May 12 movie: The Seventh Cross. Spencer Tracy stars as one of seven escapees from a concentration camp, who are recaptured and killed one by one, except Tracy, because he's the star. That makes it sound grim, and it kind of is. It's also a pretty inspiring story about the innate goodness of ordinary people.
Things I didn't love about this movie:
-I could really, really have done without the plot device of narration from the ghost of the first escapee to die. The ghost sort of hovers over the story mumbling platitudes about the strength of the human spirit. Ugh.
-Tracy was a terrific actor, but no acting could make his stocky build any less ridiculous as a recent inmate of a concentration camp. He looked like someone who should lay off the ham sandwiches, not someone who had been starved by the Nazis for three years. It required a suspension of disbelief that I wasn't able to muster.
Things I did love about this movie:
-Tracy's acting was genuinely tremendous. He conveys a character who starts out embittered, desperate and half-dead, and ends up inspired and inspiring. And he does it without dialogue for the first part of the movie.
-The surprise joy of the movie was Hume Cronyn as a likeable joe who shows unexpected heroism. I just looked up this movie on IMDB and found out that Cronyn's wife was played by Jessica Tandy, who was his wife in real-life!
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