California (Paramount) is a big, energetic Technicolored western about the 1848 gold rush. It should cause no particular pain to anyone, except possibly historians. Ray Milland is the sullen, unshaven hero. Barbara Stanwyck the hussy-with-heart-of-gold, Barry Fitzgerald the lovable old grape-growing philosopher, and George Coulouris the fine, fascist-minded villain.
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (20th
Century-Fox) is a dragging, uninspired trifle in fancy dress about "women's rights" in the late igth Century. The plot consists of one pale joke (in the 18705, typists seem to have been referred to as "typewriters"). It isn't much...