Word: villainous
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...story begins by giving its hero, U.S. Surgeon Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 5 minutes to live. At a mountain outpost, the government's apologetic hatchetman (Jack Hawkins), a charming, articulate villain, tells Fairbanks he will die in "a shooting accident." While he waits, Fairbanks and Writer-Director Gilliat's facile camera go back to tell how he got into such...
According to Tripp, teen-agers are too literal-minded to see a fleet in a washtub or a snowstorm in a handful of thrown confetti. And they want their TV villains to be recognizable blackguards. "On Mr. I." says Tripp, "you know that, underneath, the villain has a smile on his face and a sense of humor...
Fortunately, Director Lean's sure technique keeps most of the picture crackling, and the Nicholas Phipps-Stanley Haynes script gives him plenty to work with. His camera angles make a pair of cocoa cups enormously intriguing, endow the villain's silver-knobbed cane with a menacing, meaningful life of its own. He cuts back & forth between the lovers and shots of a frenetic Scottish reel to give a seduction scene a surprisingly erotic effect. His trial sequence, neatly dovetailing flashbacks of testimony into the lawyers' summations, is a fresh, economical way to film courtroom action. Many...
...actor who masquerades as a gentleman's gentleman in England, then becomes a real valet masquerading in the Wild West as a British earl. He caricatures snobbery and braggadocio, unfailingly spills tea trays all over an English hostess, unwittingly courts death at the hands of a cowboy villain (Bruce Cabot) and becomes the prey of a pack of mongrels drafted for a sagebrush foxhunt...
Skillful editing, scoring and commentary combine to humanize the animals almost as if they sprang from the Disney drawing board, and produce an engaging little story in which Hero Beaver and his friends outwit Villain Coyote while some frivolous otters and baby ducks supply the comic relief. Paul Smith's score is a miracle of synchronization and humorous comment. The film's piece de resistance: the frogs and crickets croaking and chirping through a chorus of the sextet from Lucia. Well worth sitting through a dull feature for, Beaver Valley is both an informative nature study...