Cinema: The New Pictures, Aug. 5, 1957

A Hatful of Rain (20th Century-Fox), the latest of Hollywood's dope operas, is much the best of the hopheaded lot. Its predecessors luridly flaunted syringes, outsize needles and puncture-mottled golden arms; their heroes inevitably kicked the habit for good in a rosy last-reel vision of a better tomorrow.

Rain scraps this brand of opiated logic in favor of cold-turkey realism. The movie zeroes in on a nightmare that is real in tens of thousands of U.S. homes. This particular private hell is an apartment in a big Manhattan housing project. Don Murray is a...

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