James Stewart was always a more interesting actor than the wholesome persona foisted on him suggests. His performance as George Bailey has the earnestness typically associated with Stewart, spilling out here into unrestrained, passionate speeches, but there is a great deal of quietness in this performance too, most evidently when Bailey suffers yet another personal disappointment. The camera stays close to Stewart in these moments, sometimes uncomfortably so, capturing his silent expressions of disillusionment, resignation, and near-hysteria, and allowing him to demonstrate the depths he could plumb beyond the usual good cheer expected of him.
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He Ran All the Way 1951
The eternal outsider from his first film to his last. In his debut, Four Daughters, John Garfield is full of hard-earned sardonic humour; in He Ran All the Way, the emotional isolation of Garfield's Nick Robey has curdled into desperation and paranoia. There is an underlying vulnerability in both characters (and indeed in many of the characters Garfield played across his career) that is used to tragic effect in He Ran All the Way, evoking sympathy for Robey even in…
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The Breaking Point 1950
Desperate and weary, John Garfield's Harry Morgan feels considerably older than the characters he played just a few years previously in Body and Soul and Force of Evil. It might be his best performance (which is saying something), and it demonstrates a maturity that signals where he was headed as an actor as he approached his forties. It makes the performance all the more tragic then, knowing that this was basically it for Garfield; he wouldn't even make it out…
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Love Finds Andy Hardy 1938
Why are Judy Garland, Lana Turner and Ann Rutherford all chasing after this fool?
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