He has a funny voice that makes you nervous on its high notes, a funny face, no one could call handsome; he cannot, so far as I know, act, and he nev… - C. A. Lejeune

A book could be written if Harpo didn't eat it first, or Groucho and Chico tear it up page by page on the art of the Marxes. You could call it surrealism, or or dadaism, or what about that -ism that all depends on the use of staircases? You could analyse its clear cold illogic, entirely divorced from emotion. You could suggest that Harpo, with his motor horn, is in the direct line of the clowns of history. You could even argue that it represents the furthest manifestation of, pure comedy on the modern screen, and you wouldn't be far wrong.

For Mr. Astaire, along with Chaplin and Disney, is one of the only really significant trio that the cinema has yet evolved. These three are universal artists, at once masters and servants oi form which the whole world can assess and appreciate. It is possible that Chaplin his time, and Disney at the present, is the completer artist. It doesn't matter, Evaluations of this kind are little more than academic exercises, a sterile study, a conscript thesis. The important fact that Astaire, with his dancing, like Chaplin with his clowning and Disney with his drawing, has found a way of expressing an idea, a feeling, or even clean and acute perception of physical well-being, to millions of people who cannot follow his steps, understand his songs, or speak his language.

A new film by Alfred Hitchcock is usually a keen enjoyment. Psycho turns out to be an exception. There follows one of the most disgusting murders in all screen history. It takes place in a bathroom and involves a great deal of swabbing of the tiles and flushings of the lavatory. It might be described with fairness as plug ugly.