The superb THESE THREE is William Wyler’s first screen adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (1934).  Despite the necessary (for the time) deletion of the play’s lesbianism, THESE THREE is far superior to Wyler’s more faithful and permissive remake of 1961, which retained the original title.  THESE THREE proved that the potency of Hellman’s play [...]

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This thoughtful, sensitive comedy is unusual for tackling two hardly hilarious subjects:  suicide and miscarried pregnancy.  It is also a timely post-war film, dealing with the G.I. Bill and the era’s overall mix of optimism and gloom.  Fresh from his Oscar-winning Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and again directed by Miracle‘s George Seaton, Edmund [...]

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Though merely a minor effort from Hollywood’s greatest year, the soap In Name Only has a lot going for it, particularly its star power of an unusually high wattage.  This triangle stars Cary Grant (on his way up), Carole Lombard (at her peak), and Kay Francis (on her way down, but not without a fight).  [...]

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This masterpiece, one of the last of the great silent pictures, is one of the finest achievements of director King Vidor, the man who gave us The Big Parade (1925), Stella Dallas (1937), and The Fountainhead (1949), among so many varied movies.  The Crowd is a moving and powerful work, honest and timeless, and Vidor’s direction excels in [...]

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For me, there are only two candidates for the best English-language film of 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (no surprise there) and Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners, a film lauded in its day but shamefully overlooked ever since.  Zinnemann is best remembered as the man who made High Noon (1952) and From Here to Eternity (1953), but he also made [...]

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