Titio Não É Sopa (1960)

Paulo is put in charge of a large sum of money by his rich uncle, under the condition that he will use it to build a retirement home for the elderly in need. Instead, he uses it to buy a nightclub. His uncle, who lives in another State, comes to visit him and inspect the construction works. He brings his beautiful young adopted daughter with him. Paulo lodges his uncle at a friend's house, pretending it is his.

This is a very conventional musical comedy, very short on comicity, but with above average actors, most noteworthy among them the great Procópio Ferreira. Also, one of the musical numbers is very good, both musically and cinematically: it is a fantasy on the Carnival march Mamãe Eu Quero, with orchestration and arrangement by Pachequinho (José Pacheco Lins).

Rating: 31

Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

Bobby is an 11-year-old boy who lives with his mother. They are facing some hardships ever since his father died. When a new boarder -- a man in his mid-sixties -- moves into the upper story of the house in which they live, Bobby strikes up a friendship with him. The older man seems to be running away from something or someone.

Half-baked story about not one, but two people with extrasensory faculties. It is supposed to be nostalgic and life-affirming, but its plot is absurd and there isn't a single sequence in the whole film that rings true. On the other hand, it moves at a decent pace, and has some nice Virginia landscapes in the summer, so it isn't completely unwatchable.

Rating: 26

A Room with a View (1985)

Second viewing; first viewed on March 27, 1987.

Based on the novel by E.M. Forster, first published in 1908.

Lucy is a young upper-class Englishwoman who is in Florence with her chaperone, as a tourist. At the boarding house where they are staying she meets several English people, including handsome George and his father, two middle-class tourists. One day, George kisses Lucy forcibly. Some time later, back in England, his father moves to near where she lives, and the young man comes to visit frequently. Meanwhile, Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil, an intellectual type from the same social class as she.

This is one of those films on which I differed so completely from everyone else that I just had to give it another chance. And, now that I did, I can say that, though I really was too harsh on it, I still differ from everyone else about it. There are some comic sequences, mostly involving character Charlotte, which are actually quite entertaining, I will give it that. But, all things taken into account, there is not enough to this movie to justify all the awe it inspired. Perhaps the novel, which I haven't read, would enlighten a few points, but, from what I gathered by watching the movie, there isn't much originality or consistence in the events woven by the screenwriter. Of course, characters are allowed to be contradictory and confused, but in this film they are just, well, too mysterious. At one point, George says that he, unlike Cecil, is able to respect a woman as a full human being, with wishes and thoughts of her own. But what we see is quite the opposite of that. George is impulsive, self-absorbed and even prone to forcing a woman to satisfy his wishes, whereas Cecil respectfully asks her before kissing her. As I said, perhaps such contradictions are part of the writer's design, but then again, I think this aspect should be a little more fully fleshed out (perhaps in the novel it is, but, as I said, I haven't read it, so I can't tell). Furthermore, the incredible coincidence which makes the plot possible is slightly annoying, and even more so is that the movie has the gall to deny it with the most feeble explanation. But these are mere examples. I guess the main point of the film is to contrast the sanguine and phlegmatic characters, with considerations about how they are influenced by the climate, and by social class. But it never transcends the level of cliché and, all things considered, makes for an unsatisfactory movie.

Rating: 46 (up from 30)

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Several storms rage the planet and bring about a new ice age. A paleoclimatologist must save his son who is trapped in the New York City Public Library with his friends.

Disaster movie whose plot does not seem to make sense -- I mean, why would a man travel by car and eventually by foot across a storm to send for air rescue when he knew the place where his son is and could have done it from where he was initially? Oh well, I guess people do not care any more about these insignificant details. The film is not completely unenjoyable -- there are some fine action set-pieces and the special effects are impressive.

Rating: 36

Love Story (1970)

Two college students begin a relationship. He wants to get into Law School and she wants to study music. He is from a wealthy WASP family; her ancestors are Italian immigrants. They fall in love and get married. His father does not approve of the marriage and disinherits him. They postpone children until after finishing University. She gets sick and dies at 25.

