Ripley at the Front

From the Polo Lounge to The Bistro, from the private projection rooms to the paneled, antiquated offices of MCA, the word has gone out in Hollywood: big, fearless pictures are in. The decision was prompted less by an abiding concern for the mangy state of mankind than by the stark economic reason that problem films have, however inexplicably, become boffo at the old B.O. In the Beverly Hills lexicon, however, big only means star-stuffed and three-hour-long, and fearless means pretentious. I got me a homo story, baby, and Sophia’s hooked in to play the wife, a real distraught babe, and Max Schell, he’s her husband who may be you know (but he’s not really), and Diahann Carroll (get it, get it!), she’s the dame who snaps him out of it. And for the background music, howzis, we got Bobby Darin to sing “God Save the Queen.”

So far, the leading practitioners of this art form have been Stanley Kramer and Abby Mann, and the reviewer churlish enough to suggest that their endeavors might not be any good (and they have not been) always seems to find himself in favor of Nazism (Judgment at Nuremberg, The Condemned of Altona), nuclear destruction (On the Beach), congenital brain defects (A Child Is Waiting), or acial prejudice (The Defiant Ones). Now we have The Victors, written, produced, and directed by Carl Foreman, a film which is the “biggest” and “most fearless” of them all.

JD

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John Gregory Dunne

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From the Polo Lounge to The Bistro, from the private projection rooms to the paneled, antiquated offices of MCA, the word has gone out in Hollywood: big, fearless pictures are in. The decision was prompted less by an abiding concern for the mangy state of mankind than by the stark economic reason that problem films have, however inexplicably, become boffo at the old B.O. In the Beverly Hills lexicon, however, big only means star-stuffed and three-hour-long, and fearless means pretentious. I got me a homo story, baby, and Sophia’s hooked in to play the wife, a real distraught babe, and Max Schell, he’s her husband who may be you know (but he’s not really), and Diahann Carroll (get it, get it!), she’s the dame who snaps him out of it. And for the background music, howzis, we got Bobby Darin to sing “God Save the Queen.”

So far, the leading practitioners of this art form have been Stanley Kramer and Abby Mann, and the reviewer churlish enough to suggest that their endeavors might not be any good (and they have not been) always seems to find himself in favor of Nazism (Judgment at Nuremberg, The Condemned of Altona), nuclear destruction (On the Beach), congenital brain defects (A Child Is Waiting), or acial prejudice (The Defiant Ones). Now we have The Victors, written, produced, and directed by Carl Foreman, a film which is the “biggest” and “most fearless” of them all.