Sunday In New York

The Albany virgin and vague newspaperwoman, her Manhattan brother the airline pilot who gets around and puts up a virtuous front, the Albany millionaire on the Olympic boxing team who is repulsed and proposes, the Philadelphia sportswriter and occasional music critic who spends the day with the girl.

A tremendously virtuosic film from Norman Krasna’s play and screenplay (“cursed with... nasty plot contrivances”, Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema).

Jane Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Robert Culp, Rod Taylor, acting the parts intelligently divined by Krasna, a quite regal showing.

Bosley Crowther of the New York Times thought it was a dirty joke manqué, Variety took the slightly more artistic view, “fresh,” says Halliwell’s Film Guide, “fairly adult sex comedy.”

 

Emil and the Detectives

It’s as funny as ten films, a German cousin of Crichton’s Hue and Cry.

The pickpocket on the bus is a tunnel man, not a “lucky amateur” crossing the Wall but a real professional hired to reach the Berliner Bank vault.

Emil engages private detectives to get his 400 marks back, the boys track down the hireling to his new assignment in a ruined building.

Girls who talk excessively on the telephone are an occupational hazard, and the snoopy kind likewise.

The robbery is quite successful, and nearly ends with Emil’s extinction, but the chief detective and the children of Berlin see that justice is done.

Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema, “may have been handicapped somewhat by the demands of the Disney Organization.”