Word: valli
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Paradine Case (Selznick) stars Gregory Peck as a gifted, happily married English lawyer who falls in love with the client he is defending. Mrs. Paradine (Valli) is accused of poisoning her blind husband, and Lawyer Peck recklessly sets out to pin the crime on the dead husband's valet (Louis Jourdan). In his infatuation for his client, he is incapable of imagining that she may be guilty. In his jealousy, he suspects an affair between the valet and the accused lady. Making a headlong effort to defend her, he brings on a suicide and his own virtual ruin...
...hard to figure who is at fault, or why, in the case of the much heralded Italian newcomer, Valli. Her beauty, or better-than-beauty, has an almost reptilian fascination; she is, indeed, the most fatale-looking femme since Garbo. But it remains an open question whether she can act. Hitchcock, keeping her nearly motionless, plies her with one slow, cold, lambent close-up after another. Some of these close-ups function forcefully in the storytelling; but too many are as nonfunctional as her frequent changes of hairdo. It looks as if Hitchcock, one of the smartest directors of women...
...Americans pushed a cautious advance toward Bologna, pulled back under heavy German artillery fire. The British stormed a railroad bridge north of Faenza four times, were driven back each time. The Canadians, who had cleared the enemy from 50 square miles between the Reno River and the Valli di Commacchio lagoon, met stiffer resistance and came to a halt...