While not exactly the best film I ever saw, this film does not deserve some of the criticism it received. In the first place, there is nothing maudlin about it. It is quite the opposite of maudlin, actually, as it is told in a modern and dry style, and the "sad" parts go by quite faster than one would expect. Secondly, people have disparaged the film's catchphrase (spoken at two points in the movie) as silly or worse; well, I will not go into deep philosophical discussions here, but I am simply not so sure it is actually as silly as all that. I am not sure I can pinpoint anything that is necessarily wrong with this film. But this is as far as my defense of it will go; I guess I just don't think it is intellectually and emotionally stimulating enough. There are, nevertheless, one or two things that apparently escaped critics. The most conspicuous subtext that no one, to my notice, has talked about, is the religious one. The protagonists are self-defined atheists, and the author, who was a son and a grandson of rabbis, seems to be saying that, even if your wedding ceremony is a "do-it-yourself" one, chances are that your death ceremony will not be of that kind. Also of notice is how mothers are completely insignificant to the story, whereas fathers are quite the opposite. Needless to say, should the protagonist couple have had a child, that pattern would repeat itself, which I suppose makes God -- that greatest of all father figures, and an invisible and omnipresent character in the film -- a terrible monster who slays or annihilates all women. As for the musical score, I must differ on that regard from many reviewers, because Lai is a true god among composers and this is a superb score. For what it's worth, here goes a piece about a woman who allegedly served as an inspiration for the female protagonist:

The Very Jewish Love Story Behind Erich Segal's 'Love Story'

Rating: 51

Tristeza do Jeca (1960)

Some poor rural workers are manipulated by both sides in an election. The candidates focus especially on one of the workers, named Jeca, as he is considered to have some influence over the community. The son of one of the "colonels" feigns to court Jeca's daughter in order to obtain his support. The other side threatens to fire his workers if he does not win; later, he resorts to kidnapping.

This comedy tries to depict the Brazilian phenomenon of "coronelismo", in which a rich landowner, or "colonel", dominates politically a certain rural community. Voters are coaxed by various methods to vote on him. The most trivial of these methods is the buying of the vote through material benefits offered to the voter. In the film, more sophisticated ruses are employed as well. Although it suffers from a somewhat simple-minded plot, there are good things in this film. The picture of the workings of the Brazilian electoral system when the film was made is fairly accurate, and occasionally funny. Things have changed a bit in Brazil from that time to present days, but problems persist, in slightly modified shapes. 

Rating: 42

Three Violent People (1956)

After the American Civil War, a Confederate officer returns to his native Texas. He meets a woman on his way and marries her. She hides from him her past as a dance-hall girl. He is a cattle rancher. Cattle thieves and new tax laws are making it hard for him to keep his ranch. His brother, with whom he does not get along, has also returned.

The premise has some implausible points, most evident among them the marriage itself. The story has many points in common with other films of that period. One of them, The Naked Jungle, had the same male leading actor. Elephant Walk is another film with some plot similarities. The postwar context is an interesting one, and they make good use of it. Overall, a mildly interesting and mildly entertaining film which does not stray from Western conventions and stereotypes.

Rating: 39

Kóblic (2016)

Argentina, 1977. Kóblic is a Navy captain who worked as a plane pilot in the notorious "death flights", which dumped people suspect of political crimes into the sea. His personal opposition to those activities leads him to quit his position and hide in a small town, where he works as a crop duster for a local friend. The local police chief, who is a corrupt and violent man, soon becomes suspicious of him. To complicate things, he gets involved with a woman who is living with another violent man.

Although it is very well directed and well acted, there aren't many thrills in this somewhat implausible drama with a historical backdrop. Some people are being misled into taking it for a real story, which just comes to prove how prone to wishful thinking people are, even when there is no statement by the movie itself claiming its veracity. There isn't much of a chance that a real military would do what the protagonist here does, and the film itself is a sort of explanation for that. It would perhaps be different if he left the country. By staying in Argentina, he just demonstrates that small places are just political miniatures of big places, i.e., the whole country. Besides, most people who work for a dictatorship are ideologically in tune with all its aspects. Military men most of all, since their very training is a strong mental conditioner. I liked the way the movie turns into a revenge story in the final section, although the ending is not exactly a happy one.

Rating: 60

Man of the House (1995)

Jack moves in with his girlfriend, who is divorced and has a 11-year-old boy named Ben from her previous marriage. Ben does everything he can to scare away his prospective stepfather. Meanwhile, the latter, who is a Federal prosecutor, is being targeted for revenge by the son of a Mafia boss he sent to prison.

