeted pianist who escapes with Heyst to the peace of Samburan from oppression in an itinerant girls' band...
Fredric March with his solid, unruffled disposition makes a neat and finished sketch of the brooding Heyst; Sir Cedric Hardwicke is as sinister as a haunted house with his bland, cobra-like Mr. Jones; Jerome Cowan, mouthing claxon-like Cockney accents, draws an ugly but adept picture of a psychopathic killer; sparrow-voiced Betty Field turns the mousy Alma into a heroine with dimensions. But it is an actor's movie. There is never any real suspense in a story where suspense is the hallmark...