Orson Welles's second 'I-did-it' should show once and for all that film making, radio and the stage are three different guys better kept separated. 'The Magnificent Ambersons' is one of those versions of the richest family in town during the good old days.

Sunset Boulevard' - the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair - is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties.

Actually, what will be shown from here to eternity will be Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr cavorting on the beach. From Here to Eternity must have seemed like a chore to its director, Fred Zinnemann.

Frank Capra, Hollywood's Horatio Alger, lights with more cinematic know-how and zeal than any other director to convince movie audiences that American life is exactly like the 'Saturday Evening Post' covers of Norman Rockwell. 'It's A Wonderful Life,' the latest example of Capracorn, shows his art at a hysterical pitch.

Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect.

A peculiar fact about termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art is that it goes always forward, eating its own boundaries, and, likely as not, leaves nothing in its path other than the signs of eager, industrious, unkempt activity.

The story of Warner Brothers' movie, 'Mildred Pierce,' recounts the enormous and unrewarded sacrifices that a mother (Joan Crawford) makes for her spoiled, greedy daughter (Ann Blythe).