This is a very lame comedy, but there are occasional glimpses of what might have been a better movie, if all the ridiculous dances and all the moralistic sap were weeded out of it. The earlier part of the movie suggests a perversity which could turn into something interesting. One of the better comic points has a school kid being repeatedly locked inside a locker by bullies. At one point, he and Ben, who tried to help and suffered the same fate as he, talk from inside their respective lockers:

Kid #1: You know, it's not so bad in here. It's kind of peaceful.
Kid #2: Yeah, it's amazing how you get used to it after a while.

Another interesting point of the movie is how the three main ethnicities that formed the U.S.A. are represented in the movie. When Ben tells his school chum that he and his stepfather have joined an Indian Guides program and are going out on a camping tour, Ben's friend, who is black, comments:

Kid #3: I'll never understand why you white people like to sleep outside on the ground. You'll never catch no brothers doing that.

As this film was (apparently) made by whites only, it is only fair to include here the testimony of a black person:

We're Here. You Just Don't See Us

The Native American angle of the movie seems to imply that white people have no culture of their own on which to lean when it comes to restoring their familial wounds. It is ironic how whites would have wiped out most indigenous populations only to appropriate their culture for therapeutical purposes. But of course the movie will not come anywhere near such problematic points.

But, as I said, there is a good movie lurking somewhere inside Man of the House. The intertwining of the two subplots of Child vs. Stepfather and Thugs vs. Prosecutor is not a bad idea. The latter works most obviously as a catalyst for the resolution of the former, but in my opinion it goes beyond that. There is a psychoanalytic angle in which the thugs represent the stepson's unconscious murderous fantasies. Alternatively, or even concurrently, they represent the stepfather's fears concerning his stepson. But, again, to make it work it would be necessary to remake the movie and steer it in a new direction.

Rating: 30

Another Stakeout (1993)

A woman who is about to testify in the trial of a crime boss goes missing after some associates of the defendant blow up the house where she was hiding under police protection. Two cops and a woman from the D.A.'s office are assigned a stakeout on a house where two friends of the missing woman's are spending the summer.

A lame sequel which repeats some of the shortcomings of the first film and adds a lot more of its own. The implausibility factor is severely intensified, especially in the fact that a couple who is sheltering a hiding witness should be a lot more wary of neighbors, and more so when those neighbors behave and talk erratically. The attempts at humor, in this film, take a turn for the worse, and are for the most part strained and insipid. On the plus side, the cinematography is excellent, and the action sequences, though not as remarkable as those of the first film, are well done.

Rating: 33

Stakeout (1987)

Second viewing; first viewed on February 19, 1988.

After a prisoner escapes, the police sets up a stakeout on his girlfriend's house. One of the cops assigned to that job falls in love with the aforementioned woman, entailing a series of complications.

Entertaining blend of comedy, romantic drama, and action thriller. It is quite well made, too, and the sequence at the paper mill is a real tour de force. The plot, however, does not make room for much thinking on the part of the viewer. It is all very mechanic, and part of the thrills is simply a straightforward consequence of a combination of the complex premise and the behavior of the male protagonist, who is both imprudent and absent-minded, to a degree that could be considered unrealistic. I guess one could file it under easy viewing, which usually means also easy forgetting.

Rating: 60 (down from 67)

Bon Voyage! (1962)

A middle-class family, comprised of father, mother, two sons, and daughter, go on a vacation trip to France, by ship. Daughter meets a young man on the ship, and he follows her on land. Older Son becomes a bit of a womanizer. Father and Younger Son take a tour of the Paris sewers. At a party, Mother is harassed by a don juan. After Paris, they travel to Cannes. Daughter seems to have fallen in love with her new acquaintance, and he shows up at the beach, where they have a fight.

Upholding family values seems to be the underlying moral purpose of this film; it tries to do so in an entertaining way, and seems to have achieved its goal with audiences of its time. The script is hopelessly uninspired, but lack of inspiration did not seem to pose an obstacle for its extended -- more than 2 hours! -- length, and that in turn did not seem to scare away viewers. It is far from unwatchable, but equally far from exciting.

Rating: 33

Bloodline (1979)

The president of a pharmaceutical company is killed, and his daughter replaces him. The board of directors is comprised of members of the same family, who are all in need of quick money. They try to convince the new president to allow the company to go public. She refuses, and as a consequence is also targeted for murder.

The basic storyline is interesting, but the details of the plot are terribly lacking both in consistency and entertainment value. There is an underlying theme of ethnic bonds and how they become a source of problems which is also interesting, but its development is very superficial. A longer version of this film is said to exist but is nowhere to be found, apparently.

