Reviews

The filmed version of John O'Hara's From The Terrace leaves out the real view of the novel: how a man's monomania for commercial success destroys his ethics and finally, leaves him a rich, but unhappy man. The film covers only first part of the novel. Joanne Woodward's performance (thank God for all the O'Hara dialog left in the script), totally unbalances the film, but emerges as the most interesting part of the film: a woman's frank discussion of her need for sexual fulfillment. Woodward is so good as the adulterous wife, that the viewer should root for her instead of the Newman character whose own affair is condoned because the woman he sleeps with is the nice girl type. It's bitterly ironic that this film was released the same year as Billy Wilder's The Apartment which dealt a little more honestly with business success bought with sexual favors.

The film qualifies as 2nd rate Douoglas Sirk melodrama, but looks really great in cinemascope and technicolor and has received a great transfer to DVD.

The Accused is the kind of movie that begins promisingly, but then the script loses its nerve. That we root for the movie to be better, indicates the promise it showed, but then lost after the first third of the movie. Loretta Young plays a repressed psychology professor who kills one of her students in self defense, then covers up her crime. For a short time, Young actually stays in character before the script changes her from a frumpy spinster to the glamorous movie star, the better to hide her original appearance from a truck driver who gave her a ride on the evening of the killing. The movie displays many nice touches provided by director William Dieterle. Wendell Corey makes us wish he had been given better roles and the untalented Robert Cummings makes us ask if he was cast as a favor to someone.