Word: korda
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...which since World War II began has been trying to roar like an airplane engine, took off with a movie glorifying Britain's air defenses. It was called The Lion Has Wings. Conceived by Ian Dalrymple, who scripted The Citadel, edited by American William Hornbeck, produced by Alexander Korda at his Denham lot in twelve crowded days and nights, Britain's first propaganda film of World War II was shown first to the Ministry of Information and the censors. Fearful of disclosing war secrets, they slashed out vast footage, mostly shots of balloon barrages, and the interiors...
Excellently made (with his own money, according to Producer Korda, though later the British Government bought it), the picture maintained a mounting tension as thrilling as its theme sound of droning airplane engines. But it also had a quiet humor. Sample: during the Kiel raid the navigator asked his pilot to "pick up Middleton" (a BBC lecturer who talks on gardening). Satisfied that Britons have forgotten none of the talent for first-rate propaganda they developed during World War I, the Ministry of Information announced that similar films on U-boats, convoys, a great military picture about the Maginot...
...COFFIN FOR DIMITRIOS-Eric Ambler -Knopf ($2). An English detectifiction writer sets out to trace the career of a shady Greek fig-packer whose stabbed body he saw in a Turkish morgue. Author Ambler, international traveler, scripter for Alexander Korda, artfully interweaves spidery intrigue and murder mystery...
...British bull's-eye is Four Feathers (United Artists-Alexander Korda), memorializing one of the most bullish turns British imperialism ever took: the gaudy slaughter at Omdurman with which Horatio Herbert Kitchener in 1898 avenged the massacre of General Gordon and the British garrison at Khartum, 13 years before. For Four Feathers Hungarian Alexander Korda, the Union Jack's most industrious cinematic flagwaver, sent his director-brother, Zoltan, and practically his entire cast to the Sudan, where they stumbled over some of the actual shells Kitchener had left behind, tottered in temperatures of 120° in the breeze...
...gets white feathers from his three old messmates and a fourth from his disillusioned fiancée, and then goes through hell & hot water to give them back. Although this fable is energetically enacted, Four Feathers is most memorable for its desert and battle scenes, dyed in the renowned Korda Technicolor. John Bullish characterization: Commander of the British Empire Charles Aubrey Smith, as an ancient fire-eater whose hobby is re-enacting his version of the battle of Balaclava with fruit and cutlery at the dinner table...