Rating: 20

Plaza Suite (1971)

Three stories around the theme of marriage. (1) A businessman and his wife camp out in a hotel room because their house is being painted; the wife also wants to make it a celebration of their wedding anniversary, but the event becomes the catalyst for the husband's coming out in the open about an affair. (2) A Hollywood producer is passing by New York City and sets a hotel date with an old girlfriend from his hometown, who is now a married woman. (3) A bride-to-be locks herself in a hotel bathroom on the day of her wedding which is to be held on that same hotel. Her parents struggle to take her out of there.

This segmented film presents three different angles of wedlock. The first segment features a woman in her forties, the second one a woman in her thirties, and in the third one she is in her twenties. It works as an analysis of different stages in womanhood and also as an assessment of marriage in different decades of the 20th century. The script sports a great domain of dramatic technique, but this comes at the expense of naturalism. Everything is greatly exaggerated, and the characters are as annoying as they come, more so than one would find in any real-life person. Each line of dialogue struggles to outsmart the previous one; sometimes they succeed, and some times they painfully do not. I suspect that may become a little exhasperating for some viewers. The happy ending is simply one of those things that come across at once as strained and inevitable.

Rating: 44

Freaky Friday (1976)

A teenage girl and her mother simultaneously wish they could "switch places" for just one day. Instantly, they switch bodies. As they both had some rather demanding events scheduled on that day, complications ensue.

This is what I might call an opportunistic movie. It envisages a situation and milks it for all it can give to the goal of achieving a respectable movie length. Sometimes, you get an interesting philosophical and moral essay on understanding the other's position. Other times, it aims at lower human urges, such as spying on someone close. As the film nears its end, the film is not interested in any of those things; it has evolved into an action comedy which profits from either character's inability to deal with certain physical tasks of their apparent selves. It even abandons consistency (in the reverse transformation) for the sake of prolonging the action. Much of the movie, however, just shows its two main characters adjusting to more trivial details of their bodily situation, like, for instance, addressing others in such a way that is consistent with it.

Rating: 45

The Pleasure of His Company (1961)

The arrival of an estranged father upsets the preparations for a young woman's wedding. He tries to envelop everyone around him in his charms -- his remarried ex-wife, his daughter, and even their house cook. The greatest concern of his ex-wife is that his sweet talk seems to be changing their daughter's mind about the big step she is about to take.

I found this film deeply infuriating as I started to watch it, mainly because its central character comes across to the viewer as not charming at all. It's quite a stretch to suppose any other character in the movie might think differently, but maybe I am wrong about this -- after all, they say that blood is thicker than water. Or maybe, rather than a genetic phenomenon, it has a sexual component to it -- an implication that women are somehow attracted to scoundrels. Well, make what you will of it, this is not a particularly entertaining movie. According to Wikipedia, the leading actor decided before this movie he was through dancing in the cinema, but they sure made him dance a lot in this movie. Of course, it was all in the story -- what I would call diegetic dancing -- so I guess this does not make him a vow breaker. It ends in the Casablanca tradition, with the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Rating: 40

Tsirk (1936)

English title: The Circus

A circus artist has a child from a black man, and is discriminated, and even physically threatened, because of it. She flees to Europe with a man she meets on a train, who will act as her impresario. In the Soviet Union, she performs at a circus and falls in love with a local performer. Her impresario gets violent toward her.

This film is a very simple melodrama with some circus numbers thrown in. It has a clear propagandistic slant, depicting America as a land of bigots and savages, and the USSR as a paradise of tolerance and freedom; it manages to be mendacious about both countries, of course. In the specific case of racial tolerance, it may be right about the USSR, I couldn't tell for sure. Not that it matters much. There was no significant black population there, and such welcoming messages as this one did not prompt all that many blacks to want to live there. But it is a watchable movie.

Rating: 32

G.I. Blues (1960)

The central concept on which this film's plot was based is not new, and was already present on the 1782 novel The Dangerous Liaisons, by Choderlos de Laclos. A closer source would be a 1933 play by Kenyon Nicholson and Charles Robinson named Sailor, Beware!, and  adapted to film three times before this one. No credit is given for those works, though.

A G.I. stationed in West Germany (presumably at around the same time when the film was released) has plans of starting his own nightclub once he returns to America. He places a bet on a fellow soldier who says he can spend the night with a certain German dancer. But that soldier gets transferred...

