Word: paramount
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Unless you're a timeaddict or have let Henry Luce spoil your fun with his picture mag, you'll find Paramount's MacMurray-Stanwyck-Edward G. Robinson thriller good and exciting entertainment, although you may be able to knock a few dents in the plot. James M. Cain writes tough, sharp prose, and judging from "Double Indemnity," his stuff makes even better moviegoing than reading...
...Masters. Scientific exactitude in tuning is expected of any hack, but there is a further area where taste, artistry and individuality are paramount. No two master tuners will tune a piano exactly alike, nor will any master tune a piano the same way for different occasions. A piano that is perfectly tuned and "regulated" (by fluffing up the felt hammers to soften tone) for a broadcasting studio will sound all wrong in Carnegie Hall. A piano that is to accompany a violin is adjusted differently from one that is to accompany a cello. A tuner with a sensitive personal touch...
Double Indemnity (Paramount) is the season's nattiest, nastiest, most satisfying melodrama. James M. Cain's novelette was carnal and criminal well beyond screen convention. Director Billy Wilder's casting is just as unconventional. Naturals for their parts are Fred MacMurray as an insurance salesman capable of murder; Barbara Stanwyck as the unprintable blonde (for the occasion) who exploits his capabilities; Edward G. Robinson as the insurance-claims sleuth who sniffs out the flaws in their all-but-perfect crime...
...Story of Dr. Wassell (Paramount). One night in 1942 Producer-Director Cecil Blount De Mille listened to Franklin Roosevelt tell an episode from the war in the Far East...
...Hour before the Dawn (Paramount) is a picturization of W. Somerset Maugham's novel of that name. Its thesis: there's nothing wrong with a pacifist that committing murder won't cure. As a boy, Franchot Tone suffered a psychic shock when he shot his dog; after that he was a sourpuss at hunt breakfasts. "Now, if it was the birds that had the rifles," he would mutter...