Word: siodmak
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Bouncily directed by Robert Siodmak, and photographed in Technicolor against real Italian settings. The Crimson Pirate turns out to be great fun. Lancaster, a onetime circus acrobat, bounds from balconies and cliffs, fights his enemies with fists, swords and belaying pins, swims under water, and swings from the ship's rigging with the greatest of ease. All in all, he makes a good claim to being the successor to Douglas Fairbanks as the screen's most athletic swashbuckler...
...cast tries hard for plausibility and Director Robert (The Killers') Siodmak builds tension in some of the courtroom scenes, e.g., when the morbidly curious camera paces Barbara from a cell in the county jail, across a crowded street and up three flights of courthouse stairs to hear the jury's verdict. But taut detail is not enough to prop up the essential fudge-and-marshmallow of character and concept...
Criss Cross (Universal International] is fairly routine gangster melodrama in which the hero (Burt Lancaster) is led into a whole mess of trouble by his alluring ex-wife (Yvonne de Carlo). But it is sharply directed by Robert Siodmak and enlivened with some fresh bits of business. Samples: a jug-nursing old gentleman (Alan Napier) who makes a specialty of planning complex holdups; the robbery of an armored car (in which Lancaster is a guard), a rare sport among real-life or cinema crooks; so much double-crossing that the cast almost needs military maps to remind them...
...City (20th Century-Fox) is one up on most movies in two ways. The screen play, by Richard Murphy, who wrote Boomerang!, is unusually thoughtful and pointed. And the picture is directed by Robert Siodmak, one of those quaint, old-fashioned craftsmen who still believe that a movie should move and be visually interesting...
...best of the numerous small touches in the film which jog the memory with their sharp exactness are contributed by Sam Levene, in the role of a police lieutenant, and by Siodmak. Although his previous efforts--"The Spiral Staircase," among others--have been outstanding. Siodmak has never been more successful in evoking the atmosphere and "feel" of a particular place, be it the unending bleakness of West Philadelphia, or the strident shrillness of a chromium-and-glass bar. His only mistake is unbelievably bad. In the otherwise excellent payroll robbery scene, the presence of palm trees in the background make...