A good movie

It seemed to be a rather obscure picture so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from it but, since it was directed by King Vidor, I thought I might as well check it out. Recently, I have been watching some older movies from the 30’s and 40’s and, back then, the screwball comedies were really popular but, to be honest, I always struggle with this genre. Indeed, most of these movies are just too silly for my taste. Well, this movie was something else and, only therefore, I gave it some extra points. Sure, it was maybe not really ground-breaking and it was pretty obvious that it was adapted from a play but I did like this idea of focusing on the stoop of some average building in Manhattan for about 24 hrs. Indeed, they gave us this way such a convincing and compelling portrayal of the diverse people living in New York with all their different backgrounds, cultures, religions and even prejudices. It also displayed one of the most basic murders I have ever seen but it was actually quite refreshing. Indeed, Hollywood movies, especially thrillers, can be so far-fetched but, in fact, in many cases, women are killed by their jealous husband as it was depicted in this movie. Eventually, in my opinion, the only thing that prevented this movie to become even better was that the acting was most of the time borderline average. It’s too bad because most of the characters felt genuine and were interesting enough and the writing was actually quite solid. At least, it was pretty neat to see once again the lovely Sylvia Sidney, even if I have to admit that I wasn’t really sure if she was actually really better than the rest of the cast. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it turned out to be a really intriguing movie and I think it is definitely worth a look, especially if you want to watch something slightly different.