With starring roles in The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit, 1951 was a fabulous year for Alec Guinness.  In the latter comedy Guinness portrays Sidney Stratton, a guileless inventor who is on the trail of […]

A footnote in the history of Abraham Lincoln’s ascension to the presidency of the United States is fictionalized in The Tall Target (1951), a dandy little thriller. Dick Powell portrays detective John Kennedy (yes, yet another interesting Lincoln-Kennedy connection) who […]

Another solid little movie from the film noir gallery that was so popular in the ‘40s is Tension (1949).  It benefits from excellent performances but its real power lies in the way that director John Berry frames the story, indicating […]

This is a solid little movie inspired by the Aesop fable about the boy who cried “Wolf!,” a fact admitted onscreen even before the opening credits roll.  There can be little in the way of surprise, since we already know […]

When one thinks of movie musicals, one does not think of England.  The best of the British musicals is Evergreen (1934), a Jessie Matthews tour-de-force with music, choreography and vigor that rival anything ever put on screen by Busby Berkeley. […]

There were several good newspaper movies of the early- to mid- 1930s  — The Front Page (1931), Five Star Final (1931), Is My Face Red? (1932), The Payoff (1935), Libeled Lady (1936) — and to this list must be added […]

The Wind (1928) is one of those artificial melodramas, and it holds up exceedingly well in some respects, and not so strongly in others.  The first time I saw it I was blown away by its sheer force, even though […]

As the roaring twenties were racing forward toward the crash of 1929, movies reflected that recklessness; comedy and whirlwind action was the order of the day, while ever fewer films attempted to depict with authenticity the real world.  The Crowd […]