THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK *

 George Stevens was one of the great American directors of the 1930's and early forties and some of the films he made around this time, {"Alice Adams","Swing Time", "Quality Street", "Woman of the Year" "The Talk of the Town", "The More the Merrier"), have become classics. However, it was clear that by the late '40's the rot was beginning to set in. "I Remember Mama" was heavy-handed and sentimental while the over-praised "A Place in the Sun" was a turgid version of Theodore Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy'.

Momentary redemption came in the form of "Shane", still one of the greatest westerns ever made but "Giant" was an elephantine version of Edna Ferber's novel only partly redeemed by James Dean's performance. Nevertheless, it won Stevens his second Oscar as Best Director and then in 1959 he turned his attention to "The Diary of Anne Frank", adapted not from the diary itself but from the Broadway play of the same name. The result was cloying nobility of the worst kind, reducing the tragedy of the Holocaust to the level of a cheap Hollywood entertainment.

Shot in Black and White Cinemascope, (totally the wrong format for the intimacy required), it was still handsomely photographed but very unevenly cast. An over-aged Millie Perkins made for an insipid Anne while Shelley Winters chewed the scenery all the way to an Oscar, (which she later donated to the Anne Frank Foundation). Ed Wynn, on the other hand, managed once again to steal all of his scenes though Stevens dragged the film out to an interminable three hours. Worse was still to come, of course, when Stevens decided to tackle the life of Christ with "The Greatest Story Ever Told". In 1970 he made a late gem with "The Only Game in Town" but by then it was too late.

GODSPELL no stars

 Never having seen this on stage I must admit director David Greene has done a very good job of opening up "Godspell" for the big screen. The question is, was it worth opening up in the first place? Like "Jesus Christ, Superstar" it's another hippie rock musical based on the life of Christ but whereas "...Superstar" stayed reasonably close to the 'facts' as we know them and adhered fairly closely to biblical locations this, like "Hair, transfers Jesus and his disciples to contemporary New York, turning them into hippies.

This might have worked had its score been on the same level as Andrew Lloyd Webber's classic or if it had a director of the caliber of Milos Forman but here the score is largely insipid and mostly forgettable and quite frankly, not the kind of thing to turn either a hippie or a Christian on and it's unlikely that this thoroughly banal film will convert anyone. In fact, if you are a follower of Jesus, after seeing "Godspell",  you might actually start looking the other way.

CONSEQUENCES no stars

 "Consequences" is well directed by first-time director Darko Stante and mostly well acted by its young cast but it is also thoroughly unpleasant and more than something of a downer. Andrej, (Matej Zemljic), is a young thug who winds up in a reform school where he falls in with Zele, (Timon Sturbej), and his group of bullies but Andrej is also secretly gay and it doesn't take Zele long to figure that out and use it to his advantage.

This is a Slovenian coming-of-age movie set in a world of violence and full of characters with no redeeming qualities and where, in view of everything else that is happening, the LGBTQ+ angle is spurious to say the least, Zemljic may be physically attractive but his performance carries no conviction and it's left to the thoroughly nasty Sturbej to walk away with the picture. Still, there are better ways to pass the time.