Cinema: The New Pictures: Jul. 1, 1940

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Susan and God (M. G. M.) explores the situation that develops when a giddy Long Island matron takes up with something resembling Dr. Frank Buchman's Oxford brand of confessional Christianity, tries hard to talk her husband and her friends into it and to death.

In the latter enterprise Joan Crawford at first comes too close to succeeding. But when the film gets under way and Susan wakes up to find that her patient husband

(Fredric March) — sick of the way she has been treating him and their ugly duckling daughter (16-year-old Rita Quigley) — is about to fly the coop, Cinemactress Crawford conies into her honest own. The result is a moving marital drama, which, although it talks more than most cinemas, also has more to say. It also demonstrates that Buchmanism is a bore, at least in the movies, and that Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Rose Hobart, Nigel Bruce and Bruce Cabot are not.

Like all Metro specials, Susan and God is trademarked by expert direction (George Cukor), lavish mountings, best camera work and lighting in the business, and gowns by Adrian. Since Hollywood's only rival as the world's fashion centre was Paris, since Hollywood's No. 1 stylist is Adrian, and since broad-shouldered, boy-hipped Joan Crawford is one of Adrian's favorite models, Susan and God is no mean fashion event. Feminine movie goers and scouts who remembered such nationwide Adrian clicks as the puffed sleeves Crawford wore in Letty Lynton, Garbo's Eugenie hat in Romance and jaunty pillbox in Mat a Hari, ogled Miss Crawford in a quilted bed jacket and chiffon wimple, a severe black frock with white loops sprouting from one shoulder, a striking evening gown suspended from a white cord (see cut), 13 other Adrian changes.