Screen Test of Time

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; Jennifer Jones in yellow-face is anything but.

Mister Roberts was the last movie William Powell ever did, and he’s great in it. Unfortunately, he’s not in it very much. Henry Fonda, Jimmy Cagney, and Jack Lemmon all co-star in this US Navy dramedy that had three directors before all was said and done, and the way the tone ricochets all over the place like a pinball launched from a shotgun, it shows!

Marty was a one act play that was probably pretty good… So good, in fact, that Hollywood thought it was a great idea to make it into a movie, add a bunch of extraneous stuff, make it nearly twice as long, and ruin it.

Bing Crosby plays an abusive, manipulative alcoholic stage actor trying to make a comeback, and Grace Kelly his long suffering, salt of the earth wife, and yet it’s William Holden as the show’s director who is the least believable character in The Country Girl.

In which Elia Kazan uses Marlon Brando to try to not only justify snitching on his friends and colleagues to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but convince his audience it was heroic. We’re not buying it.

Look, David and Suzan normally don’t side with musical theatre haters, but in the case of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, they’ll make an exception.

The Caine Mutiny can’t make up its mind if it is an excellent film about the stigma of mental illness, especially in the military, or an embarrassingly boring romantic class dramedy. When Humphrey Bogart and José Ferrer are around, it’s the former and at its best.

A picture postcard movie of Rome and Venice, Three Coins in the Fountain answers a question our hosts didn’t even know they had: can a movie devoid of stakes be good?

Richard Burton stars in what is quite literally Bible fanfiction that is almost so bad it’s good. Almost.

Possibly the greatest casting of all time in any movie, ever. No one but Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck could have pulled this off. But wow, did they ever.