The musical numbers with the male lead are OK, and are satisfactorily tuned to the plot. There are also two nice solo dance numbers featuring the female lead. As for the script, it is painfully mild and uninspired.

Rating: 31

O Vendedor de Linguiças (1962)

Gustavo sells sausages which he carries around the city on his truck. He lives at the working-class periphery of São Paulo, in a neighborhood comprised mostly of immigrants of diverse origins. He has a wife, a son, and a daughter. Gustavo's daughter, named Flora, works as a housemaid at a posh house. When her employers go out on a vacation trip, she gets to be alone in their big house. She does not resist the temptation of borrowing some clothes from her employers. She meets a rich young man to whom she pretends to be rich.

Comedy whose initial section depicts an immigrant neighborhood in scenes which are close in style to Italian neo-realism. The middle section suffers from of a poorly thought-out plot, but if one is willing to suspend disbelief, it is possible to mildly enjoy the follow-up which shows, with a mix of comedy and drama, the cultural and economical disparities between social classes in Brazil.

Rating: 39

Jing wu men (1972)

English titles: Fist of Fury; The Chinese Connection; School for Chivalry

The master in a Chinese martial arts school in 1910s Shanghai dies suddenly of mysterious causes. A rival school run by the Japanese is suspected of having something to do with that death. Cheng, a former student at the Chinese school, returns after a long absence. His fiancee is also a student at the school. Cheng vows to find out what happened to his old master and avenge him if that should be the case.

Fight film which is very dull in the non-fighting parts. The poor script is centered aroung the oppression of Chinese people by the Japanese who controlled Shanghai. The drama taps into the viewer's weakness for conspiracy theories and revenge fantasies. According to some scientific studies, the Chinese have one of the highest I.Q.s in the world. The star of this movie was seven-eighths Chinese and one-eighth Ashkenazi Jewish. His I.Q. must have been high indeed as, according to the same aforementioned scientific studies, the Ashkenazis' I.Q. is even higher than the Chinese's. But this film is surely aimed at people with I.Q.s lower than that.

Rating: 17

Casinha Pequenina (1963)

A rural property in 19th-century Brazil is run with iron hand by its owner and his foreman (appropriately nicknamed Iron Fist). A peasant who works for the land owner (possibly as a sharecropper) frequently intercedes in favor of the property's slaves, who are frequently whipped and tied to a pole. The owner has a dark secret in his past and is being blackmailed by a woman.

Terrible melodrama, with an absurd plot, and overall deficient production values, though the cinematography is good, and so is the musical score. The main actor has an interesting screen persona, which makes the movie a little less unbearable to watch. Also, the first section of the movie is slightly better than the rest and has some interesting sequences depicting rural slavery in Brazil, albeit in a melodramatic way.

Rating: 26

Fun in Acapulco (1963)

A young American living in Mexico suffers from post-traumatic disorder. He sees an opportunity for self-treatment when he lands a job as a lifeguard at a hotel pool.

This musical drama is extremely gorgeous-looking. This somehow justifies it, but its main commercial appeal was probably the magnetism which its male star exerted on a huge number of people. The script is not very relevant here, except as a structured series of cues for showing the beautiful scenery and places. The complete disagreement between the title and the plot actually proves what I am saying (unless one considers psychotherapy fun). The songs are a musically unremarkable mish mash of American stereotypes about Latin America whose lowest point is possibly the proverbial misassociation of Brazilian bossa nova with hispanic America. But they are somehow not important either, as they are merely an excuse for displaying the singer's talents. Overall, a poor film, but, as I said, not altogether without a raison d'être or two.

Rating: 31

Savage Sam (1963)

A young man is taking care of his house and of his little brother while their parents are away. They have a dog (the titular Sam) to whom the younger brother is very much attached. The Apache surprise everybody in the region with an attack after a long period without hostilities. They abduct the two brothers and a young woman who is with them. The boys' uncle rounds up a posse to search for the abductees. Sam helps them find the savages' trail.

Juvenile Western. The Apache (and one Comanche) are the enemies, but the film wastes a few lines of dialogue to explain their position.

