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Limelight
(1952)
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Robert Hatch
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A movie of impressive dimensions and great technical skill that serves up a tidbit of pathos as though it were a feast of tragedy.
Posted Sep 29, 2023
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High Noon
(1952)
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Robert Hatch
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What it comes down to is that the makers of High Noon, in an attempt to inject new content into the standard Western formula, have raised vexing moral issues that they have no intention of treating in a responsible way.
Posted Sep 20, 2022
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Ikiru
(1952)
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Michael Roemer
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A moving and extraordinary document of our time and its urban civilization.
Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Seven Samurai
(1954)
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Michael Roemer
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One of the finest films ever made.
Posted Jul 06, 2022
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A Man Escaped
(1956)
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Harris Green
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A Man Escaped is a series of separate scenes arranged to fit into a large, over-all pattern. By never overstating the contrast Bresson heightens it with his own restraint.
Posted Jun 21, 2022
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Lawrence of Arabia
(1962)
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Jay Jacobs
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The film’s real protagonist is the Arabian Desert -- a state of physical oppression and a state of mind made as compelling for the moviegoer as it must have been for Lawrence himself.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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On the Waterfront
(1954)
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Robert Bingham
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Although there is excellent support -- notably from Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden -- without Mr. Brando’s pervasive personality On the Waterfront could certainly not have been what it now is: the best American picture seen so far this year.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Vanishing Prairie
(1954)
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Robert Bingham
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His series of “True Life" nature documentaries has been generally superb, and let it be said right now that his latest, The Vanishing Prairie, is the best yet... But all too often Mr. Disney lets second-rate music get in the way of first-rate pictures.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Robinson Crusoe
(1954)
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Robert Bingham
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Straightforward, unpretentious, this definitive filming of Robinson Crusoe should be frequently revived.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Marty
(1955)
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Robert Bingham
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Marty is a small but splendid sample of that richness and variety in American life which has been waiting all too long to be filmed and televised.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Around the World in 80 Days
(1956)
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Robert Bingham
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It’s just about the most delightful way of spending three hours that I can think of offhand. At last the wide screen and full-color films have been used to make a picture that is worthy of them and appropriate to them.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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Baby Doll
(1956)
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Robert Bingham
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A picture that is several cuts above Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender but quite far below A Streetcar Named Desire, another Kazan- Williams collaboration, and not even to be compared with their Rose Tattoo.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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All About Eve
(1950)
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Leo Rosten
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It has been a long time since the screen has offered us anything as adult, as full of insight, or (in the favorable sense of the word) as sophisticated as All About Eve.
Posted Feb 10, 2022
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The Mouse That Roared
(1959)
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Jay Jacobs
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It pokes a good deal of fun at a number of aspects of the contemporary scene that the movies have heretofore hardly considered prime material for levity (e.g., the State Department... the arms race, motion-picture audiences, and the movies themselves).
Posted Feb 07, 2022
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Behind the Great Wall
(1959)
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Jay Jacobs
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[Behind the Great Wall] is a handsome enough piece of work, and the narration, despite a lair share of the clichés endemic in the travel documentary, is somewhat more digestible than is usual in jobs of this sort.
Posted Feb 07, 2022
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Pather Panchali
(1955)
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Gerald Weales
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A film that speaks so directly and so movingly of human pain and human joy and, most important, of human dignity.
Posted Feb 07, 2022
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The Tiger Makes Out
(1967)
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Richard Bimonte
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All in all, the film is peopled by a gallery of ingratiating nuts and misfits.
Posted Jan 27, 2022
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Shoot Loud, Louder... I Don't Understand
(1967)
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Richard Bimonte
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An unwieldy and unfortunately disfigured version of Eduardo De Filippo's fine and eminently actable play Le Voci di Dentro ('Voices from Within").
Posted Jan 27, 2022
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Brink of Life
(1957)
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Jay Jacobs
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Miss Dahlbeck's performance is one of the really memorable tours de force I've seen on film, and her brutally convincing scenes in a labor room will come as a shock to most American males.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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Sapphire
(1959)
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Jay Jacobs
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A thoroughly engrossing and highly plausible entertainment -- and an unusually trenchant examination of the psychology of bigotry.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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Intruder in the Dust
(1949)
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Ralph Ellison
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The great significance of the definition of Lucas Beauchamp's role in Intruder in the Dust is that it makes explicit the nature of Hollywood's changed attitude.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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Happy Anniversary
(1959)
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Jay Jacobs
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A puerile farce.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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Tom Jones
(1963)
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Derek Morgan
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You can expect an absolutely breathtaking picture of joyous barbarity in eighteenth-century England.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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The Loved One
(1965)
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Marvin Barrett
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Southern has set himself an insoluble problem, and his response is appropriately neurotic and disconnected, a set of not very funny extraneous gags.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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Splendor in the Grass
(1961)
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Gerald Weales
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A great part of the blame for the dullness of the film, however, lies with Elia Kazan. On other occasions he has let the camera help the author tell his story. Here, his images are as spongy as the ones that Inge's screenplay suggests.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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The Heart of the Matter
(1953)
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Robert Bingham
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The photography is beautiful. the direction is sensitive, but somewhere along the line it was found expedient to throw away the entire point of the book.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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The Last Time I Saw Paris
(1954)
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Robert Bingham
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I certainly wouldn't trouble you with a description of this abysmal film.
Posted Jan 25, 2022
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The Brothers Karamazov
(1958)
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Stanley Kauffmann
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In spite of all the virtues cited above, one leaves the film with a sense of disappointment. Part of this is due to the shortcomings of the script.
Posted Dec 16, 2021
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Gervaise
(1956)
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Stanley Kauffmann
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The best compliment one can pay the new French film Gervaise is to say that it represents faithfully the Zola novel on which it is based.
Posted Dec 16, 2021
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The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957)
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Stanley Kauffmann
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Lean's direction is masterly, with that unhurried sureness which results in the best kind of pace.
Posted Dec 16, 2021
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