Word: pseudo
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Like most such pseudo-bucolic rubbish about simple folk, this one has only the very transient virtue of being in fashion. It was a mistake to waste, on such a story, the brusque, noble backgrounds (the Scottish island of Skye) and the honest abilities of Director David MacDonald, who had the controlling hand in making Desert Victory, one of the first really excellent war documentaries...
...company's strong points, are Margaret Mitchell as Phyllis, Denise Findlay as Iolanthe, and Elia Halman as the Fairy Queen. Miss Mitchell, seen before as Yum-Yum, has a delightfully crystal voice and an acting manner no less charming. Her eighteenth century makeup is excellent, and her innocent, pseudo-proper, very British diction in the spoken dialogue a special attraction of the evening. Miss Findlay is bewitching and demure as the 17-year old mother of the lad of 25, and Miss Halman perfect as the frightening but not really fierce Fairy Queen...
...often permitted the actors to stand in awkward groups in the canter of the stage. If more imagination had been exerted, more realistic and fluid action could undoubtedly have been devised, but again the basic difficulty seems to lie in the play itself, which handicaps the director by substituting pseudo-eloquence for drama...
...Naked City" is without doubt the most successful of the pseudo-documentary crime films that have appeared in the last few years. As the magazine blurbs have emphasized, the picture was made in New York at the places where the events supposedly happened, and the effect of taking the murders out into genuine open air is both refreshing and convincing...
...Miracle of the Bells (RKO Radio), an adaptation of Russell Janney's fragrant bestseller, is a "religious movie" -of a sort. Its box-office gross should be a fair measure of the depths of U.S. pseudo-religious depravity...