Sherwood Week: Grinning and baron it

THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST

1946

Directed by Henry Levin and George Sherman

Written by Wilfred H. Pettitt and Melvin Levy

THE SON OF ROBIN HOOD

1958

Directed by George Sherman

Written by George S. Slavin and George W. George (no, really)

Spoilers for either: moderate

A boy and his deer

THE YEARLING

1946

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Paul Osborn and John Lee Mahin (based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)

Spoilers: moderate

If it was gay, bright, and beautiful, that's how Ziggy wanted it

ZIEGFELD FOLLIES

1946

Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Charles Walters, George Sidney, Lemuel Ayers, Roy Del Ruth, and Robert Lewis

Spoiler alert: inapplicable (and as I've said before, it's difficult to be brief with musicals or anthologies, and this one's both)

"All women are rivals, fundamentally" (so which one's Joan Fontaine?)

THE DARK MIRROR

1946

Directed by Robert Siodmak

Written by Nunnally Johnson and Vladimir Pozner

Spoiler alert: moderate

Life after wartime

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

1946

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Robert E. Sherwood (based on the novella Glory For Me by MacKinley Kantor)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part X: Ain't no rule says a whale can't sing at the Met

MAKE MINE MUSIC

Though blessed with at least one genuine high point, and even a few good bits after that, for the most part this anthology isn't even up-and-down, it's mostly one single flat, boring line, spread across some of the most disposable animation in the whole Disney canon.

1946

Directed by Jack Kinney, Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske, and Joshua Meador

Spoiler alert: moderate

Love and death

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH

aka The Stairway to Heaven

Surely one of the best movies whose content was ever dictated by a government, A Matter of Life and Death is practically the perfect wartime romantic melodrama... except, I guess, for those parts where the content was dictated by a government.

1946

Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

With David Niven (Squadron Leader Peter Carter), Kim Hunter (June), Roger Livesey (Dr. Frank Reeves), Robert Coote (Flying Officer Bob Trubshawe), Kathleen Byron (An Angel), Joan Maude (The Chief Recorder), Abraham Sofaer (The Judge), Marius Goring (Conductor 71), and Raymond Massey (Abraham Farlan)

Spoiler alert: moderate