Word: inept
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...leisure. Marlowe's more serious work takes him to a glass-eyed bookseller's orgy-nest just in time to find him dead, with Miss Vickers, squiffed in a Chinese gown, giggling over the remains. He takes the heiress home and hurries on to watch a painfully inept blackmailer (Louis Jean Heydt) catch a bellyful of lead; no time later, Marlowe is kicking the killer in the face...
Besides making audiences uneasy about the safety of hero and heroine, this picture may also make people a bit uneasy about the efficiency of U.S. intelligence services. The inept way G-Agents Bergman and Grant fumble around with Mr. Rains's key ring and his cellar, clumsily knocking over bottles of uranium samples, may make audiences conclude that the pair would have tough going with the simplest civil service exam. But with Messrs. Hecht and Hitchcock on their side, no mere Nazi is quick enough for them at the finish...
...taking leave from my American friends, I want to say: I don't know when our peoples will be able to shake hands peacefully, when inept and criminal speeches about a third world war will stop, when we shall again meet, like brothers. . . . I want to believe that this will be soon, that the American people will tame its rabble-rousers, its Fascists, the men who dream of a crusade against Moscow, and with love I tell America: Thanks for the friendly reception and goodbye...
...Bride Wore Boots (Paramount) is a depressing little example of what can happen to a romantic farce when it is mauled by inept hands. Plainly designed as an airy, sophisticated yarn, the film follows the marital ups & downs of Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Cummings. After seven years of marriage, they are the parents of two healthy, handsome and singularly bad-mannered children...
Time for Squeeze. UNRRA men in Hunan find it practically impossible to determine how much rice is actually on hand. Chinese officialdom, far more conditioned to famine than to organized relief, or more concerned with "squeeze" (timehonored graft) than with efficiency, often seems utterly callous or thoroughly inept. There is no effort to control private rice supplies. Minor officials of CNRRA-UNRRA's Chinese extension-are afraid to make decisions. They will watch a village starve and report it back to UNRRA as dramatic evidence of famine and the need for more help, instead of sending the villagers...