Word: technicolors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...trade magazine Boxoffice, seemed cause more for alarm than pride. For in the last three months more & more seats have been empty in U.S. movie houses. Only the showiest spectacles seemed sure to attract the customer's eye; three of Variety's top-grossing six were in Technicolor...
...through the latest Tyrone Power Technicolor epic, this reviewer waited eagerly for that standard but entertaining scene where four thousand howling savages descend (at $25 an hour) on the hero's intrepid little band of one hundred (fifteen of whom are wounded in the left shoulder). It never came, and that's just about the trouble with "Captain from Castile"; it never quite comes off. Every scene seems to lead inevitably to a gigantic battle in the final reel, but all suddenly comes to naught as Mr. Power and friends march off into a sunset fadeout...
Most people who go to technicolor extravaganzas would rather have duels than dialogue, and battles than brainfood. If spectacles can be said to have a purpose, it is to give pure entertainment. The technicolor plot is generally too flimsy to carry on unless buoyed up by blood and swordplay. Until some cinemogul realizes that an intelligent picture can be filmed in color, this is the way it will always be: that the number of corpses is directly proportional to the worth of the picture...
Wearing kilts instead of blackface, Larry Parks is a Scotsman here, returning to his ancestral clan. Clans aren't worth a darn unless they're a-feudin' and pretty soon another clan turns up with plaids and tempers that clash with Parks' outfit. After a couple of deep technicolor breaths of the sky (blue) the trappings (scarlet) and the lochs (emerald) the picture settles down to conversation (colorless, but strongly accented). The time has come to stop looking and listen. Clan wars are futile, says the hero sand because his bonny one belongs to the other clan, the time...
...cast had included Margaret O'Brien and the Andrews Sisters, and the photographing had been done in technicolor, the picture could have been billed as an extravaganza. As it is it isn't even colossal, but there are times when it activates a grudging smile, and once or twice even a warm chuckle. Levant's cynicism is two-dimensional: in his role and for his role. This, by all accounts, is a good thing, taking the mind off the pins and needles of a sleeping leg. Dan Dailey carries the burden of the show, and proves his worth...