Mini-Review: Practically unrecognizable when held against Salter's novel. The gut-wrenching fear of failure which permeates every page is replaced with two-fisted punchin' and killin', and it's a shame because they threw away a lot of good stuff to juvenilize the story. On its own terms, though, it's a pretty routine wartime melodrama marred by embarrassing Anglo-centrism, but buoyed by some stone cold BEAUTIFUL and deeply exciting arial photography, the caliber of which I have never seen matched.

Mini-Review: This is an extraordinary cultural document. Like Alice Guy's "The Results of Feminism," it's a jokey send-up of a social "absurdity" that was really a historical inevitability. Little Rufus' campaign is a catalog of racist trash - "free pork chops with each vote" and a "dice president", but then all of a sudden Ethel Waters starts singing a cutting and heartfelt ballad about the American dream. It's a shocking moment of raw passion and hope for the future.