[Pack: Don't tell me about right and wrong.         
White: I'm not trying to tell you anything, Pack.
Pack: Then don't argue with me about Injun killing.           
White: I wasn't arguing. I merely said the reason the Indians fight so hard is the white man's crowding in, killing off the buffalo. That's all.
Pack: Them Injuns don't own the land, they don't own the buffalo.   
White: Maybe not, but after thousands of years they feel as though they have a right to it.       
Pack: They're gonna learn different. And I learn 'em.       
White: Sometimes hard to tell who the savages are.       
Pack: Dirty Injun lover !           
Beck: Quit that! Quit it out, I said! Quit that!       
Pack: He can't talk to me that way !                     
Beck: I said, quit it.  We go fightin' amongst ourselves, we're never gonna catch no Injuns.]

Then it wastes a few more lines to explain Pack's position:

[White: I didn't mean to get him so upset.
Beck: I know that.                   
White: I never saw a man so full of hate.           
Beck: Well, there's things that can sometimes breed hate in a man. 
White: Not like that.         
Beck: You're new out here, white. You're gonna find this is a hard country. You go to fightin' it, and it fights you right back every inch of the way. Ain't Virginia.               
White: I realize that, Beck.     
White: I mean, out here a man puts in a crop of corn and you bust your back watering it and hoeing it, and just before harvest it gets set on by hoppers. They hate the land. And you got about 50 head of cattle ready for market. Then blight comes along and kills 'em all off. You get so you hate everythin'.
White: But not other people the way he does.           
Beck: Look, a couple of years ago, Pack come home-- he come one day and he found his cabin burnt to the ground and his wife and three kids was killed. All of 'em was scalped. And he about went crazy grievin'. That can turn into hate real easy.]

The proceedings pack a good deal of action but not a whole lot of originality. As is usual in every film, well, almost every film, there is a surface of relative blandness or convention which poorly disguises a more explosive underlayer. In this case, the underlying thesis appears to be that the white woman has a superior sex appeal to non-white males.

Rating: 39

Volga-Volga (1938)

In a small village, a bureaucrat in charge of fostering the local arts and crafts dreams of being promoted to a job in Moscow. That promotion does not come, but he is invited to select a team of artists to take part in a contest of amateur art being held in the Soviet capital. There is a quarrel among the artists which results in the local orchestra being the only ones selected to go. The folk artists will not take that sitting down, and decide to go by sailboat (the others travel on an old steamboat). The local postwoman, who is also a singer, gets separated from her fiancee: he boards the steamboat and she, the sailboat. She has composed a song which eventually becomes the orchestra's chosen entry in the contest. She at first will not reveal she is the songwriter, attributing its authorship to someone else instead.

Musical comedy which reportedly was produced with the intent of showing Soviet peasants and villagers as happy people. The film is very energetic and has nice visuals along the titular river. The songs are nice too. The script is very unsophisticated, but I admit there may be dialogue which simply was not translated in the subitles, and therefore escaped me altogether. This seems to have been a very popular movie, but it is rather lacking in substance and mediocre in artistry.

Rating: 35

Domicile conjugal (1970)

English title: Bed and Board.
Faithful title translation: Conjugal Abode.

Antoine is married to Christine. She gets pregnant. He gets a better job. His son is born. He has an affair.

Quirky dramatic comedy with a main theme -- the day-to-day mechanics of marriage -- which perhaps is meant to disguise under its banality a supposedly secondary -- and arguably more polemic -- one: interracial relationships. The main thesis seems to be that such relationships have a traplike nature: attraction is greater, but disillusionment is in the same proportion. The film, written by three hands, is funny, at times in an outrageous fashion -- take, for examples, the jobs held by the protagonist.

Rating: 52

Here Comes the Groom (1951)

An American reporter runs a home for World War II orphans in Paris. Back home, his neglected fiancee gives him an ultimatum. He fails to comply, and she gets engaged to her millionaire boss. He flies back to America with the purpose to win her back. He takes two of the orphans with him.

Awful musical comedy, with one of the most unconvincing endings in film history. The plot bets on schmaltz. It's like that: you start out feeling solidary to all the abandoned children of the world, and then, all of a sudden, they decide that the script can afford only two of them (and the second one is initially an extra burden which prompts a sigh of fatigue in the protagonist). And you go along, and are, all of a sudden, not overconcerned with the remaining children. A curious thing for modern viewers is to witness what the old sensibilities had to say about catcalls. They were seen as a positive thing. Well, I will not count this as a merit of the film. Everybody thought catcalls were a positive thing in 1951.

Rating: 13